Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Silver was falling.

Normally, this wasn’t an issue. Dreams where the brain tricks the body into experiencing freefall were common. Unfortunately, something about this sensation felt awfully real. A little too real to just be a nightmare. 

The girl panicked, flailing around in the air, grasping at the wind rushing up behind her back. She twisted around with some difficulty, eyes widening at the floor that was quickly rushing up to give her a good ol’ hug. 

Silver did not like hugs.

Regardless, there was no time for her to ponder about why she was falling in the first place. She was on her way to an accelerating, impending doom. Terminal velocity didn’t care about why someone was falling, after all.

The ground started looking a little too close for comfort, to the point where Silver could see the individual shapes of the rocks. No trees seemed to be available for her to crash into. There wasn’t even a canopy of leaves to cushion the impact.

Well, she thought bleakly, guess I’m screwed.

And then right at that moment, she hit a ledge. 

It nudged her path of descent, while also bruising her ribcage. Silver clutched her torso and winced. That hurt. However, instead of hurtling smack-dab into the ground, she missed, tumbling down an impossibly large, green hole.

Silver covered her eyes with her hands, too scared to look.

She fell down…

Down…

Down…

Still down some more…

And then she stopped. 

From the middle of her back, she felt a tug. The girl opened her eyes, peeping through her fingers. She... wasn’t dead?

It felt as if someone had wrapped a bungee cord around her waist. There was something, a line of something, attached to the small of her back, threatening to lift her sweater right over her head. Her feet were dangling over the remainder of the sheer drop, shoelaces untied. Her blue sweater was caked with green pigments of the plants she’d fallen into along the way. Now, she smelled like grass.

Craning her neck, Silver managed to make out a red figure on a nearby overhang, from which the white bungee cord connected to. It regarded her for a moment, before pulling with surprising strength. Its arms seemed quite petite and its silhouette hardly showed any bulk. She was surprised the cord stopped her fall at all in the first place.

Silver was gradually hoisted up to the overhang by the strange… human? Was this a human? 

There were two black, deep-set sockets where eyes should have been. It contrasted the being’s pale, shining mask, which ended in two smooth points like the letter V. Silver thought that its shape resembled the fortune cookies shops liked to sell during Lunar New Year. They always tasted like some variation of cardboard, and yet, she still scarfed them down like regular cookies.  

The being wore a pleated red shawl, loosely draped around its shoulders, covering most of its body, only showing its black legs. Its lower half of its mask was hidden by the shawl’s collar. Silver wondered if the shawl-cloak had pockets. That would be so cool if it did.

It also had a sword-staff thing pointed at Silver menacingly. The white bungee cord was attached to its offhand, the line now slackened and tangled. It looked less like a bungee cord up close, and more like organic material. Some sort of plant fibre? ...Silk?

The stranger eyed Silver with suspicion. It was amazing how much emotion those hollow eyes could convey. They didn’t even need to move! And despite seemingly lacking a mouth, the being spoke with a sense of dignified royalty. 

“Who are you?”

“...”

“... can you speak?”

It’s not every day someone gets dropped into a strange new world. Silver’s brain needed time to play catch-up.

She gently pushed the red stranger's sword needle away from her throat with an air of faked nonchalance. Silver likes doing that. It bolstered her confidence. Faking it until she makes it. It never fails.

The red stranger pressed her sword-staff closer, unamused. “Identify yourself as friend or foe, before I do so myself.”

Silver let out a soft hiss as she stood up, one hand pressed against the side of her torso where she’d hit the ledge. That was definitely going to leave a mark. She leaned against the cavern’s walls, trying to ignore the wet squelching of the lush moss against her back.

“Let’s take a moment to… ouch… settle down, alright? Name’s Silver — ow — And you’re…?”

“Hornet,” said Hornet, thoroughly perplexed by this odd blue bug.

She had no mask, no mandibles, no chitin or segmented body parts. Her eyes were white, but also grey at the same time, instead of being one solid colour throughout. Her… cloak-thing… was rather unique; it wasn’t a singular piece of fabric, but rather several sheets stitched together to wrap comfortably around her form. A similar piece of clothing covered her legs as well, but were brown instead of blue. Weird black coverings were on her feet, making the blue bug quite the colourful specimen indeed.

What was this creature?

Hornet was snapped out of her confusion by Silver’s sharp gasp, which was followed by another groan of pain. 

“Hornet? Like, from Silksong?” she said, eyes widened. There was no way this was real. “I’m in Pharloom?”

“This is Pharloom, yes,” the hunter confirmed, swiftly removing the line of Silk that she used to catch Silver from falling. Silk was a precious resource she couldn’t afford to waste. It also helped disguise the gears turning in her mind. What nonsense was the blue bug spewing? What was a "silk song"?

Silver laughed, the pain in her side momentarily forgotten. “This is amazing! Wait, no. This is, uh, pretty bad actually.” Her voice lowered into a mumble. “All of the endings are super dangerous and… the Void… Grand Mother Silk… ooh, this is bad, isn’t it?”

She glanced around with the look of someone who knew it wasn’t going to end well. “This is, like, really bad. Pharloom ends up getting wrecked no matter what you do.”

Hornet had enough of the blue bug’s cryptic words and held out her needle again, much like how she first faced off Ghost in Greenpath. She massaged the side of her head with her free hand. Wyrm above, this was starting to get to her.

“You would do well to ‘ware your words, blue bug. If you are aligned with the envoys that caged and brought me here–”

Silver let out a small meep of surprise. She’d forgotten how mistrusting the princess-protector of Hallownest could be. Thank goodness for lore-accurate information from the Hollow Knight and Silksong wikis.  

“Hey, hey! I’m not your enemy, I swear!” the girl held out her hands placatingly. “I can explain things, but you might wanna take a bench first. You’re still getting used to things, right? Moss Mother is just right up the Ruined Chapel. Not that you’re gonna lose to her” — she snickered at the thought — “… but still.”

Hornet’s silence spoke volumes.

This… blue bug. She seemed to have some future-sight, much like her father. Was this another Wyrm in disguise? It seemed the most likely explanation for the girl’s lack of any bug-like body parts. The Pale King wasn’t exactly your average Hallownest denizen. The stranger would be spared her needle, for now. Even if she didn’t actually have future-sight, Hornet felt kind of bad for leaving her behind, unarmed and injured.

“I’ll hold you to your word, blue bug,” Hornet said, sheathing her needle. She set off deeper into the Grotto, having come to terms with the notion of being followed around by the strange bug. “We shall see if your claims have merit.”

“I’m not a bug!” Silver hobbled after the hunter, not eager to be left behind. She didn’t want to confirm the mechanics of respawning enemies and room transitions so soon, especially not while wounded. “I’m a human! But I kinda doubt you’d know what that means anyways.”

“You would be correct, child. The term is unfamiliar to me.”

“Wha– I’m not a child! I’m sixteen, alright?”

“That still sounds young.”

“You’re one to talk. You have the unfair pale being genes and whatnot! You’re functionally immortal and your lifespan occurs on an unfathomable scale. All according to Mask Maker anyways. He’s on Mount Fay. You’ll reach him soon enough. Can't progress anywhere without the double-jump.” Silver paused her rambling, recalling her trawls through the wiki. "Though, Act 2 ending is still attainable without the Faydown cloak."

Hornet bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself from exclaiming in surprise. She focused on clearing their path while also giving the girl a helping hand to jump over ledges and climb short walls. First foresight, and now extensive background knowledge? The spider made it a priority to question the human once a settlement has been reached. There was just too much to deal with right now. Even the unintelligable details at the end sounded important somehow.

Just what exactly was Hornet dealing with? A Wyrm? A god? A delusional maniac?

Eventually, the pair came to a stone bench, right as they entered a run-down Chapel. A Ruined Chapel, if you will.

“Aha! See? I was right,” Silver said, sitting down heavily on the bench. She shook the creeping concern of internal bleeding away. Her lungs were fine… probably. Every breath was starting to come shorter than she’d liked.

Hornet sat down beside Silver, red cloak rubbing against her blue sweater. “Hm.” The hunter stole a glance at her companion’s pained grimace. She wasn’t sure if her binding techniques would work on a human. “Still not enough definitive evidence. While I’m no scholar, I will make my judgement of your proclaimed foresight after we have braved more challenges.”

Silver chuckled softly, wincing with each laugh. Oh stars, she was going to black out soon. Hornet had better do quick work out of Moss Mother. Dying in the tutorial area would be a painfully embarrassing way to go. It also raised the question of the respawn mechanics. 

If Hornet dies in Silksong, the game, she gets teleported back to a bench. Silver had half a mind to ask Hornet to try dying, but felt that it would be pretty inappropriate to ask a princess to do so. She was also the only one armed, and seemed to have no qualms about skewering Silver alive.

The real million dollar question was: did Silver also respawn? She’d better hope she does. The Haunting makes Pharloom an incredibly dangerous land to traverse. Act 3 will be even worse, with Voided bugs all flying about, spewing black sawblades of death. 

She was so cooked.

Hornet cleared her throat. “I shall scout ahead for this Moss Mother you speak of. Try not to die while I’m gone.” The hunter disappeared upstairs in a red flash, footfalls as silent as she was.

And with that, Silver’s only source of protection was gone.

Yay.

Silver took the time to tend to her injury. She lifted up her sweater, exposing the blue-black skin. It was splotchy, tender and it had snaked up most of her left side like a paint splatter. She groaned, cursing her lack of medical supplies. All she had in her pockets were loose change and paperclips. Hardly anything of value.

The girl let her mind wander, desperately trying to piece together what the heck just happened.

She had been pulling an all-nighter for her finals exams the next day. Once the coffee had run dry, she’d just rested her head for a second, not expecting to fall asleep. Waking up again, she had found herself falling past the Blasted Steps bridge, past Mosshome, and almost went ker-splat at the bottom of Moss Grotto, right where Hornet’s cage was.

She had just met Hornet, the titular protagonist of Silksong: Hollow Knight. She had been dropped unceremoniously into the land of Pharloom itself. Hornet was playing out the game’s story, not knowing how it all ends. She knows that whatever ending Hornet takes, things don’t go well for everyone.

Bind Grand Mother Silk? Pharloom gets covered in Silk and a new tyrant emerges. Twisted Child ending? Some eldritch abomination will hatch from the petrified remains of the two pale beings. Trap Grand Mother Silk? Act 3 begins and all hell breaks loose; Ghost will save Hornet and Lace, but the Void still ends up plaguing Pharloom.

The question of how she was to get home crossed her mind. Would beating the game's true ending send her back? Has her family noticed her absence? Was staying in Pharloom better, where no school exams loomed over her head? If so, Act 3 would be a nightmare. It's not like Act 2 endings were any better; she didn't particularly want to deal with Weaver Queen Hornet.

Dealing with Hollow Knight gods had always been a terrifying prospect.

Silver also wondered if she was immune to the Haunting at all. Hornet certainly was, since all her Silk was that of her own. Was she running on borrowed time, then? Once she steps into the Marrow, would she get caught in the Grand Mother’s web of control, just like poor Pebb the merchant?

Was she just doomed from the st–

“Huh?”

WHAT THE H– Dude!” Silver jumped up, dropping her hold on her sweater, one hand clutching a nonexistent pearl necklace. Speak of the devil. “You scared me!”

The spider had simply reappeared on the bench, right as rain. Hornet's mask still showed indifference, but her voice belied utter confusion. “Sorry to startle you, blue human. I need to get used to this strange deathless-death. This has never happened before.” She stood up, inspecting her resurrected self.

“I’ll bet,” Silver snorted, collapsing on the floor from relief. “The only other time it happens is in Hollow Knight, where Ghost is the one respawning. Heck, I’m guessing they drove you insane in Greenpath and Kingdom’s Edge, right? You just weren’t able to kill them for some reason. They couldn’t stay dead. Their shade was also pretty flippin’ creepy too. But your needle couldn’t hurt it.” 

Hornet’s metaphorical jaw dropped. Exactly how much did the human know?

The girl waved the silence away, chuckling awkwardly. “Um, yeah, anyways… how was Moss Mother?”

“I’ve fared better, thank you.”

“Tell me about it. You fight a goddess, y’know? Not now but, eventually!” Silver chirped from her seat on the floor. “And Lace, thrice. Your diagonal pogo is infuriating though. Newbies ragequit over it. Personally, I like the different crests you end up using, but–”

Hornet left. She muttered something about listening to the human’s incoherent foresight. Seems like she'd much rather fight Moss Mother.

So much for conversation.

Chapter Text

Hornet tapped her finger on her needle, counting the seconds. She turned to her right. 

The human was still out. 

And was also conveniently occupying half the bench, all four limbs sprawled out with no grace or poise at all. 

The hunter sighed and stood up, stretching a little. 

Silver had convinced Hornet to backtrack throughout the entire Moss Grotto to kill a hidden marrowmaw, tucked away in a cave she didn’t notice. It dropped a beast shard, which the human claimed could be broken for 140 shell shards. 

How exactly she knew that number, Hornet didn’t want to know. The girl seemed to carry around a nigh-infinite book of trivia about Pharloom in that head of hers. It was best not to pry unless absolutely necessary.

Furthermore, she had insisted on referring to it as “Dave”. When questioned why, the human simply said something about a “2019 E3 playable demo” and how that particular marrowmaw had been collectively referred to as “Dave”. Once again, Hornet had wisely kept her mouth shut, lest Silver find more excuses to continue talking.

Hornet took a moment to look around the town of Bone Bottom. 

It was a modest little settlement, with a single shop vendor, a cheery menderbug-adjacent fellow who was building a sign of sorts, several pilgrims and a large tunnel. Before passing out, the human had made sure to inform Hornet of the tunnel, saying that it housed a primary mode of transportation called a Bellbeast. 

Apparently, it was to be addressed as "Eira" and was in fact, a she. 

The human had gone unconscious not long after they’d left the Grotto. The hunter did what she could, patching up her nasty bruise with her Silk. Hornet managed to get her binding technique to work on Silver by simply resting one hand on the human, and concentrating hard. It took the same amount of Silk, costing six notches, but Hornet shrugged it off. 

She was calculating, not callous. It wasn’t quite nice of her to leave a child to die. 

Besides, keeping Silver around had been to her immense benefit, for the most part. Aside from the incessant chatter, she displayed impressive knowledge of the strange land of Pharloom. Only a fool would ever ignore such a wellspring of information. 

The human started to stir.

“Hm… whuh…?” She sat up, blinking spots out of her vision. “Wheream…”

“Bone Bottom,” replied Hornet. “It was as you said. Well done.”

Silver wasn’t quite sure how genuine Hornet was being with her praise. Tones and subtext, especially sarcasm, were either the most painfully obvious things in the world, or impossible to grasp. Right now, it was the latter. 

She looked around to regain her bearings. Yep. This was Bone Bottom alright. “Oh! That’s faster than I thought. You… didn’t fall in the hole?”

“No. It’s a rather big hole. I would be impressed if someone did.” Silver felt that if Hornet had eyebrows, they were definitely furrowed right now. 

“Fair point.”

Hornet offered a hand as Silver stood up, who was surprised at the lack of pain from her side. She quickly lifted up her sweater, expecting to see the splotchy purple skin. 

Instead, it was good as new, with no sign of bruising at all. Running a hand across the healed wound, she was shocked when it felt less like skin and more like a woven tapestry. Slightly fuzzy and smooth, but with a sense of artificiality. Gently stretching the patch of not-skin revealed fine white strands of… Silk?

Silver whipped her head around, squinting at Hornet. “You can use your bind on me?” she glanced between the hunter and her healed wound. “I have Silk in my body? But, doesn’t this… no, oh no… the Haunting! It’s gonna affect me now, isn’t it? Once we leave to find Shakra, I’m as good as Pebb!”

In the distance, the shopkeeper perked up, confused as to why the blue stranger shouted her name.

It was now Hornet’s turn to calm Silver down, mustering the art of speaking in a soothing manner, like how Midwife spoke to her as a child. It was a tad difficult, seeing how it’d been years since her last bout of interaction with someone who wasn’t trying to kill her. 

Ghost, the Knight, didn’t count. They never breathed a word in return, anyways. 

“Calm yourself, child. For a force as strong as the Haunting, I have doubts that it can claim mastery over you.” She was starting to understand the nature of the Haunting now. It was a little bit like the Radiance and the Infection. Something was spreading its influence through Silk. It was evident through the Silk dregs she could see coming off of almost all hostile bugs in the Grotto. 

“My Silk is my own, and the being atop the Citadel cannot sway you through threads they did not spin.”

“So, like, she’s barking up the wrong tree, in a sense?” Silver dropped her sweater, mind churning from the implications. So Hornet’s Silk was okay, but not other Silk. Any other Silk was Grand Mother Silk’s Silk. Got it.

“... odd choice of words, but yes.”

Hornet mentally noted that the pale being she suspected to be the cause of the Haunting was in fact, a monarch.

“Phew! Here I thought I was gonna be the next Whiteward-esque victim! By the way, please stay far away from that place. It’s super creepy. Like, who records invasive surgery? Who makes a psalm cylinder out of it? The enemies there are terrifying too. One looks like a giraffe gone wrong. Never go there. Unless saving Sherma. Then by all means, wreck their butts.”

Silver took a moment to pause and draw breath. 

“The only butt that might pose a threat to you would be that of Ass Jim, I mean, Chef Lugoli.”

“...”

“We call him Ass Jim from his signature attack. It does two masks of damage. Probably the only attack that deserves two masks, to be honest. One for each cheek.”

“... naturally,” the hunter muttered.

“I know, right? He’s in Sinner’s Road. You’ll see later. Mind the muckmaggots though. I do NOT want to experience that. You’ll regret it. There’s also that one massive simp in his weird nest that a lot of people like to write… scenarios… about. Styx, was it? Crull and Benjin are cool though. Aside from the 160 rosary scam for steel spines, they’re chill. And–”

Hornet cleared her throat, politely asking Silver to stop. Her foresight was accurate to the T, but honestly, Hornet’s head was really starting to hurt when deciphering the apparent nonsense.

“I appreciate your intuitive mind, child,” she said. “But try to keep your head below the clouds. Danger does not wait for one to be alert. It simply strikes.”

Silver nodded, deciding to take the advice to heart. If she was going to survive Silksong, she’d better do as the pro says herself. She wasn’t quite sure if respawning affected her either. It definitely applied to Hornet, who’d reappeared after dying to Moss Mother. Silver didn’t feel like testing her luck just yet.

After confirming that Silver could walk, the duo set out to explore Bone Bottom before they left for the Marrow.

Pilby was up first.

He had been watching the banter unfold, but was too comfortable at his spot next to the gleamfly globe. It was warm and cozy, something the roads ahead lacked severely. He had to make the most out of it for as long as he stayed in Bone Bottom.

“Hm? Fellow pilgrims, are you?” he raised his weary head, eyeing the girls with bags under his eyes. Sleep, just as peace of mind, was hard to come by on a pilgrimage like this. “About to start your journey to the holy Citadel up top?”

“We are no pilgrims, sir, though it seems we will be travelling a similar path.” Hornet had to look down to address the bug. Silver simply dropped to a crouch, mimicking Shakra, whom they had yet to meet. She thought it made her look cooler.

(It didn’t.)

The human stared at Pilby intently, as if trying to convey something so incredibly urgent, words alone were not enough. 

“Hey, Pilby, listen to me. You’re gonna pack up and head to Pilgrim’s Rest in Far Fields eventually. But! If you hear distant rumbling, that’s a rhinogrund. Get. Out. Of. The. Way.” She had her hands on Pilby’s shoulders, scaring the poor pilgrim witless. “If the door at Pilgrim’s Rest is broken, stick with Flick when the world starts ending. Got it?”

“I– um… uh–”

“Pilby!” Her grey eyes bore into the bug’s deep holes in his mask. No irises stared back, but it was pretty obvious that the poor pilgrim was scared out of his mind.

“Um…”

“Silver!” Hornet tsked and pried the human’s vice-like grip off of Pilby’s shoulders. Her disapproving stare was enough to prevent any more aggressive coercion. Pilby scooched a little ways away from the duo, hiding behind the gleamfly globe. The blue stranger was terrifying…

Silver huffed, slightly annoyed. “I’m trying to make sure he survives Act 3! You have a lot of deaths on your hands, y’know? Just trying to help a princess out.”

Hornet nearly throttled Silver right then and there. 

“You do not blame me for things that have yet to occur,” she said, voice low and serious. “And you do not borrow grief from the future. You’ll drive yourself mad.”

Silver held her ground for a moment, before exhaling and backing off, mumbling an apology. She probably shouldn’t have spoken to Hornet like that. She was right. Foresight or not, the blame should fall on Hornet after the event happens, and not before. It was unfair to the hunter, to be judged for actions she had yet to do. 

Still, Silver didn’t feel any guilt at all for warning Pilby. She looked forward to seeing him at the Survivor’s Camp.

The two girls walked along the path in silence. Hornet’s hand on her needle twitched slightly. Silver pretended not to notice.

“O-oh! Travellers! Destined for the Citadel, yes?” Pebb the merchant called out. Her shop was small, but the gleam of shiny tools and trinkets within were unmistakable. “Well, before you embark, won’t you stop and—”

“—make trade with an old pilgrim?” Silver finished her sentence for her, smirking. Any trace of enmity with the hunter washed away immediately upon seeing a new face to interact with.

Hornet suppressed another sigh and cleared her throat. “We’d see your wares, madam, though I fear we may have nothing worthy to offer in return.” She did have to admit, the human was amusing at the right times. The hunter wasn’t allergic to fun; amusement simply dictated for the right place and time to be practiced. Otherwise, it’s just plain folly. 

That’s what Queen Vespa said anyways.

“I know a place where we can get tons of rosaries,” the human quipped. She turned to Hornet. “We’ll also pass Shakra. She’s essentially Pharloom’s Cornifer. Just a little more musically inclined.” 

The hunter hummed under her breath. Nicely drawn parallels, human. Annoying as she was, extensive knowledge conveyed in an understandable manner was great. At least, much better than cryptic chatter. 

Silver glanced over the array of items around Pebb’s shop. The simple key seemed to leap out at her, itching to be purchased. She knew how much more expansive the map of Silksong got after one purchases the keys. She needed Hornet to buy it, ASAP. 

The spider was still a little confused. “Rosaries?”

“Our currency of faith!” said the shopkeeper. “Your companion seems to know about them. They are finely carved beads of prayer. Share some with me, and I’ll trade my wares in return. For the right price, of course.”

Hornet went through her cloak’s pockets, realising that she barely had enough to buy even the cheapest item. Oh well. They’ll just come back later.

As the pair bid Pebb farewell and continued onwards, Silver chuckled dryly. “She dies after you buy out her stock.” It was said matter-of-factly, like a comment on the weather. 

Hornet didn’t quite know what to say to that. 

The human practically dragged Hornet by the hand towards a hardworking fellow, busy with hammering nails into a signboard. Hornet quelled the urge to smile and swat her hand away, allowing herself to be pulled along. This human was either the most adorable thing on earth or the most insufferable being she’s ever met. 

Silver waved in greeting, receiving a friendly smile in return. 

“Hello, dear pilgrims!” He put down his tools for a moment, resting his tired hands briefly. “The wishwall will be up soon, if that’s what you were about to ask. Just a little more hammerin’ and it’ll be finished!”

Silver grinned, giving Flick a wink. “This red bug here will become an avid wish-granter in the future. You wouldn’t know it looking at her, wouldn’t you? She runs herself ragged, doing all the chores for literally anyone who asks. If anyone deserves a statue, it’s Hornet!”

Hornet was appalled. Using the hilt of her needle to shush the human, she bowed slightly in embarrassment. “I’ll apologise on the behalf of my companion, sir. She is very new to Pharloom, as am I.” She stressed heavily on the part about being new to the land. The last thing they needed to do was piss off the bugs in the first friendly settlement they found. 

“Please don’t be pressured into building anything for my sake. Whatever kind deeds I do are to aid my future travels, and less out of charity. It would not be right for anything to be constructed for a passing helper’s memory. Save your materials, sir, for the nobler purpose of helping the town.” 

“Mmhmph!” Silver protested. Hornet’s needle was pressed firmly against her lips. It tasted really bad. Though, it was quite pretty up close. Swords were always cool. 

Flick laughed, resuming his rhythmic hammering. “I’ll be the judge of that, missy! Let’s see what you’ll be doing around these parts once I’m done with the wishwall. If the blue bug’s words do come true, you can expect a little gift from me, the resident fixer.” He gestured to the tarp where wishes would eventually be hung. “If these disappear faster than I expect, I know who to blame!”

It was now Hornet’s turn to drag Silver by the sleeve of her sweater, far away from Bone Bottom before she could say anything else they’ll regret.

As the Marrow came into sight, Hornet lowered her blade. Silver retched in disgust. “Do you ever clean your needle after your kills?” she asked aloud rhetorically. “If I knew any better, it felt like you did that on purpose.”

“I don’t,” said Hornet in a deadpan. “And yes, it was.”

“... oh.”

Art by me hehehe

Chapter Text

“Watch out!” 

Silver hurriedly shook Hornet’s shoulder. She knew this part of the map. Hidden away behind a breakable wall, it housed a lovely collection of falling rocks and platforming parkour.

The duo jumped over the sequence of spikes, scrambling for the ledges. “Silver, child, you can relax your grip,” said Hornet coolly, once the boulders stopped falling. The human obliged, letting the hunter go. 

Their reward was a fine cache of rosaries, whose rock formations looked unfortunately a little too much like the faces of dead pilgrims. Silver decided to not think too much about it. 

Team Cherry, makers of Silksong, was also the same bunch of Aussie fellas who made Deepnest. Putting the fossilised remains of the faces of pilgrims upon several stone formations was just an average Tuesday for them.

“These are rosaries?” Hornet held one bead up to her eye as they left the secret room. She observed how the light of the ever-present embers reflected off of its red metal. Not as shiny as geo, but it seemed valuable enough. “What a strange form of currency.”

Silver muttered something about the horrid scheme of blending faith and greed. “Weren’t you paying attention to the rosary string I made you pick up in Moss Grotto? It’s like… the more you hoard, the wealthier, and greedier, you are. How hypocritical. Top ten reasons why I hate the Citadel. Their actions also led to the existence of Bilewater, which is essentially a green hell that makes any gamer worth their gaming chair want to punch someone.” 

“Duly noted,” Hornet said, absentmindedly pocketing her newly acquired wealth. 

There were many words she failed to understand at all, such as “gamers” and “gaming chairs”. She theorised they must’ve been a group of humans who excelled in the trade of “gaming” (whatever that was), whose equipment consisted of specifically-crafted chairs. She’d have to have a chat about that in some other, less hostile environment.

“Shall we return to where you wanted us to go?”

Silver immediately hummed in agreement, speeding off through a route they had just previously been through. Hornet was thankful for fast reflexes; she would’ve otherwise been left in the dust with how quickly Silver ran off.

The human seemed particularly excited. Hornet wondered what could possibly be so thrilling to encounter that required Silver to jump around like a great hopper. Those annoying bugs were plentiful in Kingdom’s Edge. The hunter wasn’t eager to meet them anytime soon.

As they backtracked through the rocky tunnels, the unmistakable sound of a chime was heard. The human yanked hard on Hornet’s cloak, urging her to hurry up, to which Hornet lightly smacked her hand away. The pair dropped down a short ledge, nearly shattering Silver’s kneecaps. She wheezed as she stood up, earning an unimpressed side-eye from Hornet. 

It was a rare instance of Silver ever regretting not joining a sports extracurricular program in school.

Right in front of them was a short little fellow. His golden hat looked like the lid of a very large pot, and his head wrap reminded Silver about Quirrel from the first game. No weapons hung from his belt, as such was the custom of pilgrims. Instead, he held out a chime and stick, singing cheerfully to an audience that consisted of a stone door.

“Fa ri do la si ma net… do ni pwa na vo mi net… pi na sa ni ma ni cet… dana fou su lo bon!”

Hornet turned around to catch Silver singing along with the stranger; the human was practically bursting with excitement. She deduced that the pilgrim was someone the human knew of through her foresight. 

She sighed. 

This didn’t bode well for the stranger. The odd human probably had all his lines of dialogue memorised, like Pebb.

“Hi Sherma!” Silver waved her hand rapidly. “Don’t worry, we’ll help you open the door!”

“Hrm? Hoy! Hail, pair of maidens! Have we met befo— ack!” Sherma gulped as the blue maiden rushed forward, wrapping her arms around him in a lightning-fast hug. She immediately stepped back after the moment of contact. The pilgrim blinked in surprise. That’s a first. 

“Oh, haha! You’re a sprightly one, aren’t you?” he said as he tipped his hat in a gesture of greeting. “You already seem to know my name but… I’m Sherma! Me and my lucky chime are at your service!”

Hornet exhaled in resignation, taking a moment to regard the ceiling before addressing Sherma. “You might want to know that this wouldn’t be the first apology I have had to issue on behalf of the blue one. She’s a… traveling companion. Harmless, but severely lacking in proper etiquette—-”

“Hey!” Silver shot Hornet a glare. 

“—-and we both bring you no harm.”

Sherma giggled at the banter before turning his eyes to the obstacle before them. The gate remained closed, despite singing to it for well over half an hour. No worries. He’d just keep singing! “But look here! As soon as our sacred journey begins, we are tested. This huge gate stands between us and the way forward.” 

Silver mentally commended his consistent polyrhythm. Even she had no idea what time signature he was smacking his chime to.

“Only holy prayer and song will open the way! In this kingdom, even mighty bone is moved by music! Join your voice with mine, fair maidens! You two, me, and my lucky chime will sing together until the great gate opens!”

Before Hornet could politely interject, Silver pulled her away. “Don’t you dare,” she whispered, “mess this up for him.”

“I wasn’t planning to.” Hornet was already striding ahead, returning to the road they’d just come from. She sensed that the opposite side of the bone door was just beyond the winding path. “It seemed quite wrong to do so.”

Silver nodded sagely. Hornet was impressed at how sombre she could look when she wanted to. The human wasn’t all laughter and talk, it seemed. “Innocence and naivete are fleeting, and often spell the end of such bugs," Hornet said. "The little pilgrim can keep to his faith, only if we help him along the journey.”

The two eventually found themselves in a large, rectangular room. The floor had the flaky shells of long-dead skull scuttlers and skull brutes which Silver eyed in suspicion. Wide area… singular point of entry… the rumbling sound of… oh no, this was an arena!

“Gah!” Silver hoisted herself up onto one of the two stone platforms as skull scuttlers swarmed Hornet. The hunter expertly cut them down, as expected, and paused to glare at Silver. So much for help in combat… 

Two beastflies rammed their way into the room. One zoomed past the human’s head, barely grazing her hair as it circled the platform lazily. Hornet was busy trying to strike the other beastfly that stayed out of her reach, leaving Silver alone to deal with her problem. 

The beastfly charged, and Silver ducked. 

It charged again, and Silver jumped over it, almost falling face-first into the hard stone floor. 

The beastfly buzzed in some sort of angry protest, unable to hit this dastardly nimble opponent. Dang it! It had one job, one job in its miserable, Haunted existence, and it still couldn’t even do it properly!

A good few metres below, Hornet was being bodyslammed into the wall by a skull brute. The cracking of shell made Silver’s stomach churn. It sounded like two celery sticks being snapped, one after the other. The hunter no doubt had just lost two masks of health. Her sharp cry of pain did little to calm the human down. She could respawn, sure, but Silver didn’t particularly like the idea of being trapped in the arena without her, bladeless and ability-less. 

