Archive of Our Own

Your name is Hornet, and for as long as you can remember, the specter of a much larger bug has been hovering over you at all hours of the day.

They are, to be speaking quite clearly, not actually a real specter.  You've touched their strange matte black carapace enough times to know that the bug guarding you is perfectly solid.  You've seen them draw their nail in your defense enough times to know that they're not some malevolent spirit.  And perhaps, most importantly, you've seen them get hurt from time to time on those occasions when they have to defend you.  You've not seen them bleed—not in any color you could recognize as blood, anyways—but you've seen them limp and hunch and place pressure on damaged chitin.  For all their quirks, your 'specter' is quite clearly not some sort of ephemeral undead.

But by that same token, they are also quite clearly not all that much alive, either.

Their shell is cold to the touch, and they never seem to eat or breathe when you've got half a mind to pay attention to such things.  They don't even seem to have a mouth as far as you can tell, not even a really little one meant just for fluids like what you have.  They're far too tall for a normal bug, but conversely far too light for what their stature should otherwise imply, almost like they were completely hollow inside with no organs or ganglia to speak of.  And perhaps most damning, you're fairly certain that on at least one occasion you've seen them sustain what should be a mortal blow in your defense, only for your specter to be perfectly fine the next morning, with not even a scar left behind on their chitin to show where the wound had been.  Like it never even happened.

They have never questioned the orders you've given them.  They have never spoken to you at all, not by sound nor by writing nor by moving claws.  If they had a thought in their head, you wouldn't know it.  If they had a name or a life before coming under your dominion, you have never known the answer.

If you had been older and wiser and more confident about such things instead of a literal nymph, you likely should have sent them away years ago when they first appeared in the Distant Village. It brings ill luck to deal with the dead, after all.  But your guardian, for lack of a better word, had been a gift from the Pale King off in nearby Hallownest meant to foster good relations between your two kingdoms following the death of your mother, and so no matter how strange they seem to you, you cannot send them away without risking offending him.

Not that you actually want to send them away.  Partially because, unlucky or not, they are handy to have around.  You likely would've been dead many times over by now were it not for the odd bug's timely intervention.  But more than that, it's also partially because as the years go by, you become more and more certain that perhaps your guardian was not a gift at all, but wergild.

To the best of your recollection, roughly around the time you were born, your mother had left for Hallownest to fulfill some promise she'd made to the Pale King.  You didn't know what it was at the time.  You still don't.  All you know is that your mother left for the neighboring kingdom alive and well, and returned not even a week later cold and dead, with a bug much too tall and much too quiet following closely behind the funeral procession.

That gangly specter has been with you ever since.

But none of this really matters anymore.  Unfortunately for you, the time for a young princess's idle imaginings is over.  Whatever musings and theories you had in the past as a nymph need to stay in the past so that you and and everyone else in the Nest can focus on the future.  You've got a coronation coming up in a few days, and not a lot of time left to make sure that it all goes smoothly.

So far it has not been going smoothly.

You've been up to the tips of your horns in banners and platforms and feasts and whatever else the day of ceremony will require more days than not recently, and it is taking its toll.  You have not eaten yet today.  Which would normally not be a problem, as you tend to be a fairly light eater, if not for the fact that the early risers of your home were probably on their way to have lunch by now, and you had still yet to break your nightly fast.  You've been too busy sitting up in your room all morning doing anything you possibly can to avoid thinking about everything that needs doing now that you're going to be the one in charge of it all.  You did that yesterday too.  And the day before that.  And the day before that.  The day before that, however, you actually got quite a number of things done before you inevitably burned out and spent several hours recuperating before eventually slinking off to bed.  Which, now that you think about it, is probably why you haven't done a whole lot in the days since then.

It's been a hectic few weeks.  There's been so much to do and not nearly enough time to do it, especially considering the sheer amount of work that that falls on you and you alone to accomplish before before the ceremony.

Well.  Technically speaking, there's only so much that requires your singular, specific touch to get done, but, well, you know what they say about wanting something done right.  And you really want everything done right.

There's dozens of reams of silk paper piled up on your desk waiting for your attention after all the time you've spent working on literally anything else—speeches and schedules and letters and a few legal agreements from dignitaries who apparently wanted to get a head start on things.  It's enough to give you the beginnings of a headache just thinking about it, though that may also be the lack of food catching up with you.  There's a feeling creeping up on you that maybe things might feel a bit more manageable if you just moved into your mother's old room already, claimed the larger space there for all the forms you had to deal with and made an effort to sort things into more coherent piles and stacks, but no.  That's not your place.

Not yet.

Meanwhile your guardian has been standing at attention by the doorway all the while.  The gangly specter doesn't really seem to care about things like food or stress or upcoming political upheavals.  They're content just to keep watching you (for a given value of content, anyways), but you suspect that for all the watching they're not truly seeing you.  Or at least, they're not all that interested in seeing you in comparison to everything else going on around you.  You've learned a long time ago that no matter what you do, talking or dancing or practicing with your needle, they're not going to react unless you either request their attention directly or try to hurt yourself.  They're just going to keep staring at you, still as a statue.

You suspect you would find their conduct a fair bit more unsettling if you hadn't spent all of your life getting used to it.

Eventually, midmorning hunger wins out over everything else warring for dominance in your head somewhere around the time that you start seriously considering the benefits and drawbacks of commissioning a new dress to wear to the coronation ceremony versus just weaving one yourself, and you're all too happy for the excuse to leave your room and all its various papers behind, if just for a moment.  You gesture at your guardian to give you some space to move through your bedroom door and walk on out, the much taller bug turning to follow dutifully behind you just a few paces away.

You leave your room.  You leave your den.  The marginally fresher air of the underground cavern your home is build into feels great on your spiracles.  You keep walking.  There's no one lingering about that you can see, so you've no reason to stop or slow down or make idle conversation with your subjects as you go.

You leave your village.

You get out your needle.

It takes you a good number of minutes to finally appease your hunger—the beasts of Deepnest are hunters and carnivores as a rule, and you are no exception. Not too far past the outskirts of the Distant Village, your midmorning meal comes in the form of a freshly caught dirtcarver, speared expertly through the head with your needle and drained of its life fluids.  The beast isn't exactly the tastiest thing you've ever had, but inanition is an excellent flavor enhancer.  You've certainly had worse either way.

It is only the knowledge that you're being watched that prevents you from abandoning your manners entirely and sopping up whatever stray drips fall past your endites with your claws to try and lick them back up.  Your specter might not care about your eating habits, but you do.  Royalty must maintain a certain decorum, after all.  Out of a sudden fit of generosity (or perhaps curiosity), you offer a morsel of your prey to your guardian, even knowing that they've never eaten in your presence before and likely never will.

The tall bug does not react for several seconds.  This doesn't exactly surprise you.  Eventually however, at about the point where you would've given up and taken the morsel back, they slowly extend a matte black claw towards the dirtcarver and seem to draw out something from the beast's flesh that you just barely can't see.  The substance escapes your vision, and the claw retreats to under your specter's pale cloak, leaving them perfectly posed and still as a statue once again.  They do not make any more advancements towards the offered meat.

You glance back between them and the meat and find yourself shrugging in response, somehow not even all that fazed by the reveal of what you can only assume to be some kind of magic.  You dimly remember hearing rumors that aristocratic bugs were experimenting with soul magic in Hallownest around the time your mother left, so it wouldn't surprise you if your specter had been one of them in their past life.  It's been a strange number of weeks.  They are a strange bug.  This might as well happen.

At least there's more dirtcarver left for you.

You look around the scenery surrounding your home as you drink your food.

There's fresh air and freshly dug tunnels that you don't recall being there the last time you left the Distant Village.  You're keenly aware that you don't remember anymore how long ago that was.  Clearly it must've been some time if there are new pathways leading through your home that you can't recall ever seeing before.  This is only the first day you've gone so long without eating, right?  You haven't forgotten more?

...Actually, considering how little you eat even when you are hungry, missing multiple meals at a time would go a long way towards explaining why you've been so tired and drained lately.

The thought occurs to you that there's still so much time left in the day to do whatever strikes your fancy instead of just going right back to work, and you're suddenly filled with acute revulsion at the thought of returning to your increasingly cramped room to just to plan seating arrangements and read things that aren't even important yet.  How much time will you have after your coronation to simply hunt for your own food and eat it at your leisure?  How much time will you have to take in the world around you?  How much time will you have to just be free?  Oh sure, you've never truly been free, you know that with a bitter certainty, but even with a princess's title bound to your name and a bug with pale ore weaponry bound to your shadow, you realize that you've never felt more trapped than you have in the past few days.

What little life you have that's reserved only for yourself is fading fast, and you find yourself increasingly filled with a deep need to use as much of it as you possibly can before your coronation tears it away from you.  You feel like you're suffocating.  You feel like you're losing yourself.  You feel like you're going to go crazy.

So you do something crazy.

You haven't even finished your dirtcarver before you're jumping up to your tarsals and dashing off again into the tunnels surrounding your home.  You see your guardian following after you as fast as they can, likely alarmed at the unexpected movement, and you have the sudden, delirious desire to lose them.  To let them wander about on their own for a while while you step out of their impossibly long shadow.  To exist in a state without their observance and be your own bug for the first and last time in your life.

You want to.  You shouldn't.

You must.

You see a chance come up and you take it.

You duck into a southward tunnel right as a colossal garpede bursts out of the ground behind you, cutting off the tall bug's view of you just long enough for you to weave your body through the tunnel network and pop up in a chamber you know to be a long way out of sight from the one you just left.  That sudden delirium is stronger now, turning into a steady thrumming of hot blood through your body as the reality of your actions settle deeply in your mind and you boggle at the sheer possibilities before you.  You could go wherever you wanted.  You could do whatever you wanted.  You could spit and swear and cry and curse the unknown father that left you the last living heir of the Nest to the high heavens, and do everything else you know you won't be allowed to do anymore once your new title hangs upon you heavier than any crown could ever hope to be.

You're not going to have a lot of time to enjoy this freedom, you know.  Your specter will find you, and you will return home, and in a few days you will be Queen of Deepnest like your mother was before you.

But right now, you're not queen of anything.  You're barely even a princess.  No.  Not even that.

You're just Hornet, and you're going to do whatever the hell you want.

You pick a tunnel at random and start exploring.

Tunnels turn to caves.  Dirt turns to stone.  You're not worried about where you're going or how you're going to get back.  Your spatial memory is excellent, and even if it weren't, you know how to listen for the garpedes and follow them back to the various nooks and crannies of the Nest that you're familiar enough with to know your way home from.  Every so often as you run your needle flies forth from your claws and impales some burrowing beast, as much for the fun of the kill as for the convenience of having food to bring back to the storerooms that you won't have to hunt for later.  You don't bother trying to take them with you.  You'll grab everything later when you're retracing your steps on the way home.

You feel incredible.  You feel more alive than you have in a long while and you're just screaming at yourself wondering why you didn't do this sooner, why you had to wait all this time to flee from your life, flee from your titles, flee from your specter.  You should have done this ages ago, you—

You round a corner and see yourself staring back at you.

