Chapter Text
"And so my half-sister Lumina was born, and to this day she continues to shepherd the dreams of all the bugs in Hallownest," High Queen Hornet read from her storybook to the crowd of eager children in one of the Red Palace's gardens. "The Radiance kept her word, and she removed her infection from every afflicted bug in the kingdom. And that, children, is how my father saved Hallownest."
"And then everyone lived happily ever after?" A young grasshopper asked excitedly.
Hornet shook her head. "No, then the Mushroom Clan unleashed a devastating terrorist attack using cordyceps that would've wiped out all of Hallownest if Lord Fool hadn't roused from his slumber and led his tribe to the aid of the rest of the kingdom, after which my father was forced to fulfill his promise to the Fools and mate with him. Following that, he had a bit of a breakdown after all the crises, stress, and political pairings he'd had to deal with in rapid succession and ran away to join the Grimm Troupe for a few decades until they kicked him out because his colors made him stand out too much and he came home with another of my half siblings, the Nightmare Prince."
"He's soooo cool!" gushed a young stag, one of Hornet's half-brother's many fans, as his coloration indicated.
"And then everyone lived happily ever after?" the grasshopper asked.
"No, then came the Great War of the Half-Siblings which killed tens of thousands, which I won, of course."
Who could have ever expected a game of Tag would get so out of hand?
"… And then-"
"Child, there are no such things as happily ever afters, that's just where the storyteller stops narrating," Hornet said, shutting the storybook. "Life keeps going on afterwards, especially when one is immortal." She smiled. "Now, can anyone tell me the moral of this story?"
Several children raised their hands.
"Is it that you can solve any problem by offering your body to strangers, like my daddy keeps telling my mommy to do?" A ladybug asked.
"… No, that's not quite what I was looking for," Hornet said, reminding herself to check in on this child's parents.
"Is it that we mortal bugs are but mere pawns caught in the games of Higher Beings and have no say in our own destiny?" a mantis asked.
"No, though that is more or less true," Hornet said.
"Is it that in real life things don't have easily packaged morals, things just happen, often with no reason, and you have to deal with it?" An extremely fluffy Mosskin asked, and it was all Hornet could do not to squeal at how fluffy he was and rub her face in his foliage and take him home and keep him with the rest of her menagerie of incredibly fluffy fuzzy critters and concubines to love and cuddle forever.
"Valid, but not the lesson I wanted to impart to you children today," Hornet said gently. "It's very hard to be a ruler, very hard to be a parent, and incredibly hard to be both. My father's actions have been debated to death back and forth across the ages, and while he'd be the first to tell you that what he did to my elder half-siblings is inexcusable, the fact is things were so bad, he was so desperate, and there were no other options available to him, if his final gambit to defeat the Radiance hadn't worked he'd have had no choice but to either sacrifice more of my siblings to the Void, sacrifice me, or let the Radiance destroy everything. As a leader, many times you don't get to pick between a right and wrong option, you must choose from a selection of very bad ones, and hope that you can live with whatever awful decision you've made."
(Hornet had inherited her father's Foresight, which, combined with her Weaver nature, had allowed her to not just see possible futures, but other timelines, different strands of the Web of Fate, other worlds where things had gone differently.)
(She never told her father about the Dream Nail. It would only hurt him.)
"Have you ever had to do that your Majesty?" An ant asked.
"All the time," Hornet said wistfully. "But those are stories for another time."
As the schoolchildren said farewell and were hurriedly taken away by their incredibly anxious teacher, Hornet took a moment to relax against the statue of her father, looking very intimidated and scaroused as the mothers of all his children loomed amorously over him.
"You probably never imagined that Hallownest could have a future like this," she said softly. "Hallownests where this prosperity and lasting peace are even possible are few and far between, even rarer the ones where you are still a part of it." She smiled sadly. "As are worlds where I do not have to suffer alone for so very long, as you Foresaw all those years ago. I pity my sisters across the threads of time, but I'm still glad I got to be born in this one."
A large, silent presence loomed behind her.
Hornet turned to face her half-sibling, the Heartful Knight. (There was no reason to call it Hollow, after all, since it wasn't.) "An intruder?" She asked in surprise. "From where?"