When the beastfly reared its small, compressed head, Silver panicked. She held out her hands to reflexively block the charging bug, much like how she’d often block a basketball headed straight for her head. Rationale be damned; she didn’t know what else to do!

She braced herself for the impact of the beastfly’s hardy exoskeleton against her palms until…

Shhhhhhiiing!

The beastfly dropped to the floor, neatly split in half.

Hornet wouldn’t have realised, but Silver noticed the world shaking a little from the felling of the last enemy. She also moved in a slight slow-motion, much like how the original game indicated a killing blow. The arena had been cleared. 

Two tunnels soon revealed themselves after parts of the wall crumbled away. 

Silver peeked out from the ledge, just in time to see Hornet sheath her needle. Talk about a clean kill! Hornet looked up and snickered a little, amused.

“Do the bugs of the Marrow terrify you that much?” She helped Silver hop down from the ledge, noting the absence of any injuries. Hm. Seems like the human knew a thing or two about combat. “Aside from the larger ones, I find them rather easy to take on.”

“I was trying not to die, okay?” the human huffed indignantly. She brushed off a thin layer of dust that had settled on her blue sweater, preventing it from turning greyer. “I don’t think I can respawn like you do. I really don’t wanna die in a videogame.”

“What is a ‘videogame’?”

Silver chuckled and put on her matter-of-factly face. It made her look a tad more knowledgeable than she actually was. 

“It’s a form of entertainment. It’s kinda like… a moving picture? Yeah, a moving picture. The player, er, reader, would interact with the… picture… through external inputs. You press a button, the picture’s character moves. You press another button, and they swing their weapon. Games usually have a set goal to complete, like killing all enemies, reaching the checkpoint or, in Silksong’s case, beating up Grand Mother Silk and stopping the Void.”

Silver thought for a moment, sifting through her patchwork vocabulary to explain the mechanics of respawning.

“Respawning is that ‘deathless-death’ you felt when Moss Mother killed you. You died, but came back to the bench. That’s a core mechanic in most games, giving players more chances to complete challenges.”

Hornet took a moment of silence to run a simulation in her mind’s eye. A moving picture? Respawns? So strange…

The two dropped down a shaft that had opened up after the arena battle. Sherma’s singing and chime echoed faintly throughout the tunnel. The other side of the locked stone door greeted them.

“I won’t wanna dwell on the concept of being a character in a game if I were you, ‘cus that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms… Haha, get it? Worms? Wyrms?” Silver laughed at her own joke. 

Hornet fought the urge to sigh loudly. The hunter busied herself with smacking the lever to open the door for Sherma as her companion rambled on. Large pillars hit each other in a chain reaction, eventually turning the gears that caused the door to retract.

Silver really had a lot to say, huh?

“A widely popular piece of human fiction includes the genre of ‘isekai’, where a human gets transported into another land. It’s often a fantasy, magic-related setting where the human usually has the option of staying or returning home. That’s ignoring the whole ‘killed by truck-kun’ subsection of isekai but…”

Hornet quietly urged Sherma to continue on as she stayed, being the unwilling audience for the human’s (mostly) one-sided conversation. The pilgrim spared the duo a curious glance before continuing on his journey.

“I think this is a dream…? Albeit a very, very real one. I don’t know how I got here. Or why I fell into Pharloom like you did.”

The hunter exclaimed softly. This was new. She'd simply assumed the human was from a far-off land. It sounded more like she was from a different world entirely. How could she have mistaken what was so obviously real life for a dream?

“I kinda miss home, honestly. I don’t think it’s even been a whole day, and I’m already homesick,” Silver chuckled dryly, slowly walking along the path. “But it’s not quite fair to you; you’re probably homesick too. I’m just, uh… whining about it more, I guess. ‘M sorry.”

Hornet trotted alongside the human, keeping one eye out for danger, but also focused on the conversation at hand. Silver was young; likely one of the younger beings in this human species of hers. It was a little much to Hornet herself, getting kidnapped and drop-kicked into a strange and hostile land. 

How much more disorienting could it be for Silver?

She idly cut down approaching skull scuttlers like they were rocks along the road. “Try not to worry too much, child. I find that worrying rarely solves problems. I offer to aid you in your plight, but don’t get dragged down by your own mind so easily.” She gently stopped Silver in her tracks, making the human face her. 

“You’re much stronger than what you take credit for.”

Silver laughed it off, playing hopscotch between large, flat rocks along the floor. She wobbled a bit, but regained balance quickly. Her bruised torso had long been forgotten, organic skin already having covered the patch of Silk-skin that Hornet had binded.

“Yeah right. You’re just saying it so I feel better,” she said in a non-accusatory tone. “Thanks, but you didn’t need to. You don’t need to babysit me.”

“I’m serious,” Hornet returned, performing a quick bind to heal herself back to full health before staring at Silver. “You… don’t realise?”

“Realise what?”

“You survived an onslaught of enemies in an enclosed area. That’s more than what most pilgrims encounter.” Hornet deposited a handful of rosaries into a bell-shaped contraption, watching a bench emerge from the ground. “They have wide open spaces to run, and prior knowledge about the dangers that lie on the road. You have never met any of those bugs before, and yet faced them unarmed, emerging unscathed.”

She took a seat, sliding to the side to make room for Silver. “That is something to be proud of.”

Silver hummed thoughtfully, sitting down as well. 

“Well then, if you put it that way… it’s pretty dang impressive.”

Her singing was enthralling.

Both Hornet and Silver stood for a moment, listening to the distant, lilting voice. Silver already knew who it was, but didn’t dare spoil the moment for either of them. She didn’t know how much more beautiful it sounded in-person, compared to hearing it through headphones.

“Kai, lai lai lai lai… whoooshka dou… kai, lai lai lai lai… whoooshka dou, lai…”

It sounded like a warrior.

The duo approached with some hesitancy. Meeting the cartographer was always a bit of a jumpscare. She had a habit of greeting people with a very loud yell.

“Poshanka!” she cried, beating her throwing rings against each other. They rang bright and clear throughout the tunnels, hinting at their sturdiness and strength.

“Waugh!” cried Silver, unprepared.

Hornet refused to roll her eyes. If she kept reacting to the human’s antics, her incomprehensibly long lifespan would be shortened drastically. Dying from annoyance. That was enough to give all three of her mothers an aneurysm each.

Thankfully, Silver recovered quickly enough to return the golden bug’s ferocious greeting. Since she lacked throwing rings to perform a proper “poshanka” back, Silver opted for the next best thing: a good old-fashioned military salute.

“Poshanka, Shakra Wielding Rings!” She almost gave herself a concussion through the sheer force of her hand smacking her forehead. “Meet Hornet Wielding Needle and… uh, Silver Wielding… Sight…?”

Shakra oohed at the formal introduction, bending down to get to both their eye-levels. It wasn’t every day she came across such knowledgeable travellers!

“You seem well-versed in my tribe’s customs, Silver Wielding Sight. Though, I must admit, weaponising eyesight is new to me,” she said, glancing over the duo’s lack of weapons. One needle for two bugs was hardly enough to guarantee safety. That’s why she keeps many rings on her body at all times. Much safer that way!

“Say, was it my master who taught you as such?” Shakra asked. She hoped so. It would save her so much more effort compared to running around the whole kingdom finding her if the strangers knew her whereabouts.

Hornet stepped forward. “Greetings, Shakra. We haven’t met any bug that resembles you, master or not. Are you perhaps trying to find her?”

Sharka nodded. “She is a great master, but has a knack for getting lost. I have been trying to track her down ever since I stepped foot into this accursed kingdom, to no avail.”

She rummaged through her bag, pulling out a few sheets of maps. “Perhaps these would be of better use to you, seeing how I’ve already traversed these areas.”

As the pair traded rosaries for maps, Silver simply stood there, uncharacteristically silent. She didn’t move an inch, watching the two bugs barter their supplies stoically. It was like every breath came too loudly; she didn’t belong here, not at this moment.

Once done, the human slowly approached Shakra, about to say something. 

“Shakra, your master…”

“Yes, Silver Wielding Sight?” The cartographer gripped her remaining maps in suspense. A lead, finally! “Have you met her?”

“I…”

An uncomfortable silence filled the air.

“I… ah, no. I haven’t. I must’ve confused her for um… It’s a mistake, sorry. Didn’t mean to get your hopes up. She’s out there, somewhere, right? Just gotta find her… haha…”

And with that, Silver left, leaving Hornet with Sharka. Safety be damned, she just wanted to be left alone for a bit.

Ignoring Hornet’s vocal protests, Silver rushed off into the Marrow, jumping atop platforms and dodging enemies. 

She couldn’t bring herself to tell Shakra. If she did, she and Hornet wouldn't have forged that admirable warrior’s bond across their sparse, yet meaningful meetings. Silver’s actions actually had consequences, not just relating to Hornet’s conscience around her actions. She couldn’t just stroll up to a character and tell them the end of their journey without altering their development arcs massively.

Would Shakra still have befriended Hornet so deeply if she knew her master was going to die? Alone, quietly, of old age, under a waterfall in Bilewater?

Highly unlikely. She wouldn’t have helped around the different gauntlets of the map, not stopping to linger around new areas to sell maps. She’d head straight to Bilewater, preventing Hornet from forming any sort of bond of friendship between them. 

Shakra would be spared her troubles at the the loss of a lifelong ally.

The human jumped over lava pits effortlessly, guilt and adrenaline clouding the ache in her legs. Is that what she did to Pilby? Change the course of his fate forever? Is this what Hornet meant by not borrowing grief from the future?

She shouldn't take what happens in the future and bring it to the present. Sad or not, happy or otherwise, those moments were made special because they happened right when they did. Not a second too soon or too late. 

It then occured to her that she was messing up Silksong.

Silver didn’t realise that she was running straight into the shell of a skull brute before it was too late.

As her consciousness slipped away for the second time that day, the human could faintly make out a blur of red and rings of gold around her prone form. 

Huh. 

Weird.

Chapter Text

Silver came to upon a bench.

Her head swam like the lazy koi fish in her school pond, tracing circles in the half-murky water. They were beautiful things, those fish. Reds, oranges, whites and golds, all swimming together like paint trails on canvas. In fact, there was a massive red koi fish right in front of her!

And then she realised that the red thing she was staring at was Hornet. 

“Still alive,” she confirmed to a tall golden fish. Wait, no. There were no fish in Silksong; they’re all bugs! That included the fish-like enemies in the Coral Tower. 

That meant that the tall golden fish was most definitely Shakra.

Maybe. 

Silver was 80% sure. Her head was still throbbing like she’d used a jackhammer for a pillow.

“This travelling companion of yours… Dondakku! Where is her blade? Her bag for supplies? Upon first glance, tell me you would not mistake her for an oddly-shaped pilgrim!” said Shakra. Silver’s vision was clearing up, allowing her to see the utter disbelief written on the cartographer’s face. 

“How has this one not fallen to the silken madness yet?”

Hornet stopped whatever she was doing with her Silk for a moment. “I will admit, her resilience comes as a surprise.” 

Silver fought the urge to quip a sassy remark. Sentences were a little too difficult at the moment. She was content with looking around for now. Words could wait.

“But her unusual exterior hides a powerful ability, and one that has yet to fail me at all,” Hornet said. “This human knows our fates, and what trials we will encounter along our journey in this land. Even the very words we say are made known to her."

Shakra hummed, her deep voice bellowing throughout the small tunnel. Foresight! Some members of her tribe often claimed to possess such a power, but were easily ratted out by the elders. 

She stopped scribbling on her work-in-progress map. “This one spins no lies?”

“She’s as truthful as they come, Shakra. She knew your name, how to properly greet you, and seemed to know a thing or two about your master. And yet, you still doubt?”

Shakra bowed in apology. “Yokkala… Perhaps she does speak the truth. One cannot fault me for disbelief, Needle Child, for our tribe had been duped by many such proclaimers." She snorted at the memories. “Imagine the prowess in battle they would have! Predicting attacks before their opponent even picks up their blade. Formidable foes, but only because they can dodge what has yet to be swung!”

The migraine Silver was experiencing finally subsided somewhat, to which she sat up as quickly as she could. And then she immediately regretted it.

Pain flared like a hot spike through her skull before dissipating. “Ow…” 

Hornet helped the human sit up properly, handing her what looked suspiciously a lot like a dead skull scuttler. “Eat. Replenish your spent strength.” 

It was shocking enough to jolt Silver out of her stupor. “Ew!” she yelled, flinging the dead bug off her lap. “Why would you do that?”

The hunter looked annoyed for a split second, before she sighed and picked up the perfectly good meat and took a bite out of it. She didn't need to eat, per se, but leaving it would be a waste of resources. She swallowed the coarse, dry meat. It tasted exactly like Hallownest’s tiktiks.

Note to self: humans don’t eat skull scuttlers.

The cartographer looked up from her map again. “Silver Wielding Sight, are you alright?” she called out. “You ran into a skull brute with impressive speed. Normally, that is how pilgrims die.”

Silver groaned and tried not to cringe at the memory. It was beyond stupid of her. While walking into walls while using her phone was excusable (somewhat), this really took the cake. 

“I was uh… dealing with… things!” the human protested. She turned to Hornet, who had just polished off the skull scuttler like it was a bag of chips. “And why on earth did you drop a bug on my lap? I don’t eat insects!”

“I didn’t know that,” Hornet stated bluntly. “But we have more pressing matters to discuss, such as your second injury sustained within one day of exploring Pharloom.”

Silver noticed that the area of impact on her body had been sewn up by more Silk, hiding the large bruises that were likely already fading thanks to Hornet’s binding. Instead of fading into a colour that resembled her skin, the Silk stayed glaringly white. "Y'know, your binding is handy and all, but I have a feeling that I can only withstand so many binds before… I dunno, something bad happens, I guess. Maybe I actually do have a chance at becoming Haunted if you keep using Silk on me.”

Silver poked at her Silk-covered side. It felt less like human skin and more like a piece of a t-shirt slapped onto her body. It reminded her of a patchwork quilt.

“Going by videogame logic, any player in the game should be able to respawn. But since it’s not exactly a game, and you’re the main character… what if there’s a side-effect of respawning for me, who’s just a side character?” she mused.

Shakra and Hornet shared a look. The tall bug decided to explain. “Child Wielding Needle did try to use more Silk than what you see,” she started. “But she stopped when you started glowing.”

“Glowing?!”

Hornet interjected. “Silk strands from your wound dressings started reaching up and above, as if searching for the source of the Haunting. I theorise that you can only sustain so much harm without healing, and over-healing you with my Silk makes you susceptible to the Haunting.” Silver nodded along. It made sense. “So while I can prevent you from dying, I can’t do so repeatedly within an extremely short duration.”

“Guess I gotta lock in then,” Silver said jokingly. “Can’t be caught lacking in Silksong anyways.”

Neither Hornet nor Shakra decided to query about the strange vocabulary. The hunter had already warned Shakra of her companion’s tendencies to ramble.

Since the human was clearly busy recuperating, the trio stayed a while, forming a cosy gathering around the bench. Shakra enchanted them with her singing. Hornet continued working on… something. Silver took a bite out of a mossberry, claiming it was delicious. 

The two bugs were once again shocked by the human constitution. If only they knew of caffeine and capsaicin, Silver thought to herself as green juice trickled down her jaw. Nature’s age-old toxins, but we process them into food.

Pretty soon, the cartographer got up, having packed her maps and quill. “I must away, Children Wielding Needle and Sight,” she said. “My master is a fast traveller, and I dare not fall behind her pace so easily. Let us exchange goods along our journeys, wherever we may meet next. May your weapons carry you far!”

And with that, Shakra was gone.

“Whatcha doing?” Silver peered over Hornet’s shoulder.

“Something,” the hunter replied curtly.

“That thing being…?”

“A weapon.”

“Oh. But you haven’t picked up any tools. The straight pins are in Grindle’s cell, deeper into the Marrow. You also haven’t even fought the puppy — I mean, Bellbeast — yet.”

The hunter stood up, handing the human what looked like a quarterstaff. It seemed to be made of one of the sparse metal poles that decorated the path in the Marrow. Only, this particular pole had been reinforced with Silk, shell shards… and more Silk. 

“Here. Call it whatever you wish. Use it to defend yourself and reach heights you normally cannot.”

Silver twirled it around experimentally. It felt like a very light, yet strong, like a baton. It resembled the bamboo poles her family used to hang clothes out to dry on, but had half the height and double the sturdiness. It could easily take her weight, and more. Good for vaulting and poking from a distance.

“I find it a little difficult to trust you with anything sharp, so this is the best I can do,” Hornet added, watching the human swing at the air. “It should last you long enough to prevent another incident like that of earlier.”

The human laughed, both in the simple joy at being handed a cool weapon and Hornet’s words. “This is awesome! I’m like Aang from Avatar now!” She made wooshing and “hah!”-ing noises as the quarterstaff traveled in graceful arcs. “And Master Shifu! And Sun Wukong!” 

Hornet was almost hopeful that the nonsensical ramblings would eventually fade away until Silver opened her mouth again.

“The Journey to the West one, not the Lego version. I haven’t watched enough episodes aside from the first, but I love their Lego sets. I have Mei’s dragon in my room. It goes well with my three other Ninjago dragons. I… also haven’t watched that haha. Dragons are just cool.”

The hunter settled for nodded along, helpless to stop the oncoming tirade.

“I hope Lego will make Hollow Knight sets in the future. I’d pay good money to make Greenpath out of Lego. Maybe even a mini-you thrown in as an easter egg!” Silver said as she strapped her new weapon to her back. Hornet had added a few extra strands of Silk to serve as a cross-body strap. 

“I love Greenpath’s music. It’s really a shame it’s rather unplayable on one guitar. All the sheet music is paywalled too. I just wanna play some banger music man.”

Oh, Greenpath? This was something Hornet actually knew. A welcome change for once.

“Greenpath was a fine place of temporary residence,” she said, walking away from the bench, prompting Silver to catch up. They didn’t have all day to stand around and talk. “The moss chargers were… commendably enjoyable to watch.” 

Silver snickered a bit. Yeah, she knew. Hornet is just a massive softie for fluffy and fluffy-adjacent things. She’d hug a moss charger if it weren’t infected. The human also wagered that she’s hugged her fair share of bees during her time in the Hive.

Without warning, Hornet’s tone suddenly took on a more muted note. “It is also not too far from the Queen’s own residence, though I have not spoken to her in a long time.”

A beat. 

And then…

“Oh.”

The pair walked on in shared silence.

There was something profoundly saddening about that to Silver. She couldn’t pinpoint why. 

Everything about anything relating to Hollow Knight hid some form of tragedy, be it death or otherwise. The whole universe felt like it yearned for peace. It ached and cried for a time where things aren’t always a stormy sea of troubles, where the skies stayed blue and smiles never faded. 

Its characters try so hard to attain peace, to guard it, to instill it… and they never succeed fully. Not the Pale King, not the Dreamers, and certainly not Hallownest’s protector.

Silver then realised that Hornet had been alone for a very, very, very long time.

Ghost had been her only form of company; even then, the number of times they met in-game could be counted on one hand plus one finger. Six times, if conditions were met. 

Six measly times.

And Ghost doesn’t even say anything to her. They still don’t, not even in the Sister of the Void ending where they save her and Lace. Their meeting was also brief, kept short by Hornet’s inability to survive the Void without the Everbloom.

They just simply couldn't talk.

On top of that, she mainly spent most of Hollow Knight busy trying to kill Ghost, so they weren’t exactly having quality sibling bonding time at all.

The human then wondered if hunters ever got lonely.

After a little bit more exploring, the duo stumbled across the Bellbeast. 

Or, more accurately, a large clump of Silk and bells that housed the Bellbeast.

It growled when Hornet approached to study it, attempting to wriggle away from its silken prison. Imagine Hornet’s surprise when the Silk strands held fast, even regenerating after she tried to cut them away. 

“Oh, I know this one,” Silver said as she watched the hunter unsuccessfully free the large bug. “We gotta backtrack a bit; Mosshome has the upgrade you’re looking for. It’s to the left of the fork in the road earlier. Your first Silk skill, and also one of your moves from your bossfight in Hollow Knight.”

Hornet eyed the human quizzically. What bossfight? Was she referring to her first encounter with that one vessel? What a strange word it was. She mouthed it out silently, feeling the foreign syllables with her jaw.

Naturally, Silver wasn’t paying attention to Hornet in the slightest. She was preoccupied staring at the shiny bells, wondering if she could take a small one along with her. “It does thrice the damage of your needle by the way. I’d wanna get it as soon as I can if I were you.”

And with that, Hornet followed her companion to retrieve this supposed upgrade. Thrice the damage of one needle swing? Wyrm above, you bet she’ll take it.

The pair came to a Weaver spire; its foundations hovering above the earth, just like the Distant Village, as is the fashion of Weavers. Leave it to them to defy gravity in all architectural aspects.

Silver then pointed at the suspiciously smooth platform, gesturing for Hornet to inspect the spire. An odd request, but the absence of levers to hit or buttons to push limited her options.

And then something started happening.

Silver watched in awe as the cutscene from the game played out right in front of her eyes. Silk strands whipped around Hornet as she groaned and concentrated, following the instructions written on the spire. It sounded like it hurt. A lot.

Then, as quick as it started, Hornet exhaled, mind reeling as ancient Weaver knowledge flooded her brain. It instilled in her a muscle memory, one that she’d somehow lost since arriving in Pharloom. And yet, it felt as if she’d even never forgotten how to do it in the first place.

The hunter threw out her needle, keeping it tethered to her by a line of Silk. It then retracted, flying back to her open hand. She cracked a small smile at the familiar feeling. She missed this move of hers.

She could use Silk spears again.

“Hey! I’m standing here,” Silver said as she jumped back in surprise. She’d almost gotten skewered clean through by the Silk spear. She had half a mind to lecture Hornet about being “trigger-happy”, but they had more important matters at hand. “Now you can free the Bellbeast! Oh yes, and her name is Eira. I told you that already, right?”

“Indeed you did,” Hornet confirmed. “You insisted on it before you passed out in Bone Bottom. It seemed like a matter of great importance. I’ll be sure to name her appropriately after I cut away at the strange Silk.”

“Well then, let’s get to it!”

Hornet raised a nonexistent eyebrow. “And by ‘us’ you mean…”

“Haha. You.”

Returning to the Bellbeast, Hornet made quick work of its regenerative web. 

A single cast of her Silk spear pierced it straight through, shredding the thick strands like sharp shears against fabric. The hunter hummed, mildly impressed. She didn’t ever remember her Silk spears being that powerful in Hallowne—

“Hornet!”

Silver, fully aware of what was going to happen next, tried to make a run for it from the arena. Sadly, the leftmost exit of the small cavern was immediately blocked by web-strung bells. She called out reflexively, unaware that Hornet already had her needle up and ready to fight.

They were now stuck in a bossfight.

That’s not good.

The Bellbeast, adorable as it was, was currently busy being really pissed off at everyone in its general vicinity. It roared, declaring the start of the bossfight. Silver covered her ears while Hornet stood rooted to the ground, feeling the whole space rumble along the beast’s cry. 

Once able to, Hornet quickly cast a Silk spear straight ahead, hitting the Bellbeast’s head. It leapt out of the ground, almost flattening both girls with its massive body. Luckily, neither of them were blind enough to not move out of the way. The duo watched the bells on the floor ring and clatter as it dug through the bellvein, anticipating its next move.

This gave Silver an idea.

“Hey, Hornet. Want to do a speedrun skip?”

The hunter wasn’t in the mood for weird human speech and snapped impatiently. “Out with it, child. This is no laughing matter. You’d best not beat around the bush here.”

Silver threw her hands up in mock surrender. “Welp. Alright then.” She put her back against Hornet, holding her new quarterstaff awkwardly. “It’s a speedruning tech called the Bellbeast phase skip. It shortens the fight significantly.”

Hornet really wanted to hit the human on the head again. What was “speedrunning”? Was it some long-lost art of running very fast? What did she mean by “phase skip”? 

A dust cloud denoted the rising Bellbeast. They had to act fast. The hunter elbowed Silver in the chest, hard. She sucked in a breath sharply and took it as her cue to explain the phase skip tech.

“You already did one Silk spear. Do four hits, another spear, and then rinse and repeat. Finish off with three hits and a final Silk spear. Should be enough to… whoa!”

The Bellbeast jumped again, its pearly hide gleaming in the bronze glow of the bellvein. A magnificent creature, if not for its misplaced anger.

Hornet did as told and methodically unleashed four strikes to the Bellbeast’s exposed belly. Once it landed, she followed up with a well-timed spear. All the while, Silver stood there gaping, like an incredibly unhelpful battle buddy. She consoled herself by saying that she was providing moral support.

After seeing Hornet execute the phase skip strategy flawlessly, she wondered if the hunter needed any support at all. What was her stick going to do anyways? Poke the Bellbeast to death?

“Hoy! Human! Watch it!”

The Bellbeast had gone and tossed a pair of bouncing bells out of its tunnel. Hornet had already taken one to the face before batting it away with her needle. Two masks down already? This was overkill!

Silver snapped out of her musings to dodge the other bell just in time. It was the size of her entire body, and probably weighed four times as much. She watched her own shocked reflection in the metal as the bell rolled past. 

Close call.

“Oh yeah,” Silver called out as the bells despawned. “Bellbeast does double damage.”

“That would have been very nice to know earlier,” said Hornet through gritted teeth, while simultaneously finishing off the last of the phase skip routine. One last Silk spear to go.

The beast emerged in a predictable cloud of dust, rearing its head. It was going to charge at them.

Hornet sensed the Silk in her shell, and concentrated. One last Silk spear. She felt the threads collect and bind to the eye of her needle, ready to be unleashed. 

And then, out of nowhere…

“Hy-ahhhh! Take that! And that! And that!!”

To the side of the Bellbeast where its charge wouldn’t have hit, Silver stood, smacking at its hard hide repeatedly. To her credit, she was using the quarterstaff correctly. Less like a glorified bat, and more like a spinning stick of blunt force trauma. 

The Bellbeast stopped its charge and stared, unimpressed.

It shared a look with Hornet, clearly conveying utter disbelief at whatever the human was doing.

Taking advantage of the poor beast’s confusion, Hornet quickly recovered from her bafflement and released the Silk spear. It hit the Bellbeast between the eyes, causing it to roar in pain.

Silver stopped her ineffectively relentless barrage.

A burst of Silk erupted from its body, indicating that it was no longer plagued by its silken jail. It went still from exhaustion before burrowing away from the cavern.

To the left and right of the duo, the once-barred exits were now free of debris. The bossfight arena was no more.

They won.

Hornet and Silver looked up at the suspended glowing orb in the middle of the cavern. 

“You should get it.” Silver put away her staff, grateful that the threat of dying had passed. “It’s called a Silkheart. It’s pretty important.”

Hornet hesitated.

“You’ll go unconscious for a bit, but don’t worry. I’ll stay here.”

Hornet trusted the promised safety with more than the normal suspicion, but believed the human anyways. The orb called out to her, tugging at her heartstrings. It wanted her to claim it. And it was quite difficult to ignore. There was a power older than her at play; it'd best be to see what it was.

The hunter jumped high, one hand reaching out for the unknown orb of power. Contact was electrifying. She immediately blacked out, falling to the floor like a limp red twig.

Silver snorted and laughed. That was pretty funny. It would make a great Youtube Shorts clip, if she bothered to upload anything online.

It was at that moment, she realised. 

Silver now had to defend the both of them for however long it took Hornet to wake up. No Silk, no tools, no powers. Just a long stick, her brains, and a lot of bravery.

Great.

She nervously reached for her quarterstaff again, alertness dilated up to the hundreds. Every sound made by a distant foe felt much louder than it should be. The gleam of the bells looked harsher than she’d remembered. Her unsure footing screamed of incompetence, and the Silk that was holding her wounds together had never felt more obvious in her life.

Getting hurt without Hornet for binds was a death sentence. Her stick probably did as much damage as the basic needle at best. She had no martial arts training whatsoever, and her coordination in battle was about as reliable as her school’s Wifi. 

Oh, where was Shakra when you needed her?

Chapter Text

“I’m telling you, it really worked!”

“Right,” said Hornet. “Of course it did.”

Hornet had long since stopped questioning the logic that flowed through the human’s mind. But even the most absurd actions had a reasonably absurd rationale, if it could even be called rational at all. 

This was on another level.

Silver toyed around with her new weapons. It was very fun to swing a large quarterstaff around without any adults to chastise her for safety. 

“I’m serious! The music worked!” she continuously protested, observing for any form of reaction from the hunter, who was leading the way in front of her. Was it really that difficult to believe?

While Hornet had been preoccupied taking a quick nap from absorbing the Silkheart after the Bellbeast fight, Silver had been left to her own devices for a solid half hour. 

And as anyone who’s interacted with teenagers before can attest, a lot can happen in 30 minutes.

Hornet jumped over more platforms, turning around occasionally. She was heartened to see her companion shimmy up most ledges without assistance. She didn’t say it out loud. Any words of praise would only be reserved for truly impressive feats. Still, it didn’t lessen the small grin that was forming on her face.

Seems like humans are quite the adaptable species.

“You claim that an instrument, made from my needle, had stopped the bugs from attacking,” the hunter recapped with a healthy dose of suspicion, “saying that silken threads materialised and held them fast.”

“Pinky promise, I’m not lying,” Silver groaned. Hornet was being so stubborn. How on earth did the White Lady and Ghost deal with her? “You just can’t do it yet because you need to kill Widow to get the needolin. Unless you install mods. But this is real life now. No mods allowed.”

What really happened was quite a sight.

Silver had taken Hornet’s needle and, using a few strands of Silk from her wound dressings, formed a stringed instrument she’d dubbed the “needolin”. She played it for a whole half hour straight, preventing enemies from ever getting too close by stopping them in their tracks. A foolproof, non-violent method to keep them both alive.

Hornet made quick work of the enemies once she had woken up. And then she also glared at Silver for touching her needle without asking for permission. 

Go figures.

Silver trailed behind Hornet, mentally mapping out where they were headed. They were getting closer to the Lace 1 fight. If memory serves right, the next upgrade would be the swift step upgrade. She wondered how she’d be able to keep pace with Hornet once she gains the dash ability. Would she be slowing them down?

Hornet cut away at some hardbone hoppers like they were harmless gleamflies. “Where did you acquire the skill to play that instrument?”

“Oh, I learned erhu in school for… ten years? It’s a two-stringed violin equivalent from China. I also taught myself guitar. Dabbled in a bit of piano, but never formally attended lessons.” 

Silver listed the instruments as if Hornet would even have an inkling about what they were. Last she checked, the only musical instrument ever shown in canon before Silksong was Brumm/Nymm’s accordion-bug. Hollow Knight unfortunately didn’t have many in-game instruments to accompany its banger soundtrack. Perhaps Skarrsinger Karmelita could teach Pharloom a thing or two. Too bad she was kinda old now.

“You’d be surprised at how similar all stringed instruments are in terms of mechanics. Your needolin works like a high-pitched cello on permanent pizzicato. It wasn’t that hard to figure out,” the human concluded, if a little smugly. 

Hornet stifled a good-natured chuckle. Skills to a hunter were their pride and joy. She’d be hard pressed to not flaunt her talents too, if it weren’t for Queen Vespa’s rigorous training to instill a sense of discipline into her. 

Though, Hornet doesn’t regret it at all. Life without discipline is not as fun as most make it out to be. 

The two made their way across what seemed to be a corridor full of supplies. Bundles of coal and ore glistened in the dim firelight, neatly packaged, all ready to be shipped to the Citadel up top.