The hot-blooded rush of escape dies immediately within you as you try to parse exactly what you're looking at.  You skid to a stop amidst the stone floor of this latest tunnel, all your speed and momentum and excitement forgotten.

The bug standing statuesquely in front of you does not move.

For some reason you feel the need to take a step back despite the utter lack of a reaction.

You're not exactly vainglorious, but you know what you look like.  You know the swooping horns of your mask, the glossy black carapace of your body, the red silk of your princess's smock.  You know there's no one in either Deepnest or Hallownest that looks like you.  So what the hell are you looking at?

You catch movement in the faintest corners of your vision high above you as all the displaced air from your speedy entry floats upwards, and you tear your eyes away from the copy just long enough to glance up at the cavern ceiling.

Bodies.

Dozens of bodies hanging like lanterns from black thread.  More than just mindless beasts among them, you can see the soft-shelled beetles of Hallownest interspersed with small creatures bearing oddly familiar pale masks. One of them sways gently, as if it was just recently disturbed.  While the survival capabilities of Hallownest bugs are admittedly, on average, poor enough to leave you wanting, the sight of so many of them strung up on stalactites is enough to give you pause.

Then you notice the hulking frames of two of your own weavers amidst the rest of the grim display.

Then you hear the crack of shattered chitin as the odd mirror in front of you twists its head in some unseemly direction.

Then you find yourself regretting your decision to run off and be your own bug like some kind of spoiled nymph.

Then you start running.

Your needle is already hurtling forward into the dead air of the cavern to pull you as far away from this thing as possible by the time the crunching noises stop.  You don't have much in the way of targets to choose from; you clamber onto one of the Hallownest beetles on the ceiling and stare down in reviled fascination at the thing that wore your appearance like a mask.

It's—it's bigger than you thought it would be.

It's a quadrupedal thing, spider-legged but not quite spider-like, with an odd shape to its carapace that you know couldn't possibly come from any regular sort of bug.  The spikes?  Normal.  The pedipalps?  Also quite normal.  The thin strips of chitin just barely attempting to contain what looked like a bloated, membranous thorax?  Never in all your years have you seen that before.  Never in all your years do you wish to see it again.

The mask and smock, all that remains of its Hornet disguise, hang limp and upside down from its long neck.  The swooping horns of your mask look like fangs stretching down from some great predator.  In just a fraction of a second you see your own head swivel upwards in the direction of your refuge, and the thing screeches at you.

Once again, you start running.

You hurl your way from body to body along the cavern ceiling, trying your best to dodge swipes of claws from the horrid thing beneath you or globs of what could easily be acid being spat out from the thing's invisible mouthparts.  There are only so many places you can dash to while remaining outside of its reach.  You're bobbing and weaving through the dead air as best you can, occasionally running along the cavern walls when simply taking a direct pathway with your needle would leave you unacceptably open to attack.

You have no idea what this thing is.  You have no idea how to fight it.  You send your needle forward with as many jabs and strikes as you dare, fully aware that even a single wrong movement will catch on the adjoining threads, sending you hurtling down to the floor with the monster—or worse, leave you without a weapon.  You've tried to strike at the monster's membranous thorax, hoping against hope that such an obvious weak point might be your salvation, but this creature seems to be well aware of its own vulnerabilities.  Every blow you send its way either glances or deflects, landing only surface damage against the gleaming carapace.

You can't help but cursing your earlier decision to run so manically from your specter, more than wishing that they were here with you right now.  If not the welcome addition of their combat prowess, you could certainly use the extra nail.

The creature is screeching at you again.  It leaps across the stone floor as far as it can, likely aiming to impale you upon its spiked carapace, but you manage to duck out of the way in time by flinging yourself at one of the small, pale-masked bodies close to the cavern wall.  You haven't taken any hits yet, but you can feel yourself starting to tire.  You need to either kill this thing or get out of its lair, and you imagine that one of those options will be far more likely than the other considering how little you know about it.

Of course, you could also stall for time and hope that your guardian manages to find you before the creature can kill you, but you wouldn't exactly be holding out hope for that to work even if you weren't losing steam.  The fact that they hadn't arrived already tells you that you did a very good job of throwing them off your trail.

Thanks a lot, past Hornet.

The thing is stamping its tarsals against the cavern floor repeatedly, clearly preparing itself for some kind of action, but you can't hazard a guess what.  Your current hiding place behind the impressive bulk of one of the strung-up weavers (and you swear, whether it takes you a few minutes, a few hours, or a lifetime, once this thing is dead you are taking your kinsmen home for a proper farewell) is secure enough for now that you chance taking a peek.  It's not going to jump up at you blindly again, you know that.  But something about the way it's moving reminds you, on some level, of a hunter preparing to pounce.

You chance a closer look.  The thing's entire body is in motion.  Wait.  No.  You realize, suddenly, that it's not swaying its horned head around like it had done for every other movement made so far, and clarity hits you like a punch to the mouth: it's calibrating something.

Its tarsals leave the ground once more and—

and—

White Wyrm Ascending, it is crawling up the walls.

You have no time for rational thought anymore as the creature scrambles up to the cavern ceiling and starts rushing straight at you with furious determination.  You are not a hunter right now.  That monster is the hunter.  You are its prey.

And you run for your life as all prey does.

You are as much jumping off of the weaver's corpse as you are rappelling yourself away from it, desperation fueling your movements where before there had only been grim annoyance.  You're not calculating anything.  You're not thinking anything.  You're just moving.  The creature swipes at you with its pedipalps (they're bladed like mantis claws, what was this thing?) and you hurl yourself to wherever is out of its reach.  The creature tries shooting acid at you and you do your best to dodge what you can only hear coming towards you, not even considering taking your eyes off of wherever a potential exit might be for one moment lest you miss it.

You do not have a plan.  You do not have a strategy.  All you can do is run, and look, and tire more and more rapidly as your body burns through everything it has to give you whatever scraps you can use to escape with your life.

In the next few seconds, two things happen: the first is that a glob of stomach acid (and you know, suddenly, that it has to be acid, because nothing else but acid and magic could burn this way and you know without knowing that this creature is not a Higher Being) lands crushingly upon your back, eating away at the silk of your smock and melting the chitin once hidden underneath.  The second is that something that looks like a tunnel comes up fast in the periphery of your vision, and you are hurtling yourself inside before you can even fully register making the decision to do so.

You hit the stone floor hard, unable to tell amidst the rushing of your own blood through your body if the sound of your landing was just from rocks being violently displaced and clattering about in new positions or from your own chitin cracking on impact.  You scramble to your tarsals as quickly as you can and pain lances through you as sharp as any nail.  You can't tell where it's all coming from just yet.  You don't have the luxury of taking the time to find out.  You need to leave, and fast.

With every stuttering step its own flavor of agony, you limp your way down the tunnel, hoping against hope for some kind of salvation.

(Somewhere, in the fear-clouded reaches of your mind, you recognize that the gap in the cavern wall you'd thrown yourself through was too small for the monster to follow you.  Later, when conscious thought returns to you and you can look back on your surroundings with a modicum of clarity, you will hope that that could be enough.)

Your progress along the path of this new tunnel is torturously slow, not just for the pain it causes you physically.  The acid still burns at the chitin on your back, though by now the epicenter of the impact has taken on a much more raw pain, throbbing at the movements of what's left of your smock and stinging when you come in contact with whatever particles the motion of your weary tarsals kick up ever so briefly into the dead air.  You know without needing to double check that part of your chitin has been burned away completely: the pain you're feeling now is from having the bare flesh of your abdomen exposed to the elements.

You almost trip and fall on something soft as you go, and in that moment of barely attained recovery you know you need some rest.  You're injured, you're exhausted, you're of no use to yourself if you tire yourself out just putting some distance between yourself and that damn monstrosity and can't bring yourself to move anymore in the event you need to start running again.

You tell yourself you've gotten enough of a lead.  You tell yourself the rest won't kill you.  You reposition your smock so that there's a layer of silk between your bare flesh and whatever nonsense might be lying on the cavern wall, and you sit down.  Then, with perhaps a second or third thought, you gingerly press yourself as flush to the worn, rocky surface as you can, and try to examine yourself for injury.

There are definitely cracks on the chitin of your legs.  Extensive ones.

Great.

Small mercy, however, that you're more than familiar with hairline cracks in your own shell from all your years hunting, and you know how to treat such wounds in the field.  You draw your needle more for the lines of silk attached to it than for the blade itself and harvest as much as you can.  There's nothing you can do for the cracks right now, not without finding a depository of lifeseeds or a soul-infused spring, but you can wrap your injuries tightly enough to bind the chitin together once more, and that should keep the pain down until you can find one of the above methods of magical healing.  Or until have your next molt, but you're not exactly counting on having too many of those left (if any) since you're already fairly grown for a spider, not to mention that you would have had plenty of time to find a hot spring by the time your next molt came around anyways, so it's kind of a pointless hope in the end.

Your work is pragmatic, not pretty, but it will do its job until you can find your way back to the village.  Wrapping up your legs takes up almost all of the silk that you have on you.  Almost, because you need to leave some for your needle in case you run into the monster again, and staying alive is more important than pain management.

Gods, this was not remotely how you expected your day to go when you woke up this morning.

When you find your guardian again, you really should apologize to the tall bug for running off so sudd—

There is something squirming on the floor next to you.

Your needle has already left your grip by the time you register the sensation, but luckily for the thing next to you you were expecting something perhaps a little bigger.  You're already up on your tarsals (when had that happened?) ready to make a run for it in case this thing was aiming to take advantage of an already wounded target.  You strain your eyes trying to see it better, but you don't have ogre eyes like some of your kinsmen do, and your darkvision isn't the greatest.

It's—small.  From what you can tell it's one of the small, pale-masked bugs that shared the cavern ceiling with the Hallownest beetles.  It's wrapped tight in black thread like the others were, but unlike its brethren this one seems to still be alive by the way it's moving.  Or at least, living enough—something about this small bug reminds you of your guardian specter in a way that you don't really have the time or energy to ponder right now.  It feels cold though, in that familiar way that makes you feel suddenly so much more at ease.  At least for a few seconds.  Then you just find yourself wondering what the hell is this thing?

It's stopped squirming by now, but you're fairly certain it isn't dead.  You can't see the wet gleam of any eyes behind that tiny mask, but you're certain the trapped bug is looking at you.  You really don't want it to be looking at you.  You feel like it's seeing more of you than just your carapace.

You have three options here, as far as you can tell: you can either kill this strange little bug, you can ignore it and keep going, or you can set it free from its black bindings.  All three options have a plus and a minus.  This bug could betray you and kill you if you set it free, or it could help you survive against the creature.  You would be in no danger if you killed it or left it alone—no more danger than you're already in at least—but what exactly the story is behind this little bug and any connections it might have to your specter would be lost forever.  And you're growing more and more certain that there is a connection the longer you're near this thing.

(You're nearly one hundred percent certain, for some reason you can't quite pinpoint, that if you saw this odd little bug in the light, its carapace would be matte black.)