The giant Vessel said nothing, for it could not, even after all this time.
Hornet understood itanyway, her eyes widening in surprise. "Pharloom?! The homeland of my ancestors? Is she refugee or assassin?"
The Hollow Knight inclined its head slightly.
"I see. Take me to her."
…
The interloper was in a spherical, incredibly ornate cage on wheels practically glowing with magical power. Hornet immediately recognized the structure as having powerful Seals of Binding worked into its frame, ones designed to imprison and sap the power of Weavers or other powerful beings imprisoned within. Even she would have had difficulty escaping from it unaided, though she was fairly certain she could have managed thanks to the many centuries she'd spent honing and exploring the powers she inherited from both sides of her lineage, something that most of her parallel sisters had not. This cage was clearly meant for use on her, or other Weavers.
The being inside the cage was neither, though she was certainly resonating with power similar to that of a Weaver's. "So… You must be the Weaver Queen I've heard so much about?" The prisoner tittered. "I thought you'd be bigger. Though you are quite…ah…" She blushed. "Lovelier than I expected, and certainly not like…ah, not important."
Hornet was immediately enchanted. The bug in the cage had a pure white body with a black mask – or was that a hole, her face? – With a fan-shaped head that curved at the ends. She was gorgeous, with shapely hips, sharp claws, and her body looked so incredibly, incredibly soft. It was a very good thing Hornet had seen her before any of her sisters or they might have immediately claimed her for their harems, and it was taking all of her strength to refrain from tearing her out of the cage and rushing her back to her quarters to properly mark her as hers like all the other beautiful, soft, fluffy things she adored.
(There was plenty of time to do that after she finished interrogating her, for there was no question this would be her ultimate fate. Hornet wanted her, and Hornet always got what she wanted.)
"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, outsider," Hornet said calmly while beneath her mask she was screaming at how adorable and soft she was. "To whom do I have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of?"
"My name is Lace, spider," Lace giggled, making sure to pose in a way that drew Hornet's eyes to all the right places. "Charmed, I'm sure."
"Lace, then," Hornet said, though she was not truly surprised. She'd seen glimpses of this white being in the other worldlines inhabited by her alternate sisters and had always wondered when it would be her time to meet her. They seemed inextricably bound together, by whichever Weaver spun the fates of all things into existence. "You have some explaining to do, I'm afraid."
"I'm an open book, Your Majesty," Lace said, though there was a bit of a sneer in how she spoke Hornet's title. "What would you like to know?"
"According to my sibling," Hornet said, nodding slightly to the Heartful Knight looming behind her. "You were found in this cage at the edge of the kingdom, surrounded by dozens of dead bugs in unfamiliar white raiment and insisted you be taken to me right away, and also refused to be let out of the cage."
Lace blinked. "That thing's your sibling?! Then again, I suppose I'm one to talk…" She muttered.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Oh, nothing. Your big, tall, handsome…" Lace hesitated. "I'm sorry, I'm having difficulty gendering…?"
"The Heartful Knight," Hornet proclaimed, her sibling proudly brandishing its greatnail. "And it's genderless."
This took Lace by surprise. "Really? Huh, wasn't expecting we'd have that in common… Anyway, yes, it had the right of it. Those bugs were part of the Choir, the Army of the Citadel, the capital city of Pharloom. I don't know how much you know about it-"
"I know that it is the ancestral homeland of my kind, which we fled a very long time ago," Hornet interjected.
"Oh good, that saves me some time," Lace said in delight. "Anyway, they're an especially nasty bunch, like everyone who works in that shining city on the hill."
"Does that include yourself?" Hornet asked.
"It does!" Lace said brightly. "However, for a variety of reasons, I'd rather not stay there anymore – too many hymns, a disgusting amount of theocratic totalitarianism, horrific working conditions for the underclass, and we're literally next door to a prison made of a colossal turd – so I wound up committing a perhaps ill-advised act of youthful rebellion and apostasy which would make me rather unwelcome back home, so I was hoping I could perhaps have asylum here." She grinned. "You… Do offer that, right? Asylum? I can make it worth your while. Lots of up-to-date knowledge about the state of affairs back in the homeland, information about a potential threat to the future of your kingdom, I'll even give you my body if you like!" Her grin grew somewhat strained. "I assure you it wouldn't be an imposition on me, honest, that body of yours is really doing it for me, I was worried you'd look more like…ah, someone else, which would be really weird and…please, please don't send me back, I've come too far, I don't know what she'll do to me but-"
"Relax, child, I will not turn you away," Hornet assured her. "You also need not give yourself to me to earn my protection."