And after that, they entered the Deep Docks proper.

It was a gargantuan structure in size and sheer scale. Towering columns held metal platforms to climb up and down, while ore deposits were tended to by forebugs, both of sane mind and the Haunted variety. The ever-present tinking and clanging of hammers on anvils echoed throughout the docks, accompanying the groans and coughs of the dock workers.

If Hornet could feel the searing heat, she wasn’t showing it. Instead, Silver, blessed with the sweat glands of a mammal, was rolling up her sweater’s sleeves in a pathetic attempt to deal with the temperature. Hyperhidrosis wasn’t something you’d want to pair with a smooth weapon, like a quarterstaff. 

That’s just asking for trouble.

“Wow… it’s hot as a furnace in here,” Silver said, pulling on her collar repeatedly to fan her neck, desperate for a cooling breeze from anywhere. “How’re you holding up?”

Hornet shrugged, more focused on locating the distant singing coming from somewhere below. She squinted against the sudden brightness of the room, the lava stream beneath illuminating the whole docks like one massive, dangerous and liquidy lamp. “It is certainly warmer here than most, but I’m fine. Why is your face wet?”

“Oh, right. Bugs don’t sweat.” Silver wiped away the sweat-drops on her brow, flicking them away. 

“It’s a biological mechanism for thermoregulation. We produce secretions that are mixtures of water and salt from pores in our skin. The latent heat of evaporation is lost as the water evaporates, cooling us down. Only downside of using water is the possibility of dehydration.” 

She then realised she hadn’t had a sip of water since Bone Bottom, not thinking of finding a carrier of sorts to serve as a water bottle. Haha. Yay. More problems to deal with later.

Silver hid her concern behind a laugh. “Makes for a rather messy cooling system, but it’s really effective! You might… uh, not wanna ask me for handshakes. And don’t hand me your map. My hands might tear the paper.”

The hunter nodded, eyeing the human’s drenched hands briefly. 

The pair then dropped down from the ledge. 

Well, technically, Hornet dropped down from the ledge. Silver slowly made her way down via several other platforms. Resilient as she was, gravity still affected her. Simply walking off of cliffs was definitely going to break at least one of the 206 bones in her body. 

“Hi Shakra!” Silver greeted after saluting the cartographer. “Got any maps?” She said it in a very specific cadence, one that was no doubt referencing popular meme culture. Sadly, neither Shakra nor Hornet could ever hope to comprehend a fraction of the trends of 2025.

(For those with elite ball knowledge, she was referencing The Duck Song where the duck asks for grapes at a lemonade stand.)

The tall golden bug stopped her melodious singing and crouched down to address the pair. Silver tried not to laugh at Hornet’s unimpressed expression. Guess Hornet doesn’t quite enjoy being made fun of for being short.

“Poshanka, Children Wielding Needle and Sight! Our paths cross again,” said Shakra. “What do you two make of this huge, groaning structure?”

Hornet looked around to where Shakra gestured. Silver, on the other hand, was busy giggling at the corpse of a nearby forebug who had assumed the Peter Griffin death pose. 

“The scale of it all impresses me,” Hornet admitted. “If this is merely an outpost of the Citadel above, then their capital must be—”

“—grand beyond measure,” Silver said in tandem with the hunter, a cheeky grin on her face. “You really should see the Citadel. It’s even bigger than the Deep Docks. It’s got its own fast-travel system; that’s how big it is!”

Hornet sighed. “Noted. And, pray tell, how did you know what I was about to say?”

“The wiki.”

“Naturally…”

Shakra chuckled. “I like your strange words, blue bug. Always keeping us on our feet. I see also that you have obtained a weapon. You are now Silver Wielding Staff, yes?” 

The human reached for her long stick self-consciously. It was strapped to her back weirdly, making parkour a little clunkier than she’d prefer. But she wasn’t stupid enough to ditch her only form of self-defense. “Yeah, I guess so. Still working on it, though. I’m nowhere as good as either of you two.”

Hornet and Shakra then traded their resources; Hornet finally was able to purchase the bellway and bench markers, and Shakra strung up her sudden influx of rosaries. Silver then got reminded of the incident with the Bellbeast’s cave. 

“Oh yeah, Hornet?” 

“Hm?”

“Remember your needolin?”

The red bug nodded absentmindedly. “Yes; what about it? … wait. No. You cannot have it right now.”

Silver laughed and waved away Hornet’s defensiveness. “I have an idea, but you gotta let us make a detour. I wanna pay a certain smith a visit. You’re gonna like what she sells.” Silver exaggerated with her hands. “Tools and traps of all kinds! Just like the ones you used against Ghost at Kingdom’s Edge.”

This prompted Hornet to look up from her new map. “Is that so?... Well then, I suppose that leaves us no choice but to locate this smith you speak of.” She didn’t say it, but the prospect of obtaining her old tools was quite exciting. She’d thought she'd lost them forever after getting captured. Good to see that Pharloom wasn’t all hostile and unbearable.

“And why do you seek this smith?”

Silver held a sly look on her expressive face, smirking. “If I can get the needolin to work, I don’t see why other instruments wouldn’t have similar effects on other characters and enemies. Music in Silksong is a pretty important piece of the lore; it sounds so much easier to weaponise than a staff I don’t know how to use.” 

Hornet left the conversation at that, a little concerned at the human’s line of thought. The look of sharp wit in those grey eyes made her a tad more wary about what Silver can do if she put her mind to it. Mischief left unsupervised… not the best combination.

Shakra returned to her singing as the duo left, searching for an unlikely pair of forebugs.

Chapter Text

“Oh, small pointy bug and small blue bug, why do you bother us, at our work?”

The hulking lady who called herself Forge Daughter kept her hands busy while talking to Hornet. 

Silver tried very hard to peer into her face, which consisted of a round bell. Sadly, she couldn’t see much; no eyes or mouth within the bell as far as she could make out. She also reminded herself to keep her hands by her side, lest she touch anything she wasn’t supposed to.

Just next to the large forebug was Ballow, dutifully shovelling hot coal from a nearby deposit into a furnace of some kind. It heavily resembled the bundled-up supplies they had passed by along the way, but even Silver didn’t know what they did. 

“My travelling companion sought your audience. What is your duty here? Are you a smith of some kind?” Hornet eyed Forge Daughter’s table with interest. Silver promised that this smith could forge her new tools to replace what she’d lost. She seemed promising so far.

Before the forebug could scoff and correct the hunter, Silver stepped in. “Oh, right. She’s not a smith. Sorry ‘bout that. She’s just… Forge Daughter. No smith, no sir-ee,” she said, emphasising the bit about not being a smith. “Comes from a super ancient and important line of forebugs ‘n all that jazz. Give her the materials and she’ll make you your hunter’s traps.”

Forge Daughter guffawed heartily, prompting Ballow to look up and pause for a moment. “Seems like small blue bug knows us well! For you and you only, we’ll offer our service once, free of charge! One-time offer, so use this wisely.”

The red hunter smiled slightly, seeing Silver’s shocked expression. “I suggest you take her offer, child,” she teased. “Before she changes her mind.” When Silver protested, saying that Hornet needed her tools, she sighed. “My traps can wait. You need all the tools you can get, much more than I do.”

The large forebug bellowed in laughter again. “Well said, pointy bug! Blue bug here looks a little lacking in armour. A bell-helmet, perhaps? Easy enough to mould to your proportions. Would give Ballow another fellow to match with.”

The shovelling forebug grumbled from his post, but otherwise made no comment.

“Aha… no thank you.” Silver chuckled along. “Before I get into the specifics, Forge Daughter, are you okay with crafting… instruments?”

“Singing tools!” Forge Daughter paused her tinkering, taken aback slightly. 

In the ages she’d been manning the forge, not a single request of such a holy item had ever been placed before. The small blue bug thought highly of her, it seemed. She’ll craft this one a fine instrument, fine as any dock-worker could make. “Yes, we can make them. What kind? Batons? Bells? Bows?”

“Uh… sorry, Hornet, can I borrow your…”

Hornet stepped back, letting the human use her quill to draw on the blank side of her map. 

It started as a figure-8 curve with two parallel lines running from its top. Then six more lines ran between the two, with perpendicular lines marked at regular intervals. A hole was drawn in the middle of the figure-8 curve. In a strange, straight script, one that was definitely not the language of bugs, the human named her creation.

To Silver, she’d simply spelt: GUITAR.

She held up her crude blueprint to Forge Daughter, who bent low and had pulled the paper close to her face. “It’s called a guitar. While I personally have never attended classes, I think it should be easy enough to figure out. It’s much more portable than other stringed instruments, like Hornet’s needolin.” Silver used the quill to point out specific shapes of the guitar she wanted, giving rough estimates for its length, width and other details.

She envisioned it slightly smaller than the average store-bought variety, for the sake of portability and weight. The last thing she needed was to be encumbered by her secret weapon. 

“Also, this is my one and only chance of living out my dream of being a D&D bard in real life so…”

Hornet politely interjected. “You mention it uses strings. Will these be made of metal too? That sounds like it may cause much distress to your hands.”

Forge Daughter, after sending Ballow off to retrieve the materials, hummed in thought. “We see a solution, if pointy bug is alright with it,” she said, always using the royal “we”. “Pointy bug can supply us with strings made of Silk. We heard you wield it against the poor souls all throughout the docks. Might serve a less violent purpose if strung upon blue bug’s gee-tar.”

“Hey, that’s a great alternative!” Silver realised, before turning to Hornet. “Only if you’re okay with giving me your— oh. Thanks!”

The hunter placed a spool’s worth of the pure-white threads on Forge Daughter’s table. “A good use I put my Silk to. I sense the stirrings of a plan within my companion, and one I am keen to trust. Do what you will with the Silk, ma’am. And thank you kindly for your service.”

Hornet and Silver took a well-earned break within the Forge Daughter’s lair as the large bug tinkered and fiddled with a hot rod of steel for the fretboard. Ballow manned the fires of the forge untiringly, only ever speaking to gossip or joke with his mentor. Every so often, the pair of travellers would be caught by surprise when Forge Daughter burst out laughing at one of Ballow’s muffled jokes, before she returned to her meticulous craft.

“Here,” said Hornet, offering the human a flask. “My unique constitution renders food and drink as mere additions to life, and not essential to prolong it. You’ve been suffering in silence for the past hour.” 

Silver gulped down the water gratefully, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “Thanks.” She tried to hand the flask back, but the hunter insisted she keep it for herself if they ran into a water source in the future. “I was already getting lightheaded. Would’ve passed out again if you didn’t share your water with me.”

“My pleasure.” Hornet’s face made emotions difficult to infer, but Silver liked to imagine she was smiling sincerely underneath the mask. “Please take care of yourself. For one so far from home, strive to return in good condition.”

They listened to the steady rhythm of Forge Daughter’s hammer upon her anvil and Ballow’s murmurs and echoey breaths. To their left, a wall of hot coal sizzled and crackled like a swarm of bees.

“Y’know, you’re much more different in-person than I could imagine,” Silver ventured, ensuring to keep eye contact with a piece of coal straight ahead of herself. “More… real. Genuine. A rare treat amongst modern game protagonists.”

The hunter also kept her gaze away from the human, opting to focus on the needle on her lap instead. “I take that as a compliment, so thank you. Though, it sounds intriguing. Is integrity to one’s morals so difficult to see nowadays?”

Silver picked at her nails, her quarterstaff laid on the ground for comfort. “Just feels like everyone keeps needing to put on performances. Subversions. Red herrings and ‘aha, gotchu!’ moments that make me a little tired of it all. Dancing around layers and layers of untruths and not-reallys.”

She paused, searching for the right words and giving up. “You’re not like that. You’re… nice to be around. You’ve stayed you despite it all.”

Hornet found herself sorting through long-suppressed memories.

Deepnest… the White Palace… the Hive… Greenpath… the City of Tears… Kingdom’s Edge… the birthplace…

The years had whittled away at her childish whimsy and naivete, strengthening the stronger aspects of herself. Diligence, wit, grace and a dash of altruism. Cultivated over the long eons, it was hard imagining herself suppress any of the main defining characteristics that comprised… her.

That’s all she had now.

No family left to speak of, no allies from Hallownest, no gods or pale beings to hear her every action. 

No royal lineage to succeed, no hardwired goal to achieve on anyone’s behalf, no bonds to any town or settlement. She didn’t owe anyone in Pharloom anything, as far as she was concerned.

It’s just Hornet.

That’s all she had.

Herself.

But lately, with the persistent chatterbox that called herself Silver by her side, Hornet felt less inclined to only ever think about herself.

Whether that was necessarily a good thing was still up for debate. 

Regardless, Hornet couldn’t deny Silver’s noticable presence as her travel companion at all.

“Why do you endure?” she asked the human, drawing her gaze. “A pilgrimage to the top is no easy feat for a resident of Pharloom. You, a stranger like I am, persist on what grounds?”

Forge Daughter and Ballow’s discussions faded into white noise as Silver thought long and hard for an answer. She shrugged, watching a piece of wood be chipped and carved into a more guitar-like appearance. 

“I have a feeling that if I help you take down Grand Mother Silk, I can go home,” she said. “I hope.”

Silver stood and stretched, yawning from a long day’s walk. Did Silksong even have a day-night cycle? She pushed away the nagging question of how screwed up her circadian rhythm was going to be to one side. Not a priority at the moment. 

“But partially also because… I wanna tag along for the ride. You’re the one videogame protagonist I really…” she sighed, searching for the words. “I wanna be you.”

“... oh.”

“You’re the coolest main character ever, and so I thought that, if I went through the same hardships as you, I'd… well… be better off doing so. If experience makes us who we are, then going through Silksong as you do would let me feel like I’m you. That’s sorta why I don’t wanna spoil the endgame even if it’ll save you and others a lot of trouble. It messes up the scripted timeline and it won’t be the Silksong as I know it.”

Silver inhaled sharply. “I just realised how selfish that sounds. What the heck.”

Hornet refrained from saying anything.

It felt odd to be admired so openly. Even less so as the hunter was learning a thing or two from Silver. She felt like an older sister of this human; looked up to and awed at, where the weight of the responsibility of fulfilling the role felt familiar atop her shoulders. It wasn’t nearly as heavy a burden as being the sentinel for a kingdom was, but a burden nonetheless. 

The additional revelation that Silver was deliberately withholding crucial information wasn’t exactly a surprise, but Hornet felt icky about it. It sounded selfish indeed. But… was it really? 

If the whole adventure of her ascending to the Citadel and beyond was in fact part of a script, was it bad for an outsider to hide the sequence of events? It could very well have been a mercy of sorts, allowing things to run the intended course. Hornet would come out of Pharloom as expected, going through hardships and trials according to plan. No curveballs, no tricks. 

Forge Daughter wisely left the duo alone in their shared moment. She simply tapped Silver on the shoulder politely, handing her the finished craft and nodding farewell. 

Silver slipped the strap of the guitar over her head, hugging its still-warm wooden body close with her right forearm. Her left hand found a home wrapped around the dark fretboard, fingers curled into familiar shapes. Magically, the instrument left the forge in perfect tune, so Silver didn’t need to fiddle with any tuning knobs. 

Hornet watched as the human took a second to think. 

Silver had been eager to test out her hunch that music held power in Pharloom with a lively, chipper song, but quickly realised that it might not be the most appropriate thing to play after her conversation with Hornet. The hunter probably thought that she was the world’s biggest jerk now, hearing what she said. Maybe a song could convey her thoughts better…?

Putting her fingers atop the silken strings, the human strummed an A chord. Her voice was mediocre at best, in part because she’d never gotten any vocal coaching at all and mainly because she’d get laughed at for her bad singing. To hell with it, she thought, humming out the front bit of the song to get to the chorus faster. 

I need to get my point across and there’s no other way to do it.

     [ Skeleton we have been friends for years

     And you have seen me through some trials and tribulations

     And some tears

     But everyone thinks I’m weird… ]

She liked the Skeleton Song. 

It was hauntingly beautiful in conveying a relationship with someone who wasn’t a person. It described how she felt about Hornet, who up until recently, was simply another fictional character she related to. The mirror was one-way, but Silver had always treated it as a see-through curtain rather than a reflective wall. 

     [ And I should have known

     That it wouldn’t be long before you

     You’ve got me standing in an

     Awkward position with 

     Unwanted attention

     And a need for explanation and it’s

     Not that I’m letting go of you… ]

Silver kept her eyes on the fretboard, not trusting herself to look up and meet Hornet’s gaze. The hunter’s dark eye-holes made for an intimidating audience, making her shift around her seat slightly. She could make out Forge Daughter and Ballow in the background, not realising that the sounds of their craft had dulled into silence.

     [ But I dunno what to do-o-o-oh… ]

“Silver.”

The human stopped. The crisp, clean notes hung in the air like gleamflies. Her fingers hurt from the fresh string, not having been broken into yet. 

Hornet exhaled softly, putting a hand on her shoulder. She seemed to be squinting somewhat, perhaps a masked bug’s attempt at a smile with her eyes. The stoic hunter nodded slowly, having understood the gist of the song. 

Silver wasn’t purposely being odd. 

She saw Hornet as the skeleton she’d sung about; a one-sided friend. Familiar, but it wasn’t a mutual feeling. She knows what hardships Hornet will go through and feels obliged to do the same with the hunter, since Hornet had been there for Silver by proxy, in thought.

She tagged along as a repayment for the unknowing kindness she had given the human before falling into Pharloom. A friendly hand extended, offering support to return the favour.

Silver didn’t want to tell Hornet what the future held so that it wouldn’t change. That way, she could be the reliable constant, the one Hornet could fall back on for help. Undergoing the same experiences, being “like Hornet” as she said earlier.

In an unusual way, that was how the human was asking Hornet if they wanted to be friends.

Silver’s vision was a little blurrier than she remembered. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, biting hard on her tongue to stop herself from crying. She hated being the only one in the room who had tear ducts. Damned biology. 

Hornet kept her hand on her shoulder, sitting in silence.

After all that, she felt that words weren't needed to console the human.

Friends work like that sometimes. 

They just know what to do.

Chapter Text

Hornet loved the new upgrade.

She’d spent a full five minutes running in a circle around the Weaver spire, mentally thanking the Weaver who’d imbued the statue with such a fun power. It was game-changing. She never wanted to stop sprinting. Swift step? More like extremely-speedy steps!

Meanwhile, Silver was uncharacteristically focused on her new guitar, legs akimbo as she sat to the edge of the spire’s platform, playing along to the sound of the Deep Docks’ soundtrack. She’d discovered that, likely as a consequence of now being able to make music, she could hear the real in-game music playing in the distant background.

Hornet couldn’t hear anything, no matter how hard she tried.

No matter. She was enjoying herself immensely by learning that she could dash in any direction at all. Side to side, straight down, right after hopping… the possibilities were endless.

“You can dash up walls after you get the mantis claw, I mean, cling grip,” Silver corrected herself sheepishly. Whoops. Wrong game. “Instead of needing to hop off and on the same wall to go up, just dash upwards.”

If it were any other circumstance, the hunter would’ve stopped horsing around immediately after hearing “mantis claw”. Anything Silver said either answered one question or spawned a dozen more. She knew about mantises too? 

Luckily, Hornet paid no mind, doing a sick backflip in the air that went unnoticed. Silver wasn’t looking, busy with hissing in pain from the silken strings of her instrument. They hurt just as much as steel strings did. What a scam.

Hornet finally tired herself out, stopping briefly to smooth out her wrinkled cloak. She looked at the human whose back was against her, precariously seated at the edge of the Weaver spire, overlooking a sea of lava. “Ahem. Let us be off. We haven’t got—”

“—all day… yada yada.” Silver slung the guitar over her back again, pulling out her quarterstaff. “I know. You gotta beat up a white girl now.”

“Pardon?” Hornet stopped dead in her tracks. That sounded a little wrong in many ways.

“Lace. You arch-nemesis and platonic best friend,” Silver stated nonchalantly. “Get your spike traps ready. She’s a doozy of an Act 1 fight. I have speedrun strats for her, but only do it if you wanna disrespect the hell outta her fight.”

Hornet didn’t even think for a second before politely declining. She’d rather face foes with well thought-out strategies than exploit a dishonourable weakness. This Lace person sounded like the first bug to be of a skill akin to hers. There was no way she would dare tear down her hunter’s code for a quick and dirty win. It sounded like cheating.

“Alrighty then. Suit yourself,” Silver said in a chipper tone, vaulting over platform gaps with her staff. Hornet made sure to look out just in case the human slipped and fell. She was also busy formulating a solution to their now-considerable speed difference. Perhaps it was time to pull out an old Weaver trick she learned from Midwife. But first, they needed a bench.

“Silver, correct me if I’m mistaken, but…” Hornet paused to deal with some Haunted forebugs. ”This guitar of yours. It should be able to channel Silk due to its strings, yes?” She tsked at the bell-wearing dock-workers once she realised that they were immune to needle pogos. “Have you tried casting a Silk skill, or something of its equivalence?"

Silver peeked out from over Hornet’s shoulder once the forebugs were all dead. “Hm… sounds fun! Lemme try,” she said, pulling out her instrument excitedly. She strummed a C chord, envisioning a Silk spear shooting forth from the strings very dramatically.

Nothing.

Hornet hummed, thinking of ways to utilise music outside of immobilising enemies. It’s not that it wasn’t useful, but the guitar surely had a more powerful use than that, right? It was her Silk that powered it, for crying out loud!

Idle and already bored, Silver strummed and mumbled out a little bit of the song Legendary. 

     [ Give me sirens and a cyclops

     Give me giants and a hydra

     I know life and fate can be scary

     But I wanna be legendary... ]

It was a good insight into the attitude she held towards the journey so far. The first real bossfight was just right around the corner. They could take one measly fencer on no problem! Silver almost yelled aloud a “Bring it on!” but decided against it. It would only attract more enemies and an exasperated sigh from Hornet anyways.

Silver continued, enjoying the melody.

     [ I'll fight the harpies and chimeras

     The Minotaur, even Cerberus

     I know life and fate can be scary

     But I wanna be legendary! ]

Hornet turned around immediately after Silver stopped her short outburst into song. “How did you do that?” she asked, sheathing her needle. 

“Do what?”

“Your music,” Hornet said. “It enlivens the soul. My strength returned after hearing it, and I feel as if spurred on by a will beyond my own. Whatever doubts I had of this ‘bossfight’ you speak of just… dissipated.”

Silver did a double take. “Wait, what? It can do that? I can do that?” She eyed the six white Silk-strings on her guitar before shouldering it in favour of her quarterstaff. “Bardic inspiration is real?” 

Hornet chuckled softly. “Inspiration, yes. A suitable word to describe what you had done. Perhaps your mastery over music allows you to influence your audience. If so, thank you for the much-needed boost of energy.” 

Silver continued to gawk at her own hands as the two headed to a bench. 

She was really a bard!

The duo took a strategic rest-stop at the next bench they came across. It was strategic for a myriad of reasons.

It was the closest one to Lace’s arena, providing Hornet the shortest runback possible in the unfortunate scenario where she dies. It made returning for a rematch less painful as compared to other bosses they’ll face in the future.

(Cough, Bilewater, cough.)

It also reduced the time Silver would have to spend fending for herself, ensuring her survival. While she knew all of Lace’s attacks, interacting with her was uncharted territory. She could very well choose to immediately stab Silver straight through the heart once Hornet dies. Humans are famously adverse to fatal stab wounds; Silver was no different.

The hunter pulled out her toolkit, freshly purchased off Forge Daughter, and got to work with her small handful of tools. They weren’t anything spectacular; not like the things Silver kept describing, some sort of “cogfly army” and “portable White Palace buzzsaws”. 

But Hornet never judged weapons based on looks. If she did, she’d be long dead. The moss knights of Greenpath were deceptively good with their rusty nails and shell-shields. She’d learnt to keep an eye on anything remotely pointy enough to piece carapaces. 

“You’re really good with tools.” Silver observed from her spot on the floor. “Did Vespa teach you that?”

Hornet refrained from immediately exclaiming in instinctual surprise. That name hadn’t been uttered in so long…

“Yes, and no,” she said, gently pushing back spikes into red balls to form her sting shard traps. She had to be careful to set the release latches loose enough to explode upon contact, but locked well to avoid accidents. Having one of them get triggered by a nonchalant brush of her hand cost herself a whole mask of damage.

Silver hadn’t let her hear the end of it for hours.

“The Hive had no need for contraptions, but the Queen understood the basic methods of a hunter. She taught me only in part, since my father was the main reason for my familiarity with these tools.”

Silver snickered. “Path of Pain.”

The hunter was glad for a mask that could hide the mirth in her eyes. She also wanted to snicker, but stubbornly kept her composure. “I know not such a route,” she said, smooth as a lie. “The mere prospect of its traversal sounds unwise.”

“I’ll bet,” the human said, tap-tapping her staff against the lukewarm floor. “Liking the dash ability so far?”

“Very much so. It has potential to be used both in battle and for exploration. A versatile upgrade. I suppose we can now open that gate we passed by earlier? I should be able to get up to the platform now.”

“Yeppers! It’s time for you to beat up Lace!” Silver hopped up from the floor. “Onwards!” She held out her staff, pointing ahead, one hand on her hip to dramaticise the moment, keeping one leg on a rock to bend her knee. “Let us fulfil the fanfic plots!”

Pocketing her sting shards, Hornet sighed as she trailed after the human, headed straight for the next bossfight.

“Hi Lace!”

Silver waved a friendly hello from the far edge of the platform, leaving Hornet to seize up her opponent. She had her guitar out instead of her quarterstaff, ready to hype up the hunter with sick battle OST.

The silken fencer froze, arms still in the air from her idle conducting. She let the gleamflies fly away, before the tension in her stance disappeared, and she turned around to face the rude intruders.

The one who clearly meant business, and the one who matched Mother’s description, must be Hornet. Red cloak billowing in the warm air all around, the Weaver-spawn’s white mask seemed to glow in the light of the lava. Her long needle stayed at her side, but she was clearly on guard. 

Untrusting. Ready to fight.

The other one was unlike anyone she’d ever seen before. Lace had to physically stop herself from snorting at how weird the blue bug looked. 

Was that a musical instrument? It wasn’t one of the Citadel’s, that’s for sure. Her smooth chitin, or lack thereof, wasn’t the usual black or white or dull brown of a bug. Instead, the outermost covering of this bug was a strong tanned brown, much like a plank of wood, or aged parchment paper.

Her dark antennae were massive and numerous, a bundle even long enough to be braided. Between the black strands were a handful of lighter, blueish-purple clusters. Lace tilted her head, realising it must’ve been dyed. After squinting, it looked less like antennae and more like… hair? Was all of that hair? That’s impossible! No bug ever has hair that long and luscious, ever! Phantom would be jealous.

She was blue and brown and black all the same. Torso was blue, legs were brown and feet were black. Her eyes were surprisingly detailed too, depicting a pair of grey amidst white circles. She had one eyebrow raised.

“So… you gonna fight us?”

Lace raised one dainty hand to cover her false smile. She had her pin in one hand, loosely sagging against the ground. There was no rush to cross blades. She had all the time in the world, after all.

“How sad,” the fencer stated, back still turned against the duo, only looking over her shoulder to keep eye contact. “A little spider has fallen from its cage. And a blue parasite seems to have taken interest in its journeys. So lost. So weak. So—”

Hornet struck.

Silver had already lectured the hunter about Lace’s tendency for theatrics and encouraged her to simply start the fight. Taking the human’s advice, Hornet threw out her sting shards and used them to deny space for the flighty fencer.

“What is this?!” Lace cried out, returning Hornet’s single slashes with a flurry of pokes and jabs. “You interrupted me!” She huffed and used her offhand to clean away at her pin momentarily. “Barbaric!”

Hornet ignored the silken being’s outcry and protests, deftly manoeuvring herself to force Lace to take a quick dip in the fiery lava below. Supposedly, it did more damage than a single Silk spear. And yet, despite her silken constitution, Lace simply leapt up from the lava, no signs of being near death whatsoever.

Whatever. She could take on this Weaver before she gets too far anyways. Mother dearest, are you watching? See what I’m doing down here, your faithful knight? Some might call this… sabotage. Ahahaha!

Pin crossed with needle, throwing the two duelists back against the floor. Hornet used her diagonal down-dashes to pogo off of Lace’s mushroom-shaped head, keeping well out of range of most of her attacks. That was, until Lace decided to jump straight up; the force of their collision knocked the wind out of Hornet’s lungs. 

The hunter heard the snap of a twig. One mask. Gone.

She gritted her teeth, pausing briefly to check on Silver and wait for Lace to stand up after getting stunned. “Spare me your sorrows, child. Stay your blade, or run. Feel free to continue your monologue after you do so.” 

Silver kept to the far edge of the platform, trying to minimise the disruption her presence had within the arena. She’d been busy strumming furiously alongside Lace’s theme that was being blasted straight into her mind. But then… an idea.

Lace laughed tauntingly, simply resuming her elegant dance of blades. 

How cute! This Weaver packed quite the punch, and definitely wasn’t holding back. Her performance was a little subpar from expected, but Lace didn’t mind. It was probably some side-effect of the cage Hornet had been trapped in. She was enjoying herself greatly, her pin drawing tantalisingly close to Hornet’s cape as they fought. Denying Mother of this one... a sizeable rebellion indeed!

Meanwhile, the human attempted to sing as loud as she could over the ring of steel and the roar of the lava stream. She marvelled at the projection of the guitar, wondering what kind of wood Forge Daughter had crafted it out of. It sounded mellow, yet deep and rich. Almost as if the wood itself was singing songs it couldn’t have done otherwise.

Down, down, up-down up-down, down-down…

     [ Harpy hare, where have you buried all your children?

     Tell me so I say… ]

Silver smirked as she caught Lace’s white eyes widening. Her grip on her pin faltered for a moment, prompting Hornet to chuck a sting shard right in her face. 

A very appropriate song, considering who their opponent was. A healthy dose of mommy issues, has a sibling and demands justice, or at the very least some compensation, for what she went through. Yeah, that’s Lace alright.

     [ Harpy hare, where have you buried all your children?

     Tell me so I say… ]

“Shut up!” Lace’s voice dropped a few notes, no longer high-pitched enough to destroy the ears. It sounded strained. She swung her pin in a wide arc, leaving her entire front unguarded. Hornet almost got her square in the chest if it weren’t for a split-second riposte. “Quit singing, blue bug, you’re distracting me!”

Silver did what she did best and ignored Lace. Down, down, up-down up-down, down-down. Repeat.

     [ All the arrows that you’ve stolen

     Split in half now bum and broken

     Like your heart that was so eager to be hid…

     You can’t keep them all caged

     They will fight and run away

     Mother, tell me so I say….

     (La la la, la la la, la la) ]

Hornet noted how Lace’s footwork got progressively sloppier, falling into the lava again. She pressed on unmercifully, baffling her with her heals and performing perfect parries. Hornet threw out more sting shards, exhausting her toolkit. 

“You falter, fencer.” Hornet waited for Lace to stand up again after she had been driven to her knees. “Do you resign?”

Lace groaned and helped herself up with her pin, panting laboriously. “That wretched companion of yours uses the power of music against me. Treacherous work, spider! How could you have ever concluded that this would be a fair fight, if that blue parasite there keeps singing?”

Silver let her hands drop from the fretboard, but didn’t move to shoulder her guitar just yet. It was pretty rewarding seeing Lace get this annoyed over her. She’d always imagined Hornet being the one to suffer from her uppity attitude, so this was a nice change of pace. 