Thankfully, your choice doesn't really require much in the way of deliberation.  You see the barely-there glint of what must be a nail peeking out from under the black threads, and you make your decision.  You need all the help you can get.

Your needle makes quick work of the threads binding the small bug.

It wriggles up to its tarsals on tiny little stump legs, using equally stumpy arms to lift itself off the ground.  You almost feel like screaming.  Until seeing the proportions this bug possessed, you were fully willing to believe it was just some species that was naturally miniscule, like a fly or a flea.  What you're looking at instead is some kind of nymph that had probably only just stumbled out of its egg when the monster caught it.

The glint catches your eye again as the bug turns to face you and your mind sputters to a halt.  Nymph or not, it is definitely carrying a nail.

You—

Okay.

You suppose this is your life now.

You nod your head down in hunter's acknowledgement at the small bug, gaining a mild surprise when it nods up at you in return, and decide that you've had enough of a rest for now.  Unlike yourself, your new companion doesn't have any injuries as far as you can tell (and isn't that another mystery, if it was caught by the creature like its other kin were?) so you don't really need to stay any longer on its behalf.  Their behalf.  The little bug isn't dead yet.  Whatever.  You're already standing again anyways, you might as well start walking again.

And you do.  Your surprise is equally mild, but much more pleasant, when you turn your head to find the small bug keeping pace with your much larger strides.  Slow as your steps may be with still-aching legs, you're glad that you don't have to slow down any further.

The tunnel you're traversing down is no more familiar to you now than it was when you first hurtled yourself inside, but at least you're starting to feel traces of dirt mixed in with the stone the farther down you go, and you know your chances of being able to find your way back to civilization will increase significantly the moment you reach pure earth—garpedes can't dig in stone, after all.  If you really try throwing out your senses, you think you can even smell something new up ahead other than just old particles and stale air.

You take a glance down at your new companion as you walk.  Their motions are rigid in a way that looks trained even if it feels natural, and you're reminded suddenly of how your guardian moves, like every step was planned for maximum efficiency.  Watching the little nymph move, you can't help but feel that even without a nail resting under their cloak, the odd little thing would be a decent combatant.

How curious considering that you'd only just met.

Where had that nail even come from, anyways?  The beasts of Deepnest weren't adverse to giving their children weaponry, not when life was already so dangerous without a means to defend oneself, but this bug was not part of the Nest or you would have met them before.  Which meant that someone, at some point in their lives, had seen a stubby little nymph as small as your legs, and decided to give them a weapon.  You take a closer look at the bug trailing along next to you.  They don't have the claws of a mantis or the stripes of a bee, and they don't hold themself like the fools of the far-off Coliseum.  If there truly was some deeper connection between this pale thing and your specter, then they and all the other little nymphs like them that had been decorating the ceiling of that horrid creature's lair must've come from Hallownest.  Which meant that whoever it was that had given them their nail was likely in Hallownest as well.

Which, as far as you were concerned, ultimately made this the Pale King's fault, as many things in life are. 

The darkness around you lessens little by little as the rock and dust gives way to root and dirt, with small amounts of bioluminescent fungi growing on the walls.  You're grateful for both the lessened strain on your eyes and the sign that you're that much closer to civilization.  The nearest landmark to help you find your way back home can't be very far now.

You can't hear anything yet, though.  No rumblings of tunneling garpedes off in the distance, no sound of mindless bugs or beasts scurrying in the soil.  No water dripping down from the upper levels, which makes you wonder what the fungi along the walls sustain themselves with.  All you can hear are the soft steps of your companion against the dirt, your own, much crunchier steps right beside them, and the exhausted wheezing of your own breath passing through the spiracles in your chest.  It's a subtle kind of oppression, you think, traversing through such heavy silence when you're so used to the noises of the Distant Village as all the deeplings crowd around everyone trying to get food, all the weavers sing at their looms while they work, all the hunters polish their nails or sharpen their claws for the next hunt, and not too far beyond them all the beasts that surround your home and provide you with food and resources live their lives in cacophonous harmony.  Even when you have to travel to attend the meetings between rulers that your mother should have been attending in your stead, there had always been noise surrounding you.

Now there is nothing but what you and you companion create, and the silence hangs heavier with tension than any shroud you could possibly hope to weave.

The light grows stronger and stronger the further down you go into the tunnels as the glowing fungus begins to overtake the walls.  A quick peek at the little bug as the two of you go along confirms your theory that their shell is indeed matte black like you thought it was.  You're not really sure what to do with that information, so for now you don't really do anything.  The path gets harder to traverse as you go despite the increase in visibility, with more gaps appearing in the hardened soil as tunnels convene or disperse and leave chunks of abandoned pathway hanging in the earth above you like gently floating platforms.  You have a bit of trouble navigating those with your injured legs and spent energy (and the pain of exerting the raw, unsupported muscles in the hole on your back isn't helping either), but your miniscule companion seems to do fairly well for themself.  For something with such small legs, they can leap quite a height.

You pull yourself onto a particularly long stretch of island earth and suddenly see two tunnels stretching out ahead of you, not one.  There's a tunnel on the same stretch of earth you're on, likely the original dug far before whatever other tunnels had opened up the ground enough to collapse the floor in places.  Then, a bit above it, the opening to another tunnel hangs empty.

You take a moment to contemplate your options.

You've been following this one specific pathway for a long while now, and some irrationally possessive part of you wants to stick to it and keep going.  You squash that part down as violently as you can.  You don't have the luxury of irrationality right now, you need to pick whatever option gives you the best chance of living to see your village again, let alone living to see your coronation.

(Gods, it seems so much longer ago that increasingly heavy piles of paperwork and a title granting you basically the same responsibilities you'd already had all your life were the most suffocating things you could have ever thought to deal with.  You can barely even recognize the Hornet of this morning, naïve fool that she seems to you now.)

The other path is a complete unknown, and that is a dangerous thing with your injuries to take into consideration.  From its positioning you can safely determine that it goes upwards, but you can't say for sure if it goes into the Fungal Wastes, or simply into another part of Deepnest.  You're... Actually somewhat ashamed that you can't tell.  Your sense of direction may be impeccable, but you're not too arrogant of a bug to admit that it isn't infallible.  You'd gotten thoroughly mixed around in the panic of trying to escape the creature wearing your mask once it had demonstrated that it wasn't nearly so limited as you'd thought it was, and now you're not entirely sure where you are in relation to any of the other parts of your home.  You have a good idea of where the creature's lair was in relation to the Distant Village, but to figure out where you are you'd have to know what direction you took off in when you threw yourself into the first chance at escape you saw.

And you do not remotely recall what direction you took off in.

You find yourself torn.  On the one claw, you recall being fairly deep in Deepnest's lower levels; going upwards from there would eventually lead you to the merchant roads, the tram that the Pale King had insisted on building between your kingdoms (he'd claimed to want to give you a lesser distance to travel between your home and his on the occasional meetings you needed to hold with your fellow monarch, but you know that he had his eyes on expanding his kingdom and made sure that that was the only tramway that would taint Deepnest's borders) and perhaps, most importantly, the hot springs that could heal your legs.

Upward movement could be your salvation.  On the other claw, it could also be your demise.  Upwards of Deepnest lay the Fungal Wastes, and that is the absolute last place that you want to be with a hole in your carapace.  The constant spores floating along in the humid air might be an annoyance on most days, but you don't want to take the risk that they might become deadly if given the chance to come into contact with raw, unguarded flesh.

Then again, for all that it's now become irrationally comforting and familiar, you don't really have any justification for believing the pathway that you're currently on will be any better for you.  You don't know of many tunnels this far deep in your domain.  For all you know, continuing as you have been will only lead you to a dead end where the ungodly mask creature can face off with you once more in an area where you have significantly less room to maneuver around it.

You don't really have much in the way of options here.  Either you take the upward tunnel or you don't.

For a moment you look down at your small companion and contemplate asking if they have any sufficiently asymmetrical geo to flip, but they look back up at you with their round, empty eyes, and you find yourself wondering why you ever thought they would even understand the concept of geo.

You huff a breath and start calculating the angle you'll need to throw your needle to reach the higher tunnel without pulling on too many of your poor muscles.  A few moments later you're flying through the dead air of the tunnel, the small nymph travelling with you not far behind.

You're pleased to say that this time, your landing is significantly more graceful.  The pale bug's landing is less so.  They miss the jump by almost half of their body length and try to scramble up the hardened earth as best they can with their tiny claws.  You manage to throw your arms over the side and catch them before they can fall down to the tunnel floor, bringing them back up as gently as you can.  You do chide them for not trying to break their journey into chunks more manageable for their size, though.  There's no need for the both of you to go crawling about the way with broken legs after all.

Speaking of.  Now that you're at a significant turning point in your escape—and you've done a significant amount of moving around—it would probably be a good idea to see how your legs are holding up.  The sharp pain that had lanced through them is a dull throbbing now that doesn't hurt nearly as much, but that doesn't mean you're in the clear.  You doublecheck the wrappings on your legs (one of the cracks looked to have spread since you'd started moving more, but enough of it was held in place with the silk that it would hold for now) and mend what needs to be mended.  Then you give yourself a nod of satisfaction, and start walking.

Within a few dozen paces the terrain of this new tunnel proves to be significantly more challenging than the last.  The level of illumination has remained more or less the same, but there are more gaps and holes in the earth here, and the path is significantly more vertical than horizontal.  You can't really call it a disappointment.  The tunnel you'd been in up until now had been an unusually straight path.  Bugs liked to build their pathways in easy to traverse forms, but Deepnest and its adjoining neighbors were all exceptionally old settlements built on the bones of an even older empire—all of their tunnels were built on tunnels their ancestors had built before them, and they intersected or collapsed or expanded in new ways as time went on and more pathways were discovered or built or caved in.  No matter how bugs liked to do things, a broken pathway was always going to be significantly more common than an unbroken one.

Still, as much as the sight of a more familiar pathway structure feels reassuring in some strange way, that doesn't mean that it isn't also going to be absolute hell on your poor body.  You are going to need to make a lot of stops to sit down and catch your breath if you want to go far.

You feel a sudden pang of envy as you look back down at the pale little nymph to gauge their feelings on continuing onwards; unlike you, the quiet bug doesn't seem to be any worse for the wear after so much travel.  You can't even hear them breathing a little heavy.  You can't even hear them breathing at all.

Of course.  How could you have forgotten?  This is your life now.

You bite back a curse and huff out a sigh and start climbing.

When all of this nonsense is over and you get back to the Distant Village, you're going to stay wrapped up in your bed for a full godsdamned day, to hell with whatever paperwork or meetings you'll have accrued in that time.  You've more than earned it by now.

Your journey through the twisting paths and scattered islands of this new pathway is, thankfully, mostly uneventful aside from the crying of your ragged body and the occasional near-miss of a jump.  On one or two occasions you rappel yourself forward with your needle only to go forward ten or so paces and realize the pale little bug still hasn't followed you yet.  Then you look back down and you find them still standing where they had been when you made your jump, staring back up at you with empty eyes as if to ask whether or not you'd forgotten that they weren't a spider and had no silk to fly away with.  It's nothing at all to head back down and carry them back up (and you really do mean nothing, the little nymph feels like they're completely empty inside for how little they weigh), though you're burning with embarrassment at having forgotten something so simple.