"Oh," Lace said, looking relieved as well as slightly disappointed.
"Of course, since you've offered…"
"Oh!" Lace said excitedly.
"Now, let's get you out of that cage and see about getting you settled-" Hornet started.
"Wait!" Lace interjected, a panicked look in her eyes. "This cage is magically sealed, it won't be easy for you to open-"
"No, I think I can handle it easily enough," Hornet said, drawing her needle.
"And also, I'm rather allergic to dying, and I'm not certain that won't happen to me the instant someone lets me out of here," Lace said anxiously.
Hornet paused. "Would this have something to do with your little act of rebellion?"
"Yes," Lace admitted.
"And why you killed the members of the Choir accompanying you?"
"Yes-" Lace started. "Wait, how did you-"
"An examination of the bodies of the bugs from the Choir indicated they were not killed by beast or claw, but by a weapon," Hornet said. "The wounds don't match those inflicted by nail or needle, but do look like they were caused by a pin… Which, I believe, is the national weapon of Pharloom?"
"… Oh. Yes. Well. That would be me," Lace admitted, producing the pin in question.
It was of very fine make. Hornet yearned to test her needle against it.
Later.
"If you wanted my help, you didn't need to pretend that you were a prisoner," Hornet said gently. "Not the least of which because it would make no sense for them to take you all the way out here instead of the aforementioned giant pile of excrement used as a prison. I am guessing you killed them, then locked yourself in the cage to try and make yourself look more vulnerable and your story believable? The fact that you lied about this and are hesitant in me letting you out of the cage does not paint the best picture, Lace. I do not believe you are an assassin, but I would appreciate the truth."
She was going to help Lace regardless, of course, but she didn't need to know that.
Lace's shoulders slumped. "Ah. Well. Brains and beauty. You really do have it all, don't you, spider?" She muttered in bitter resignation. "I'll admit, it's not the best plan I've ever had, but in my defense, it was sort of a spur of the moment sort of thing. Anyway, no, I'm not an assassin. Well. I almost was, I… Let me start the beginning," she said quickly, as the Heartful Knight slowly raised its nail.
Hornet crossed her arms and nodded. "Very well."
Lace took a breath. "So. The Pale Being that rules Pharloom not only created your ancestors, the Weavers, but created me as well. She calls me her daughter, but she never birthed me, but spun me into existence from her own silk, though, I'm sure a being as powerful as yourself could already tell that I wasn't really… Well. Real," she said with diffidence drowned in deep, deep bitterness and self-loathing.
"Of course you are," Hornet said immediately.
Lace blinked. "What?"
"Your being created by artificial means does not make you any less a real bug than I," Hornet said. "My sibling here and many of our kin were also created by magical means by our father, and all of them are considered real bugs as well."
"Oh, well, if you're saying that, then, it must be true," Lace said sarcastically, though Hornet immediately intuited she hadn't expected such a sentiment… And that she was, perhaps, the first person to ever tell her that. "And it certainly sounds like you lucked out in the parent department, mine created countless beings like me in an attempt to replace her precious Weavers, only for just about all of them to be discarded as failures. You probably wouldn't know what that's like, clearly having a happy family and all."
The Heartful Knight tensed. "We… Understand rather more than you think," Hornet said, placing a claw on her siblings' arm.
Yes, their father had realized his mistake and tried to make their family whole, to treat them as his cherished children. And they loved him for it. However, that did not erase his failures as a parent, and Hornet was far too aware that there were plenty of other versions of her father who had learned this lesson too late, or never did at all, and countless of her sister-selves despised their Pale Kings much as Lace resented her mother, and were right to do so.