"I’ve got a name, y’know,” she said, grinning a bit. The fight was over faster than expected, all thanks to her ragebaiting Lace. “Name’s Silver. But I have a feeling you’re gonna keep using archaic epithets to refer to me. You never call Hornet by name at all. And neither does Hornet.” She turned to the hunter in question briefly, before turning back to Lace. 

“Do you guys just… are you just allergic to the idea of using your actual, legal names? Is it simply too intimate or something?”

Hornet was quick to shut down that particular train of thought before the fencer could capitalise on it. It was hard talking over Lace’s shrill laughter. “No, no. We’re not. It is simply one of our idiosyncrasies, child.” She shot Silver a withering look, as if blaming her for giving Lace any ideas. A change in the subject matter was needed. Hornet turned back to Lace, who was drying her eyes from laughing.

“Submit now and run away,” Hornet said calmly. “My companion says that we shall cross blades twice more. Until then, prepare yourself.”

Lace hopped away, mumbling something about mothers and hares and blue parasites and epithets.

“Honestly? I thought she’d stay and ask questions,” Silver sighed as she watched Lace disappear into the platforms above. She shouldered her instrument. “I thought I’d picked a pretty good song too. She’s gonna have a lotta food for thought after this. Should’ve sung the whole bit to get her real good.”

Hornet opened her map and started heading east, seeing as their path was no longer blocked by a maniac fencer. “Your voice seemed to rattle her enough. The grip on her pin slowly loosened as we fought. There was no doubt she would’ve dropped her blade should you have finished.” The hunter quietly folded up her map, tucking it within her red cloak. 

“It gave me food for thought too,” she said. “Intentionally or not.”

Silver sucked in a breath through her teeth. Ooh. Accidental AOE emotional damage. She chided herself to test out the strength of her new power first before the next bossfight. Otherwise, Hornet will always get caught in the blast of whatever she’s singing her heart out to.

“Is it because of Herrah?”

Hornet once again hid her utter surprise. It shouldn’t startle her anymore, seeing as Silver knew much more than whatever she rambled about. The whiplash was still unavoidably potent. 

“Yes.”

“...”

"And please try to remain professional in confrontations. I fear that the silken child will now continuously mock us for that quip of yours."

Silver snickered. "Yes ma'am."

They stopped for Hornet to ring a bellshrine. Silver grimaced as the Dies Irae echoed for miles all around. Death. Doom. Judgement for the sinners. They were headed their way head-first into the Citadel, a place where few leave alive.

The bell tolled with thunderous swings. 

F E F C.

Creepy.

And then a bench popped up, prompting the duo to rest their weary feet for just a moment. 

Safety at last.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“What’s this again?” Silver held up a shiny white trinket by a strand of Silk. It looked a lot like the numerous keychains she had on her Splatoon bag. 

Hornet cut through some hardbone hoppers, never staying too long atop the hot coal. Silver trailed behind, vaulting over most of the coal with her staff and running quickly over larger gaps. 

“An item imbued with Weaver runes. Wear it, and share the power I claim from shrines.”

Silver gasped. “I can use Silk skills? Pre-nerf threadstorm? Pale nails? Cross-stitch? It’s the coolest Silk skill by the way. Who doesn’t love a parry skill?”

Hornet sighed again for the umpteenth time since they’d stepped into Far Fields. “Once again I reiterate myself. I… do not know, child,” she said as a fertid popped out from the undergrowth, capturing Silver’s fullest attention. The human poked it with her quarterstaff, giggling softly as it let out a scared skrrrt.

“I only meant it to bestow upon you a traversal speed equal to my own. I’m not sure if all skills are passed to you as well, or if it is only the ones related to movement. Our runes get a little picky sometimes, as Midwife used to claim.” The hunter swatted away at fleeing brushflits, mentally appreciating their amusing appearance. “She and Mother taught me our ancient arts, but I’m afraid my skills may be found lacking.”

“Oh, Midwife. Love her.” Silver tore her eyes away from the adorable creature that was the fertid. “She gives you a Spirited Away jumpscare in Deepnest, out of all areas, and splits her face into two. Two! Does she not realise how it could’ve given literally anyone but Ghost a heart attack?” Silver clipped the trinket to the waist of her brown pants, suddenly feeling as if lead weights had dropped from her feet. “Wait… wait—!”

She sprinted ahead, laughing as the hot coal barely warmed the soles of her shoes with how fast she was running. Hornet has no choice but to run along too, closing the distance with her swift steps. 

“Hahaha! Look at me!” Silver ducked under flying enemies and breezed through platforms, making a beeline for eastern Far Fields. “Look at me, Hornet! Gotta go fast!!” Caranids of all sizes chattered at the commotion, some coming dangerously close to brushing Silver’s hair. Hornet threw out a Silk spear in panic, killing several instantly. She exhaled in relief, watching the human sprint ahead without a care in the world.

She also concluded that Silver had the survival instincts of a mossgrub. 

Thankfully, Silver wasn’t the most athletic person in the world, and soon tuckered out. She came to a stop, panting. Hornet jogged alongside her, consulting her map. 

They seemed to be near a long vertical column that ran through the centre of Far Fields. The human, hands on her knees and still out of breath, managed to wheeze out a few words. “Pilgrim’s… huff… rest, upstairs. Huff… can we go?”

Hornet held back a stern remark about charging headfirst into uncharted territory by stopping herself with a sigh. “Alright,” she said, rolling up her map. “We could use some rest too.”

“Sherma!”

Silver ran to the pilgrim and wrapped in him another lightning-fast hug. He exclaimed, dropping his chime and stick, his hat almost falling off completely. The weary pilgrim who he was singing to earlier jolted upright.

“Haha, greetings, fair maidens!” he said as he picked up his chime. “You came just in time to see this devout sister of ours recover from her ascent.” He smiled and turned to the pilgrim, who’d returned to her glump and hunched-over position beside the small shop. “Aren’t these fields marvellous? And above us are the bountiful moors, where every pilgrim can fill their belly!”

Hornet nodded in greeting, watching Silver wave excitedly to both Sherma and the weary pilgrim. Hornet couldn’t help but warn Sherma a little. “These hot fields are a wonder indeed, but hunters prowl the long grass. Playing your instrument will only alert them to your presence.” She side-eyed Silver, who had her guitar out and was ready to serenade everyone in the vicinity. 

Thankfully, the human took the hint and put away her instrument, sulking. 

Sherma hummed in cheeky disapproval, straightening his cymbal-hat. “Well then, alert them I shall! For where many gather, great songs are sung!” He turned to the pilgrim who was on the verge of falling asleep from exhaustion, clinking his chime and singing. “Sister, sister, don’t you doubt! Rewards to the faithful, and not those without! We can sing, and you can hum. Together, we shall overcome!”

“He’s not gonna stop anytime soon,” Silver whispered to Hornet, pulling her into the Pilgrim’s Rest by the hem of her cloak. 

Hornet whispered back. “I have deduced as much.”

Sadly, the door remained stubbornly shut, no matter how much Hornet smacked her needle against it. Silver was greatly amused at how the hunter’s first reaction to a locked door was not to knock, but to beat her weapon against it like an armed robber.

She pointed to a basin-shaped mechanism in the centre of the locked door. “A 30 rosary donation to get in,” she said with annoyance. Stupid Mort the shopkeeper.

Hornet, too, shared her distaste, but didn’t show it. She had long since accepted that Hallownest was simply economically superior to Pharloom. No matter how cold and callous he was, the Pale King sure did run a tight ship. Ghost themself had thousands of geo when they met again before facing the Hollow Knight.

And yet, no pockets to hold all the money…

The hunter shook away her questions regarding how Ghost kept all their stuff and fed the mechanism its toll. The rosaries clattered around the basin before falling through a funnel, triggering the gears to spin, unlocking the entrance.

And so the pair entered into a little hidey hole made of rock, which the last friendly frontier of Pharloom’s lowlands.

The interior was extremely barebones, with nothing much to look at.

You’d think for a guy who scams people of money before even seeing his face, he’d have tons of supplies. But no! Of course not.

“Bench,” said Hornet and Silver simultaneously. Hornet took a seat, restocking her supply of tools. Silver sat on the floor, resting her aching legs. Despite the great speed she’d gained from Hornet’s small Weaver-trinket, it did nothing to boost her actual physique. 

She rolled up her sleeve again, eyeing the scrawny arms she’d been blessed with. Strong enough to carry instruments, but even a cloakless Hornet looked more intimidating than her. 

The shopkeeper, a bug with a considerably long nose, eyed the newcomers. These weren’t the average pilgrims. No. They looked exhausted from fighting, not fleeing. Perhaps he could upcharge a few things in his shop to reap more rosaries than he normally would…

Mort wheezed out a tired greeting. “Come to rest your weary bodies? The climb is agonising, and even—”

“— something, something limits, mhm.” Silver didn’t even turn her head to regard him, massaging her leg muscles to avoid cramps. “You want our rosaries for your goods so that you can go on your own pilgrimage to the Citadel, being holy enough with a ton of rosaries. Just like Pebb. Amirite?”

Mort spluttered a little, looking to Hornet for elaboration. “Greetings, sir. You’ve done well to ascend so far without a weapon,” she commended. “Please excuse my companion. She lacks a filter; most of the time.”

Silver shrugged nonchalantly, taking out her guitar to check its condition.

It still looked practically brand-new, if not for a small scratch here and there. The silken strings held fast, never once deviating out of tune unless Silver touched the tuning pegs. The neck stayed firm and steady, no sign of wood-rot or inevitable breakage at all.

As she plucked to the tune of the Far Fields, Hornet got up to make trade with Mort, returning with an odd belt of sorts.

“This accessory is beyond my usual wardrobe, but the shopkeeper promises its utility in battle.” She strapped it around her waist, feeling her centre of gravity shift a little. Somehow, it seemed to not affect the speed of her sprints at all, and only served to ground the hunter better.

Silver didn’t look up from the fretboard, lost in the music. “Hm? The weighted belt? Yeah. It’s Silksong’s equivalent of the steady body charm. Reduces knockback when swinging your needle and when enemies run into you. Great for bossfights with Wanderer or Beast crest. A quality-of-life upgrade, but I’d keep the compass on for now. Unless you bought Mort’s memory locket too.”

Hornet raised up a thin disk of metal, surprising Silver. “Actually, I did.” She held it up to the light, watching its unpolished surface shine slightly. “We collected quite a few rosaries, thanks to your recommended routes.”

“That’s rosary farming for ya!” Silver did two finger-guns in Hornet’s direction. 

The hunter looked at the memory locket, confused. “What do I do with this?” she asked aloud, both to Mort and to Silver. Sadly, Mort was busy stringing up his new rosaries.

The human looked over and also thought hard. She wasn’t exactly sure what Hornet did in-game to activate a new tool notch with a memory locket. The inventory animation simply shows the crest expanding and… that’s kinda it? 

There was no instruction manuel or lore snippet in the wiki that said anything about the diegetics-ness of crests getting expanded with memory lockets. So, Silver had to improvise.

“Try prying it open?” she said, seeing that there was a line going straight down the locket, implying that it could be forced open somehow.

Hornet complied, squinting with effort as she brought her hands together and pulled against the sliver of an opening. She grunted softly, and hummed in satisfaction as the locket snapped open into two semicircular halves. 

She peered inside the hollow locket, noticing something strange. Silver looked inside too, but couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing.

A flash of light blinded both girls and the locket disintegrated into dust.

This was through the eyes of someone else, whose face never appears.

In front of the bug was another, likely a lover or someone close. They shared a moment of laughter, running through the lush grasses of the Far Fields, wide smiles on both faces.

Silver rubbed her eyes, wincing at how they hurt. “Wasn’t expecting a flashbang. It felt like opening Discord light mode. And I don't even use Discord that much.” 

Hornet shook her head to force the brightness in her eyes to fade away faster. She patted the bench, feeling for the memory locket. And then she realised it was gone. Vanished. Consumed.

From behind his counter, Mort called out to the disoriented duo. “Wasn’t either of you two’s memory, but was likely some unfortunate pilgrim’s. I just found it recently, on the floor and rusting away,” he said, pocketing his rosaries. “Memories like them weigh us pilgrims down, though it seems like it doesn’t do so for the both of you.”

“Perhaps,” muttered Hornet, checking to see if the human was alright. “Did you… see that?”

“Yeah.” Silver stopped rubbing her eyes once her vision started blurring. “You should be able to equip both the compass and belt now.”

Hornet gave it a try. Surprisingly, having both tools on hand didn’t feel so clunky anymore. The compass clasped nicely to the belt in a way that it didn’t before, allowing her to fully utilise them at the same time.

“Interesting." The hunter undid the belt again after checking. It wasn’t like they were going anywhere so soon anyways. She wasn’t into belts that much. Cloaks had always always been superior. 

Pilgrim’s Rest quieted for several precious moments, before someone broke the silence.

“Silver.”

“Whuh?” The girl in question whipped around, startled out of her epic, ten-chapter, exposition-heavy, barely coherent original character daydream. “Me?”

Hornet scooted over to the far side of the bench, inviting Silver to sit down properly. “We can camp here for the night. In the meantime, it would be rather rude of me to go about travelling with a companion I barely know. In light of that…” She hid a small smile under her mask when Silver sat down beside her.

“You know all there is to me. Would you mind doing me a favour? I have—”

Silver perked up, overjoyed. Finally, permission to yap! “We can play 20 questions!” she doffed her quarterstaff and guitar, leaving them on the floor beside Hornet’s needle. “You ask twenty questions and I—”

“Understood. But in the interest of time, I shall only ask five.” Hornet got the gist of the game from name alone. She was eager to finish by nightfall. Start any later, or ask any more, and Mort will kick them out for being nuisances. 

“First question.” Hornet had a vague list prepared and so fired off the first shot she’d been itching to ask since they met. “What is a human?”

Silver laughed and gestured to herself. “A species. Homo sapiens. We’re mammals, since we have placentas and mammary glands, and are bipedal plantigrades. You guys are insects. You, specifically, are based off of spiders. We’re different species, essentially. We do weird things like sweat, blink a lot, breathe through lungs and… yeah!” 

She was glad for her decision to study biology over physics in school. So much more interesting. Physics was just… science math. Biology let her learn about all the cool things like how missing one dose of an antibiotic has a slim chance of starting the bacterial version of COVID-19. The magic of meds, baby.

Hornet noted down the definition, but still couldn’t fully grasp the idea of a non-insect being. It was an utterly alien concept to her, to no fault of her own.

“Next, your name. I sometimes chance upon bugs with titles and such. Do you have any?”

“Oh!” Silver wracked her brain to find the best equivalent she had. Surnames? Those surely counted. “Silver Astronomo. That’s my full legal name. The one on my ID. Last names, or surnames, are how we trace lineages and avoid marrying close relations. My family’s from an archipelago called the Philippines. It’s basically a bunch of islands in a gigantic lake — bigger than millions of Blue Lakes combined — called the Pacific Ocean. We have knives, mangos and a reputation for typhoons.” 

Silver took a breath, before continuing with her infodump. “I was born in Singapore though. Daughter of immigrants who moved here.”

Hornet silently marvelled at such phenomena after Silver took the time to explain “typhoons” and “islands”. At what scale of size exactly did Silver live before all this? It sounded like a world that was billions of millions of times larger than Hallownest and Pharloom combined, and tripled, and tripled again.

“Third. Your knowledge. How did you acquire such in-depth knowledge of a land that you once believed to be fictional?” The hunter genuinely admired Silver’s insane all-rounded insights on anything and everything relating to her kingdom and the lands they were currently traversing. “What is this ‘wiki’ of yours?”

“Aha! Two questions in one! That’ll also be your fourth, hehe.” Silver smirked as she watched Hornet stutter for the first time. 

“A wiki is a fanmade, fan-managed website with extensive information on a certain piece of media. The Silksong wiki is made by the collaborative efforts of many players all around the globe, working together to piece together info about… literally everything. From beginner tutorials to recommended strategies for beating every boss in the game, it’s got everything! And I read all (most) of it!”

“Lastly,” Hornet cut in abruptly. Dusk was approaching. She could see it in the way the outside dimmed ever so slightly, even in the presence of flowing lava nearby. She really wanted to rest, but also wanted to know more about her mysterious companion. 

“My fifth and final question. What is ‘Silksong’?”

“...”

Utter silence. 

The pilgrims resting by the corners had snuggled up and were dropping off to sleep. Mort had left his counter and disappeared behind a door, presumably retiring to his room. The gleamflies in the shop’s lights sank to the bottom of their circular bulbs and dimmed their glow.

Hornet didn’t know it, but she had been lightly tapping her finger on the bench for the past minute. It was a small habit of hers; something even the wilds of Pharloom couldn’t rob her of. She was anxious. Anticipating. Intrigued.

“...so?”

“Uh… saying it’s complicated would be my understatement of the century.”

Silver was unusually still. Throughout their not-actually-20-questions game, Hornet noticed how Silver always had one limb moving. Her leg-bouncing. Her fingernail-biting. Her skin-picking. Her knuckle-cracking; which was frankly a terrifying noise to hear.

(Having one’s bones inside their body was also equally horrific to imagine. Were they just constantly in contact with her red haemolymph — no wait — “blood”? Like, all the time? Does it not fall off like chitin, or shed to make room for growth, like carapaces? Do humans simply expand outwards during growth, like a shell-less larva?)

“Remember what I said about videogames?” Silver prayed that Hornet had taken her ramblings to heart. Re-explaining was a chore.

Thankfully, Hornet nodded. “A moving picture controlled by external output to deliver a story. Is that right?”

“Yep!” said Silver, popping the “p” sound. “You’re the character we control to experience the story of Pharloom. Silksong: Hollow Knight is its full name. A sequel to your sibling’s adventures in Hallownest called Hollow Knight. There, we control Ghost instead.”

“... What.”

“Haha, yeah. We’re really debating the nature of the free will of videogame protagonists, huh?” Silver said to an invisible audience, not unlike a podcast. “You’re probably wondering if any of what you do is of your own volition."

Hornet nodded, extremely curious, as one would naturally be after finding out that their actions were due to the whims of a being beyond their comprehension.

“Um, well, you see… that’s a pretty good question haha…” Silver managed to choke out, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly. “I’m not… sure? Everything that you went through and will go through is sort of… scripted? Like how I know some bugs we meet along the way won’t make it, or how some actions of yours will indirectly kill them.”

The silence that enveloped the little shop was deafening.

The hunter remembered the scene in the memory locket, wondering if that pilgrim’s untimely death was a necessity by this “script”, for the sole purpose of having Mort pick it up and sell it to her for her use. She wondered just how far this divine, ruthless “script” extended, if her mother had been doomed to a life of eternal slumber because of the plot. 

Hornet wondered if her sufferings could be justified through this “script”, and if her journey had any point in it at all. Why try fighting against an evil empire you know will fall anyways? Why struggle to climb the Citadel if it all comes crashing down at the end? Why did she need to get kidnapped, taken from the only home she’d ever known, stripped of her powers and forced to play out this narrative, for a viewer’s own pleasure?

Why bother?

More silence. It was so thick that Silver felt like choking on it. The Weaver-trinket that hung from her waist felt like a rock. It was a sign of friendship at this point, seeing how Hornet bothered to make something for the human so that they could stick together throughout the journey. It weighed Silver down with Silk-sewn guilt. 

A terribly icky feeling it was. This… guilt business. Silver didn’t like this. They were supposed to be resting for the night, not destroying each other’s trust!

Hornet broke the silence with a single exhale. Amidst the pin-drop silence, it very well could’ve been a  gust of howling wind from Mount Fay itself.

“I won’t pretend to not be disheartened by this,” she said. “And I need time to process your words.” She closed her eyes under the mask, thankful that the action was hidden from view. “But thank you for telling me. By one way or another, this… ‘Silksong’ story will be fulfilled. In that case, if this is how my story will play out, then I shall strive to be this hero I am meant to become. And you will help me.”

That last bit wasn’t exactly a command, but Silver could feel the intensity of the words. It was a statement, plain and simple. 

Silver will help Hornet reach the end of Silksong; by hook or by crook, they are going to finish the game… somehow.

Silver let out a small laugh, the tension leaving her shoulders. She yawned, resting her head on one arm. “I promise to do my best,” she said at length. Promises were a notoriously hard thing for her to keep, but if she wanted to get home to her family and friends, and see Hornet’s character arc complete, by Wyrm above, you bet she’ll do it.

Hornet watched as the human nodded off into slumber, her resolve and determination ever the more strengthened by her new revelation.

Come what may tomorrow; the duo will be ready.

They had to be ready. 

They had no choice.

Chapter Text

The Seamstress had a very cool house.

It hung above the abundant lava below, its red canopy catching the updrafts of wind that blew in streams of air, fluttering in welcome to visitors. Made of light planks of wood, it was held aloft the ground by two chains, suspending the whole house into the surrounding environment. Caranids, the vicious ones and otherwise, populated the Seamstress’ backyard.

Safe to say, getting up to her front door was a little difficult.

“Hi Seamstress!” Silver barged into the stout red house with a handful of hoker-spines, some falling to the quilted floor with soft thuds. Compared to Silver, the spines were an arms length each, sharpened to a point on one end, and lighter than bird’s bones. Truly, the perfect material to fashion the Mary Poppins dress out of. 

“We got you your hoker-spines!”

The Seamstress didn’t stop her weaving, hands still gliding across her loom. “I can see that, child,” she replied.

Behind the human, Hornet was also carrying a handful of spines, with several spines lodged painfully to her body. She’d been a little careless, getting shot at by the lazy floating bugs. Silver snickered and pulled out the offending spines once she’d placed her load next to the Seamstress. 

“Silver, I can do this myself perfectly fi— ouch…” Hornet grumbled somewhat, realising that her cloak now also bore a few holes. 

After removing the spines from Hornet, the duo handed over their total of twenty-five spines to the Seamstress, who hummed in acknowledgement. She didn’t expect them to finish the hoker-hunting within half an hour, and much less with that bumbling fool of a blue bug by the hunter’s side. 

“Well then! I can tell by this lovely pile of spines that the hunt has been a success! I’ll get to work now,” said the Seamstress, gathering up the materials. She extended another hand towards Hornet, who was seated on the nearby bench. “Your cloak, dear. I need it in full to make my changes.”

“As you wish, madam.” The hunter spun her red cloak off her shoulders with one graceful motion, folding it nicely and placing it in the Seamstress’ hands. She pretended not to notice Silver’s wide-eyed staring at her somewhat… unimpressive form. 

Just like most other regular bugs, Hornet was black. Except for her mask, of course. But build-wise, if one were to compare the twig of a human that was Silver to Hornet, they would be hard-pressed to guess the winner in a hypothetical arm-wrestling match. Only those who have seen the hunter in lethal action would know that Silver stood no chance of winning an arm-wrestling match, skinny or not. 

The Seamstress hummed and mumbled her own odd song as she started sewing on the spines to the inner side of the red cloak, using them as a sort of supporting structure for when the cloak got flared in the air. 

Meanwhile, Silver rested atop the mound of string and yarn next to the bench where Hornet sat. Guitar out and hands on the fretboard, she too hummed out a song. Hearing the click-clacking of the hoker-spines against each other and the rustle of fabric, it prompted her to sing a silly little song to enliven the mood.

     [ I’m bored again

     Guess I’ll pretend

     I’m from some distant

     Magic land…

     How very hard

     To be a bard

     In San Tan Valley, Arizona… ]

The catchy tune and the occasional slap of strings made Hornet and the Seamstress turn around for a few moments, captivated by the human’s voice. The Seamstress quickly returned to her sewing, adjusting the space between the spines and stitching up some holes in the cloak.

Hornet, however, rested her head on her hand, guard completely lowered and her needle stuck firmly to the quilted floor in disuse. A rare moment, for this hunter, to afford complete safety in a stranger’s home. 

Something about the hot air, the singing from both sides of the room, and the smell of burnt rocks below felt oddly cozy and soothing. Even if the two bugs didn't want to feel silly, something in Silver's voice made them exhale and let go of the tension in their shoulders. There was no danger here. They could afford to be a little whimsical.

     [ Romanticise

     My silly life

     Khaki armour

     Quest to WalMart…

     Someday I’ll die

     But for now I’m alive

     So hand me a pen

     And call me the Bard… ]

Silver herself didn’t come from Arizona, nor had she ever stepped foot into a WalMart. She doesn’t usually wear khaki anythings and her handwriting was almost on par with a doctor’s. But there was something so earnestly encouraging with this song. A call to embrace the sillier aspects of life, no matter how trivial it seemed. A nod to the forgotten fun times of playing pretend, which she excelled at as a child.

She looked at Hornet and laughed aloud at how ridiculous she looked. Atop the bench, cloak-less, needle-less and relaxed. Almost a completely different bug.

They could afford some rest for now, safe in the Seamstress' home. No enemies to fight, no bosses to cheese, and a movement upgrade was almost complete.

But... did hunters ever rest? Silver wondered about that. And judging from how she’d almost never seen Hornet stop continuously surveying her surroundings, she can confidently answer “no”.

She wondered about Hornet’s childhood, if she had any at all. Was her entire life just grim, stoic-faced training montages and angsty lone wolf behaviour? Surely the White Palace must’ve had some cool things to do, like annoying the Pale King, or bossing around the royal retainers. 

Since the wiki only stretched into Hornet’s adolescence and snippets of moments of her childhood, almost everything else was up to speculation. Perhaps Silver should inquire about such details when they had another rest stop somewhere. Maybe the Halfway Home?

Anyways… that was a problem for another time.

Pretty soon, the Seamstress finished her work. 

She handed the cloak back to Hornet, who donned it in one fluid action. It slipped on nicely, almost identical to how it was before. Same shade of red, same feel of the fabric. Running her hand over and under it, even knowing that hoker-spines reinforced the structure, Hornet couldn’t feel anything different. She looked at the Seamstress in a moment of awe and respect, thoroughly impressed by her skills.

“This is fine work, Seamstress. Your modifications will aid me greatly.” 

“You’re quite welcome, dear,” said the Seamstress with a small smile. “I’ve rare opportunity to practice such intricate sewing, and a warrior sort like you will be able to properly appreciate my additions.” She gestured to Hornet’s cloak, glowing with pride. “It’s been a long time since I’ve made a piece like this.”

Silver stopped her idle strumming and shouldered her guitar. “Oh, that’s right! You made a blue one for the Pinstress in the Blasted Steps, didn’t you? She can also puff out her hood to float in the air, like blue Mary Poppins! Pin-wielder, likes to spam the threefold pin attack, grouchy grandma at the edge of the world?”

The Seamstress exclaimed in surprise, nearly stabbing herself in the hand with her needle and thread. “You… how did you…? You know of us, our order?”

“Yeah, sure I do. The Pinstresses of Pharloom. Once renowned, now hunted by their very allies. There were many maidens, and now two are left.”

“Two? Is there not…” the Seamstress trailed off, realising the implication. So their green-cloaked sister had not survived the ages. And she was only hearing of it now. Her voice came out a little softer than she’d like to use. “What happened?” 

Hornet watched as Silver briefly described the ruins of the third Pinstress’ hut in the Putrified Ducts, tucked away where the Citadel wouldn’t think to look. Sadly, either by age or enemies, that Pinstress had long since passed, leaving only a bundle of leaf and reed to her name. The wreath of purity.

“...”

“...”

Silver was never good at processing grief. She’d always had a delayed response to emotional things, shelving things away for later experience. Right now, she only felt… numb. Not sad. Not heartbroken. Just... numb. 

Even so, she mustered up the best condolence she could give that wouldn’t be read wrongly under the circumstance.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no. Don’t be.” 

The Seamstress found any ill-will towards the strange blue bug was melting away, replaced by the ache of long-overdue sadness. To think she’d thought that there were three left of the order! Today, only two remain to see things through. 

The trio shared a moment of silence as the loom quietened down. A moment to remember the Seamstress’ green sister.

Hornet laid a hand on Silver’s shoulder without being asked to. It just felt right, she reasoned.

The Seamstress, old soul she was, snapped out of her funk with relative ease. “Well then, as I always sing, let’s spin and weave to forget the dead. Not forgetting them by name, but to forget the sadness they bring.” She turned to Silver, who was sorely lacking any clothing-related upgrade at all. “Now your turn, dear. If you’re to follow the stray one up to the Citadel, you will need my help too. Your… er, cloak please.”

Hornet noticed Silver’s awkward fidgeting and butted into the conversation. “Madam, I have a proposition,” she said politely. “That you craft a separate accessory for my companion, instead of modifying her current apparel.”

The Seamstress caught on and withdrew her hand. “Oh, alright then. If you insist…”

The loom clattered to life as the Seamstress wove a small piece of rectangular fabric. No hoker-spines were needed, since this one wouldn’t flare out. It would simply serve as a parachute, and only needed to be strengthened by thread. 

Silver watched with interest as the second “drifter’s cloak” was brought to life, faster than she’d expected. It had taken the Seamstress half an hour for Hornet’s cloak, but no more than ten minutes for this one. 

She was just that good.

The Seamstress removed the final product and beckoned for Silver’s arm. She tied it around the human’s left wrist with a neat bow. 

“There we have it,” she said, admiring her own handiwork. “It’ll catch the winds like the stray one’s cloak, and slow your fall when you hang in the air. Now you two can head up to the Citadel and give them a piece of my mind on my behalf.” 

Silver squealed and flapped her left arm around excitedly, thrilled at the new upgrade. Her very own drifter’s cloak!

She hugged the Seamstress, before dashing out her hut, eager to test it out. Hornet followed suit, waving in a more proper farewell to the red bug. She was such a helpful lady, and was very friendly too. Hornet made sure to note down her sister’s location in the Blasted Steps. Silver did say she was important…

“C’mon! We gotta try it!” Silver tried to speak over the roar of the wind column. “You go first, ‘cus uh… ladies first!”

Hornet stood next to the vertical slipstream, feeling a little less prepared than how she usually felt. Heights weren’t that scary. It was more of trusting her historically flimsy cloak to bear her entire weight, without suddenly giving way and causing her to plummet to her death. Again. 

“Are we not both ladies?” Hornet quipped, eyeing the drop. “We ought to go together then, seeing how we should both go ‘first’.”

Silver, a being driven by impulse, bad decisions and a healthy dose of humour, gave Hornet the cheekiest grin known to mankind and gave her a light push off the edge of the platform. The hunter exclaimed in surprise as she fell.

For a terrifying split second, the hunter was in freefall. She was going to go splat on the ground, shattering her mask in ha— oh? What’s this? 

Hornet found her whole body soaring up the stream of air, her cloak catching the updraft and pushing her along. Once out of the slipstream, she floated down to the ground with her flared cloak. Her legs dangled uselessly beneath the fabric, swaying lightly as she descended. To any onlookers, she resembled a large, red umbrella. 

Silver tried to contain her laughter, but couldn’t. “You’re Mary Poppins!” She wheezed and choked a bit, her ribs hurting like hell. “Say it, say it!”

“Who is that?” Hornet asked as calmly as ever while she floated down in ridiculous fashion. “Is she a notable figure?"

“Yes!”

Hornet sighed loudly. “I am Mary Poppins.”

Silver howled and clutched her stomach, practically coughing from the excessive laughter. She got Hornet to say it! That’s amazing! 

Then, the human looked at the bandana tied to her wrist, shrugged, and also jumped off the platform. Hornet very nearly struck her with a Silk spear in fear that she would go tumbling down straight to her death. 