They pay you back once or twice too.  After a particularly complicated series of jumps and rappels and even running along the vertical surface of the hard earth island for just a quick moment, you collapse onto the compacted dirt just in time to almost get gored by a dirtcarver that popped up out of nowhere.  You're reaching for your needle in a panic only for the little bug to rush in with their nail and take care of the impromptu ambush for you.  Watching the resulting fight, you find your earlier assessment of the odd little nymph to be correct—though their stance left much to be desired and their clearly worn nail needed upgrading, the bug was indeed a capable combatant.  The dirtcarver goes down in just two well-placed blows.

You're about to ask if they would like to take a moment to enjoy the spoils of their labor (not that you aren't starving yourself, but this isn't prey you've earned the right to eat) when the little bug extends one stubby claw and draws out a translucent something from the dirtcarver's flesh that you just barely can't see and your question dies before it even passes your endites.  You see their pale mask drift up to look back at you as the bug notices your gaze.  They push the dirtcarver's limp body towards you with their nail, clearly offering to allow you to partake in some of their meal.

You stare at the dirtcarver as if it were a foreign object.

You are suddenly no longer hungry.

Your time spent resting in the resulting awkward silence is not nearly as long as it should be before you decide you've had enough and start barreling forward again.  The dirtcarver's uneaten corpse is left behind for some other scavenger to consume.

After a number of twists and turns and picking irregular intersections at random, you find yourself in a dead end.  No way forward.  No hidden corners.  Just you, and the nymph, and a slowly increasing sense of panic that gets harder and harder to ignore the more you stand here.  The rational part of your brain wants to say that the odds of the creature following you so far past its den are miniscule—no predator would be so determined to capture its prey, especially not one that clearly preferred to camouflage itself and ambush whatever came its way.  It was massive.  It could hardly fit through the tunnels you'd been traversing.  The irrational part of your brain instead focuses instead on the raw agony of your back and the weakness of your legs, and the all-consuming terror of going from hunter to hunted in only the span of a few seconds.  It wouldn't be likely, no.  But it wouldn't be impossible.

Something small and freezing cold brushes gently against the chitin of your claw and you're halfway across the tunnel with your needle drawn before you can even finish processing the sensation.  The nymph stands before you with one stubby arm outstretched, tiny claws almost imperceptible against the matte black of their carapace.  You feel a heat rush up to the base of your mask and turn your head away from your companion as you sheathe your needle.  They don't seem to be bothered by your reaction, however.

The outstretched claw moves from your direction to an indistinct point in the tunnel ceiling.  It takes you a second to follow the movement.  It takes you another second to realize what you're looking at.

There's a conspicuous rock in the roof of the tunnel that looks far too smooth to simply be part of the tunnel's natural construction.

Your dead end might not be a dead end after all.

You press your claws against the stone and grin fiercely under your mask when you feel it give way, just a little.  A hidden exit.  You call the little nymph to help you prop the stone up with its nail and you start pushing as hard as you can, wedging the stone out of position little by little until you can slip your claws out through the gap and slide it the rest of the way.  Your muscles burn without the support of your chitin, but you don't really care.  All you can feel right now is a hot rush through your system at the thought of escape.  The gap in the ceiling is more than large enough for you to fit through so you scoop the pale nymph up in your arms (they are freezing to the touch but not enough to register against the intoxication of impending freedom) and you rappel yourself upwards with your needle.

You land on hard earth, mostly stone and damp soil, and your eyes drink in a dimly lit environment with luminescent fungi lining the walls and stalactites hanging from the roof.  You do a sweep of the area.  The air is wet here, dead with lack of use but not dusty or dry like what you've been breathing for the past you don't know how long.  A few mushrooms grow in the soil at your tarsals.  If you strain your senses and hold your breath you can maybe hear something digging in the distance just loudly enough to register over the sound of your own heartbeat.

For the first time since you turned a corner and saw your own mask staring back at you, you're in a place that looks and feels like home.  And you—

You know this tunnel.

You know this tunnel and you know where you are and you know where to find the hot spring from here and you know where to go to reach the Distant Village and you have never once in your life experienced a greater joy and relief than you feel right now.

You don't even bother moving the stone back or putting the chilling nymph down.

To the left of you lies the hot springs, and you take off running so quickly that your cracked legs start crying.

There's more than just the sound of crunching chitin and tarsals colliding stone stone now; as you run you can hear the sound of burrowing creatures, and skittering legs, distant conversation, and, eventually, rushing water.  Your legs are afire in sharp pain and burning exhaustion, but you can't even bring yourself to notice the sensation anymore.  You've almost reached the hot springs.  You've almost reached salvation.  No amount of pain between then and now could possibly divert you from your path.

You follow your mental map to where the hot springs flow and immediately collide with something pale and hard when you fly into the warm grotto.  You feel the little bug slip from your arms on impact.  The sound of something—no, two somethings—colliding with a wall of water reaches you, but you can barely process it.  You're still in the air.

You hit the stone floor hard for the second time in one day, and this time you know for a fact that the cracking sound you hear is not from displaced rocks clattering against the earth.

It takes you longer than you would like to admit to haul your battered body off of the ground.  You don't manage to get quite up to your tarsals, not with your legs screaming at you again, but you're able to prop yourself up on your elbows and get into a sitting position, so you're going to call it a win.  You glance back to the hot spring to see what the splashing noise was.

The little nymph stares blankly back at you, pale mask dripping with spring water as their tiny body floats with no expended effort on their part at all.  Some part of you supposes that makes sense—they are awfully light for a bug of their size, especially when taking the weight of their nail into account.  Beside them, a greyish haze slowly blooms from under the water before a massive set of pale horns erupts from the water's surface.  You feel your eyes widen as your heart stops.

You don't even need to see the mask waiting at the end of those horns to rise up out of the water to know who you're looking at.  You've known what your specter looks like for almost your entire life.

You hurl yourself into the spring with a cry and wrap your arms as tightly around the tall bug's body as you possibly can.  There's a wave of relief you feel rushing through you like some kind of benevolent fire, and you feel like the sensation has just as much to do with the bug in your arms as it does with the hot spring water slowly easing healing soul into your body.  You can feel your guardian's body stiffen and flinch at the sudden contact.  You don't really care.  You just hug them harder.

The you of this morning was a fool to ever want to run away from the odd, gangly bug.  You never want to let go.

(Some part of you notices, maybe a bit distantly, that for once your guardian isn't cold to the touch, but you're all literally sitting in the middle of a hot spring, so you suppose the hot waters are cancelling out their natural chill.  You don't mind, though.  You could do much more with a warm hug than a freezing one.)

As much as you might never want to let go, you do have to eventually.  You open your eyes and find the tall bug staring down at you with some expression you can't quite identify.  They've always seemed empty on the surface, but they're not.  There's always something underneath that they try very hard not to let show through.  With as long as you've known them, you have a feeling whatever they're feeling is probably confusion.  You understand.  You're not exactly the most affectionate of bugs.  If you were in your guardian's place, you'd probably be confused too if someone like you decided to start hugging bugs out of nowhere.

You murmur out an apology and release your grip, swimming back to the opposite wall of the spring.

When you're no longer embedded in the odd heat of their thorax, you're able to take in more of the tall bug's appearance.  There's a warmth rising up in you that has absolutely nothing to do with the hot water.  Your guardian is slick and shiny with the spring water still dripping down their massive horns and the pale ore of their armor.  Their heavy cloak has been soaked into a much darker grey instead of the usual off-white color that marks them as one of the Pale King's retinue, and as far as you can tell their nail seems to have completely disappeared amongst the crags and the rocks of the grotto.  Hell, the nail might have even landed in the spring, which wouldn't do any of you any good if it managed to land blade side up.  You find yourself muttering more apologies for the collision.  Excitement or not, you really should've been looking where you were going.

The tall bug, as usual, does not reply.  It takes you a good number of moments, but eventually you notice that for once your specter's attention isn't on you.

They're staring at your companion, the pale little nymph bobbing and floating just a little bit beside you in the spring water, staring right back at them in return.

For a moment you had forgotten that the tiny bug was even there.

You hang back in your little corner of the hot spring after issuing a half-hearted introduction—the waters felt divine on your aching limbs, and through some grand providence managed to soothe the bare flesh on your back rather than agonize it—and you content yourself with watching the two bugs watch each other.  You've been pondering their similarities on and off for the past number of hours.  Now you finally have a chance to see the two of them up close.

There is a striking resemblance between the two bugs.

There are, of course, the similarities you've already noticed.  The odd dullness to their carapaces that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.  The empty stares behind their masks.  The masks themselves.  Bugs' masks are traditionally white or off-white, painted pale to better see one's face from far away, but you've only seen three in your life that were truly, naturally pale with no paint required.  Yours.  Your guardian's.  And now the little nymph's.

(You've wondered before, about the odd resemblance between your guardian and yourself, but those had never been questions that you felt like you could share with anyone but your mother, and your mother had been cold and dead for a good few days before you'd ever even met the bug that would be coming to live with you in her stead.)

You're certain that the nymph would look much more similar to the taller bug as they aged.  Their thin, branching horns would thicken up at the base, turning into the swooping giants that ensured your specter had to crouch through every door they ever entered.  Their nubby little limbs and claws would elongate, their thorax would turn tall and gangly.  They might even become almost like a copy of your guardian, like some long-lost twin only recently rediscovered.

But...

Something about it all feels off in a way you can't quite put your claw on, though.  The certainty that you felt in the tunnels is conspicuously absent right now.  Maybe you were wrong.  Maybe they aren't actually related at all.  There's dozens of different types of bugs that look remarkably similar to each other in the larval years only to turn out radically different when they reach their adult forms.  You're certain the smaller bug came from Hallownest, but they don't emblazon themself with the Pale King's colors like your guardian does, and they're far more proactive at both exploring the world around them and adapting to your moods or needs than the taller bug has ever been.  Perhaps the similarities you'd noticed were just coincidences.  It's not like you take the time to explore and get to know anyone on your rare trips to Hallownest proper, anyways.  For all you know bugs like your specter could be fairly common.

The little bug, evidently, seems to come to the same conclusion.  They turn away disinterestedly from your still-dripping specter and divert their attention to the rest of the grotto, turning their mask every which way to take everything in.  You wonder if they've ever even been in a hot spring before.  Maybe they haven't.

You certainly remember your first time.  It was definitely something, seeing the grand fountainheads for the first time, carved into the masks of giant bugs from ages long since fallen out of memory.  Not that you'd really been paying much attention to the décor back then.  You'd practically been bouncing off the walls, afraid that Midwife had lead you on such a grand adventure so far from home only to take you to another bath.

You sink further into the spring, shaking your head at the memory of your younger self as the soul-infused water eases away your pain and slowly mends the cracks in your worn body.  You needed this.  Even more than just for healing the wounds you've suffered today, you needed this for the sheer serenity of it all.