"Well, I'm just the latest in a long line of disappointments," Lace said bitterly. "It's not my fault she made me this way, just like she made the others. Just like she made…" She glanced briefly at the Heartful Knight, then looked away. "Anyway. She's given up on trying to make new children and is obsessed with finding her old ones and dragging them back to Pharloom. I don't know why. To kill them? To control them? Drain their silk for some reason? I don't know. But I could see the writing on the wall. If she had her 'real' children back, what need would she have for a worthless doll like me? She certainly didn't need-"
She clammed up.
"Didn't need…?" Hornet prompted.
"… All the failures, those who couldn't even maintain physical form for long, were dumped beneath the Citadel and haunt the Mist as Wraiths," Lace said, unaware of how both Hornet and the Knight flinched at this. This new point of similarity between their father and the ruler of Pharloom was… Rather uncomfortable.
Hornet was too young to remember, but Heartful would never forget the day Father had torn open the doors of the Abyss and they'd journeyed to the bottom of that darkness which ran beneath every inch of the world; how they'd spent days searching the thousands and thousands of broken Vessels littering the floor to try and find any who were still intact and hadn't joined the ranks of the carefree Shades drifting peacefully through oblivion, Father growing paler and more despondent by the hour at the comprehension of just how many he'd consigned to the dark.
In the end, they'd only found four to bring home with them.
It would never forget Father's cries of anguish, his pleas for forgiveness, his promise to never abandon or hurt his children ever again.
(It would also never forget Father's first attempt to try to repair a Vessel so its Shade could be re-inhabit it. It was also his only attempt.)
Every week, the whole family went to the edge of the Abyss to tell the Shades – too dark, too incorporeal, to go into the light – how they'd been doing. It both loved and dreaded those outings, due to the effect it had on Father.
And this…queen, this mother, couldn't even be bothered to do that much?! At least the Shades were happy in the Abyss, it rather doubted these Wraiths or Phantom were!
"Then she finally created a perfect doll to be her 'child,' my… Older sibling, Phantom. Except then Phantom started fraying and turned out not to be so perfect after all, so she dumped them in the Exhaust Organ and left them to decay out of her sight. And then she made me! And what a spectacular job she did of that!" Lace sneered angrily. "'Better a child spun mad than none,' right, Mother?!"
"I do not think," Hornet said slowly. "That I like your mother very much."
Heartful made its feelings clear by driving its greatnail into the ground.
Lace blinked, looking really surprised. "… I know I shouldn't be surprised by that, but… That… That sentiment is rare to the point of nonexistent back home. Granted, not many people actually know Mother exists, but those that do adore her, even though she doesn't love them back. Will never love them back. Just like she didn't love-"
"You?" Hornet asked softly.
Lace hesitated. "I… Was going to say Phantom, but… Even now, after everything, I don't… I still feel…" She shuddered and turned away. "Whatever. We're not talking about me. Anyway. Phantom. While I was the 'favorite' child – whatever the hell that really meant - Phantom was relegated to the Exhaust Organ, this big machine which clears the silk dregs from the Citadel vents. Ghastly place, right on the edge of Bilewater, this place we dump all our waste and pollutants into because the whole city seems to be deliberately designed to ruin the lives of everyone and everything around it just to make the privileged few comfortable!" She laughed madly. "And that's practically the least awful thing we did! There's the sham religion, the mass mind control, the enslaved underclass, the machinery powered by bug souls, Whiteward… Oh, if you only knew what happened there, you'd declare war on Pharloom and kill everyone in the Citadel, who would deserve it."
"Does that include yourself?" Hornet, who was already contemplating war, inquired.
Lace cackled, filled with self-loathing. "Spider, I may be made of pure white silk, but trust me when I say that my claws are stained with the hemoymph of hundreds, maybe thousands. After all, I was complicit in many of those atrocities."
"Do you regret them?" Hornet asked.
"Do I-" Lace paused, giving this question serious thought. "Do I regret them? I was going to say I wouldn't be here if that weren't the case, but… I suppose that's not entirely true, is it… It's…" She sighed. "You two. You love your parents, right?"
"We do," Hornet said, Heartful nodding vigorously.
"So, if they asked you to do something, even if it made you uncomfortable, you would probably do it, right? Because you love them, and want them to love you?" Lace pressed.