Luckily, the Seamstress was no liar. Silver yanked the bandana off and held the corners between both hands, letting the middle section catch the wind. The fabric was deceptively strong, stretching to swell up like the world’s smallest parachute. 

If a more succinct description is needed, try envisioning Link’s paraglider from Tears of the Kingdom. Only differences were that this one was entirely made out of a single sheet of fabric, was coloured a shade of orange, and looked way less clunky. 

Silver floated down to the floor next to Hornet, and dusted off the bandana with a flick of her wrist, before tying it around her arm. Having it around her wrist wasn’t nearly as cool as this. 

“Hehe. Do I look dapper or what?” she asked, strutting a pose that definitely wasn’t going to be featured in any beauty magazine. 

Hornet pretended to observe, putting a hand under her chin and humming thoughtfully. “A striking change of apparel, if I do say so myself.” She smiled a little when Silver chuckled again, her insides probably starting to hurt from all the laughter. 

“Well then, let us be off. We have a long day ahead,” said Hornet, moving past the windy columns to exit the Far Fields. They’d met Shakra in a small cave earlier, whose map implied that going eastward would only loop them back around to the Seamstress’ house. To head on to the next area, the duo needed to ride the winds up the vertical column they’d passed earlier, to the moors.

Silver trailed behind the hunter, resting her quarterstaff on one shoulder. “Oh right, before we go to Greymoor, we have to—”

The ground shook. 

A pile of rubble that they had sped past started to stir. From empty eye sockets came a gleaming white glow; the trapped automaton underneath sparking to life. The groan of machinery and the hissing of pistons grew louder… and louder… and…

“ — fight this guy.” Silver tried to hide her shaking legs as the Fourth Chorus reared its head above the lava and roared. Her staff looked perfectly useless for this fight, and the machine seemed to know that too. “Okay, there’s a speedrun sk—”

Faster than Hornet could react, the Fourth Chorus brought down one massive hand and slammed it down on Silver, crushing her under its weight.

Whatever sound of pain the human made was lost under the sickening cracks of 206 bones snapping all at once. It sounded a little squelchy too, like a wet aftertaste to the crunch of an ER disaster. The Fourth Chorus twisted its massive wrist around where it squished Silver, as if to rub in the humiliating death even more.

“No!” 

Hornet felt her heart drop down to her stomach, rage filling her shell. Grabbing her needle with both hands, she threw out a Silk spear for the automaton’s head, letting out a warcry of “Garama!” as her weapon lodged itself between the eyes of the Fourth Chorus. It shuddered slightly, rattling as Hornet repeatedly down-slashed its circular head.

Hornet gritted her teeth under her mask, striking with as much strength as her body allowed her to use. No music to hype her up, and no constant chatter to provide strategies mid-battle.

Silver was dead.

And this thing was going to die.

Chapter Text

It’d been twenty minutes and there was still no sign of Silver.

Hornet had taken a few hits to the face while facing off the Fourth Chorus, getting sent back unceremoniously to the bench in the Seamstress’ house. It had given the poor bug a good scare, almost causing her to pull out her old pin in self-defense. Luckily, Hornet managed to run out of her house fast enough to avoid giving an explanation. 

The Fourth Chorus was only annoying because of the shrinking arena space. Other than that, the hunter found its attacks slow and predictable, managing to bring it to its metaphorical knees after another try. Once she’d struck the final blow, flocks of silkflies left through its white eyes, before the machine exploded into the lava, never to bother the Seamstress again.

It was quite cathartic to see it crumble to bits. After all, she’d just watched it kill Silver without a second thought. Hornet lamented not having access to more of her pre-kidnapping arsenal of Silk skills. Only being able to use her Silk spear to enact justice wasn’t nearly as accurate as an indicator for her rage.

Now, while that was fine and all, Silver had seemingly just… disappeared.

Hornet checked the spot where she’d last stood, utilising her hunter’s skills to inspect the ground. However, the only trace she could make out was a few pieces of blue lint. They clung stubbornly to the warm gravel floor, suspiciously devoid of any bodily fluids a human should have contained upon being flattened like a pancake.

There was no blood, no footsteps, no nothing.

It was beyond strange.

Her guitar and staff had also disappeared, despite being large items that should’ve been left where she was. Most bewildering of all, there was no sign of any struggle, despite Hornet having seen the Fourth Chorus smash Silver to the ground like a gnat mere moments before. 

What on earth was going on?

Sighing in defeat, the hunter had no choice but to circle back to the last few friendly faces she’d met, in some vain hope that Silver had been magically teleported to somewhere they knew. She had to be somewhere, right?

Hornet sped back to the Seamstress, who almost skewered the hunter with her pin. You can’t blame her, really. Just imagine dealing with a spontaneously reappearing person who somehow always appears in your living room.

“Stray one!” she exclaimed, putting away her weapon after Hornet parried it. “You return in normal fashion!” 

Hornet wasn’t in a great mood and cut to the chase immediately. “Have you seen my companion? Blue body, black hair, knows too much for her own good?”

The Seamstress shook her head. “The one I wove that bandana for, yes? She didn’t come by my house as far as I know, dear. Did she get lost along your journey?” Well that was (unsurprisingly) fast. She’d hoped they would’ve gotten to the Citadel faster, to give all those backstabbing choirbugs a stern talking-to. After what they did to the order of the Pinstresses, it felt nice supporting some people who also didn’t like them, unlike those fanatical pilgrims.

Hornet nodded in farewell and ran off, heading back up to Pilgrim’s Rest. If, by some miracle, Silver had been transported to that shop and was actually safe and sound, Hornet had half a mind to thank Mort the shopkeeper with some loose change.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t there either. 

It took Hornet a great deal of discipline from keeping herself from breaking down Mort’s door, seeing how she needed to pay him to even enter the shop in the first place. She gave a curt goodbye and stepped outside, grimacing as the door’s mechanism re-locked itself upon her exit.

All that was left was Shakra.

Please be there, please be there, please be there…

“Peh. Ballako! I would have most certainly noticed if Silver Wielding Song had returned to my campsite,” said Shakra, looking up from her maps. “The odd blue human has disappeared, you say?”

Hornet nodded, internally screaming for Shakra to drop everything and start worrying too. “It would appear as such,” said the hunter, masking her worry with a smooth voice. “I am here to request your aid in locating her. Her wanderings and tracks are strange even to my eye. It is imperative that I have another pair to help in the search.”

Thank Wyrm and Root for the cartographer’s sense of urgency. Shakra quickly caught onto Hornet’s distress, and followed behind without so much as a “Poshanka!”. This was a matter of the life of a friend. And they needed to move fast. Who knew what was happening to Silver while they searched?

Silver actually also had that very same question in her mind upon waking up. 

What was happening to her?

She’d been rudely woken up from her nap by some voices, and the harsh glow of a nearby light source. It looked like a globe, but she couldn’t really tell through her blurry vision. It was like she’d somehow gained cataracts in the few moments she’d been out. 

Huh.

The even weirder thing going on was the daze she found herself in, because it didn’t feel like a normal post-concussion episode. Her head wasn’t hurting like someone had put it in a blender and turned it on. Quite the opposite in fact. 

Her mind’s eye was crystal clear. 

A little too clear.

Was this Bone Bottom? 

Uhhh…

It probably was. It sure felt like it. 

The hard surface of the bench was wooden, and not metal. The floor was also a sad shade of grey, like literally every pilgrim in the settlement (except Flick). Too bad she couldn’t actually see anyone nearby her. Best she could do was recognise loose colours and shapes. Pilby was probably next to her for all she knew.

She heard some shifting fabric, and found herself standing up. Okay, this was definitely not one of the normal post-concussion shenanigans. She was pretty sure that her legs weren’t supposed to be moving on her own. She was also pretty sure that she didn’t intend for her hands to reach for her guitar and start strumming to The Mind Electric.

     [ All mine towers crumble down

     The flowers gasping under rubble

     Shrieking in the hull of lull

     Thy genius sates a thirst for trouble… ]

Her voice was hoarse and scratchy, like someone had shoved a wad of Silk down her throat. Given what was happening, though, that wouldn’t be the most inaccurate guess ever. 

     [ Scattering sparks of thought energy

     Deliver me and carry me away

     Here in her kingdom she is your lord

     I order you to cower and pray… ]

Through her poor vision, Silver managed to make out the small commotion happening throughout Bone Bottom as Silk-threads started descending from the sky. They must’ve come from the Citadel itself, given that the upwards area of Mosshome connected to the Blasted Steps directly. 

The threads smothered the settlement, catching stray pilgrims and almost any other bug within the vicinity, ensnaring the entire town in Silk. Only Silver remained, unwillingly singing to a song she didn’t even like that much. She couldn’t stop. Her mouth just wouldn’t close. Her hands kept moving, despite her silent protests. 

She couldn’t stop. 

Damn it, hands, stop strumming! she loudly thought to her own limbs. My fingers hurt! Why are there so many barre chords?

Looking a little closer, the human managed to catch a glimpse of the strings wrapped around her limbs, pulling and dragging her along to the whims of the pale monarch above like a puppet. This was a less than ideal situation to be in for Silver, who quite enjoyed her autonomy. 

Grand Mother Silk was using Silver’s guitar and music to further her influence. Which meant only one thing, really. 

She was Haunted. 

Great.

“So many changes in such little time,” murmured Hornet as she cut through swathes of Silk that definitely weren’t supposed to be in the Marrow. “What do you make of it, Shakra?”

The cartographer re-looked at her own maps, wondering how the absolutely ridiculous amount of Silk had gone unmarked. She was either blind as a beastfly, or something very, very bad had happened. She put her map away and focused on keeping herself free of the numerous threads. Her rings were no good against the thick curtains of Silk. Only Hornet’s needle stood any chance of tearing through them.

“These dregs and this scent… Dondakku. They bear the mark of a Weaver, but they are long dead, are they not? Only corpses bound in spires. To the young we tell the tales, and yet one seems to still thrive.”

Hornet bit back a comment about her… interesting heritage. She’ll save it for a later conversation. Right now, they had to get to the bench she and Silver had visited so long ago. 

“I fear this is no work of a mere Weaver,” said Hornet. “This Silk betrays a pale coldness to them. We have drawn the ire of Pharloom’s god.”

Shakra didn’t know what to say to that. Because, well, gods and the like were far beyond her warrior expertise. 

And so, the duo walked along in tense silence.

The hunter theorised that the Weaver-trinket she’d gifted to Silver did in fact grant her the ability to respawn as well. The only problem was that the human hadn’t sat on any benches in the Far Fields or Deep Docks (having sat on the floor), leaving the only possible respawn points in Bone Bottom or the Moss Grotto.

The reason why she didn’t reappear in Pilgrim’s Rest was either because of the paywalled door, or that Hornet and Silver had shared the bench. It must’ve messed with the mysterious mechanics of respawning, preventing either of them from setting that particular bench as their checkpoint. 

So Silver was either six feet under lava, or at the bench in Bone Bottom. 

Hornet sincerely hoped for the latter.

In the short span they’d been travelling together, wandering around Pharloom without Silver by her side felt off. Hornet thrived off of the excessive information the human shared, cutting down enemies with ease thanks to tips and tricks provided. Her music helped combat the ever-present feeling of homesickness and danger, boosting their shared morale. Like it or not, the constant banter was starting to grow on her. 

Silver had to be alright, right?

The two warriors stepped out of the Marrow and were greeted with… well, it was a little much to process. Since neither of them had seen Haunted Bellheart before, this was their first taste of seeing an entire settlement affected by the Haunting. 

In the heart of Bone Bottom, near the bench and gleamfly globe, was a massive triangular bundle of Silk. Every friendly bug they’d met was either dead on the floor, or ensnared within the threads, occasionally twitching in fear. Hornet caught a glimpse of Flick and Pebb, half their bodies entangled in the Silk-spire. The town was devoid of any panicked screaming and other noises one would associate when faced with potential death.

Instead, Bone Bottom was being serenaded by none other than Silver and her guitar.

Her body was moving in all the wrong ways, completely different from how she normally did. Her hands lacked any flow or fluidity at all, and were instead stiff and janky, more mechanical than human. Her voice was also horribly wrong; her tone was deader than the bodies all around, singing only for the sake of making a sound. 

Worst still were Silver’s eyes. They’d been glossed over with white, removing their iconic grey irises. All their usual excitement and wonder, gone down the drain. 

This wasn’t Silver at all.

Shakra hazarded a greeting. “Poshanka, Silver Wielding Song! It gladdens us to see you alive,” she said, one hand secretly reading her throwing rings. Just in case, y’know. “... Are you well?”

For a brief moment, there was no answer. Hornet worried that Silver was actually just straight up dead and this was a cruel joke played by the pale monarch. Instead, the warriors got a snippet of a song.

     [ Nuns commence incanting as the

     Lightning strikes my temples thus

     Electrifying mine chambers wholly

     Scorching out thine sovereignty… ]

If you think that was bad, just know that the latter bit was sung in a way that was heartbreaking to hear. Hornet saw a face of pain and desperation plastered on Silver as the threads choked the next verse out of the human, whose fingers gripped the fretboard of the guitar like a lifeline to reality. 

Which it probably was.

     [ So spiralling down thy majesty

     I beg of thee, have mercy on me

     I am just a girl you see

     I plead of thee, have sympathy for me… ]

Both Hornet and Shakra felt a wave of hesitancy wash over them, almost enough to make them drop their weapons. It was as if the actual Silver herself was singing, begging them to not escalate the encounter into a fight. After all, two seasoned warriors against one fragile human weren’t great odds for Silver’s survival. But it could be a trick, for all they knew. A trick to get them to lower their guard and become one with the poor residents of Bone Bottom.

A very cruel trick.

Hornet raised her needle, pushing back the rising guilt in her throat. “If you are our foe, stay your voice and raise your weapon,” she commanded. It was the Temple of the Black Egg all over again. A face-off she really didn’t want to have. Someone was going to die. And neither outcome was good. Why, by Wyrm, why did she have to do this again? She’s gone through enough, surely. Spare her newest friends her pain. 

Please.

“Your voice guides these cursed threads, but their source lies above us. What role do you play in this vile affliction?”

“... Union upon thread… A gift for her waking… A world strung to serve…” The words were soft, slurred and most definitely forced. The human herself looked weirded out by her own speech, but that momentary clarity was quickly buried under an un-Silver-like glare. She pointed the end of her staff towards Hornet, singling her out to challenge. “... Guide the Silk, by string and song… All of Pharloom, for her.”

Internally, she was cringing so hard. Really? Widow’s needolin dialogue for this? All the power of a pale being, and Grand Mother Silk makes her reuse a monologue from a bossfight that they were going to encounter anyways! No creativity at all.

The pale monarch herself must’ve sensed Silver’s dissatisfaction. In response, all the Silk threads around her arms tightened painfully, almost turning her fingertips blue. Silver let out a breath she wanted to keep in her chest. She’d read somewhere once that when seasoned fighters exhaled, it meant that they were… Oh no, please don’t do this. Silver pushed against the mental web that kept her from lashing out. Please — no! NO!

And Silver struck.

The Silk that strung her up was quick, dragging the girl along with surprisingly fast reflexes. Staff connected with needle, causing a hollow clonk to echo throughout Haunted Bone Bottom. Hornet held her ground, flicking away the staff with ease. 

Thank Wyrm for a mask. It did well to hide the pain in her eyes.

Shakra jumped in, throwing her bronze rings with deadly accuracy. While thrown less forcefully than she usually would, they were still dangerous weapons that could bruise shell and skin. Unfortunately, they couldn’t cut away at the puppeteering strings, bouncing off harmlessly. Shakra humphed and fell back to the ground, sending a small shockwave around her. 

It swept Silver off her feet for a moment, allowing Hornet to dip and weave past her defences, aiming for the Silk around her arms. The sharp blade was now a two-edged sword: cut too close and Silver dies; miss the strike and prolong the fight. Luckily, Hornet struck true, and Silver’s left arm was free of Silk.

Three more limbs to go.

The human was yanked back up again, painfully it seemed, since her face contorted into a grimace. She swept her leg out suddenly, knocking Hornet off-balance and falling to the ground. Shakra immediately blocked the resulting staff-strike with her ringed arm, kicking Silver in the stomach. As Hornet crawled away to recover, Silver also doubled over, not used to blunt force trauma. 

“Shakra, look!” Hornet called out after binding to heal. The cartographer turned to catch Silver coughing up Silk-dregs, littering the floor with white particles. 

“We can save her, if we’re willing to cause several wounds.” She had a plan now, which was one step up from blindly fighting. “I suspect that striking the Silk out of her body would suffice. But we must be careful to not harm her greatly.”

Silver slowly stood back up, controlled right hand gripped around her quarterstaff, freed left hand shielding her face. It was clear she didn’t want to fight at all, and was probably terrified. She was just a child, Hornet recalled. All the more a reason to save her faster.

The cartographer nodded, slipping off more of her throwing rings from her arms. “Yakkanesh! Do not lower your guard, even if you withhold the intent to kill. The evil in these threads guide her arm, and will not spare you their mercy!” Shakra threw two rings at once, one getting deflected by Silver’s staff and the other hitting her square in the shoulder. Silk-dregs exploded from the point of contact, almost causing the human to cry out in pain. 

The Silk inside her must’ve muffled the scream since she only grunted in response.

Hornet took the opportunity to throw a precise Silk-spear, aimed above Silver’s head. While it missed the strings of control, it made Silver look up instinctively. The hunter then ducked low and swung around, using the flat side of her needle to whack her torso. 

“ … S-strung to serve… for h-her…” Silver’s free hand covered her mouth as even more dregs of Silk were spluttered out. They probably tasted bad too, like a mouthful of cotton wool or linen. “ … For her… h-her… h-help… help me…”

Hornet swung again, slamming her entire body against Silver. More Silk spewed out of everywhere; her mouth, her clothes and from above. Shakra’s rings were relentless, impossible to dodge after being hit so many times. The human body was still flesh, at the end of the day. And flesh tires, regardless of who controls it.

“H-help… help! Please…”

Each hit reaped less and less Silk. Each hit coaxed a more human cry, a more Silver-like grimace. Each hit drove her to her knees, no longer strung up like a puppet.

“Th-thank…”

Hornet thought she’d long since ridded herself of pesky, meddling, irrational emotions that clouded judgment when hunting or fighting. Did prey feel sympathy for the starving predator? Did Infected husks plead for a swift death? Of course not. That’s silly. She’d always just fought, and fought, and fought… it was to survive. A merciless world, this was.

So why was this any different?

Well, Hornet thought bitterly as Shakra stepped back from the scene. Maybe this was different from surviving. Surviving was just going through the motions. Silver was sprawled on the floor, limbs and untied hair all in a tangle. Her sweater had a few holes that needed mending. Her arms and chest were most certainly bruised into a different colour palette altogther. Hornet was too nauseous to check.

Maybe this was what the human had called "living". 

While it's true that it'd been years since Hornet had ever felt the sensation of fear, it'd also been a while since she had come to truly care for someone as if their hide was her own shell. Years since she'd had to open her heart to anybody.

And now she was beating up this exact someone with a blade that has felled thousands.

The last needle-strike was half-hearted and sloppy, undoubtedly a disgrace to a hunter of her calibre. And yet, Hornet had never used so much energy to simply swing her blade once, not even turning it to the sharp side to cut. She couldn’t even bring herself to help Silver up from the hard, stone floor. Her hands were glued to her sides, clenching the fabric of her red cape.

“...”

And then, Silver stilled, free of the pale monarch’s Silk.

If one could tune out the ragged breaths of Hornet, Shakra’s loud stare, Silver’s soft sobs and the distant rustling of the ensnared bugs, Bone Bottom was quiet. Everything was a-okay again. Yay!

But at what cost?

Chapter Text

Silver yanked the bed covers off herself, exactly how the main protagonist does in an anime after waking up in the hospital.

And then she yelled, promptly covering up with the sheets once she’d noticed that her sweater was on the nightstand beside her, and that Hornet was watching from the corner. It was probably the fastest Hornet had ever seen her move. Embarrassment elicits the most impressive reflexes indeed.

“Hey, just ‘cus you don’t know the concept of a sports bra doesn’t mean you can stare, okay?” Silver glared at Hornet, who pushed off from the wall and walked towards the bed. She tried reaching for her sweater but stopped once stretching her muscles sent a spike of pain all along her arm. It felt like a wildfire, causing her to wince softly and sink back into the covers. “Ow…”

Hornet ripped the bed covers off the human in one fell swoop, drawing another yell of protest. “I need to see your body if I am to heal you with minimal Silk,” she reasoned, not understanding that you normally don’t do that in human society. “No more binding for general wounds. We need to limit it to the most severe injuries, like your arm and torso.”

She used her needle to point to a spot nearby Silver’s left shoulder, which was an ugly shade of purple and green. This was not to mention the large, blue-blackish spot on Silver’s torso area as well, resembling the Mottled Skarr’s carapace. Her wrists were rubbed raw and red, fingers still stinging with pins and needles, having lacked blood circulation. Her throat was incredibly dry, where her earlier shouts and speech sounded scratchy and hoarse. 

Pushing aside the atrocious condition Silver’s body was in, it was Hornet’s first good look at human anatomy. 

Under the sweater, well, there really wasn’t much to see. Unlike what most fictional protagonists would flaunt, Silver was your average girl. Her midriff was exposed, showcasing the utter lack of abs, battle scars and overtly artificial body proportions. The most interesting thing Hornet could see was a few inconsistent patches of differently coloured skin, where she would later learn the term called “birthmarks”.

Silver wondered what was going through the hunter’s mind. It was hard to tell with her. The mask did a great job of making Hornet’s face unreadable. Body language and tone of voice were all Silver had to work with. Which wasn't much.

“Where does it hurt the most?” Hornet tried emulating how Shakra had oriented her earlier on first-aid for others. The disadvantages of having lived alone for so long; the processes used to treat others weren’t as intuitive. She also had to be more careful with her methods, not able to brute-force makeshift healing methods as she’d done in the past. 

“I shall risk using my binds there only. For everything else, we must medicate through herbs and salves. Choose wisely.”

The human’s brows furrowed in earnest, thinking hard. And then, she pointed to her splotchy torso, hissing softly as more sore muscles were pulled. “Can’t go anywhere if my stomach looks like a blueberry,” she joked. “But you don’t — ah, ow — know what blueberries are.”

Hornet got to work, using as little Silk as she dared to mend the torn blood capillaries, heal the abraised skin, and strengthen the underlying tissues. While their anatomies might’ve differed wildly, at the end of the day, everyone’s just made of multiple tissue layers. Thus, Hornet used her Silk to repair Silver’s torso area, tissue layer by tissue layer, until the purple was buried underneath a patch of white.

Silver exhaled slowly, so as to not hurt more. Thankfully, Hornet’s binding was successful and she could now breathe easily.

“Phew. Thanks. But how did you…” Silver hung her sweater around her neck as she got up from bed, wandering about the room. “This is the Halfway Home!” She pointed to the distant windmills through the window, whose blades were heavy with rain and Silk-dregs from the sky. She spotted a few dreg catchers hoist their pointy staffs in the air, collecting bits of used Silk to pass to their brethren. They’d rake it, snip it, and re-spool it into fresh Silk spools, before sending them back to the Citadel. One large, breathing, dying organism of a kingdom.

“How did you get me here?”

Hornet shrugged slightly, glancing outside the window. “Shakra strapped you to her back like a sack of maps, and scaled the vertical column that connected Far Fields and this place, Greymoor.” Silver was amazed. Shakra must be an insanely good rock climber then. Climbing those walls, and carrying her? She owed the cartographer for her help.

“I rode the wind. We worked together to find a safe spot to rest. Shakra had left early before sunrise, off to find her master again.” 

Silver looked around for a clock and silently huffed when she remembered that Silksong had no clocks.

“And now it’s…?”

“Way past noon. You’ve been out for half the whole day. But please, rest easy. Accommodations have been paid for, and I will try my best to heal you with what I have.”

Hornet pulled out a few shallow containers from her red coat’s pockets, setting them down on the nightstand. Some were colourful, others were plain and jelly-like. Most were odourless, but a handful smelt strongly of medicinal herbs. The hunter handed Silver a tin of some sort of salve, gesturing to her shoulder. The human complied, rubbing some of it over the bruised skin. 

While it was no miracle-worker, her arm felt less like it was on fire, and more like suffering from a low, throbbing sensation. An improvement, somewhat.

She groaned, realising what this meant. “How long must we stay here? A day? A week? More?”

“I’m not sure.” Hornet sighed too, recalling the multiple runbacks she’d done to “farm” enough rosary beads to appease Creige. Silver had long since taught her the quirks of “room-resetting” with enemies, and had used it to her advantage, re-entering areas to meet recurring groups of enemies to reap their rewards thrice over. A little bit of a mind-numbing task, sure, but anything to keep her companion alive.

She’d already failed her once. Never again.

“But you should not hasten your recovery. That is unwise. I only ever do it to save my shell. As long as the barkeep allows us to stay, you will rest.” 

“Okay, mom.”

Hornet took a seat at a low table at the other end of the room, tinkering with her tools. She’d been steadily expanding her arsenal, thanks to Silver’s directions on where they’d been scattered around. A quick trip to Forge Daughter through the bellways was highly beneficial, allowing her to accumulate even more tools and upgrade her tool pouch. 

So far, the curveclaws and sting shards were great, and the compass hadn’t left her possession at all. The fractured mask also gave Hornet one extra chance to take a hit, allowing for a slightly larger room for error. In a land as dangerous as Pharloom, she’ll take anything to survive better, if only by a hair’s breadth.

Silver managed a weak chuckle, applying coats of salve to various parts of her upper body. She drew a smiley-face on her bad shoulder. “Like ‘em? Can’t wait for you to see the Twelfth Architect. She sells the best stuff, like the sawblades. Don’t forget the cogflies in the Citadel, or the pollip pouch from Greyroot!” 

She kept her sweater off and around her neck for the time being, giving the salve some time to dry. “You can also get a gun in Bilewater, which I highly recommend fixing at Mount Fay. You’re gonna get a piercing railgun with the highest damage stats out of all three silkshot variants. What’s not to like?”

Hornet laughed along softly, intrigued. “I may not know what a ‘gun’ is, but it does sound formidable,” she said with her back turned towards Silver, fixing her tools up with shell shards. “Thank you for your insight.”

Silver smirked, out of Hornet’s sight. “Too bad I didn’t foresee… whatever happened to Bone Bottom… heheh, um…”

The room was a little quieter than it was five seconds ago. The duo were quiet enough for Nuu’s voice to seep through the thin walls, humming a song about cutting down every creature in Pharloom to document. Silver shifted on the bed uncomfortably. Hornet didn’t turn around to face her.

“How many dead?” Silver asked in a voice just barely above a whisper. 

Hornet stilled, but didn’t turn around. “A handful. Perhaps less than ten, if our count is accurate. Shakra and I checked as we freed the town from the threads.”

“Who?”

“Many unnamed,” Hornet said while she turned around to face the human. 

The human. 

The one who knew their fates and futures, who likely knew of the grave consequences of altering the “script” of this Silksong game they were in. Hornet wondered how the intended events were supposed to play out. Was there a timeline where the showdown at Bone Bottom never happened? She found that hard to believe now, just hours after the incident.

“Many were tossed down the deep hole that leads to the Moss Grotto, right outside the town. Amongst the bodies lies one soul you know by name. Pilby.”

The colour drained from Silver’s tan face.

“... what.”

“I’m sorry, we tried to…”

“I killed him.”

“Silver, that was not—” Hornet stood up, one hand reaching out for Silver’s unbruised shoulder.

“I killed him. He’s dead. Before Act 3. Because of me. I killed him.”

“Silver.”

“No…” She buried her face in her hands, the dread of realising that the “script” got fulfilled anyways creeping into her mind like a long shadow. Was fate going to bend and arch whatever it needed as long as its “script” was achieved?

That’s it then? 

Her isekai journey was bound to the canon events of Silksong? No changes allowed, no saving the doomed NPCs, no sequence-breaking their actions? Pharloom will be destroyed by the Void, regardless of what she does?

But that couldn’t be. She had an instrument that never existed in the game. Bone Bottom got Haunted, and then un-Haunted. That surely counted as a deviation, no? The Seamstress knows about the dead third Pinstress. Lace might rebel sooner than the Cradle fight, if their previous confrontation truly rattled her enough. Shakra aided in battle outside of a gauntlet room. Did these all not count?

“I guess not…” said Silver to nobody in particular, reeling from the what-ifs playing in her head. “So bugs like Loam will die too then. Everyone who doesn’t make it… We can’t save them.”

Hornet finally managed to rest her hand on Silver’s right shoulder, gripping firmly as one would do so to a foothold while scaling a cliff. It helped ground the girl back to the present, avoiding another one of her anxious spirals. No words needed to be exchanged as Silver calmed herself down, exhaling and inhaling at regular intervals, breathing as deep as her fresh wounds allowed.

“You cannot save everyone,” Hornet confirmed. Her hand didn’t leave Silver’s shoulder just yet. Her masked eyes bore holes straight through Silver’s worried face. “But we can try. We must try. You may never know until you do so.”

The hunter lifted her hand, nodding slightly to check for understanding. Silver nodded along, realising the implications of Pilby’s death. Perhaps this was a once-off unfortunate event where an NPC who could’ve lived had been caught in the crossfire of a non-canonical event. With her outside meddling, Silver could still stand a chance to change Pharloom’s storyline. It was a shaky theory, but they had to try. The other option would be to callously murder everyone right now as the kingdom gets wrecked in Act 3 anyways. 

And they'd never do that. 

Hornet’s earlier warnings of saving the future’s grief for the future came to mind. To keep the sorrows of tomorrow for tomorrow. Today, they would rest and recuperate. And try their best to save other bugs, should opportunities present themselves.

There is no fate so unmovable that they could not change it.

After sleeping off the pain for a few hours, Silver (now with her sweater back on) woke up to an empty room. 

She got up from the bed and decided to take a good look around their temporary residence. Hornet’s small letter on the nightstand reassured her of the hunter’s whereabouts (rosary farming) and her estimated return (two hours later). The human hummed, realising that she had two uninterrupted hours for herself, and herself only.

Best to make good use of it.

The windows were surprisingly big, giving her a great view of lower Greymoor. Next to the windows were Silver’s repaired quarterstaff and guitar, which had sustained only superficial bumps and scratches. The staff seemed more battered and beat-up than she remembered, likely strengthened even more with additional Silk.

Silver was convinced that if the guitar could survive both Hornet and Shakra attacking her, it could survive the heat death of the universe. It was ridiculously durable. What did Forge Daughter make it out of? 

Across the bed, near the wall, was the table where Hornet had left her unused tools. Some amalgamation of shell shards, loose change and spare parts littered the desk, giving off the vibes of a rather disorganised Hornet. It made sense though, since that hunter had been living alone for so long that organisation for aesthetics didn’t cut it. As long as Hornet knew where her stuff was, Silver was fine with leaving the table as an eyesore. Nagging at her to keep it tidy would make the human a hypocrite, given that her own study table back at home was much worse.

The room was lit up by gleamfly lamps strung from corner to corner, where one could turn “on” the lights by shaking the lamps, awakening the glowing flies into illuminating the area. 

Silver eagerly gulped down the cup of water Hornet had left her, ahh-ing at its coolness. Ever since her Haunting, where Grand Mother Silk had forcibly made her sing her lungs out for the better part of a whole hour, her voice remained scratchy and husky, no matter how much water she drank. She theorised that it might’ve been a side effect of the Silk that once stuffed her body, damaging her throat irreparably. 