You can see it clearly now.  This was what you needed earlier, not some mad dash towards pretend freedom.  Even without the monstrous creature that wore your countenance showing up out of nowhere and ruining everything, your little adventure still would've ended far too soon for your liking.  You wouldn't have felt any better.  You would've instead been left feeling empty and forlorn and bitter afterwards, cursing your crown and cursing your specter and cursing yourself all for the missed chances to do whatever silly idea struck your fancy while you still had the chance.  But you didn't need to do any of that.  You didn't need to run away.  You didn't need to go on a mad hunting spree.

You just needed time to yourself.  Time to just unwind and forget about all of your worries.  Time to re-center yourself.  Time to just be.

No wonder you've been so stressed out from the coronation planning.  You've spent the last several weeks trying to be a perfect queen already, taking on as much responsibilities as you can—and for what?  Just to prove that you can handle them?  To prove that you're a capable leader?

You can already handle the harsh realities of governance.  You're already a capable leader.  A mere princess you may be, but the distinction in power between princess and queen is so much lesser when you're the only member of the royal family left to rule the Nest.

You don't need to prove yourself.

You've already proven yourself.

You don't need to remake yourself into the image of a perfect queen for the sake of your people.

You just need to be Hornet.

You're so at peace with yourself from the combination of revelation and relaxing waters that it takes far longer than it should have for you to finally notice the cold, tiny claws tugging insistently at your arm.  You open your eyes reluctantly and aim a glare down at the pale little bug floating along next to you, hoping they'll get the hint that you don't want to be bothered right now.

They do not get the hint.  If anything they are tugging at your arm much more frantically now that they know they've gotten your attention.  One of their nubby little arms is pointing a claw in your guardian's direction.

You fail to see what it is they're trying to accomplish.  Yes, the much taller bug is sitting there.  You're not really sure what they're doing in the hot spring since they don't look injured as far as you can tell, but perhaps they just haven't felt the need to get up yet when you're clearly so damaged.  There's only one entrance and exit to the spring after all, not unless someone in the upper tunnels feels like taking a mad leap into the infinitely large steam vent carved into the cavern ceiling and hope they land on some other bug on their way down.  If some danger to your life were to enter the hot springs, the taller bug would easily be able to intercept and destroy it before it could come too close.

But the little bug, evidently, does not share your certainty, pointing and pointing and gods, they're using their whole body at this point.  You roll your eyes and huff, and you crane your neck over to get a look at whatever it is that they're so determined for you to see.  You certainly have a time of it.  Between the raw muscles of your back yelling at you when you move too far out, and your gangly specter's colossal frame (or at least, their colossal horns), it takes you a lot of finagling to angle yourself in such a way that you can see whatever's behind them.  From what you can tell, there's some cloaked traveler hunched over in the cavern entrance, and you—

You can't breathe suddenly.

Whatever humid vapors that had been flowing through your spiracles stop.  Your chest is at once much too tight for anything to come in, even precious air.  In just a matter of seconds you feel all of the heat of the springs vanish from your frame is if it had never been there in the first place, because you cannot possibly be seeing what you're seeing but you cannot tear your eyes away.

Standing just past your guardian's horns at the cavern entrance, scuffed and battered and stained and leaning against the rock wall to take pressure off of one leg—

Is your guardian.  Is an almost identical copy of your guardian, marred only by the marks of battle.

Part of their pale cloak is torn and part of it is covered in some black substance you can't identify from so far away.  There are visible chips and cracks in their armor.  They seem to be missing a looped pauldron.  But beyond just the sorry state of their apparel, your eyes are drawn to what's in their claws—the arm not being used to brace themself against the rockface is holding on tightly to the pale ore nail that your specter carries with them at all times.

The same pale ore nail that you had never heard clattering to the ground when you'd impacted against your guardian specter's shell.

The same pale ore nail that you had never seen lying around the cavern floor after sinking into the spring to relax.

The same pale ore nail that you're slowly realizing had never actually been there in the first place.

Movement in the corner of your vision brings your gaze back in front of you before you can ever fully process what you're looking at.  Your guardian—the one sitting in the hot spring with you—is staring right back at you with a curious intensity.  Their head tilts back in apparent confusion.

You're hurtling yourself out of the water as fast as your legs can propel you when their head twists back far enough for the chitin to start cracking.

Air punches its way into your spiracles, but your chest is still unbearably tight as you try to put as much room between yourself and the creature in the spring as possible.  You can feel your heart pounding, beating against the hard chitin of your abdomen like it's trying to break its way out of your body.

You knew there was a possibility of running into this horrid monstrosity again before you made your way home, but you didn't think it would be able to ambush you a second time, especially not with the same trick.  Your tarsals land on the edge of one of the fountainheads.  The pale carving's surface is slick with condensation, sending you sliding back a little as you come in contact with the smooth stone and almost robbing you of your balance.  Almost, but not quite.

Your legs no longer scream at you like they would have if you'd made such an impact a scant few minutes ago, but there are still twinges and aches underneath your soaked wrappings.  The hole in your carapace is likewise nowhere near mended.

It will have to do.  You can only hope that the residual spring water clinging to your wrappings and your smock will help give you some relief as you fight for your life for the second time today.

The creature in the spring takes a few seconds to twist and bloat into its true form and that gives you a few seconds to catalogue your surroundings and determine the best possible vantage points for skirting around the damn thing and attacking from a distance.  You don't have much luck.  This cavern is significantly smaller than the one the creature made its lair in and the condensation from the hot spring water has made the rocks slippery and treacherous.  It will not have any luck climbing up the walls to attack you on the ceiling, but neither will you have any luck running along those same walls trying to avoid it.  There are no bodies hanging from the ceiling that you can use as jumping off points, either.  There are stalactites aplenty, but none of them look sturdy enough to withstand your weight and momentum for very long.

You are injured, you are low on silk, and your movements in this arena will be significantly more restricted than they were the last time.

At least you can take solace in the fact that this time you're not alone.

Movement on the field below you draws your eyes away from the hulking black mass of the creature in the springs—the little nymph had been swept up in the great upheaval of water caused both by your sudden departure and your false guardian's transformation.  They're flailing about in the draining water, trying to find their footing in the slick stones and sudden current, and they're failing badly.  There's a pang of something sharp in your chest as you watch them, but you pull your eyes away and steel your limbs to keep them from moving.  The pale little bug is far too close to the creature to risk diving back down to grab it.  You push any thoughts of rescue from your mind as you plan your next move.  The small bug had survived an encounter with this thing once already just fine without your help.  Surely they could hold out for just a few more moments.

There's more than just them to look out for, though.  There's a third combatant on this field.  You glance back at your specter.

Even from so far away, you can see them shift their weight from tarsal to tarsal and slide into an attacking stance.  They shift their grip on their nail so that it's held in both of their claws instead of just the one.  A flash of understanding burns through your mind.  You know what they're planning, just as easily as if you could see it written on every chitinous plate of their carapace.

They're going to charge the creature.  They're going to draw it away from you in the hopes of giving you time to escape.  They're going to get themselves killed unless the creature doesn't see them coming.

The moment your guardian starts rushing forward you launch your needle at one of the sturdiest-looking stalactites on the cavern ceiling and spring forth into the air, hoping against hope that the monstrous thing wearing their mask will take the bait.

It does.

The creature charges furiously at you with its claws, swinging its massive false head like a pendulum.  Most of the swipes miss you by a wide margin, but a few force you to swing wildly through the air and change the angle of your arcs to avoid getting cleaved in half.  You're keeping your eyes on the creature as you move, not on your specter or the little nymph.  If you're going to be their distraction, you can't afford to be distracted yourself.

You only know your guardian's nail has it its mark when the creature starts making that ungodly screeching again.

You're mid-swing.  Low enough to the floor that you can make the fall with little issue.  The beast is recoiling in pain, frozen and unguarded.  An easy target.  This is an ambush predator, used to quick strikes and easy meals.  Not a pursuit predator used to its prey fighting back.  You drop from the ceiling amidst the rushing of humid air all around you and land as close enough to the creature as you possibly can, your needle flying from your claws as soon as your tarsals collide with the slick stone of the cavern floor.

(If you can just hit the thorax—!)

The creature spasms suddenly in its agony.  It rears back just in time to move your target, thrashing its false head in the humid air and sending your needle bouncing uselessly off of hard chitin instead of the thin membrane bulging forth from its belly.  You bite back an enraged string of curses.

The massive mask of the thing's head swings over in your direction.  If the horns of your own mask looked like fangs hanging upside down on that long neck, your specter's massive horns look like serrated jaws.  Your attack might've missed, but the creature turns its attention to you all the same.  One of its mantis-sharp claws rakes out at you in retaliation, too fast for you to avoid completely.  A sudden stinging pain erupts from your abdomen as you leap back.  Parts of your princess's smock flutter away in the humid air, shorn clean off the rest of the fabric.

You land awkwardly on the slick stone, sliding back farther than you'd meant to and aggravating your partially-healed legs.

You press a claw to the wound.  The pain intensifies but only a minimum of wetness greets you.  Shallow, then.  It'll hurt, but it won't kill you.

Good.

The creature strikes out with its claws again and this time they catch on your guardian's pale ore nail.  Motes of a dark and unfathomable something float around them as they dash in just a bit too fast for you to see clearly.  There are definite marks in the tall bug's armor amidst the cracks and chinks (did they fight this beast while you were running through the tunnels—?), but their grip is strong, and their nail is unyielding.  The creature lashes out again and again with those mantis-sharp claws, but each time your guardian blocks the blow.

You ready your needle.  Within a few more failed blows, the creature should get aggravated enough to give you an opening to strike.  You might not kill it, but still you'll do a fair amount of damage, and that's not a chance you're going to let slip by you.

Then a dark blur comes rushing in out of the corner of your vision.  What in the—?

The blur collides harshly against the false head of the creature, sending it howling in pain and skidding across the cavern floor as its thin, spider-like legs buckle out from underneath it.  You can hear the crack of shattering chitin clear as day—you just don't exactly know whether the noise came from the creature or whatever it was that just hit it.

The dark figure solidifies before you into the shape of the little nymph, a hairline fracture marring the surface of their mask and a nail held proudly and firmly in their miniscule claws, and understanding flows through you like water.  Evidently your companion has finally found their footing in the slick environment of the cavern and has decided to join the fight.

Took them long enough.  Any longer and you might have started to get a little worried.

A short distance away the creature stumbles its way up to a standing position atop awkward legs, shaking its false head furiously, and you're grinning fiercely under your mask when the reason for its trouble becomes clear to you.

One of its legs is missing.  The spasms of pain earlier must've been from your guardian cleaving the limb right off.

You spare a glance at your guardian.  Their claws are clenched in preparation, nail held firmly in one and wisps of something black and freezing held in the other.  The dark motes floating around them have not dissipated.  If anything, they've increased, leaving you wondering what your specter has planned.

Wondering, but not doubting.

The little bug up ahead of the both of you has their nail drawn in a stance you're not familiar with, but you recognize training when you see it.

You can feel your heart swelling with pride as you look at the both of them.  You can do this.  With your guardian's help, with the little nymph's help, you can surely kill this thing.