Heartful fidgeted. Hornet inclined her head slightly. "I believe I understand. Not that it excuses your actions, but-"
"Yeah, I know, I know," Lace said in irritation, waving her off. "Anyway. Phantom. Exhaust Organ. So, the vents started getting clogged from silk buildup, meaning Phantom wasn't doing their job properly, which is the only time Mother gives a damn about them, so they sent me down to check on them. Something I wasn't exactly looking forward to, because…"
She trailed off. "Well. I hadn't spoken to them in a rather long time. We had a very big argument the last time I saw them, things were said – the sorts of really nasty, hurtful things only family can say to each other, you know what that's like, right? I'm assuming, the big one doesn't seem to be able to talk…"
"We know what that's like," Hornet confirmed, Heartful glancing away in shame.
"Right, good. Anyway, I knew I'd messed up, but I just kept putting off going down to apologize to them, and the longer I waited the more awkward and uncomfortable going down felt, so I was both looking forward to and really not looking forward to talking to them, and…
"Anyway, I got there and they were fucking dead," Lace said mournfully.
Hornet was unsurprised. That was really the only way this story could end. "I'm sorry."
Lace seemed startled again. "You're probably the first person to say that to me. It's… Weird. Stopping so nice to me! It feels weird and makes me want to like you more than I do already!"
"I will not."
"Damn you!" Lace's mood fell again. "So, I… Didn't take it well, understandably. Phantom probably just unraveled like they were doomed to anyway, but a part of me can't help wondering if the things I said in our argument plus the fact I didn't visit them again in so long made them finally decide to-"
She cut herself off, trembling. Hornet patiently waited for her to collect herself and start again.
"I… Lost a bit of time… I'm not really sure what I did, but when I finally came to both my pin and Phantom's were covered in gore and I was lying in a pile of dozens of dead Skarr, half of Bilewater was on fire – which only improved it, trust me on this – the Verdania exhibit in the Memorium was completely destroyed, I had a nasty muckmaggot infestation, I'd OD'd on Plasmium and cleared out nearly all the Vintage Nectar at the Halfway Home, and I'd somehow gotten engaged to the mayor of Belhart. Which I quickly broke off," she added hurriedly, clearly wanting Hornet to know she was still available.
"Good."
"So, after I got myself cleaned up and wallowed in my grief some more, I reported back to Mother. And she said "Oh.""
Hornet tilted her head. "" Oh?""
""Oh,"" Lace snarled angrily. "Phantom was dead, and I'd gone on a pretty nasty bender of some sort, and that's it. "Oh." She didn't care. About any of it. Not about Phantom, and not about me, either." Lace slouched against the side of her cage, only to slide down because it was spherical. "The next day the Exhaust Organ resumed operation. The Architects built some machine to make it work on its own. Phantom had never needed to be down there in the first place. And I was left completely unpunished. Because no matter what I do, no matter how well I perform a task or how big a tantrum I threw trying to get her attention, she didn't care."
Lace was silent for a while. "And when I heard she was going to try and bring back the runaway Weavers, I realized I might be the next to go and decided to do something… Drastic."
"You ran away?" Hornet asked.
Lace laughed. "No, though that would make sense, wouldn't it? No, I volunteered to join one of the capture teams sent out to find the missing Weavers. I reminded Mother that there might still be Weavers as powerful as the ones who imprisoned her in the first place out there, and even a full Chamber might have difficulty capturing them. As her greatest warrior and enforcer, wouldn't it make sense for me to accompany them and make sure nothing goes wrong?"
"And she said no," Hornet guessed.
"And she said no," Lace confirmed.
"So you ran away after all," Hornet said.
"So I ran away after all," Lace agreed.
Hornet tilted her head. "What I would like to know is why you ran away. Were you attempting to seek freedom from your mother? Ally with one of the other Weavers for protection or revenge? Were you hoping that capturing a Weaver yourself would make her finally respect you, or were you planning to kill them instead to deny your mother her prize?"
"Do you know, even I wasn't really sure," Lace admitted with a cynical laugh. "I changed my mind at least a dozen times a day. After all, 'spun mad' doesn't exactly make for stable decision-making! I think I only really made my decision… Well, about the time I actually crossed the border, and I found myself standing over the corpses of my so-called countrybugs, hemolymph-stained pin in hand. It was rather exhilarating. I don't regret it. Sorry if that gives you some red flags, but I really don't. It felt really good, finally being able to hurt those bastards!"