That might be a cause of concern to her parents. But here? She’ll roll with it. It sounded cool anyways.

She snickered. She thought she sounded a little like that Lloyd guy from Ninjago. Just a tad less obnoxious.

Which was hilarious, since Zane was her favourite. Something about robot characters that talked funny and had access to mental Wikipedia were just so easy to connect to. The fanarts didn’t help either. She knew the different damage modifiers of each needle upgrade per enemy and that Hornet’s needle was made of a material called hivesteel; Zane knew that the treadmill was invented in 1818 as a random fun fact. 

Granted she hadn’t even finished season 3 yet, but she could always continue once she got home after this Silksong isekai adventure.

Speaking of home…

The human toed off her sneakers, sending them flying backwards. Her household was a no-shoes-indoors type, where shoes were restricted for outside only. Even slippers were rare, since marble flooring was comfortable enough to step on. 

And then, her stomach grumbled. “Seriously…” 

She looked around for any scraps Hornet had left behind. She felt a little bit like a raccoon, rummaging through the hunter’s satchel of items that she didn’t bring along with her for rosary farming. “Marrowmaw jerky it is then,” she said to herself while chewing the strip of cured meat. “Can’t believe Creige doesn’t install stoves in the guest rooms. Does Nuu straight up eat her catches?”

The human pondered some very good questions as she munched on bug jerky, waiting for Hornet to come back.

Chapter Text

Hornet bent down, picking up the loose rosaries by the bead.

She’d tried learning how to string them up nicely in bundles of 60 and 120, but to no avail. The strings were dastardly slippery and surprisingly tricky to work with. 

Tying them too loosely immediately sent all the beads rolling to the floor. Tying too tightly made it impossible to break again to reuse to pay at smaller increments. Tying one bead short of the 60 or 120 bundle made counting her total reserves difficult. 

It was only after losing several rosaries to spiked floors did Hornet truly appreciate the art of rosary-stringing. Whether it be Pebb or the machines nearby benches, the hunter tried her best to always string up her rosaries. Better being safe than sorry when a second death causes all her stored rosaries to be taken by the wind.

Where did the rosaries go? Heck if she knew. 

Her best guesses had always been some pack of highly skilled snitchflies, likely Grindle’s friends, who’d swoop down from… somewhere… and make off with her hard-earned money. She was never fast enough to catch them in the act, though, leaving her hypothesis to yet be proven right. Another minus point for Pharloom, and a plus point for Hallownest. Bad father as he was, at least the Pale King had enough geo running around to satisfy his subjects. 

Hornet sat on the bench within the Halfway Home, sighing in relief. Down below, Creige continuously shined his glass cups. Upstairs, Nuu was cataloguing her catches. Next to Nuu’s room was Silver, whom she hoped was actually resting and not wasting the salve’s effects by horsing around with her guitar.

Ah, benches. 

Wonderfully mysterious things. 

So simple, and yet astoundingly powerful. 

Sit on one and watch the world spin faster, she’d swear on her needle. The first time she sat on one in Moss Grotto, the injured Moss Mother somehow reappeared, right as rain and ready for round two. Sitting on a bench and running to a previously traversed area seemed to call identical reinforcements, who’d drop the same resources. 

Every single time. 

How odd.

Secret snitchfly gang aside, Hornet appreciated the consistency of this mechanic. It made hunting for rosaries so much easier once she’d found the perfect farming spot.

It was a narrow, linear corridor, east of the Halfway Home, which boasted a group of Haunted pilgrims that were easily felled by a Silk spear and several curveclaws if needed. Running back and forth from the corridor and the bench spawned more identical replacements, who dropped the same number of rosaries each time. After a few rounds, Hornet had amassed a sizable pocketfull of the reddish beads to make trade with Creige. 

“S’only those few stronger pilgrims that survive to reach my home now,” said the barkeep over the counter as he slid a glass to Hornet. “Pharloom’s curse claims the rest. Poor sods, left to wander.”

Hornet had hopped down from her perch at the bench to order her drink, shouldering her needle and taking a well-earned break. The seats near the counter were virtually empty, giving the hunter several spots to choose from. In the end, she settled on a stool at the corner of the rectangular bar, downing her cup of nectar in one sip.

Creige didn’t want to say anything about how fast the drink was consumed in fear of Hornet’s needle. It was consumed concerningly fast, as if a single shot wasn’t enough to make a bug slightly tipsy. Thus, Creige wisely continued his perpetual glass-cleaning and kept up the small talk.

“I do sometimes get to wondering… Is it the dregs of their own mind in there keepin’em walking, or something else entirely?” The glass cup squeaked out complaints from its constant cleaning. 

“Bah, the answer’s probably somewhere out there, but I’m not foolish enough to get a glimpse. We leave that to the heroic sort, like you, traveller.”

Hornet looked up from her empty glass momentarily. She gave a short nod in return, unsure of what else to add on. It’s not like telling Creige anything about the Haunting would do her any good. It might just cause him to kick Silver out, if he considered “cured” persons as still-active threats. 

And so, Hornet made her way upstairs after handing ten rosaries to the barkeep, wondering what the human was doing in there.

“And what exactly are you doing?” Hornet shut the door behind her, arms crossed in front of her chest.

“Nuthin’,” said Silver, lying as easily as she breathed. 

“Wrong answer.” 

“Man…” 

Silver dropped the tools she’d been holding and backed away, hands in the air like how a police officer might get a suspect to pose. There wasn’t an ounce of guilt on the human’s face, though. It read more like being surprised at Hornet’s speedy return than feeling bad for getting caught touching Hornet’s hunter-only tools. While ground rules weren’t explicitly set between the duo, they had a basic “my stuff is mine” boundary they had going on.

Up until now.

Silver eyed Hornet’s pockets, which were clearly weighted down by rosaries. “So, you gonna keep the beads loose or…?” 

Hornet begrudgingly emptied her cloak of all rosary beads onto the bed covers, and let the human get away with touching her tools. 

For now. 

She needed the help stringing the damned currency up anyways. While far more reliable than Milibelle’s bank back home, they were impossible for the hunter to accomplish. One day, she vowed. Before leaving Pharloom. She’d learn how to tie a bracelet of rosaries.

Hornet took her seat at the table back and Silver stayed on the bed, hands busy with the few hundred rosaries to string up. 

“Your wounds, child. How are they holding up?” 

“Pretty good! For something that isn’t paracetamol, they sure did take the pain away real fast,” Silver said between furrowed eyebrows. While human fingers were a world nimbler than bug hands, knots weren’t her specialty. It needed a little more finesse and elbow grease than she was currently exhibiting. 

“I think I’ll be out and about by today. Bellheart and Shellwood are up next, and—”

Hornet pinched her mask between the eye sockets, halting any repairs on her tools. “Not a chance,” she interrupted bluntly. “Uneducated as I am on your anatomy, we will not resume our journey as long as you bear the marks of two warriors. It will kill you.”

Silver groaned. House arrest was no fun at all! Was Hornet really that scared of either of them dying? Last she checked, Hornet could respawn as many times as she wanted. And for Silver herself, as far as she was concerned, no Silk meant no Haunting. If she died now, the measly patch of Silk on her torso was surely too little for the pale monarch to seize control of, right? 

She huffed in annoyance, stringing up the final 60 beads into a nice circular loop of string, tying it up with a bow.

“You suck.”

The hunter didn’t turn around from her table, polishing her sting shard traps. “I do not share such a sentiment. In fact, I’m doing you an obvious favour by reigning in your impulsivity. You only required so much Silk-healing because you ran into a skull brute. I cannot guarantee your safety if you keep ignoring everything I say, Silver.”

“... you still suck.”

Silence.

It was peaceful.

Well, for about ten minutes.

Hornet, satisfied with her repairs, slipped her shell shards and tools back into their respective pouches, and then pocketed said pouches into her cloak. Turning around, it was then she realised that Silver was once again nowhere to be seen. 

“You’re kidding me…”

Her quarterstaff and guitar had disappeared from their resting spots near the window, alongside her orange bandana. The hunter swore she hadn’t heard a sound, amazed at her companion’s stealth. The open door beckoned Hornet to follow, leading her down to the main hall of the Halfway Home, where Creige was at his countertop.

And currently, there were a lot more patrons than she remembered moments before.

In the distance, Hornet could make out the sounds of many hands clapping, glasses clinking and the strum of an oh-so familiar instrument getting louder as she descended to the ground floor. Nuu waved at her from a stool, giggling at the scene in front of her. She had a glass of water (Hornet hoped it was water) in her hand, trying not to laugh at the performance going on.

Hornet bit her tongue, wondering if she should’ve told Silver about the nectar.

The human had mentioned once earlier how the wiki and most sources don’t seem to agree that nectar was alcoholic. At most, it was a fancy-schmancy drink that costs ten rosaries to drink, that refilled game-Hornet’s Silk gauge and health bar. It’d never been stated that one could get drunk off it, and any mentions of a potential alcoholic nature were kept to the fanfics at best. Even if it was intoxicating, Silver assured the hunter that their totally different biological make-ups would prevent inebriation. 

Clearly, the human was dead wrong about this.

Cheeks flushed red and bright, she had her guitar strapped across her body as usual, strumming without a care in the world. It was a doozy trying to imagine how quickly the drink worked its magic on the girl. Hornet just took her eyes off her for ten minutes. Ten! And she’s already drunk? Wyrm help the hunter… she’ll die an early death from stress if this keeps up.

Wait. How is Silver up and about so fast… her wounds… what the… where were they?? 

Hornet muscled her way past the suddenly-cluttered inn to get a closer look. Bugs of all kinds had flocked to the Halfway Home, probably as a result of Bone Bottom’s Haunting. Hornet didn’t blame Silver for any of that, but she couldn’t deny its aftereffects. More Haunted pilgrims roamed Pharloom, chased out of their starting camp too soon. Less pilgrims remained sane and in the mood to talk. Silver had been subject to scrutiny and pilgrims shuddered in fear as her deeds surpassed the duo’s wanderings, even if it’s only been hours after the incident.

Hornet secured a seat right next to the counter, just like she did earlier. Creige was nowhere to be seen, likely already fed up with the ruckus. The hunter glanced upwards to examine her companion. She couldn’t believe her eyes.

No blotchy skin to be seen underneath the sweater. No hidden winces as Silver tapped her foot to the beat. No gritted teeth as she pressed her calloused fingers against the fretboard, singing like nobody was watching. In fact, Hornet swore that the pain on Silver’s face slowly ebbed away as she kept singing in that new, raspy voice. Granted, her voice was a little less sharp and a lot more loose, with around 60% of that likely being the nectar’s doing.

Did her own music heal her too…?

The hunter shook her head as she watched the inn roar to life under the spell of Silver’s song, begrudgingly vibing to the uplifting music. As expected, the song magically strengthened her as well, instilling the drive to carry on, and igniting that lost wonder she’d buried so long ago.

     [ Once upon a younger year

     When all our shadows disappeared 

     The animals inside came out to play… ]

Her younger years. Hornet’s childhood. 

Too bad it had died in Deepnest, along with her mother.

The resulting nights were like no other, where the princess of Hallownest had no bed to lay her head on, until the White Lady took her in. As Herrah slept, she’d trained so hard and so long under Vespa that Deepnest almost became a bedtime story to her. The White Lady was nice enough, but damage was still damage, even if well-intentioned.

She wondered if her name “Hornet” was even Herrah’s doing at all. If it wasn’t (it was probably Vespa’s idea), then all she had of her mother was blood relation alone. How cheery.

And now this weirdo human was singing her heart out, unaware of what the song made Hornet remember. How could she have known? Hornet wasn’t about to fault her again for something she did unintentionally. Nine times out of ten, the loudest bugs in the room hid some pretty dark stuff. The impulse to take a shot of nectar and the idea to sing aloud were definitely coping mechanisms for guilt.

Hornet will play along. For now.

     [ Went face to face with all our fears

     Learnt our lessons through the tears

     Made memories we knew would never fade… ]

Silver was stomping all over Creige’s counter, surprisingly in perfect sync with the song’s rhythm. The tipsier bugs were clapping along, some whistling and whooping from the further ends of the inn. Her shoes left large imprints on the wood, no doubt going to be the cause of the barkeep’s future problems once they left. 

Her mischievous grin was wider than usual, and if Hornet had been a little closer to the human, she would’ve smelt the sickly, strong and sweet-ish smell of nectar in the human’s breath.

(How many drinks did she have in ten minutes??)

Hornet made a mental note to tip Creige generously that day.

The hunter pulled the collar of her cloak up a little higher to hide her growing smile. (What? It was fun to watch.) The high energy was perfectly intoxicating. Silver herself was also intoxicated; off the nectar, not the energy. Each verse made her giggle a little more than she normally would, and Hornet had to gently prod her feet away from the countertop ledge whenever she got too close to falling.

     [ One day, my father, he told me, “Kid, don’t let it slip away”

     He took me in his arms, I heard him say

     “When you get older, your wild heart will live for younger days

     Think of me if ever you’re afraid… 

     He said, “One day, you’ll leave this world behind

     So live a life you will remember”

     My father told me when I was just a child,

     “These are the nights that never die”

     My father told me… ]

And then, Silver panicked. 

She’d forgotten about the instrumental parts! Stupid, idiotic Astronomo. Whatever should she do? 

Her breath came heavier than expected. Perhaps her torso wasn’t up to its pre-Haunting durability yet. But that just gave her a genius idea.

Twisting her lips together and sucking in air, Silver whistled out the melody of the following bit of the song. Her feet kept the beat, and her hands were working their magic upon Silken strings, captivating the crowd. One-and, two-and, one-and…

     [ These are the nights that never die

     My father told me… ]

Battered and bruised she may be, Silver wasn’t going to take “no” as an answer to the question of continuing her journey. She’d caught Hornet’s smile from below, fueling her mood to perform. The hunter groaned, which was easily covered up by the commotion that was the Halfway Home.

The song was one of Silver’s favourites, but for a reason more sentimental than most: it’d been her graduation song nearly four years ago, when she was twelve. The long nights of compiling pencil-lined sheet music and Zoom calls with her classmates echoed through her words, filling the hearts of all those who heard her. Unfamiliar faces they were, today, they were united in spirit. All headed to the Citadel, for wildly different purposes.

Most, to fulfill a duty to their faith.

One hunter, to set a score right, and to free a cursed land from the woe brought by her kin.

One human, to finish the game and go home. AndtoatoneforthedeathsshejustcausedhoursagoandsomuchmoretocomeifshekeptgettingHauntedsheneedstoseethisthroughorelseshewillnotforgiveherself

They all had big dreams. Much bigger than any of them were, that's for sure. Most pilgrims counted themselves lucky to survive up to the inn they were currently in. Hornet was still no match for a god yet. Silver was nowhere near the end of Silksong, much less close to the Citadel at all.

So for today, as the evening rolls around, the Halfway Home was not a ragtag group of struggling devouts and a pair of tired wanderers. Such worries were for tomorrow, or whenever Creige decides to return to kick people out.

Today, it was a house of hope. A call to turn their eyes to whatever lay ahead, while looking back to where they’d come from. They’d come this far. Fears have been faced, challenges conquered, and terrain traversed.

All hearts are wild, and yearn for simpler times. The best one could do was to live a life worth living. And that included celebrating the moment. 

And a few cups of nectar.

Chapter Text

“Many thanks for slaying that foul beast,” said Fleamaster Mooshka as some of the stronger fleas started tying up the Moorwing’s corpse, ready to be hauled off. “Our merry caravan would’ve faced quite the roadblock otherwise!”

Hornet gave a small nod, watching the human coo and fawn over the multitude of fleas present. “It was an obstacle in our path too. We simply cut down what stood in our way and… we had help.”

In the distance, the silhouettes of Garmond and Zaza were fading away, the duo of knights scurrying off on their own path to the Citadel. 

Mooshka waved and called out his thanks. In her heart, Hornet wished them a smooth journey ahead. Valiant fighters, the both of them. She’d love to see them around sometime.

Meanwhile, Silver was having the time of her life, being surrounded by around ten fleas. 

“Aww, look at you!” She buried her face into the fuzz of one particularly fluffy flea, inhaling their unique wet-ish scent from the rains of Greymoor. The flea yipped and squirmed, but otherwise seemed to enjoy the attention. Silver squeezed harder and laughed. “You really are just puppies…”

She looked up from her cuddle session and beckoned the hunter over. “Hey Hornet! They’re a caravan, y’know. Won’t stay for long! Get your dose of cuteness while it lasts!”

Mooshka coughed into his hand to hide his laughter. He’d never seen miss Hornet so torn between keeping her aloofness and indulging herself. Despite her mask covering it, the dilemma was clearly written all over her face. 

To pet or not to pet?

“C’mon, relax a little, won’t you?” Silver said as she let go of the flea, yoinking another one to hug. “We just defeated the Moorwing in less than an hour!”

Well, Hornet thought. That was a commendable feat.

The Moorwing, terror of the skies of Greymoor, lay dead at their feet thanks to another one of Silver’s strategies. Lure it to a ledge and hit it through the planks. Neither of the girls understood the logic behind hitting something through a wall, but it did help them “cheese” the boss, as per Silver’s words.

Normally, Hornet would be adverse to such underhanded tactics. But seeing how it sent her back to the bench in the Halfway Home a little too often than she liked, Hornet readily took up Silver’s request to ease the battle. 

They’d also recruited the help of Garmond and Zaza along the way, While the pair were understandably baffled by the proposed battle plan, they were good sports and shot at the beast from below, speeding up the rather repetitive task.

Throughout the whole unconventional fight, Silver stayed on the ground, strumming her guitar and singing one of her songs, as usual. When asked about its title, Silver said it was called “I’m Still Standing”... whatever that was.

“Hornet, c’mon! You know you wanna.” Silver held out the flea to entice the hunter. It wasn’t helping that the flea had its tongue stuck out and in a big, goofy smile that could melt even the coldest of hearts.

“...”

“Last chance!” Silver said in a sing-songy voice, slowly pulling the flea away.

“...”

Hornet reluctantly (not really) stretched out a hand and gave the flea’s head a light pat, right between its wings on the top of its head.

“Awoo!” said the flea.

“...” went Hornet.

“Yippee!” said Silver in triumph. 

And Mooshka sighed in happiness, seeing Pharloom’s deadliest warrior soften just a little.

The flea fluttered away after a few moments, rejoining the small swarm hovering above the caravan. The Moorwing’s corpse was now another piece of baggage the caravan carried, courtesy of Grishkin and Varga. 

Silver snickered, seeing the split-second disappointment on Hornet’s face when the flying hairball flew away. 

She really did like fluffy things.

Bellhart was in bad shape.

The duo sped past the newly-opened corridor, eyes turned upwards to look at the strung-up citizens of the bell town. 

Frey's shop was closed and a blanket was thrown over the wishwall. Several bellhomes were turned on their sides, and a layer of dust had settled on the large Citadel statue behind the bench. All doors were either locked or broken clean through and the place gave off generally unfriendly vibes.

Silver winced, irrational fear gripping her throat where Silk once ensnared her. So this was how Bone Bottom must have looked like when… no. She shook the bad thoughts away. She had to keep her head in the game. Can’t panic now. There was nothing controlling her. Her actions are her own. No evil pale being puppeteering her around.

It was deathly silent. 

And Hornet, an experienced hunter, knew that utter silence was not a good thing.

“Haunted Bellhart,” Silver managed to whisper out, plopping down on the floor with a thud. “Can’t save it now, though. You need the wall-climbing ability first. It’s in Shellwood. I know a speedrun skip if you…”

The rest of her ramblings were tuned out as Hornet took a seat on the nearby bench. The hunter had noticed the slight tremble in her companion’s hands and the glazed-over look in her eyes, and was rightfully concerned. 

“We are safe, Silver. You aren’t at risk of being Haunted.” 

Hornet placed a gentle hand on Silver’s shoulder to try and comfort her. Clearly, the incident had affected her a little more than she’d let on. The nectar must’ve dulled her response somewhat, and the Moorwing fight had whittled away at the energy she was using to keep up the completely-normal facade. 

Silver swatted away Hornet’s hand with lightning-fast reflexes, shrinking back from the bench, eyes wide, breath ragged. Hornet hated how her friend sounded so scared when there was nothing to be afraid of. “Who’s that? I–” 

Her actions are her own. She looked down for a second to check; the rising feeling of dread that she was wrong was making it hard to breathe. Silver checked the back and front of her hands, finding them absent of Silken threads. She looked back up to find a familiar face: white mask, black eyes, red cloak.

Realising it was just Hornet, the girl let out a nervous chuckle, scratching her neck. “S-sorry I thought…”

But her eyes told a different story.

Hornet knew the signs all too well. 

Hallownest wasn’t always husks and bodies. In the earlier part of the takeover of the Infection, when Hornet had already been sent to the Hive to train, she’d chanced upon spare survivors, wandering far enough to Kingdom’s Edge to make camp and scrape by. She’d asked them about the state of the rest of the kingdom, being told of the horrors they’d seen. Those poor bugs carried themselves the same as Silver was currently doing. 

Shell-shocked, scared out of their minds, and not thinking straight.

Hornet heard of children turning against mothers, once-white eyes glowing a fearsome orange. She’d heard of her fellow spiders in Deepnest, an intelligent bunch, reduced to savages as the Radiance ravaged their dreams. She’d heard of friends unwilling to kill friends, clinging to the false hope that they’d snap out of the Infection, only to be felled by a monstrous husk.

Horrible events, all of them. 

Hornet had never had such first-hand experiences of the sort, and the stories themselves were enough to unnerve her deeply. How much more did it rattle Silver, who was staring at the work of someone that could have very well been her, if not for the hunter and Shakra’s intervention?

“Silver. You are safe,” Hornet reiterated, firmly holding onto her human friend’s shoulder. It helped clear the glaze over her eyes. “I’m here.”

Silver exhaled shakily, before getting a grip on herself and noodling. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, with sad silence being punctuated by the occasional crack of carapace, and the groan of an ensnared bug overhead.

“Anyways,” Silver said as she cleared her throat. It felt much drier than it should be. 

“The bellway station is there, by the way. In case you’re wondering where Eira is.” She pointed towards the signature three-arrowhead sign that denoted the area’s link in the overall bellway system. 

They headed over to the bellway station, with Hornet breaking a rosary necklace to pay the toll. Once unlocked, she cupped her hand over her mouth and called out for the Bellbeast.

To the side, while waiting for Eira to erupt out of the ground, Silver was trying to get the images of Bone Bottom and Bellhart out of her head. 

Guide the thread, mend the wounds, sing your song, fix the hewn…  

No, no, no… there’s no way she could reach her here…?

All of a sudden, her hands were too light to be made of flesh and bone, feeling as if suspended by those cursed strings again, connected to something far greater, far grander, impossibly huge, waiting for them to arrive like a patient spider on its web. Her throat was fired pottery; about to crack and crumble to dust with how dry it was. Her vision wasn’t cooperating, everything fading into white as how the Silk literally pulled wool over her eyes. Silver clawed at the invisible strings around her neck, and when she could feel none, it just made her panic even harder.

Stay a while, sing your song, return my children, where you belong…

Right now, Silver was really wishing the whole isekai thing was just a dream. Because then, she’d definitely be wide awake from the sheer terror she was feeling. She couldn’t feel the Silk that was threatening to take her again, so she thrashed harder, not realising her nails had drawn traces of blood all over her neck. 

Her brain wasn’t helping either. 

Being connected to Grand Mother Silk dearest for that short window of time was enough to burn her voice into the girl’s head. That weirdly soothing yet fear-inducing voice, promising salvation from this dreadful life if one simply joined her in her lovingly expanding web, dealing with traitors like Hornet and pledging eternal service to the kindly goddess. 

She killed Pilby.

He deserved it. He didn’t want to join his ensnared blessed brethren. He made his choice. She just did as Mother wanted.

She fought Hornet and Shakra.

One was the child of the traitors, and the other was a stubborn nonbeliever. If Pharloom was to be perfect, then no sin can stand before the Citadel. That included heretics and unbelief.

She wasn’t herself.

And that was perfectly fine. Mother accepts all for who they are, so long as they join the web and embrace her Silk. Silver was far from the perfect Haunted Blessed subject. But that’s okay! Mother will teach her to do her best, and that was enough.

She was Silver… right?

What’s going on?

Silver…?

Hm, never heard of her.

All that’s left to answer was Mother’s loyal, perfect follower. 

Several strands of Silk from Bellhart above had wormed their way down into the bellways, wrapping around Silver’s awaiting arms. She had her quarterstaff in hand and was ready to swing, aiming right for the traitorous one Hornet.

There we go, much better! And it was really that easy. The other Weaver above them was definitely helping her in some way, no doubt guiding the Silken threads themselves. It was great to be of service again. 

She raised her staff and…

“No! Silver, snap out of it!” 

Hornet tackled the human to the floor, cursing herself for getting carried away while petting Eira. Never again, she’d promised. And look at what just happened. Great job, Hornet. Outstanding work.

She looked up, noticing the Silk threads that snaked down from the opening to the bellway. She threw out a Silk spear, severing the connection immediately. The human flopped down like a dead fish, faceplanting into the hard floor.

“Silver? Silver!” 

The human groaned, holding her aching head in her hands as her second Haunting was stopped abruptly. “Wha… how… I thought I was… needed a lot of Silk inside me?” Silver asked, too out of it to string together a coherent sentence. “You never healed me that much?”

Hornet helped Silver over to hide behind Eira, just in case more Silk was sent after her. 

“This should not have happened. There is a strong will guiding these threads in this town. They sought you out, instead of connecting to any Silk you may have within. I fear you may remain in danger of being Haunted so long as the mastermind behind the town’s plight lives.”

Silver groaned again, propping herself up against the Bellbeast’s thick hide. “Widow? Seriously? She’s the one messing with me? Damn, I hate her more now. Great bossfight OST though.”

The funny quip came with a lot less oomph than it usually carried.

Hornet hummed, checking the human over for new wounds, heartened to find none. “Normally, one would need Silk within to be subject to the pale monarch’s influence. It seems as though having a strong enough external guidance for the Silk can Haunt you as well.”

“It’s like I’m being specifically targeted,” Silver chuckled weakly. “GMS really wants my guitar, huh?”

“It has shown its value to her cause. One would be a fool to not utilise it,” Hornet said matter-of-factly. “But be assured; I will not let the monarch use you a second time.”

Silver got to her feet and absentmindedly gave Eira a few headpats. 

This was a new development. Grand Mother Silk was actually seeing her as a threat, or useful tool. They had to tread carefully now, even as they crossed Shellwood before they were to kick Widow’s butt. One lapse in judgement, one too much Silk used, and everything will fall apart.

“Well then, what are we waiting for?” Silver said goodbye to the Bellbeast, trailing behind Hornet as the duo made their way out of Bellhart.

“Let’s go do some deforestation.”

Chapter Text

Silver was never one for flowers.

And Shellwood was chalk-full of them.

Hornet had mastered the art of pogoing off of the disappearing white flowers easily enough. Silver? Not so much. She did about as well as you could expect, kissing the floor more times than actually landing successful strikes with her staff. 

In her defense, it was pretty difficult to land a normal pogo in the first place. Hornet hadn’t changed out of her default Hunter crest at all, seeing how it was the only one with all tool slots opened up. The Reaper crest was clunky and it took some adjusting to. She preferred to keep experimentation with her crests outside of unfamiliar new areas.

“I think I hate flowers now,” said Silver as a white flower snapped clean off its stem, revealing itself to be a disguised phacia. She nearly clobbered it with her guitar.

Hornet cleaned it off with a few needle-strikes and picked up the discarded shell shards. “Embrace the challenge, child. You may never know when such learned skills may come in handy.”

“Easy for you to say.” 

The human huffed and opted to vault over the gaps between platforms. Her nose itched from the abundant pollen in the air, shattering any attempts to concentrate and actually land a good pogo. She wasn’t allergic, but the scent of several thousand flowers being shoved up one’s nostrils was far from pleasant. Maybe bugs like Hornet found the scents less distracting and wasn’t an issue for her.

Regardless, Shellwood was unpleasant to navigate. 

Pondcatchers tried to skewer them. Pond skippers slammed their faces into them. The flowers were evil. Un-pogo-able thorns littered the tightest of platforming areas.

Thankfully, Shellwood was worlds smaller than Greymoor, making for fast coverage. The bench was spotted instantly, providing the duo some much-needed rest.

As Hornet paid the toll, Silver recounted some of her antics to the hunter.

“Shellwood was once kept in check by a massive flower-creature thingy called Nyleth. She used to keep the woods safe for pilgrims and passersby, but she’s uh…” Silver scratched her head, wondering if she should spoil the Act 3 lore. 

“Not around anymore. But you’ll see her again. Somehow. And you rip her heart out.”

The hunter raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She’d seen weirder things, like Ghost disappearing into the Hollow Knight’s dream to kill a god. Meeting and beating up a long-dead goddess wouldn’t be too far-fetched in something a pale child like her could do. It was entirely within the realm of possibility. 

It didn't sound any less outrageous though.

Hornet scribbled down the last few rooms they’d been to into her map. Shakra had been easy to locate, and thanks to the rosary-farming she’d done in Greymoor, she could afford to buy out the cartographer’s stock, taking all available map-markers as well. 

Shakra had been relieved to hear that Silver recovered fully after the Bone Bottom incident, only to immediately frown upon hearing that the human was now a target for Pharloom’s god. From becoming wandering travellers to public enemy number 1, the duo sure did do a lot of things while Shakra was gone.

“My master’s traces lead me to many places. Never had I thought I would traverse so strange a forest,” she had said. “Everything is an enemy, be it by guise or by nature. ‘Ware your steps.”  

And ‘ware their steps they did. 

Silver sucked in a breath as they narrowly skirted around a hidden gahlia, whose extendable neck would shoot out of the bud and bludgeon anybody in front of it. She hated them. Flowers weren’t supposed to have faces! And here they were, Haunted, angry and thriving. 

“Creepy…” said Silver as she scrambled up a ledge. “They have fake masks, almost like a normal bug. I wonder if Mask Maker is responsible for this. The only other explanation would be that Nyleth just… allowed them to develop fake masks naturally? Are gahlia sentient?”

Hornet shrugged a little as she cleared the path with her needle. “Hallownest’s Mask Maker seemed impartial to his customers, providing faces for all who asked. I would not put it above Pharloom’s Mask Maker to do the same. These plant-bug beings seem to have a mind, albeit far too simple to halt my blade.”

They were almost at the ledge where Hornet could perform the Sister Splinter skip, if she was willing to yell at a flower several times. 

Silver had other things on her mind. 

“Say, Hornet…” She whacked away a wandering Shellwood gnat. “Do you ever remove your mask?”

The hunter stilled her blade and turned around, caught off-guard by the rather personal question. In bug etiquette, one does not simply quiz another on their mask-wearing habits. It was a touchy subject between the more sapient species, and the loss of a mask was essentially death. She gave Silver the benefit of the doubt for not knowing, and answered her question truthfully.

“When necessary. Food and drink are not vital to sustain me. But when I find myself wanting sustenance, I remove the lower part of my mask, near my mouth.”

Looking around, Hornet found themselves to be in a relatively calmer portion of Shellwood. They were actually at the base of the Weaver spire. Perhaps she could show the human, even if they weren’t at a bench. The duo huddled at a corner, away from the prying eyes of wood wasps and phacia flowers. 

Hornet sheathed her needle and slipped her hands behind a hairline crack on the lower portion of her mask, prying the two halves apart. She gently lowered the covering and faced Silver, showing her the full facial features of a Weaver-Wyrm hybrid.