The creature screeches at you, high and shrill and furious.  It rears its limbs and prepares to charge.

The nymph rushes off to the side.  Your specter flits away in a streak of dark motes.  You hurl your needle up at the stalactites and take to the ceiling.  If the creature wants to charge at the three of you again, it will have to leave itself open to attack from whatever targets it decided not to focus on.

You're not going to give it peace.  You're not going to give it an easy battle.

You are going to swarm it, and you're going to make its last moments in this world a living hell.

The nymph is the first to rush in and you are more than happy to run interference with your specter.  You can't attack it while swinging from the stalactites, but if you get enough air on your upswing you have enough time to pivot around and lash out at the beast before needing to find another anchor point to keep yourself from falling too far.  You don't care if your attacks meet their mark, and you don't care if they do much in the way of damage.  You strike quick and constant and merciless with your needle like the great stinging beast you're named after, keeping the thing too disoriented to focus—meanwhile the nymph runs low along the cavern floor making quick gouges along the creature's odd-numbered legs, weaving in and out of the damned thing's range as your specter dashes all around slashing away at its sides.

It can't concentrate on three assailants at once.  The creature buckles and stutters under the assault, collapsing under its own gargantuan weight and falling to a twitching mass on the cavern floor.  You drop from the ceiling and hang back.  It throws its massive neck back one more time screams, louder than everything you've heard so far.

For a moment, the sound fills you with a feral pride as you expect you're hearing whatever this thing's death cries sound like.

And then you realize you that you forgot it can shoot sizzling acid from its head as the creature proceeds to do just that.

You are running out of blast range as fast as you can.

The nymph and your guardian might've been safely out of range of the creature's claws, but they do not see the acid globs quickly enough to get away in time.  You see your guardian suffer a direct impact with their shoulder just in time for them to vanish into the black motes again, reappearing a short distance away with a limp arm and a massive hole eating away at their pale cloak.  There's no flesh exposed on the joint from what you can see—you hope the heavy garment took the brunt of the acid's damage before it could devour too much of their carapace.

You see your guardian, but you hear the crack of the nymph's shell when the globule impacts.

Your head whips around so quickly it hurts.

Their tiny body skids along the slick surface of the cavern floor.  You feel like kicking yourself.  Of course the force of the impact would've been so much greater against such a small target.

There are motes of black something coming off from their tiny body, and when they finally stop moving the little bug looks, just for a second, like they might be okay.  There's a deep crack in their mask, but it's fine.  This is a hot spring.  Whatever wounds they get can be healed.  Everything will be fine.

And then their mask cracks in half.

And then the little nymph dissolves.

The thing screeches again somewhere off in the distance, but you can't hear anymore.  You can't see anymore.  The Pale King himself could grace this cavern and everyone inside it, and you wouldn't know.

The world continues on outside without you.

A rush of displaced air against you.  The smell of stomach acid.  The sound of something wet splattering against the stone next to you.  The sting of something eating away at your tarsals, slowly but surely.

You barely notice any of it.

All that exists in your reality right now are the broken fragments of a tiny mask, and a swirl of black like smoke rising up from where a body should be but isn't.

Then the last few wisps of smoke are starting to fade from the pale little bug's mask, and the needle held firmly in your claws is starting to shake, and if you stretch out your senses and concentrate really hard you can feel the chill of your specter standing not too far away from you, distant and detached and something you can't fully explain, and just beyond them you can feel the heat and fury of a wounded beast that very, very, very, very much needs to die.

You feel a fury in yourself, too.  One much colder, but no less severe.

You crouch down just a moment to undo the knots binding silk to your broken legs, and then you start running.

The creature stands against the wall with uneven legs, shaking its massive head unsteadily.  Unsteady does not mean weak.  You thrust your needle forward at it, and a clawed pedipalp bats the offending metal off to the side before the blade can sink into the thing's carapace.  It screeches at you again.

You don't care.  You don't even bother to pull your needle back yet.  You're still running.

Your needle is lethal, but it is not the only weapon at your disposal.

How easily bugs forget that spiders, too, are ambush predators.

You sprint directly into the beast's melee range, ducking under one swing of a claw while your specter dashes in to block the other with their nail, and only now when you're right next to the damnable thing's battered legs do you pull back your needle.  The sharp metal scores the chitin of the creature's legs deeply on its path back to you, leaving weeping gashes on two of the three remaining limbs.

The creature screams in agony.  It tries to charge you, but you are already leaping out of the way, silk trailing behind you as you shout at your guardian to keep the damned thing occupied.

They are only too eager to oblige.

Your attention becomes somewhat split very quickly.  On the one claw, your guardian is slashing at the creature rapidly with their pale ore nail, giving it neither quarter nor respite as they move through the forms they'd surely learned in the White Palace training with knights.  It is taking the creature everything it can possibly draw on merely just to keep up with the tall bug's onslaught, but you do not dare to risk assuming that it cannot strike against you.  You duck and weave and bob and run, avoiding the swings of nail and claw as deftly as you can, loosing your silk threads as you go.  You leave your trail only just tight enough not to unravel, and slack enough that the creature will not notice the trap you're building around it until it is too late to escape.

Just a little more, and your web will be complete.  The creature cannot block all of your specter's blows, and the exertion of trying is weakening it regardless.  When you pull your strings taut and send it crashing to the ground, you and your guardian will strike the final blow.

You will destroy this thing, and you will bring the little nymph's mask home to bury in thanks for its aid.

In the next few seconds, however, two things happen: the first is that one of your battered legs, thrice broken today alone and now no longer bound quite so tightly in silk, finally gives out.  The chitin shatters completely, exposing yet more of your bare flesh to the hot air of the tunnels, and without the support of your carapace you no longer have the strength needed to adequately place pressure on the limb.  The second is that when your leg shatters, and your strength fails you, the now-useless limb catches on a particularly slick stone on the cavern floor, and you find yourself careening downwards.

The pull of your body on the thread is just enough for the creature to notice the steadily increasing bindings you've been placing on it.

And the duration of your fall is just long enough for the creature to launch an attack in retaliation.

A mantis-sharp claw rushes in from your blindside and collides mercilessly with your body.  Your needle flies from your grip.  Whatever cry you might've made is utterly silent as your book lung collapses in on itself on impact.  Pain erupts from you like a garpede erupting from the earth.

Your broken body goes flying.  For a few brief moments you are merely soaring through the air until you land chest-first against one of the cavern walls.  You can feel your carapace cracking just as sure as you can hear it.  Your entire body feels as if it has been set aflame.

You fall in a heap on the wet stone beneath you.  You can't even begin to feel glad that the broad side of the claw had merely bludgeoned you rather than the sharp side bisecting you, or that you had just shattered the side of your body that still had chitin left to shatter rather than landing on bare, unguarded flesh.  Your heart likely would've ruptured on impact.

You're in enough pain right now that you're not entirely sure whether or not that wouldn't have been preferable.

Your vision is swimming and your head feels like even your mask has cracks marring its surface, but your eyes are wedged open and you can still see to the other side of the cavern.  Your guardian looks on at your crumpled form, staggered and frozen (in fear?) just long enough to give the creature the opportunity to tear open your silk web with its claws.  With its legs free, the beast charges.

And it leaps.

Its three remaining legs land on the slick stone with such a momentous crash that the sheer displacement of it all lifts you up into the air a bit momentarily.

And it screams.

So this is it for you.  You're too far from your guardian to be rescued before the final blow can rain down upon you, so there's no point in hoping for anything better.

And it raises a claw.

You'd close your eyes and meet the end with dignity, but your face is pressed too harshly against your own mask to allow for such a luxury.

And it swings.

No matter.  At least, as the creature's false mask swings pendulously in front of you, that your last moments will be spent peering into the familiar face of your wait what's that white glow—

Great blades erupt suddenly from the earth in front of you, skewering the creature like so many nails.  It screeches in pain, the sound deafening from so small a distance.

Some distant part of you wonders if these are the death cries you had wanted so badly.

Some distant part of you wonders if perhaps you're the one screaming your last and just haven't realized it yet.

Spurts of the thing's blood splash against your mask as its carapace is pierced by what looks like no less than seven massive nails.  Somehow, none of the blood manages to get in your eye.  The nails (shining and etched like pale ore) extend far enough from the ground that they lift the creature up into the air, its weight supported by the nails in its flesh as that very same weight causes those very same nails to dig deeper and deeper through its body.  One of the ethereal nails pierces the bloated membranous sack of the creature's belly, spilling its stomach acids all over what remains of its limbs and causing it to screech ever louder.  Its head thrashes at the end of its impossibly long neck.  Its legs spasm uncontrollably in the air.  Its cries sputter and halt.

Quick as they appeared, the great nails disappear into motes of white something, drifting upwards into the humid air of the cavern as though riding on the rising steam.  For a brief moment you can see your specter in the dead space between the creature's legs, but then its body collapses without the nails' support holding it aloft, and it falls to the ground in a pile of broken chitin and weeping wounds just as unglamorously as you did.

You suppose that you should be happy.  Or at least, relieved.  You're not going to die anymore.

(Well, not immediately, anyways.)

But for a split second, you saw something.  The gangly form of your guardian, hunched over and rising from a crouch, pulling their pale ore nail from the ground as if they were the one that had caused those great ethereal nails to appear.  And there's a part of you that wants to scream because of what that implies.

Magic.  True magic.  Not some parlor trick like you'd thought before, but actual spells, actual craft, actual manipulation of the soul like what the Pale King liked to show off with whenever he felt like making a power play at a meeting.  All this time they had magic, and when it could've come in handy earlier in the fight they decide to hold back until the very last blow?!

You see them rising tall behind the massive bulk of the creature's corpse, wavering and drifting as though they were favoring one of their legs, but still as poised as you've ever seen them.  And it is only by virtue of the fact that you are glaring at them so intently, wishing dearly that you could yell at them for holding back in the face of the pale little nymph's death, that you notice that they are not wavering with some kind of a limp.

Your specter is trembling.

Not from exertion, no, not as far as you can tell.  They weren't anywhere near winded enough from the fight to cause such a reaction, and you might not be a shaman or one of the weavers that still tells tales of the old country, but you know deep in your ganglia that no one singular spell would be enough to drain the tall bug's reserve of soul so completely.  Even if they were, it would be flagrantly out of character for the tall bug to display their weakness so brazenly.  Even the most mortal of wounds had only ever been betrayed by a minor limp or a pressing claw.  So why—?

As they walk towards you step after unsteady step, you can see—just barely out of the corners of your vision, but you can see it—one of their claws gripping at the heavy cloak of pale fabric draped around their shoulders.  The most prominent symbol linking them to the Pale King in distant Hallownest that had gifted them to you all those years ago, threatening to tear into ribbons as their matte black claws stress the fabric.  Some epiphany fills you then, realization hitting you before the words behind it have the chance to form.

If they have never once in your life utilized magic until now, then it was likely not the spell that had brought them so low, but the act of casting magic itself.  Your head is beginning to feel fuzzy like moss, and you're fairly certain you're starting to lose blood, but still you can't help but wrack your brain as to why.  You've never heard of magic being forbidden in Hallownest, especially not when the High—

The Higher—

You—

It's getting dark—

(You'd known without knowing that they—)

Everything fades to black.