Her face fell. "Then I panicked and locked myself in his cage, where your big sibling found me."
"Actually, it's not clear which of us was born first," Hornet said. Heartful snorted and turned away, crossing its arms. "What? It isn't!"
Hornet turned back to Lace. "So, why did you lock yourself in that cage?"
"My mother spun Phantom and I from her silk," Lace explained. "As it turns out, she can control almost every piece of silk in Pharloom because it's all from her. It's how she uses it to control the population, you see, thanks to the simply wonderful experiments in Whiteward in achieving immortality, her silk runs through the veins of just about every bug in the Citadel, and their descendants, and their descendants, and their descendants…"
Hornet recoiled, horrified. "That's-"
"Disgusting? Monstrous? An atrocity? Oh, absolutely!" Lace said cheerfully. "Her silk is also spreading to gradually take control of everyone else in the kingdom too, they're calling it the 'Haunting.' Catchy name, isn't it? I think a few towns are getting consumed by it as well, especially as mother regains her power."
"This is… A familiar story," Hornet rasped as Heartful trembled in rage.
"Oh? I guess it's just a thing Pale Beings do, then," Lace said dismissively. "But anyway. We're not talking about the sad, pathetic bugs of Pharloom, we're talking about my sibling and I. We thought we had free will, more than those other sad sacks Mother was gradually Haunting, but we weren't really sure, given we were made directly by her silk, so we didn't really know if she could hear and see everything we heard and saw, read our thoughts, put ideas in our heads, rewrite our memories and so on… Terrifying prospect, right? Could be why we've never really tried to rebel against her! Well, that, and we kind of relied on her silk to maintain ourselves, and without it, we'd, well, die. Pretty good reason not to attempt to defy her."
"And then you did," Hornet pointed out.
"And then I did," Lace agreed. "And then I panicked and immediately jumped in the cage, remembering everything Phantom and I had discussed over the centuries about her power over us, because it suddenly occurred to me that there was a non-zero chance that if she really did know everything I said or did or even thought, she might be able to use her power over my silk to simply unmake me on the spot for betraying her."
"And you hoped that the power of the cage, designed to contain a Weaver, could prevent her from doing so," Hornet concluded.
"Yes. Which is why I'm a wee bit anxious about you letting me out just yet since I don't know if I'll immediately unravel the minute I set foot out of the cage, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, would be utterly horrifying for both of us, more so me," Lace said uneasily. "Of course there's a chance it'll still happen anyway since the cage is actively draining my power, so…if something isn't done soon I could die either way, which neither of us want." Her shoulders slumped. "Unless it turns out I'm afraid for nothing and I'll be perfectly fine when I get out, either because Mother can't remotely end me, or...or because even now, she still doesn't care. Because if she killed me, at least I'd finally have gotten her attention..."
"...I am sorry you have had to live like this for so long," Hornet said. "But I promise you those days are at an end. Very well, we won't let you out of the cage until we can verify that you'll remain stable. Considering that you require silk to sustain yourself, I should be able to replace your mother as your source of life… It would, however, mean that you would never truly be free, you would merely be switching from one mistress to another."
Lace laughed bitterly. "Let's face it, spider, freedom was never in the cards for a broken doll like me. And besides, that means I'll just have to stick close to you from now on, and I can think of considerably worse fates." She smiled shyly at this, blushing.
Hornet nodded, deciding not to say that she never had any intention of letting Lace slip through her claws anyway. She was in her web now, and she never let her prey go.
"Thank you for risking so much to come here and warn us," Hornet said, placing a claw on the cage, Lace hesitantly reaching out and placing a hand on the same spot. "Once we make it safe for you to come out, you will have a place here, always. And after that…"
"And after that?" Lace asked, hesitant and enthralled.
Hornet smiled as Heartful shook its head, seeing where this was going. "Your mother sent her forces here to invade this kingdom and try to abduct me and my brethren. This challenge cannot go unanswered. Hallownest will go to war."