It was all black, with the inner part of Hornet’s mouth being pinkish-red. Fangs decorated the sides of her mouth, and each exhale caused her to unconsciously flex her chelicerae. It looked like something straight out of outer space. 

Silver could never have been more fascinated.

“That wasn’t in the wiki…” she mumbled as Hornet pulled out a piece of jerky (probably some sort of aknid from Moss Grotto) and ate.

Pedipalps guided the jerky around her mouth like second arms, securing it in place as the fangs injected venom into the piece of meat. Part of the process, Silver guessed. She watched as the insides of the strip of jerky started to liquify, providing Hornet a sort of smoothie to drink from.

When all that remained was the dried husk of the jerky strip, Hornet donned her lower mask-plate once more, hiding away her interesting mouth anatomy. 

“Did that answer your question?”

Silver nodded hurriedly, gaining newfound respect and awe for Silksong’s widely-beloved protagonist. “Yeah. Very much did.”

After that minor distraction, the human looked around and spotted the lone phacia, hovering nearby the specific ledge. All they had to do was lure it close enough to the zig-zag platform formation, pogo off of it, and head upwards to the Weaver spire without defeating Sister Splinter.

Silver hopped up the ledge, waiting for Hornet to aggro the phacia. 

“Garama! Face me and fight!” Hornet yelled at the flying flower bud. It squeaked and cracked like dried wood, floating down ever so slightly. But it wasn’t close enough. 

Hornet jumped up and struck the phacia once, careful not to immediately kill it. “Garama! Come here!” When asked afterwards, she denied any ounce of frustration towards the phacia, citing the single needle strike as only a means to properly gain its attention.

On the ledge, Silver was doubled over with laughter, finding the whole scenario hilarious. 

Here was the acclaimed hunter of Hallownest, protector of the King’s Brand, Weaver in half part, requiring a full choral of envoys to subdue her. Beast-feller, wish-granter and kingdom-saver. And she was unable to get a flying flower to cooperate. 

“Human child,” Hornet called out from below, patience wearing thinner by the second. “It is not working.”

Silver dried her tears and unshouldered her guitar. “In that case, let me try!”

She strummed loudly, trading accuracy in notes played for volume. Now was the time for attention-grabbing music. Silver was sure that half of Shellwood could hear the song. Her fingers dug into her guitar, raspy voice alight with laughter as she sang a song she’d been itching to sing.

     [ Hoy! 

     Bata!

     Dinig mo ka ba? ]

Oh? This was new. 

Hornet cocked her head to the side, listening to this new language that the human sang with. Neither of them knew how they could mutually understand each other at all, given their wildly different species and origins. They’d theorised that a magical “lingua franca” was what they’d been speaking; a common tongue to both bug and human.

This… wasn’t something Hornet had heard before. 

The language was smoother, more melodious and very heavy on the consonant sounds. Silver herself sang as if it weren’t a language she was familiar in, but treasured all the same. Hornet mused that it sounded like her own self trying to use the language of the spiders in Deepnest, despite having been away for so long.

Like greeting an old friend one hadn’t met in ages. Forgotten familiarity.

     [ Ano ang sabi nila?

     Ito ang sabi nila:

     Kung kani-kanino, kung saan-saan

     Ako ang kamahalan

     Kamahalan… ] 

As Silver sang at the top of her lungs on the joys of being young and being allowed to be noisy, the phacia slowly fluttered ever closer to where they needed it to be. Normally, Silver would smirk with self-importance and gloat a little. Successfully out-doing Hornet in something was a nice feeling to get.

But at the moment, she was too busy singing.

     [ Bata, bata, ‘wag matakot

     Isigaw at sumayaw ika’y umikot

     Maghintay o mangalok o makalimot… ]

In her brief moment of song, Silver felt like thirteen years old all over again, discovering the wide world with eyes of wondrous amazement that hadn’t been dulled by adultish responsibilities and the like. She was singing in her original mother tongue; rusty from disuse but ever-present in her mind.

In those earlier times, she truly did feel like royalty, dancing to her own tune of life, ruler to a kingdom in her head she’d dreamed up with friends. Her made-up maps and gibberish fantasy languages all scattered across her desk. Her voice too loud and fingers too curious to stop their fidgeting. Her big ideas and dreams too vivid to be left to imagination, where she picked up brushes and paints to breathe them to life.

She was the majesty of that part of her life, and what joy it brought to remember it!

     [ Ako ang kamahalan

     Kamahalan

     Kamahalan

     Kamahalan!... ]

The phacia drew close enough to the ledge, glistening Silk-strands seen from its body as Silver kept playing her guitar. She wondered if there was anything going on in that simple mind, if the flower-bug could comprehend the concept of childish joy.

Silver almost forgot to tell Hornet to pogo. 

“Now!” she exclaimed, and the hunter struck the flower-bug with a downward slash, boosting herself up to the next ledge. 

The only problem left to deal with was the still-alive and very angry phacia, who was preparing to release its cloud of orange pollen. Both girls had learnt the hard way that the pollen cloud was surprisingly painful to touch. Adverse effects aside, Silver found the smell of its pollen quite fragrant, similar to that of ripe citrus. 

Ripe citrus that stung human flesh, that was.

Hornet quickly lowered a line of Silk, which Silver grabbed onto the second it reached her. Hornet yanked the human up with one fell swoop, pulling her up to the ledge and out of the way of the pollen explosion.

Silver exhaled in relief, glad she didn’t need to feel the sting of the pollen in her face again. 

“We first-try’d it. Nice.” Silver dusted her blue sweater off of various mosses and plant saps. She wondered if the Citadel had a dry-cleaner’s store somewhere. At the rate they were going, her blue sweater would end the game by being not very blue anymore.

Hornet nodded and looked ever so slightly annoyed that her “garama!” taunts didn’t work. “Impressive indeed.” She looked up, eyeing the mostly linear path. “I assume it’s just straight ahead from here onwards, yes?”

“If you call more diagonal pogos ‘straight’, then yes. It’s a straight path from here.” 

The duo sped past the tricky platforming section, with Silver narrowly missing a bed of thorns along the way. Her quarterstaff saved her, if a little at the last moment. Gahlias peppered the path, their round heads clobbering into Hornet and Silver with scary accuracy. 

Thankfully, blunt force injuries weren’t serious enough to force Silver to heal up with Hornet’s Silk, and the two made it to the Weaver spire without much issue.

The Shellwood spire was a lovely resting place for the Weaver within. Silver thought that the overgrowth really added to the uniqueness of the shrine, and was also perhaps a sort of “goodbye” from Nyleth herself. A wordless ending to Pharloom’s higher caste. 

Silver stepped back as Hornet pulled out her needle, wincing as she started to bind the Weaver’s power into herself. It was that cutscene in the Marrow all over again. It definitely looked painful.

While the hunter was doing that, a dim pale glow from Silver’s waistband drew her attention. She gasped. The trinket!

Clipped to her pants, the Weaver-trinket that Hornet had woven as a gift was throbbing madly. It looked like a strobe light, wheezing to life as its maker absorbed more power. Silver felt the palms of her hands prickle and itch weirdly. Was something… growing from them? 

A groan was heard. 

“Hornet!” the human rushed to her side. “You good? That sounded much worse than the Silk spear and—” 

Silver smacked her forehead in disbelief. 

“ — I can’t believe we forgot the threadstorm Silk skill in Greymoor! We have to go back and get it. Its damage had gotten nerfed recently, but it’s still respectably strong. Though in terms of coolness, the parry skill has my vote.” 

Hornet was still reeling from the visions and voices, processing the strange “grippiness" being gifted to her hands and feet. “One thing at a time, child,” she managed to mutter. “This new power seems to have changed my body somewhat…”

She stood up, inspecting her hands. 

Instead of smooth black chitin, there were now microscopic pads that felt faintly sticky. Hornet pressed a hand against a side of the spire, pleasantly surprised to find herself firmly stuck to the wall. 

Her spider heritage had blessed her similar skills once, but she’d always taken it for granted, preferring to navigate Hallownest with her currently-unavailable clawline skills. Her time with Vespa and the White Lady had also almost made her forget about her ability to climb walls, purely because neither mentor was a spider.

It was good to reconnect with her roots again.

Silver followed suit, sticking both hands to the wall and exhaling in awe. “No wayyyy… I got the cling grip ability too!” She rubbed her hands together, expecting to feel some sticky residue and yet was unable to. That was good news for her guitar at least. Sticky hands upon varnished wood was a musician's horror. 

“We can wall-climb now!”

By throwing herself at a different wall at full speed, Silver stuck to the sheer face like Spiderman, supporting her entire body weight with her fingers and toes only. Somehow, even her feet were able to stick to the wall, despite being covered by her black shoes.

Intrigued, Silver gently removed her Weaver-trinket from her waistband. How much of the shared power was being channelled through the small thing? Perhaps if she just removed it for a split second…

Hornet looked up just in time to realise. “Silver, don’t—!”

“Don’t wha… ahhhhh!” 

Her grip on the vertical wall loosened immediately. The once-grippy wall turned into the slickest surface ever, making Silver slide down to the three-story drop below. And Hornet was too far away to catch her. 

With reflexes boosted by the spike in adrenaline, Silver managed to reattach the trinket to her waistband, restoring her wall-climb ability the second she did so. Her hands clung to the suddenly-climbable surface like a lifeline.

(Which it was.)

“Ahaha… ha…” Silver refused to look Hornet in the eye, embarrassment burning her cheeks red. 

Hornet sighed and clambered up the wall after the human, biting back the urge to say “I told you so”. 

Chapter Text

“You ready?”

Silver looked at Hornet, who was cleaning her needle with the mechanical precision of someone doing it just for the bit. The human had her hands wrapped tightly around her guitar; if the instrument had been someone’s neck, they would’ve turned blue from the lack of oxygen long ago. 

Silver was scared.

But she had to keep her head in the game, or risk losing it to Widow’s vicious attacks.

Hornet chuckled softly, amazed at her companion’s tendencies to look out for others in her stead. “Yes, I’m quite prepared. I think it is you who should be answering that question,” Hornet replied casually. 

“From your brief description, the arena space above our heads is too small to guarantee your complete safety. You will need to engage in combat, somewhat, for this fight.”

Silver concentrated on the rhythmic swish-swishing of Hornet’s cleaning cloth against her blade. Her jittery fingers were going a mile a minute, tapping up a storm as the grip on her guitar’s neck tightened. It could’ve been pure paranoia, but the Silk threads all around them in Bellhart seemed to inch ever closer to Silver.

Guide the thread, mend the wounds…

No, no, no yes no no no. 

Silver shook her head violently, almost nauseously so. She’d rather get dizzy than go back to her web.

The returning Thoughts made it abundantly clear that Silver had to go with Hornet. 

She couldn’t stay in Bellhart; the Silk would find her and ensnare her whole, like the poor bugs hanging right above them. She couldn’t hide anywhere else; the pale monarch no doubt had eyes and ears everywhere, through the Haunted bugs littering the lands. Grand Mother Silk would know Silver’s exact whereabouts in a heartbeat, and send those dreaded white strings after her again.

She couldn’t not fight Widow.

Silver managed a weak laugh. “Yeah… no biggie. Just gotta fight the insane, tortured, probably delusional Weaver with hands that can become blades and do double damage. Oh, did I mention the bells she throws at you bounce around the floor? And also do two masks? And can come in diagonally?”

“Yes, you have.” Hornet frowned slightly, not looking forward to feeling even more bells dent her carapace. It was the Bellbeast encounter all over again. “You’ve mentioned that. On multiple occasions.”

Silver bit the nail of her index finger nervously. It was a bad habit. She’d once contemplated getting nail polish to curb her finger-biting, before deciding against it. 

The pair had stopped to rest at Haunted Bellhart for a bit after backtracking to Greymoor for the threadstorm Silk skill. It was a nightmare and a half trying to traverse the crawbug-infested lands, especially thanks to those fat crawbugs who shot three pin-projecticles and kept hovering just out of reach, only to slam themselves into their faces without warning. Not even a telegraph for its sudden descent! 

Silver hated it, and Hornet even moreso.

While unable to utilise Silk skills, the human did find it incredibly fun seeing Hornet marvel at the return of her old abilities. It must’ve felt like rummaging through an attic and rediscovering decades-old memorabilia. The Hollow Knight/Silksong intermission timeline was about as clear as mud, so many liked to assume that many years had already passed since the events of the first game.

Silver hadn’t had the chance to ask the hunter herself. She filed that tidbit away for later, once Bellhart was saved.

Silver looked over Hornet’s shoulder, noticing the tools the hunter seemed to be favouring. 

“Sting shards? Good choice. Pretty versatile.” The human eyed the nasty-looking contraption that Hornet was handling with ease. “What’s going into your blue slot?”

Hornet blinked in minor confusion, wondering how Silver could have possibly known about tool compatibility with her different crests. Then she realised. Silver knew everything about anything in Pharloom. Crest slots were child’s play.

Did Silver have a crest…?

The hunter picked up the fractured mask, slipping it around her waist. “I shall take the Mottled Skarr’s goods into battle. It had never failed me before, and costs nothing to break. Perhaps another visit to his hideout is in order. To give a moment’s thanks.”

Silver chuckled, agreeing wholeheartedly. She would’ve once asked to take the fractured mask, just as a precaution for death. But after confirming that dying with too little Silk to be Haunted resulted in a regular respawn, Silver decided to let Hornet keep the mask. It didn’t stop injuries, which made it rather useless to the human.

Hornet was going to be the one doing all the heavy-lifting anyways.

Silver was also chuckling to hide the discomfort at Hornet’s idea to revisit the Mottled Skarr. He was dead as a doornail by now, since their last meeting had Hornet buy out his stock. Poor guy. Such a helpful skarr too.

Staff in hand, guitar on her back, and a grim slash of a smile on her face, Silver followed Hornet out of Bellhart and to the bellveins above, ready to face Widow.

Okay, scratch that.

They weren’t ready to face Widow.

The onset of panic was immediate, messy and very uncomfortable. It was like a brick being slammed into Silver’s chest, knocking the wind out of her lungs and leaving her wheezing. Hornet was no better, rooted to the floor with an unconvincing facade of confidence, not expecting a maskless Weaver at all.

The bellshrine was smothered in Silk, almost to the point of unrecognition. Widow sat cross-legged, humming in a horribly hoarse voice as she tenderly strummed strands of Silk, singing to some long-forgotten Weaver song. Pins stuck out of her back like porcupine spikes. 

Her head was bare. 

And that was wrong on so many levels. 

To put it in a more relatable perspective, it was like seeing a fully functioning human being with a skinless face; muscles and veins all laid bare to see when they definitely shouldn’t be. That was what Hornet felt like as she stared at the lump of fuzz that constituted Widow’s head.

Widow’s every movement and breath seemed to hurt, ever so slightly. But she hid it just as well as Hornet hid her sadness. Silver would’ve joked that it was a Weaver thing to hide emotions, if her lungs would kindly stop feeling like they were about to explode.

Hornet took the liberty of initiating the nice little tea-time chat that would definitely devolve into brutal, bloody murder.

The hunter held her needle in her hand, narrowed eyes watching for any sudden moves on Widow’s part. The small voice in her head begged for a peaceful way out, fully knowing what it felt like being on the unfriendly side of a Weaver’s blades. There had to be a way to reason this out…

But even if there wasn’t, Hornet was ready.

“You.”

Simple, short and to-the-point. Hornet prided herself with her succinct greeting.

To the side, Silver was drowning on dry land, the walls of the arena feeling ten times smaller than they actually were and all the Silk-dregs on the ground appearing to wriggle to life. Widow’s hands on her makeshift needolin wasn’t helping either, worming her odd Weaversong straight into Silver’s brain. 

A taste of my own medicine, Silver thought glumly, trying to keep her mind clear for the inevitable fight. 

If Hornet’s brevity was insulting, Widow didn’t seem to care at all. Cross-legged she remained, plucking her Silk so patiently. 

Silver felt a wave of jealousy pass over like a draft from an open window. Mother must be so happy to have a daughter like her… wait, no. That’s a Bad Thought. Keep that out. She’s not your Mother.

Silver winced as Widow spoke.

“Oh! Ohhhhh! They shall join… Union upon your thread… A gift, for your waking,” the maskless Weaver said. Silver fought the urge to complete her sentence. Damn you, Grand Mother Silk.

“A world strung to serve…”

“A world strung to serve,” repeated the human under her breath, blinking back the cloudy vision of being Haunted. She swore she could hear Widow laughing. She didn't know if the urge to repeat Widow's words was entirely from herself at all.

All she knew at the moment was that being in the same room as Widow was not a very pleasant experience. 1 star review. Not recommended.

It took every ounce of willpower to keep the Bad Thoughts at bay. One slip of the ol’ mental defences and, well, Hornet would be stuck fighting two bossfights at once. The Silk within the room was positively thrumming with anticipation, ready to wrap themselves all around the human girl and— and…

Silver shuddered as real pain and aching memories wracked her body. Both the Silk from Widow’s arena and in her mind’s eye were hungry; hungry for her guitar and voice. Mother would be so disappointed if she didn’t cooperate… NO! No. Never again. 

Shakra didn’t risk her hide just for Silver to fall to the Haunting a third time. The human persisted, summoning the strength to look Widow right in her six eyes as a pathetic attempt to stand her ground. Widow’s own willpower was strong, but Silver had to hold out. 

Just a little longer.

Hornet pressed on, stepping ever so slightly closer, needle pointed straight at the bellshrine. “Creature, your claws guide those cursed threads, but you are not their source.”

The “creature” epithet left a bitter taste in Hornet’s mouth. She wondered why she’d said that at all. It raised the uncomfortable questions of: exactly how much of a bug was their mask? And if Hornet hadn’t freed herself from the rune cage so long ago, was this the fate she was going to suffer?

Maskless, insane and reduced to a savage thing?

The hunter caught a glimpse of the hyperventilating Silver beside her and shook the darker thoughts away. Between the two of them, one needed to keep a cool head. And by Wyrm, if her companion was going to be busy dealing with trauma, the least Hornet could do was keep them both alive.

“What role do you play in this vile affliction?” Hornet hadn’t realised she’d reused the exact same sentence when she’d confronted Haunted Silver back in Bone Bottom. 

Widow continued her rasp of a reply. Silver thought that if the Weaver had a visible mouth, she would no doubt be grinning ear to ear while speaking. As the Weaver spoke, her hands never tired on her crude needolin, serenading the bellshrine with her eerie tunes.

“Ohhhhh! She is here!” said Widow, turning to Hornet. “Precious child of Wyrm and Weaver! Spawn of those who dared to flee. She has found her way home… at last.” 

Widow then hacked and coughed a little. Silver guessed that the pins were stuck clean through, probably through the Weaver equivalent of lungs. Silver readied her staff, anticipating Widow’s dialogue to end soon. The sooner they un-Haunt Bellhart, the faster they could—

“And the other one is here too!”

Hornet froze. Silver sucked in a breath. New dialogue. Not according to plan. What’s going on?

Widow giggled. She sounded like a maniac. Likely because she was, in fact, a maniac. "Yours is a gift beyond measure… she brings fine shell and Silk… you bring your voice and music… For you, mother… let me claim them all for you!”

And then Widow disappeared in a flash of black and Silk.

“...”

“...”

“That was kind of anticlima— aaahh!”

Silver stumbled back, completely forgetting that Widow’s fight started with a jumpscare. The Weaver hissed so loudly that both girls had to cover their ears in pain.

“Brace yourself,” said Hornet, as bells were flung in their direction. “This won’t be easy.”

And so, they fought.

Chapter Text

Note to self: bells hurt, Silver thought silently as the clatter of anything and everything attached to Widow’s Silk came crashing down. 

Bells of all sizes and shapes were yanked out the ceiling and came tumbling down like large and highly musical boulders. Silver spared a moment’s respite to wonder exactly how many bells did the forebugs of the Deep Docks had crafted to fill the bellveins, bellway and Widow’s personal stash. All the metal in Pharloom must’ve been enough to coat the world thrice over if molten down. 

Sadly, the wiki lacked any answers and she had been patiently waiting for mossbag to upload his Silksong lore video prior to getting isekai’d. Guess she’ll have to answer those questions herself.

Hornet whacked them away with her needle, but suffered several hits to her shell. Silver sidestepped them, poking some away with her quarterstaff. She looked over and noticed Hornet’s hunched-over, limping stance, dread bubbling in her gut.

“No, no, no… C’mon, heal up!” she whispered. Widow reappeared behind the human, hands in a blur of sharpened edges and her eyes squinted evilly, like a shark’s. The Weaver cackled upon seeing Hornet so weak. A clean and easy kill, all without damaging the body too much.

Thank Mother for all the Silk she so generously provided, Silver could already hear Widow thinking. Because that’s exactly what she’d have thought too if she was… no. Not now. Silver pulled herself out of that particular spiral and let out a yell, both in frustration and intimidation, as she blocked Widow’s strikes with her quarterstaff. 

Remember who the real enemy was, Silver.

A-one, a-two! The satisfying clicks of perfect parries filled the bellshrine and Widow gnashed her teeth in annoyance, before slipping into a crack in the wall. 

That damned human! Already had gotten a taste of the divine and she still refuses to submit! Perhaps if Widow continued her barrage, whittling away at Silver's resolve, then she’d earn herself an ally. It was certainly worth a shot.

From within the deep nooks and crannies, Widow laughed.

The human’s heart rate decelerated to a healthier level once she made sure Hornet had safely performed a bind. “Thank you,” said Hornet simply, before turning around to stab Widow between her many eyes as the Weaver attempted to catch the duo off-guard. “I owe you my life.”

“Heh, who doesn’t?” Silver managed a smirk and promptly wiped away the beads of sweat that had formed on her brow mid-battle. “I’ll be sure to collect my payment when — watch out!”

Human hands pushed Hornet to the wall and Silver herself scrambled to get a good foothold. The pair managed to cling onto the leftmost wall of the arena just as Widow reappeared from nowhere, scuttling along the floor and unearthing a wave of bells and sharpened metal bits. From the wall, the hunter threw out several sting shards, some of which managed to lodge themselves between Widow’s chitin.

The Weaver hissed and spluttered, diving into another crack before either of the girls were able to land a hit.

They floated down to the floor safely with Hornet’s drifter’s cloak and Silver’s orange bandana. Widow’s momentary retreat offered them a brief period to regroup and re-strategise.

Silver winced at her aching arms, assuring Hornet that it was nothing. “We gotta focus on getting her without you dying. You’re using the Silk spear skill, right?”

“I have yet to swap it out, yes.”

“Good. Keep your distance and pogo her head when you can. I’ll uh… sing something. And make sure you don’t touch her! Contact damage is pretty punishing.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Hornet, parrying Widow’s sudden entrance and whacking away several bells that the Weaver had hurled at them. “I’ll cover you.”

Silver slipped out from behind Hornet, right hand sheathing her quarterstaff, left hand pulling her guitar across her chest, fingers already curled into the shape of the chord. She needed a song, and quick! There was only so much Hornet could block before she got hit too many times and…

Ka-SHINNG!!

She watched in horror as the hunter’s binding animation was rudely interrupted a falling bell. It knocked the wind straight out of her, stealing away one bind’s worth of Silk. The white dregs of failure flitted down to the floor in silent apology.

“Ahaha… for you, Mother, my claws shall claim them both!” Widow cried out, whatever remained of her face showing sickening pleasure at Hornet’s limping form. 

The Weaver tugged hard on a line of Silk and sent more bells tumbling down from the ceiling. The hunter, too out of it to react quickly, felt the force of several massive moss chargers slam into her entire being. It was a stray bell, one she’d let out of her sight.

And sadly, one bell was all it took.

“Argh!”

Silver heard the sharp crack of shell before her disbelieving ears even registered Hornet’s scream. Her confident smile dropped like a rock, hands flying off the fretboard and towards her mouth that was open in pure shock.

No.

They’d been doing so well and…

“Mother, I claim the Wyrm-child! For you… all for you!”

Silver watched helplessly as Hornet dissipated into black particles and Silk dregs, before a blinding flash of light made her look away. All that was left in the hunter’s place was her death cocoon. A cylindrical white thing that had been Silver’s worst nightmare every time they’d stepped into a gauntlet or bossfight room.

Hornet was dead.

Silver was well and truly alone.

And Widow was going to kill her.

“Stop. Moving!”

Bells upon bells upon blades and more things were thrown in her direction. Silver parried some hits, withstood minor blows and did her best to grimace through the growing pain throughout her body. 

Silver locked eyes with Widow in-between her telegraphs. “Hm. How about… no.”

She estimated she had around a minute before Hornet came speeding back from above, fury in her eyes and needle blazing with retribution.

Sixty little seconds. Two YouTube shorts. One unskippable ad. One-third of the time it took to cook a cup of her favourite instant noodles. One-sixtieth of an hour.

Surely surviving for that long couldn’t be too difficult, right?

Well, unfortunately, the stiffness in her shoulders and the look of wide-eyed terror on her face said otherwise. Silver was running on adrenaline and fighting with the technique of spit and prayers.

As any good fighter worth their blade would know, scared people make more mistakes. And the best part?

Silver was a really bad fighter.

Blunt staff and sharpened forearms clashed as bells sung in discordant harmony all around the two beings. One bug, one human, and yet they’d both experienced similar things. The same Silk that had been taken from Widow had strung Silver up by the neck mere hours before.

Ironic, wasn’t it? Taking Silk from its rightful owner and stuffing it into someone who didn’t ask for any. If Silver wasn’t in a life-or-death scenario, she’d have laughed it off.

The human grunted after a particularly heavy bell dropped itself on her foot, smashing her toe. She did her best to keep the look of indifference, terrified to look weaker than she really was. She hated that look in the mirror, and vowed to never wear such a face when she could help it. 

Fighting while scared always reminded her of Bone Bottom and… oh stars her hands were slick with something, please don’t let it be… she can’t, she didn’t! It wasn’t her, she swears! 

She opened her palm and saw hemolymph. Bug blood. 

On the floor was a corpse. A small, triangular head, a body wrapped in a dull red shawl. Two blank, black eyes looked straight ahead, no light left in them. Silk was everywhere. Pouring out from the body. Entangling her hands and wrists. Falling from above them. Littering the floor like a soft carpet. 

Pilby.

She opened her mouth to scream. She’d have preferred it if no sound came out.

Unfortunately for Silver Mother Silk’s most loyal, sweetest child, out came a song instead, and her hands glided across her guitar strings, driven with higher purpose.

Now wasn’t that more like it?

Yes, yes! Embrace it, enjoy it, indulge in it! She could practically feel the excitement through the vibrations within the Silk. 

Own it! Take it! Use it! Use what the traitorous child had so foolishly given you to bind all tO MY WILL AND SERVE ME FOREVER AND YOU’LL BE SUCH A PERFECT CHILD AND I WILL LO—

Mother Silk’s most loyal follower opened her eyes and saw white.

The best colour to ever exist.

Widow had stopped her bell-barrages, inching forward apprehensively. It could be a trick, for all she knew. One moment the weird blue bug was kicking and whipping her ouch-stick wildly, the next moment she was stock still and silent.

It wasn’t long before Widow broke out into a lopsided smile, marvelling at Mother’s genius plan. It worked! The strange blue bug she’d wanted for so long was finally hers!

And yet, something in Widow’s mind struggled to surface. An old memory, perhaps? 

Regardless, the pain of the pins in her back and the lack of any Silk to heal made it impossible to grasp onto the fading memory. It slipped by the Weaver like fog, never to be remembered.

The stress and heat of battle had proved too much for the girl, letting all the patient Silk seek her out and trap her once more. Her guard lowered without the pesky Wyrm-child, it’d only been a battle of wills to see who would win.

The Silk, or Silver.

Judging by Silver’s current disposition, one can safely assume she lost. Pretty badly at that too.

Perhaps a description would aid in visualisation.

Where the bellshrine was was a massive clump of Silk, ensnaring Bellhart below and silencing the large bell itself. Widow had successfully manoeuvred Silver into the web of Silk itself, trapping the poor girl in a mound of Silk connected straight to its source. 

“Ohh! Ohhhhh! She is ours… yours! The song-child!” Widow crooned to the skies. She ran a loving hand across a few Silk-strands, plucking them and letting their notes ring melodiously. “To unite all… under your web… Finally!”

A soft thud and even exhale snapped Widow out of her fanatic haze.

“I may want to reconsider that,” said Hornet, brandishing her needle. She held a sting shard in her offhand menacingly. “I have failed her once. And I will not do so again. Not on my watch.”

Chucking the sting shard straight at Widow’s face, Hornet utilised the distraction to break her death cocoon clean open, re-pocketing all lost rosaries and refilling her Silk spool.

“Arrghhhhhh! It stings! It burns! Witchcraft!”

Hornet suppressed a smirk under her mask. The human had been right once more in pestering her to talk to the creepy tree-bug-creature in Shellwood to obtain the pollip pouch. A vicious venom it did secrete, and one that synergised well with multi-hit tools like her trusty sting shards. 

Still, that Greyroot fellow gave her a very, very bad feeling...

Hornet threw out a Silk spear, cutting through Silver’s silken prison with ease. The girl flopped to the floor like a dead fish, gasping for breath and coughing out Silk-dregs.

“Silver? Silver!” The hunter shook her by the shoulders, throwing another sting shard at Widow to buy more time. Please don’t be full Haunted, please don’t be…

“Wha-huh? I’m up, I’m up!”

Silver scrambled to her feet and shouldered her guitar once more, shaking the spinning world out of her eyes and willing her brain to cooperate. No time to dwell on fear. Hornet was here, meaning she could do what she did best.

Silver opened her mouth and…

… promptly shut it again.

For the first time since being gifted the guitar, Silver was at a loss at what to sing.

Widow yelled in frustration before scuttling across the floor again, forcing both girls to cling to the walls like residual blu-tack. Hornet bounced off the Weaver’s head with a solid pogo, muttering just loud enough for Silver to hear. “Any day now…”

She could sing something to throw off Widow’s concentration, something like… “Takedown” from that one popular Netflix original show about three girls and a lot of demons? No, no, too on-the-nose. Wouldn’t carry as much oomph. 

Then, uh… “Survive” from Epic the Musical? It fit the current situation at hand, but something was holding back her hands from strumming to the song.

Down below, on the floor, Hornet was avoiding bells left, right and centre, dashing in and out of the bell-rains and pogoing the Weaver’s head like there was no tomorrow. Silver commended her prowess, able to avoid so many bouncing objects at once. Good thing her corner on the wall was free of—

“Ah!”

A line of Silk that Widow had pulled on sent a bell straight for Silver’s little nook, sending her falling to the floor, with a heavy bell on top ready to squash her flat.

“Look out!” Hornet smacked the bell away and dragged Silver to her feet. “Are you going to sing, or has the Weaver scared all the wits out of you already?”

“I’m thinking!” Silver protested in a huff. “I just… none of the cool songs I know seem to fit! I wanna sing one that will invigorate you, not make you more depressed!”

“Well then, have you tried singing something to discourage Widow instead?”

“Oh.” Silver faltered for a moment, seeing her guitar in a new perspective. “Good idea.”

Digging deep into her musical repertoire and recalling her unpleasant memories while strung up in Silk, Silver found exactly the song she was looking for. And so she pressed her fingers hard on the strings, huddled away at a relatively safe corner, and opened her mouth to sing.