You reawaken what feels like only scant moments later, a warmth like the spring flowing through you.  It feels differently from the hot spring, however: the warmth is almost theoretical, more of a soothing sensation than any actual heat, and it feels almost harsh.  As if it were being actively forced through you instead of passively absorbed.

You open your eyes.

Your guardian looms before you, pressing their claws to your myriad wounds as a pale white light emanates from the normally black digits.  Wherever the light rests you can feel your chitin start to knit itself together.  You can feel your wounds mending.

You notice, a bit mutedly, that you appear to have been repositioned while you were unconscious.  You're not lying on your side anymore.  You can't see your princess's smock, but you can feel it cushioning your body.  More importantly, you can feel it cushioning the wound on your back.  From how your specter's glowing claws keep finding new things in your chest to repair, you're going to go out on a limb and say that whatever damage you sustained with that last impact was probably enough to kill you even if the creature's claws didn't.

You... don't know how you feel about that anymore.  With your fury gone and the creature dead, you're feeling oddly hollow inside, like all of your emotions had been torn away from you and left for you to rediscover later.  You'll probably have a stronger reaction later once the dust has had time to settle and reality comes flying at you full force like one of the creature's mantis-sharp claws, but for now?  You have nothing.

Well.  Almost nothing.

You haven't forgotten the revelation you'd had about your specter before losing consciousness.  It makes sense, especially in all the ways that you wish it wouldn't.  The odd behavior you'd chalked up to them being some kind of living-dead entity—all of that can be explained.  A Higher Being would not need to worry about eating or breathing or succumbing to seemingly-mortal blows.  A Higher Being would not need to abide by the common rules of the living bug at all if they didn't want to. And... If your suspicions regarding your guardian being given as wergild rather than a true gift were correct, you could think of little else in the world that could match the price in blood for a dead Queen.

But between the Pale King and the White Lady, Hallownest already has two Higher Beings living within its borders, and you've never heard of a third being born to the Royal Gods of the kingdom.  So what does that make your specter then, some bastard child the Pale King had been keeping a secret this whole time and was eager to get rid of?

...

You hate how plausible that sounds.

But whatever the true answer here is, you know it's the Pale King's fault, as many things in life are, and that's going to have to be enough for now.

You close your eyes and let the Higher Being do what Higher Beings do.  Some part of you wonders why they're bothering to heal you themself when the spring is already right there, especially since casting the spell that had saved your life left them so distraught in the first place.  Maybe they thought there was no point in continuing to hide now that the damage had been done?

No, that doesn't sound right.  Your guardian was the type to ask for permission, not for forgiveness.  More likely they'd probably thought that the shock of water in your wounds would kill you before the soul infusion could do its job properly.

Eventually your guardian's hands cease distributing soul into your wounds and withdraw.  Your eyes flutter back open.

They rise to their tarsals once more, steadying their posture as they ascend until you are looking at the figure you most commonly associate with your guardian: impossibly tall, impossibly poised, impossibly controlled.  Save for the damage to their armor, and the gaping hole in their cloak, there is nothing to indicate that the bug you look on now is the same one that had seemed almost ready to collapse just a few scant moments ago.  They hold a claw out for you to take, and guide you up by your shoulder into a sitting position.

You croak out your thanks, momentarily startled by how horrible your voice sounds.  In retrospect, you're not entirely sure how it doesn't sound even worse considering everything you've been through today.

To your infinite surprise however, for the first time in their life your wordless specter actually responds.  Against everything you know about them and their behaviors, they give you a small nod of acknowledgement before turning their attention to the side.  You follow their gaze about half a second later.

What you see makes you start swearing.

There is something floating above the remains of the pale nymph's shattered mask.  Black and wispy and leaking motes of unknowable something as it stares at you with bright white eyes.  It's shaped like the little bug it's floating above, the horns a bit longer and the cloak a bit more dramatic, but still ultimately recognizable as your little companion through the underlaying tunnels.

Gods.  You had thought your guardian to be a specter.  And now you see a real one in front of you.

...Wait.

The myriad similarities between the small nymph and your impossibly tall guardian strike you again with maddening force, and you can't help but wonder if your specter can become such a dark spirit as well.  Without the creature wearing your guardian's shape confounding your senses, that sureness you had before is back.  There is a connection between them, even if you don't know what exactly it is.

You're struck again by the realization that if the two odd bugs are of the same breed, there's a very good chance the little pale thing is a Higher Being as well.  You're so utterly taken aback by the idea of such a ludicrous (and regretfully plausible) reality that you don't notice your specter moving away until you see them kneeling by the floating shade's base.

They lift up the broken pieces of the little nymph's mask in their claws gently, like they're carrying something sacred, and limp slowly to the hot spring in the center of the cavern.  To your surprise, the empty black ghost left behind in the nymph's disappearance follows them.

Your guardian eases their way into the spring.  At this distance you can see them visibly wincing at the sudden change in temperature, and you're kicking yourself internally for ever thinking that placing someone so cold into something so hot would ever result in a shell of regular temperature.  Of course the sudden shock would hurt.  Of course it would.  Some of the black liquid that had been staining their cloak seeps out into the spring water as they go further in.  By the time they're as submerged as they possibly can be with their imposing height, the pool of soul-infused water has gained a sizable cloud of ink black in it, like someone had spilled paint all over themselves before they'd hopped in.

(Or blood, some part of you thinks, and you try your hardest to squash down that thought with the knowledge that if your specter was bleeding, the hot springs would be the best place for them to go anyways.)

They dip the mask shards in their claws down under the water and they wait.  You find yourself waiting too, much more impatiently since unlike them, you don't have any clear idea of what's going on, and you don't know how long whatever this is will take.  You check the state of your most grievously broken leg.  The silk wrappings have been retied and retightened, but it's not mended enough to be worth putting any weight on, so you lift yourself ever so slowly off your princess's smock and drag yourself across the slick stones to the edge of the spring.  The thought occurs to you to let your leg soak in the spring while you wait, but one look at the leaking black suffusing through the water withers that idea very quickly.  You might not know what it is, but you know that letting it get into your wounds would be a horrible idea.

For now, you will simply be content to watch from closer up.

For a moment nothing at all seems to happen.  There's a slight movement along the surface of the water that feels off from the usual ebbing and flowing of the spring's gentle currents.  You squint your eyes and focus.  The movement isn't just slight.  The black liquid in the water is moving of its own accord, swirling slowly counterclockwise before starting to coalesce in the center of the pool.

There's a sudden sensation of alien chill along the horns of your mask, startling you enough that you almost jump to your tarsals with your needle (wait, where is your needle) at the ready.  When you look around yourself, you can't see anything that would make sense bringing cold into such a humid area, but then you look up.  That black ghost, the floating shade the little nymph left behind shaped like their mask and cloak was floating along in the air around the spring, quicker and quicker, counterclockwise just like the swirling black underneath them.

You glance back down.  In the steadily expanding blackness of the spring's center, you can just barely make out your guardian's claws pressing the mask shards together as if they were whole.

You absolutely do not have any idea of what's going on right now.  You're just going to assume this is some magic you're not familiar with and trust your specter to know what they're doing.

The spinning gets faster and faster, and you can see the water start to bubble and rise in the center.  You can see your guardian's arms moving slowly underneath their cloak, raising the shards in their claws higher and higher in the water.  Then, without warning, they lift the mask up with a sudden, sharp motion.  There's a flash of something when they do—darkness or lightness, you can't tell which—that's strong enough to force you to shut your eyes.  You can vaguely feel the chill lingering around your horns vanish.

The flash lingers on the back of your eyes, coloring your eigengrau with something you don't (can't) understand.  You rub at your eyelids with your claws.  You wait a few moments.

When you open your eyes again, you see your guardian holding not the little nymph's mask in their claws, but the tiny little bug themself, whole and well.

Their mask turns.  They look at you, empty eyes just like your guardian's, and a shallow groove along their mask marking the spot where it had shattered into pieces.  Somehow even their nail has returned with them.

You almost start crying.

No, scratch that, you've been through a lot today.  You absolutely start crying.

The black in the water is gone, leaving nothing behind but the two bugs standing inside.  You push yourself off the wet stone and into the hot springs, trusting the buoyant waters to keep you aloft even when your broken leg can't, and you wrap your arms as tightly around the tiny bug as you can stand to.  Their small body is absolutely freezing to the touch.  It's worse now than it was earlier because you don't have your smock to provide insulation, but you physically cannot bring yourself to care.  This little bug died for you, and braving a little chill to give them a hug is the least you can do to thank them.

You speak your gratitude, your anger, your worry, your elation to the freezing nymph in your arms, bawling your eyes out all the while.  Everything in your head, from their death to your mother's to yours and your guardian's own injuries to your upcoming coronation of all things, you just empty it out upon them, like they're a vessel waiting to be filled with your words.  They're certainly listening intently if that focused stare is any indication.

Eventually you let go.  Eventually your words taper off and your wound-hoarse voice goes quiet.  Eventually you step away.  The little bug still looks at you, in that way they did before that made you feel as if they were seeing more than just your physical body.  You don't mind it so much now.  You've already lain bare everything inside of you that was needling at your mind.  You have nothing to hide.

They turn back to the much taller bug holding their tiny frame in their claws, peering up at your specter with some intensity you have no hope of identifying.  Their stumpy little legs move forward, ever so slightly—

And promptly slip on the water-slickened carapace.  Your guardian darts out a claw faster than anything you've ever seen in your life to catch them.

They set the small bug very gently back onto their claws, right where they were before.  The little nymph looks at them as their claw settles back into place.  They look down at the claws they stand on.  Back up at the taller bug's mask.  They take a few steps forward and slip again.

Once more, your guardian catches them.  Once more, they set the little bug back into place.  Once more, the bug steps forwards and slips out of their outstretched claws.  And your guardian just... lets them continue like that.

Over and over again.  Catching the little bug as they fall.

You feel like there's some significance to the gesture that you're probably never going to understand.

There's an odd feeling of intrusion starting to coil up in you.  It feels like you're watching something private, somehow.  You really don't care for it.

But before you can excuse yourself, likely with the objective of finding your needle, or putting your smock back on, or seeing how well your slowly healing legs can support your weight for however long it takes for the moment to end—it does.  The pale little nymph drops prone on your guardian's outstretched claws and wraps its stubby little arms around one of the taller bug's wrists as tightly as it can.  You can see their gangly form go rigid instantly.

Clearly, this was not an outcome that they had anticipated.

You almost want to laugh.  You do, actually, let out a few giggles that hurt somewhat considering everything that had been broken in your chest very recently.  Ow.  You are not going to be giggling again any time soon.  But what did they expect?  To save someone's life and then not get at least something so small as a hug in return?

...Oh wait.  They've saved your life countless times by now and you genuinely can't remember the last time you gave them more than a crisp nod of acknowledgement for the task.  You probably haven't given them a hug in years.  And if you haven't, it's likely that no one else has either.