     [ Tell me once again

     I could’ve been anyone

     Anyone else

     Before you made the choice for me… ]

Widow tripped over her own four feet before snarling. “What is this… this noise? What are you…”

     [ My feet knew the path

     We walked in the dark

     In the dark

     I never gave a single thought where it might lead… ]

Even Hornet stumbled, albeit less so. Her needle swung less harshly as the realisation of Silver’s intent dawned upon her. 

The song wasn’t from either of their perspectives at all.

It was Silver empathising with Widow.

The human was giving her a voice she’d long since forgotten. Taking her back to a time when there were no pins lodged in her back, when her face was still protected by a mask, and when times were simpler and quieter.

To a time before Grand Mother Silk.

     [ All those empty rooms

     We could’ve been anywhere

     Anywhere else

     Instead, I made a bed with apathy… ]

Before the Weavers. Before the pain. A moment in time when there was love.

     [ My heart knew the weight 

     Ten years worth of

     Dust and neglect

     We made our peace with weariness and let it be…. ]

When Widow still had her Silk. When the Weavers thought their Mother cared for them. Before the truth started bleeding through the pretty lies.

Oh, how furious was Mother! How mighty the scorn of a pale being!

     [ The moon will sing a song for me

     I loved you like the sun

     Bore the shadows that you made

     With no light of my own… ]

Widow stumbled and trembled, holding her forelimbs to her face, feeling for something that wasn’t there. The pins in her back burned and hurt like fresh wounds, despite the pain having dulled a long time ago. Unwanted hidden memories surfaced violently, ripping past the opaque Silk that clouded her thoughts.

She did love Mother like the sun. All Weavers did, once. They wanted to love their creator dearly, but couldn’t once the reason for their creation came to light.

Nothing but obedient servants was what she wanted. And the Weavers would have none of it.

     [ I shine only with the light you gave me... ]

Hornet managed a quiet murmur as Widow screeched and fell to the floor, almost drowning out Silver’s singing with her awful voice. She was still a Weaver in half-part, and the song still felt like tearing her heart out. Just to a lesser degree than whatever agony Widow was going through.

     [ I shine only with the light you gave me… ]

“She is singing us the truth,” said the hunter, whose needle hung unused in her hands. “Of how it all came to be…”

The Weavers were a proud race, doing their best to thrive away from Pharloom. Away from the silent god they’d sung to sleep. In wherever they’d chosen to hide, all they could do was be echoes of the grandeur that Grand Mother Silk commanded.

How sad.

Knowing all your life was to be nothing but some higher being’s plaything, and everything you did was a reflection of something you hated.

Silver slowed down and started strumming an outro, feeling her own eyes get a little watery. Music was a strange, strange magic. Sometimes, it even affected the singer.

Widow was practically bawling, shrivelled up into a ball and screaming at nobody in particular. 

“Why… Mother, you… why? You lied… Liar! Why would you…”

Hornet regained some composure, no longer as uneasy on her feet as before. Her needle suddenly felt like lead once she realised what she had to do next. It didn’t make sense in the slightest. Why feel remorse now, out of all times? Widow just killed her brutally, and Haunted Silver two times! 

If anything, why wasn’t Hornet charging in and stabbing the Weaver to death?

“Hornet?” Silver put a hand on the hunter’s cloaked shoulder, jolting her out of whatever memory she was seeing. The human looked adorable when concerned. “You good? Did the song affect you too?”

Hornet shook her head and thanked Wyrm that her mask hid her eyes.

“I’m alright, child. It merely gave me… food for thought. I will finish the job now, if you don’t mind.” 

Silver stepped back and watched as Hornet drove her needle into Widow’s chest, ignoring the screams of anguish, and binding the Weaver’s power to herself. Silk whipped about in the air dramatically, and then…

Widow stilled.

Forever.

As Hornet also fell to the floor, unconscious, Silver busied herself by cleaning up the bellshrine from the Silk. While many thoughts were swirling around in her head, one in particular stood out.

Act 2, here we come.

Chapter Text

“So just put your fingers here and press down…” Silver demonstrated what she meant by doing the same on her guitar, only with much more finesse.

She smirked and strummed her guitar as Hornet fumbled about with her needolin.

     [ So you’re already halfway there… ]

She’d remembered the song from an old animation on YouTube once, and thought it to be rather appropriate for Hornet at the moment. Interesting title. "Work is My Life", was it?

     [ Just work on your strumming

     Lean into the thrumming

     Of the music pervading the air… ]

Hornet did as instructed and kept her needolin close to her body, one hand plucking the Silk, and her other hand resting on the neck of her weapon, applying pressure to change the pitch of the notes played. She struggled for a bit, not used to focusing on the actions of both hands so intently before, until the faintest hints of a melody were exhaled.

     [ See look 

     You’re improving!

     You’re great!

     You’re improving! ]

“I have a patient teacher,” Hornet replied, sheathing her needle as her Silk reserves had almost run out. They could practice sometime else. Right now, they had some very important errands to tend to.

Namely, shopping. 

(It was Silver’s suggestion.)

Waving goodbye to Pavo and the Bellharters, the duo hopped down into the bellways and made their way back to Bone Bottom. Thanks to an extra set of hands to help, Hornet’s stash of rosaries had grown since they’d last met a merchant. Silver’s knowledge of farming spots also made things much easier, eventually allowing Hornet to collect enough money to buy out Pebb’s stock.

“O-oh! You return! Here to buy this old bug’s trinkets, are we?” Pebb sat up straighter at the pair’s approach, hearing the faint clinking of beads in their pockets. “Sharing rosaries brings good luck to both parties, as they say.”

Silver chuckled and watched as Hornet bought out everything she hadn’t purchased before. The simple key, a chunk of craftmetal and one-fourth of a mask; a mask shard. “One more craftmetal means one more red tool. You should save it for the Twelfth Architect. She’d got some amazing stuff. Game-breaking stuff.”

“If you say so,” Hornet said as she slipped the craftmetal into her cloak’s pockets. 

Pebb nodded towards the mask shard as Hornet picked it up, pocketing it alongside the metal ore. “Strange thing, isn’t it? Just a piece of something greater, but finely crafted. Who knows what it’s used for.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Silver murmured to the side, watching Hornet levitate in the air for a moment as she received her third mask shard so far. One more away from six masks of health. The next most accessible one would be in…

Oh, right. Weavenest Atla. Their actual destination.

“Farewell, merchant. Heed the paved roads and beware the Silk,” Hornet called out to Pebb as the pair left for the Moss Grotto. She hoped that Silver’s earlier predictions wouldn’t come true, that Pebb would get lost to the Haunting. 

Surely, the script has deviated from the original enough by now?

Silver watched as the lone merchant of Bone Bottom shouldered her pack and headed for the Marrow beyond, sighing softly. 

Please be safe…

A locked door.

It didn’t budge a bit under Hornet’s needle attacks. It didn’t respond to touch. And it certainly didn’t have a lock for Silver to pick.

(Not that she was any good at lockpicking.)

“Alrighty.” Silver clasped her hands together and gently shoved Hornet in front of the six-eyed door. “Time to girlboss our way in. And a-one… and a-two… and a-one, two, three—”

Hornet cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, what?” Once again, the human’s odd vocabulary evaded her understanding. “What does ‘girlboss’ mean?”

Silver shrugged and gestured to Hornet’s needle. “I’ll explain later. If you wanna get that sweet, sweet fourth mask shard and a cool crest upgrade, you need your needolin to open this door.”

Playing music to unlock a door made perfect sense to the hunter, who had seen her fair share of impossible things come true before. “Of course.”

Hornet’s music was shaky and uncertain; definitely bad enough to warrant a yelling by an orchestra’s conductor. But to the door of Weavenest Atla, it was good enough. It cracked open after a moment, both halves falling away into the floor and opening up into a dark passageway.

“This is so much scarier in real life,” said Silver as she trailed after Hornet into the Weavenest. She jumped a little at the sudden closing of the door behind her, not liking the creepy vibes of the corridor one bit. 

The pathetic beam of light offered by the servitor ignim overhead didn’t help at all, instead shining directly into Silver’s eyes.

Navigation was terrible, seeing how Hornet lacked the map to the Weavenest and Silver was blind as a bat in the darkness. Thankfully, the large elevator-thing in the next room emitted a strong enough glow to allow Silver to point out the map for the area, hidden further into the linear corridor.

“So this place is Weaver-made.” Hornet watched as the runes burned themselves into her map parchment. “That would explain the abundance of unused Silk.”

Silver let out a shudder at the notion, realising that it was more than just the darkness that was putting her on edge. Even the mere presence of Silk was enough to make her uneasy. 

Great. Just great.

How on earth would she fare in the Citadel, then? Would she just keel over and die as soon as they entered the Grand Gate? 

Silver furrowed her brow and led the way in angry silence, not liking how she’d already developed such a vulnerable response to something usually harmless. Eva better have a crest upgrade for her too, or else she was going to start throwing hands. 

They circled back to the massive elevator along the corridor. 

Scale-wise, it was an impressive build. For a place meant to provide shelter, the Weavers sure did pull out all the stops in terms of innovation. Silver’s head hurt trying to understand the mechanics of the thing. It was basically straight out of a sci-fi novel, and that was saying something. 

“Do we just—” The hunter took a step forward.

“Hornet, wait!”

Too late. 

Hornet disappeared in a beam of light and a sudden SWSHHHH. Silver gawked at the speed of which the elevator reacted, suddenly having second thoughts about using it.

What if it worked differently on humans? What if she simply exploded upon contact?

Unfortunately, left with no other way to access the lower levels, Silver steeled herself, and gingerly placed a foot on the pressure plate in the centre of the lift.

“Whaaaa—!"

The world dissolved into technicolour bubbles and then into a black-and-white filter, before the static cleared. The human then opened her eyes to solid ground, falling to her knees and taking several deep breaths to steady herself.

She found an equally-dazed Hornet to her side, also on one knee and gasping for breath. 

“Sometimes, I, too, find myself surprised by my kin,” Hornet managed between wheezes, standing up and offering Silver a hand. “Which made Deepnest’s fall into the Infection all the more tragic. All that technology… lost alongside their minds.”

“Tell me about it,” Silver muttered as she took Hornet’s hand and stood up too. “You guys have blueprints for a gun on top of Mount Fay. And a certain someone can rig your Weaver-runes into a screen full of mini-explosion discs. Pretty insane tech, if you ask me. If we gave Pharloom a bit more time to advance, maybe you’d even have invented the Internet.”

“The… Internet?”

Silver cracked a small smile as they made their way to the singular bench within the Weavenest. “The World Wide Web. Hah. Get it? ‘Cause you’re spiders and—”

Hornet gave a long and hard stare, which was impressive for someone with a mask covering her whole face.

“Got it. Am shutting up now.”

The pair spent a few moments enjoying the quiet, sharing the bench by the pool of water. Ghostly white bugs (Silver realised they were actually Verdanian pendras) flitted between lily pads and the water’s surface. The floor was soft from the overgrowth of moss, and the ceiling was full of mossy "stalactites", giving the bench room a cosy feeling.

“This… Eva person you spoke of…”

Silver looked up immediately, before calming once she registered it was Hornet’s voice. Being nearby so much Silk was still unnerving, but it was easier to calm down at benches.

Hornet frowned at her companion’s easy startle, but filed it away to be dealt with later.

“Eva? She’s amazing! Gives you all sorts of free upgrades as you passively explore and get memory lockets. The Sylphsong is also a great quality-of-life upgrade. Too bad she… uh…” Silver hesitated, wondering if she should say anything about what the Sylphsong does to Eva.

Before Silver could decide, Hornet politely interjected.

“I was not asking about what benefits she could bring me. I wanted to know more about her, as a person. Who is Eva?”

Silver chuckled and stood up from the bench. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

The cage looked much larger in person.

It was an oval-shaped container with a glass window at its front. A simple thing, for something Weaver-made, which made the figure inside all the more intriguing. 

Silver could just about make out the form of Eva through her soft glow, but it wasn’t much. She looked incredibly small in comparison to her cage, and so very unassuming to the unlearned.

“Hi Eva!” Silver called out, waving in greeting. And then she stopped, realising that Eva was effectively blind.

Eva, naturally, was rather shocked at being called by name. For the first time in a long time too. Her soft glow pulsed once before she spoke, perhaps mirroring her confusion at the moment.

“Has someone come to free me? Or are you to bring my end?” Her voice was smooth as the Silk that smothered the Weavenest; dainty and light, but strong as can be. The long ages alone hadn’t been kind, as shown by the corrosion on the details on her metal cage.

Hornet stepped forward, looking on in amazement at another product of her long-lost kin. “I am Hornet, prisoner. This is Silver. We are only travellers, and not here to slay you.”

“Whoa, prisoner?” Silver hummed slightly. “Bit of a grim outlook on life, y’know.”

“As long as that pale monarch reigns, I will never be able to escape her snare. Prisoner I am, and target you are. The Citadel’s reach is far, but I sense a lack of the Haunting here.” Hornet looked to Eva, waiting for a response.

“So my mothers’ original plan did fail,” said the being within the cage. “Times are dire indeed.”

After a brief conversation, the nature of Eva was thoroughly explained. A failed creation, she was. An attempt at divinity, in hopes to usurp Grand Mother Silk above with a pale child of the Weavers. Eva came out too frail, and was thus locked away in the Weavenest as the Weavers fled Pharloom.

And now, for the important bit.

“Lady and stranger, if you would kindly step closer. Allow me to better understand your nature.” Eva’s glow pulsed once, likely in anticipation. Their visit must’ve been the most exciting thing to happen in forever for her.

Hornet was first.

Thankfully, she didn’t scream bloody murder like when binding a Silk skill or ancestral art. Eva’s insight was kinder, and only caused the room to glow brightly, if anything.

“Incredible… Your nature is so unlike a mortal bug’s. Yours is malleable. Transitory. A marvellous thing. It is worthy of my long life to behold.” 

Hornet shook her head to clear her thoughts, drawing a concerned look from Silver. The hunter reassured her that she was alright. Having one’s personality and life experiences – their crest – pried open and expanded was… not a common occurrence. It just caught her off-guard, that’s all.

“Transitory… meaning Hornet can return for more upgrades and stuff, yes?” Silver asked for everyone. She also realised that it hinted at the Weaver Queen alternate ending, where Hornet would literally replace Grand Mother Silk by transforming her nature one last time. 

Eva’s glow brightened. “You are right in saying so, stranger. But only if she is able to further evolve. I can only do so much. Perhaps you would like insight too, stranger?”

Silver stepped forward excitedly, rocking from her heels to her toes. Finally! Her own crest could be named and understood! Maybe even… upgraded! If Hornet could get a cool damage multiplier from just talking to Eva, surely she got something good too? 

“Careful, child. Having one’s crest gazed upon by another is not so simple a process,” Hornet warned. 

Eva seemed to agree. “Aye, lady. One’s crest is more than what you think it is. That old Weaver term hardly describes it in full. It sorely lacks the many nuances that come with each bug’s crest, which are what make it so powerful. You may not take it so easily as the lady did here.”

That seemed to ground Silver somewhat. “Oh,” she said with some disappointment. “You’re saying it might hurt?”

“It will hurt,” Eva said with total transparency. “For you.”

“A lot?”

“There is a chance.”

“One you can choose not to take,” Hornet added. She’d managed to sniff out Silver’s true intentions for dragging her into Weavenest Atla. “You do not need additional strength to be of use. You can back away from the offer. Not all pain must be shouldered.”

It was never about the fourth mask shard. Nor the Hunter crest upgrade. Nor meeting Eva.

It was about her crest.

Silver glared at Hornet, annoyed that her ulterior motive had been uncovered so fast. “Hey, I’m not chickening out of this, for the record. And I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can’t I just be curious about potential upgrades, like you?”

“It comes off less as curiosity and more of desperation.” Hornet crossed her arms over her chest, meeting Silver’s glare with her own.

All the while, the little signs were there.

Hurriedly dropping everything to help Hornet master her needolin, almost afraid to be caught resting or on her downtime. The abrupt suggestion to go to Bone Bottom to buy out Pebb’s shop. The flinches and twig-snap responses to sudden dialogue.

Silver had silently directed their footsteps here for the sole purpose of getting stronger. To prevent another disaster like in the bellveins above Bellhart and, Wyrm forbid, another Bone Bottom. She was scared of being so… defenceless. 

Thus, Eva was an easy solution to the problem of being weak. 

While Hornet had no problems with Silver wanting to get a fun upgrade, she worried for the human’s peace of mind. The drive to get stronger to avoid being viewed as a burden, weakling or liability was a dangerous motivation. It made one reckless, foolish and generally more stubborn.

It was a feeling Hornet knew all too well.

Where else had she gotten her wisdom, if not from suffering from mistakes committed in her youth, all those eons ago? 

Making the mistake of chasing power and strength to maintain a feeling of security was one that the hunter of Hallownest had experienced for a bit. It nearly killed her from exhaustion, and earned her a lecture from Vespa and the White Lady.

“I’m fine,” Silver snapped, her hand unconsciously going for her quarterstaff. Good thing she realised before she had unsheathed it. “Seriously. I’m just curious. It’s okay if Eva can’t upgrade my crest.”

“Is it, really? Or will you pursue another means of strengthening yourself? To combat that feeling of helplessness from being Haunted, thrice?” Hornet eyed the hand that almost got the staff out. 

Eva stayed tactfully silent throughout.

“It’s really okay. I can live with this.” Silver let out a dark laugh before settling into a scowl. The anger wasn’t directed to Hornet, but rather the general circumstances she was in at the moment. “I have my guitar I can use to sing my way out of situations… like the freaking coward I am.”

“Cowards shrink away from combat, last I checked. And you have yet to run from an enemy.” 

Hornet wanted to roll her eyes. Classic youthful ignorance. Did the human really not know her own strength? That the power of music was so much more than what she thought it was? Pride takes many forms, really. It either puffed one up beyond their true measure, or made them oblivious to their actual competence, refusing to think otherwise and making them their own worst enemy.

“Still, can you really blame me for wanting this? A song and dance isn’t going to stop me from getting Ha… Haun…” Silver paused. 

Hornet waited patiently for a word that would never be uttered.

“You know what I mean!”

Hornet took a moment to regard Silver as she was. A young girl who was facing things far greater in scale than she’d ever anticipated to go up against. Whose confidence was built on knowledge, and was getting whittled away at unfamiliar events and experiences being thrown her way. Who sought additional strength to protect herself from becoming a danger to others.

Understandable motivations. Silver could always keep that in check.

Right?

Silver went back to facing Eva’s cage, many emotions swirling around in her chest like Soul in a bottle.

And then she felt it.

Eva’s insight.

It definitely hurt, alright.

She dropped to her knees and gritted her teeth, feeling the crest inside her get pulled open… wider and wider… so many experiences laid bare to this weird creature in a cage… her entire personality exposed for what it was...

A family.

A sister.

Her friends.

All that she’d lost in an instant.

Was there any guarantee that she’ll ever return?

Silver could distantly make out Eva’s voice and Hornet’s hand on her shoulder. She had half a mind to brush off the hand on her shoulder but the pain clouded all coherent thought.

A school.

An apartment.

A home.

A life she was robbed of.

She heard something about her crest being “unexpected” and “highly complex”. So many memories, all being glanced at in one go. To any normal bug, it would’ve been overstimulating enough to kill them. Good thing Eva was no normal bug.

For Silver, in her mind’s eye, one thing was clear. White words, all capital letters. A statement, bold and true.

EVOLVED THE CREST OF PROTAGONIST

Chapter Text

Silver scooted to the ledge and peered into the sand below.

Upon sensing her presence, thousands of sandcarvers burst out from the sand and wriggled their toothy maws at her, causing Silver to yelp and backpeddle to Hornet, who had just gotten up from the bench.

“What the actual f—”

“Language.” 

“You don’t even know that word!” Silver huffed and wiped sand off her face. She’d removed her drifter’s bandana from her arm and wrapped it around her face like an actual bandana, shielding her nose and mouth from the worst of the sandstorms.

Also because the orange bandana and her dark hair made her look almost like a bad genderbent Cole cosplayer. Yeah, the Ninjago one.

Hornet shrugged and squinted against the poor weather visibility. She wondered how Shakra fared amidst the impossible terrain. “It sounded unsavoury. Speaking such things won't help our situation.”

“Fair point. But seeing sandcarvers this close to my skin made me appreciate my internal organs just the way they are,” Silver said. “Also, don’t worry about navigation. Shakra’s just a hop, skip and jump away from us. All you gotta do is worry about your loose rosaries. You might die from the sand worms. Several times.”

The real challenge was landing the first jump. 

Silver went first, steeling her nerves and dash-jumping safely onto the metal platform. She nearly slipped, almost feeling the jaws of the sandcarvers gnaw down on her sneakers. That sickening sound they made whenever they burst through the sandy floor made her palms sweat.

“Gah!” 

She scrambled onto the platform and gripped the metal chain for stability. Each gust of wind threatened to push her into the hungry sand. She used her free hand to cover her eyes. 

“Your turn!” she called out to Hornet, who was standing just a few metres away. And yet, the sand made it look like she was in a different dimension altogether.

Hornet didn’t dash far enough, and so flared her drifter’s cloak to float a few feet closer. Unfortunately, the westward wind blew in opposition, forcing the hunter backwards instead of towards the platform where Silver stood.

Hornet fell into the sands, her shell getting cracked open in milliseconds by the many, many mouths below. It sounded like someone biting an apple really closely to a high-quality microphone. In other words, it was a very crunchy and concerningly fast death.

Before Silver had enough time to close her gawking mouth, Hornet reappeared on the ledge, right as rain. Well, as alright as one could be after getting eaten alive.

“Hornet! You good?” Silver called from her small platform. It was getting mighty difficult staying on top of it while fighting the strong winds. It didn’t help knowing that the floor was something infinitely worse than lava.

Hornet shook her head, hopefully only to clear her mind and not as a negative response to the question. “That was unpleasant.”

“Doesn’t get much better than this,” Silver mumbled under her breath. “There’s one really, really big judge waiting for us at the top. Not too hard of a fight, but you wouldn’t believe the flak she gets online.”

She was praying very hard that the Last Judge wouldn’t instantly send Hornet back to the second bench, where she’d be forced through the first of many long runbacks. The route wasn’t terribly bad, but it was mildly frustrating. The title of “most tilting runback” could be reserved for Groal the Not-So-Great.

The duo eventually managed to scale upwards, avoiding the leftmost rooms for a moment and focusing on getting to Shakra’s ledge. 

Silver cautioned Hornet on some boss she'd dubbed the Conchflies or something.

Driznits were aplenty, consulting the ghost of Pythagoras himself on the best angle to shoot their stupid cone-masks that appear to have heat-seeking properties. 

When approached, those cowards simply flew out of reach of both staff and needle, instead hovering low enough to send their coral masks ricocheting away and catching both girls off guard. 

To Hornet, their masks felt like a lessened version of a swim with the sandcarvers. Painful, but quick. 

To Silver, they felt like excavator drills tearing through her skin and everything between that and her bones. Exaggeration? Never heard of it.

Truly vile creatures, they were.

Luckily, Shakra was easy to spot, even admist the swirling sand. Her golden shell stood out against the small, gravelly ledge she'd stopped at for a rest.

“Poshanka, Hornet Wielding Needle! It is good to see that Silver Wielding Song still lives.”

Shakra had bent down to Hornet’s eye-level as usual, and, besides singing her iconic song, was cleaning one of her bronze rings that was slick with driznit haemolymph. Around her were several husks of Haunted pilgrims, pharlids, and the flying conch cutters. 

Hornet nodded in greeting, as she always did, and glanced around the fallen enemies at Shakra’s small corner. “Well met, cartographer. It is good to see your rings in action when not used to leave a trail for us to find.”

“Peh. Ballako! Easy pickings, the lot of them. The enemies you should be concerned with are the judges that guard these steps. Strong are their shields and harsh are their blows!” Shakra stayed in her iconic crouch, pocketing the now-clean throwing rings. 

Looking a little closer, Silver managed to make out the faint scars on Shakra’s shell. They’d matched the slashes of driznits, and some seemed to hint at old crawbug-pin wounds. One large dent in the cartographer’s carapace was the perfect size of a judge-bug’s mallet. 

“Shakra, your wounds…” Silver spoke up after Hornet had paid for the map. “Hornet, do we still have some of your salves?” 

There was no way Shakra wasn’t in pain from any of that, and was highly likely keeping her mouth shut out of sheer stubbornness. But Silver, a bit of an expert regarding wounds and such, knew that it would only be a matter of time before the pain caught up with exhaustion.

The hunter rummaged through her cloak for a moment, before producing a tin of scentless goop. She handed it to Shakra. “This works best on surface scarring. Two applications per rest.” 

Hornet raised a hand to stop Shakra from saying anything. “Consider this a gift instead of a transaction. No rosaries required.” 

“Hm… Yakkanesh. Thank you, Hornet Wielding Needle,” said the warrior as she pocketed the tin. “A good gift for a long journey.” 

The winds suddenly picked up the pace and blew furiously over the trio. Hornet’s cloak flapped around chaotically. Shakra stuffed the remaining cartography-related tools she had into her satchel, barely in the nick of time. Silver dug her heels in and braced for the sandstorm.

The sands swirled around them viciously. But only for about ten seconds. It died down as fast as it came, leaving the group unharmed, albeit far sandier than they originally were.

Silver swore she heard a soft chime, not unlike that of the critical hit on the Wanderer Crest, somewhere in the distance.

“Well, would you look at that.”

Above them, atop several sand-blasted steps, the judgebugs they would’ve faced seemed to have been blown off the ledges, into sandcarver territory. Nearby driznits had either retreated back into their coral nests, or had been blown far away from the trio. Even the distant moans of Haunted pilgrims seemed to have… disappeared.

“The winds just cleared a path for us!” Silver said excitedly, bouncing up and down a bit. They could get to the second bench much easier now. “I didn’t even know this could happen in the game.”

Both Hornet and Shakra shared a wary glance. 

Coincidences were a fool’s confidence. Happy occurrences, yes, but about as reliable as a half-eaten plank of wood. This all seemed suspiciously in their favour, all so suddenly too. Both warriors could smell the potential danger from miles away.

This was not natural.

Despite the unease, Hornet was the type to take whatever advantages she had as they came. Even oddly favourable weather conditions.

And so, following Hornet, Shakra and Silver made their way up the Blasted Steps, inching ever closer to the gates of the Citadel.

“So, Silver,” Hornet began. She extended a hand and pulled the girl over a dizzying drop between the suspended cages. “What is your crest?”

“I didn’t tell you?” Silver did her very best to not look down. Fall damage wasn’t something she had tested yet, and wasn’t keen on finding out if it applied to her at all. 

“Pray tell, what is a crest?” Shakra asked as she brought up the rear. Without the cling-grip or swift step, it was quite a sight seeing her move around the unforgiving terrain. It was practically no problem at all. She was almost twice the height of Hornet anyways, letting Shakra step over larger gaps.

Silver steadied herself atop a gilded cage. She absentmindedly wondered who the cage was for, if it saw any purpose at all aside from being a platform in a 2D platformer game. 

“Yada yada… signifier of a bug’s invisible yoke of their life, blah blah… Basically, your fighting style as a result of your life experiences with a cool name slapped on it. Mine’s the Crest of Protagonist. Her default crest is —” Silver nodded to Hornet up ahead, “ — the Crest of Hunter. She’d also just claimed the Reaper crest recently in Greymoor.”

Hornet didn’t show any sign of slowing her ascent, but did sound rather bewildered at Silver’s words. “Protagonist,” she said with hesitancy, testing out the syllables with her mandibles. 

Not that she was unfamiliar with the term, Wyrm no. Years in the White Palace tended to elevate a bug’s vocabulary unconsciously. She knew damn well what a protagonist was.

But how on earth was that a crest?

“Gara Takana!” came an exclamation from behind. Hornet and Silver turned around, ready to fight, until Shakra reassured them it wasn’t an enemy she’d been startled by. “Silver Wielding Song is far more mysterious than I thought! First a melody-maker, next an adversary, and now the vital component of a story… Pharloom’s marvels are truly aplenty.”

“Beats me, man.” Silver shimmied up the last few cages, helping Shakra up and steadying Hornet when she wobbled. “Ask the failed experiment in the Weavenest, not me.”

At last, they arrived at the bench.

And naturally, it called for a toll.

Hornet snapped a few necklaces, depositing the loose beads into the machine. As they waited for both the bench and bellway station to open up, Silver explained their route to Shakra.

“There’s two ways into the Citadel, but the Judgement% route is the one with the least environmental hazards. Sinner’s Road and the Exhaust Organ have uh…” Silver suppressed a shudder before continuing. “Lots of hazards. The muckmaggot water shouldn’t be too bad, but I do NOT want to experience it without the wreath of purity.”

Shakra didn’t know what "Judgement%" was, or how exhaused organs had to do with whatever muckmaggots were, but they sounded unpleasant all the same.

Silver… well, Silver wasn’t exactly a bug-lover in the real world. 

Moths in the bathroom at 6am startled her badly, and wasps in the bookshelves were terrifying. Swimming with maggots was definitely not something on her bucket list. She’d rather get scorched by the Last Judge’s fire than get soaking wet in gross vomit water.

Silver sat down on the sandy stone floor. Hornet took a seat on the bench. Shakra laid out a small mat next to Silver and sat down there.

“So, protagonist,” Hornet started. Silver whipped around, smirking smugly at the cool new epithet bestowed upon her. “If crests are what you say they are, and each boast of a unique power, what does yours have to offer?”

The girl hummed low, deep in thought. She had an inkling of an idea, but there wasn’t nearly enough evidence to confirm it. Something about plot progression being made artificially easier or harder as the narrative needed it to be.

If she was right, it would explain the coincidental sandstorm earlier. 

Still thinking hard, Silver looked around the area. Maybe the idea might pop out if she zoned out a little.

To the side was Shakra, already scratching out the path they’d taken through the steps on her own maps. On the bench was Hornet, looking at her with those intense eye-holes in her mask.

And in the far distance, Silver’s caught the gleam of something. Her breath hitched.

No, not the gleam of something. Rather, it was a bunch of somethings. 

Eyes.

A whole lot of eyes.

Silver swallowed a gasp. 

Thousands of eyes – human eyes, mind you – winked back at her from beyond the sandy winds. They weren’t exactly physically present, but the stares felt as if a crowd of people had their attention focused on Silver and Silver alone. 

As if she was some sort of… main character.

Silver’s head started throbbing from the overwhelming feeling of being watched. The sickening somersaults her stomach was doing once it realised that there was more going on than meets the eye. That there were things in the world of Pharloom that prying into simply led to more questions than answers.

Neither Shakra nor Hornet gave any indication that they felt the many eyes watching them.

So, Silver steeled her nerves and did her best to hold a stare, at the cluster of impossibly numerous eyes in a place they definitely shouldn’t be at. 

Silver stared into the eyes of you. Yes, you. All of you. The readers. 

There was a bit of a spark, when your gazes connected. She jumped back in surprise, not expecting to feel a sting from the mere act of looking at something.

I’ll bet you jumped too, also not expecting me to take this direction in defining the Crest of Protagonist. And you definitely didn’t expect a 4th wall break like this. 

“Song child? What was that?” Shakra raised her head, also drawing Hornet’s attention. “Is there something out there?”

Yes there is! Silver wanted to scream. But the narrative had other ideas. 

In fact, she could feel the whole world itself protest vehemently against the idea of her opening her mouth to alert the warriors. While it would help them, by giving happy coincidences to speed them along the path, there was unfortunate certainty inside Silver’s gut that told her that it wouldn’t always be so helpful.

Because really, where was the fun in that?

And then she passed out.