Clearly you need to fix that.

You take a few steps closer in the spring and pluck the tiny nymph off of your guardian's wrist, depositing them in one of your arms.  You can feel them struggling a little against your carapace as you hold them close.  Apparently they didn't want to be moved.  You give them a conspiratorial shush, marveling as their tiny body immediately eases.  So the little bug has a mischievous streak?  Wonderful.

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see your specter relaxing their posture just a tiny bit in response to their wrist being freed.  They withdraw their arms beneath their cloak and loosen their back.  They seem to breathe a sigh in relief, though you're well aware that breath isn't something that your specter does.

On a count of three you wrap your arms around their thorax and they go still as a statue again.  The little nymph in your arms is only too happy to follow your example.

This hug is significantly less cold than the one you gave to the little nymph; at least on the side of your body that isn't directly holding them.  Your guardian's pale cloak is heavily insulated (maybe it's supposed to ward off their chill?), and the fabric is damp with hot spring water beside.  They still haven't moved at all while you're hugging them, just standing still at attention and likely waiting for this ordeal to end.  You stretch your endites in a grin underneath your mask.  You don't plan on letting it end any time soon.

As the seconds drag on, you can practically see your guardian considering the situation.  Wondering how best to proceed.

Their mask angles itself very slightly in your direction.  You don't even need to hear them say anything to know what they mean.  Ask for permission, not for forgiveness.

You give them a nod.

Then, slowly but surely, a pair of gangly, matte black arms stretch out from underneath their pale cloak, and wrap around you and the pale little bug in your arms.  Loosely at first.  Then tightly.  The taller bug practically pulls the two of you closer to them as their arms cinch tighter.

It is cold, and wet, and and even a little painful between the points of their armor and the giant hole in your abdominal plating, but you lean into the embrace happily.  You absolutely don't want to let go any time soon.  The you of this morning was a fool for wanting to abandon your specter.  The you of right now can't even begin to imagine leaving them behind.

You do have to let go eventually, though.  The chill eventually causes you to start shivering, and the little nymph starts to get restless and squirmy, and your guardian has their own wounds to tend to in the soul-infused spring.  You all pull away after a time, and you retreat to your own respective corners of the hot spring.  At least, you and your guardian do.  The little bug, having been completely restored through whatever odd process had brought them back to life in the first place, had no injuries or aches for the spring to mend, and very swiftly runs off to explore the rest of the grotto.  You let them wander off as they like, instructing them only to not get themself killed again and to recover your needle if at all possible.

They do not respond, but you hope that they got the message anyways.

You sink back into the hot spring.  The water takes significantly longer to heal your wounds than your guardian's earlier magic, but it feels easier on your system.  And you're not going to be complaining about the relaxing soak, either.

Still, as much as you want to just unwind and forget yourself as you did earlier when you still thought you had escaped the shapeshifting creature, you can't seem to reach that same state anymore.  You've triumphed over the beast that nearly broke you.  You've realized the error in attempting to handle everything yourself.  You've emptied yourself of all your worries.  So why can't you just sit back and let yourself float away for a few hours?  Because...

Because...

Because your problems are still there.  You may have exorcised yourself of the stress that they'd been placing on you, but the root cause of that stress still remains, and will continue to remain until you pull the root up and deal with it.

You still have a lengthy period of physical recovery to go through since the hot springs won't be able to heal everything in just one day.

You still have a coronation to plan and attend, and political work to do as Queen of Deepnest.

You still have a number of bodies to recover from the creature's lair, most of which will have to be repatriated to Hallownest which means you'll have to deal with the Pale King soon.

You still have your specter to figure out, why a Higher Being was sent to guard a neighboring princess, why they were hidden, why they were forbidden from using their magic.

You still have the little nymph to puzzle out what to do with, as there's clearly something important going on with them, and even ignoring that you're not going to just leave them behind after they literally died for you.

You still probably have a whole host of other things beyond all that to deal with that are slipping your mind right now because gods, have you had a day.  And now you can't relax because you know that you'll have to go back and deal with them all anyways after you leave the hot spring and head back home to the Distant Village.  Isn't that a right kick in the mask?

A small clicking noise gets your attention.  You look over at your specter's end of the hot spring.

Their long claws are fiddling with the straps of their armor, slowly and methodically removing the broken and damaged pieces.  An...unusual choice for them to be making.  You look harder.  There's not a single pale ore plate that looks unblemished.  Surprising, considering how durable the material is.  Whatever they had fought between you leaving them in the tunnels and meeting them again in the hot springs must've hit like a falling boulder.  But you don't really see the point in removing the armor now when it would be more practical to keep it on for the return trip and simply wait to bring it with them on the next trip to Hallownest for repairs.  Pale ore didn't rust in water, after all.  There was no need to remove the pieces now.

Unless they weren't planning on bringing the pieces with them.

You glance up at their mask, angled downwards just enough to see the clasps and straps properly.  As conversationally as you can, you note aloud that some of the pieces of their armor are missing.  Likely lost in the tunnels where they would be rather difficult to reacquire.

Their claws curl hesitatingly mid-removal, but they do not otherwise acknowledge your words.

You have to admit, there's always been some small part of you that admired the armor your guardian wore.  Pale ore forged beautifully, even before the carvings went on, and their armor managed to be regal despite the overwhelmingly minimal and practical design.  Well, mostly practical.  There were still the odd, decorative loops on their pauldrons that didn't seem to match any style in Hallownest that you knew of.  But while you might've admired the armor, you're well aware that it carried a much greater significance to the bug that wore it than just mere protection.

For whatever reason, your specter held a great amount of respect for the Pale King, something that has always confused and vexed you whenever you were reminded of it.  Taking your recent revelation into account explains some of that irrational fondness in hindsight (what child doesn't seek the approval of their parent?), as well as some of the other quirks of their character that you had always assumed to simply have come from strict training.

Though you find yourself increasingly suspecting that perhaps that strict training was not simply training.

(Ask for permission, not for forgiveness, for forgiveness will not come.)

You note again, as casually as you can while thanking every possible ancestor looking out for you that your conversations with the White Lady as a nymph had taught you how to sound genial and friendly no matter how much you want not to, that it would be a shame if such splendid armor would have to be discarded wholesale just because of a few missing pieces.

And you note for one third, final time, that you believe there are actually a few chunks of pale ore lying within Deepnest's border that could probably be used to replace those pieces in the event that the original artifacts could not be found.

The taller bug's reaction is almost instant.  Their posture straightens abruptly as if they were a knight standing at attention in some great palace hall instead of sitting in a hot spring while their wounds mended.  Their mask turns to meet yours fully.  And perhaps to your greatest distaste, they seem—eager.  Excited, even.

You have not, strictly speaking, promised anything.  But you have implied a good deal, and the two are often one and the same where royalty is concerned.

It might leave a deeply sour taste in your throat to say the words, but you doubt your guardian would take well to losing something so important to them after whatever anguish using their magic had clearly caused them.  You still don't know what the reasoning behind their reaction was, either being forbidden from using magic or forbidden from letting anyone see it, but you know enough to know that your next diplomatic visit to the White Palace is going to be, at best, very awkward.  The tall bug had save your life.  Had saved the little nymph's life.  You don't care what orders the Pale King had to give, nor the reasoning behind them: what your specter did today is not improper by any stretch of the imagination, and you will not allow them to punish themself for it.

The specter in question does not seem to share your rage and reservations.  You notice their claws once again curling hesitatingly by the straps to their armor, and you wave dismissively with a claw of your own.  They start moving again almost immediately—placing the remaining pieces of armor back on this time, rather than removing them.

A small pitter-patter of chitin against stone registers in your senses over the sounds of rushing water, but it's the faint chill accompanying that sound that causes you to turn your head.  The little bug is standing just outside the spring, holding your needle in their stubbly little arms like a prize while your smock sits neatly folded by their tarsals at the edge of the hot spring.  They hold the weapon out for you to take.

You accept their gift with all the grace a princess has to offer.  Specifically, you place a claw on their head and rub around the base of the little bug's horns affectionately, which they seem to like quite a lot judging by the way they start leaning into your claws.  How cute.

Odd little specters or not, it seems that all nymphs like getting their heads petted.

They settle down on the stone edge of the spring when your remove your claws, looking at its inhabitants with empty eyes.  You glance back over to your guardian.  The last remaining pieces of their armor are now securely tied in place.  They look like any stately statue you've ever seen, waiting perfectly for your next command.  You can't tell whether their wounds have healed completely, but you suspect that if they were able to direct soul into your injuries to heal them faster, they can probably do the same for their own.  Speaking of your injuries...

You gently press your mending legs into the stone floor of the spring, testing to see how the limbs react to the pressure.  There's a small twinge from your most grievously injured leg, but hardly anything at all from the other.  You can work with that.  You already knew you were going to need multiple healing sessions to get yourself back to peak form, anyways.  Then there's your other, much more pressing injury.  You arch your body forward, ever so slowly as you test out how your body reacts to the movement when so much of your carapace is still missing.  There is a persistent ache, stronger the farther forward you go, but the pain isn't sharp and nothing feels like it's close to snapping or tearing.  You extend a probing claw to feel what the wound is like since you can't really see it.  Something a bit harder than raw flesh meets your touch, though even putting the slightest pressure upon it stabs into you as sure as any nail.

You try to wrack your brain for whatever bits of medical knowledge you still have left over from Midwife's lessons.  This would probably be—the exocuticle?  It doesn't offer much in the way of protection against attack, but it's still a barrier between your insides and the outside world, so you'll take it it as gladly as you possibly can.  You imagine it would probably fare better if you were to wrap it up in silk while it heals.  You imagine you're going to be wrapping a lot of yourself up in silk while it all heals.

Such is life, you suppose.  As far as this horrible, ill-planned little adventure has gone, a number of weeks or months spent feeling like a captured outsider being stored for the leaner months is a much kinder price to pay than your life, or the lives of your companions.  To think that you merely wanted a day without having to deal with any of your responsibilities.

Well.  You've certainly had that.

And now...

You rise from the hot water with neither fanfare nor ceremony, smiling a little behind your mask as your guardian rises with you.  You pluck your smock off the ground and begin to pull it on as you exit the spring, using the red silk fabric more to dry yourself off than you do to actually cover your body as a stately spider should.  Your grin fades abruptly when you notice the giant hole in the fabric still left over from your first fight with the damnable creature.  You'd actually forgotten about it.

You don't have nearly enough silk with you to patch it (not without taking some from your leg wrappings, and you're not doing that again any time soon) but you also don't have any means of disguising it among the fabric's folds either.  The creature's acid had burned an impressive amount of the silk away with that one blow.  There's no fixing it now, and no hiding the damage without at least one of your subjects seeing it by the time you return.  Perhaps the resulting scandal will be swept away quickly when the extent of your wounds becomes more known to the beasts.  One's modesty has never been considered more important than one's life.

A few slightly wobbly steps on the wet stones of the grotto take you from the from the center spring to the hole in the rockface leading back out to Deepnest's tunnel networks.  You poke your head out of the cavern entrance.  Nothing else in the tunnels right now, or at least nothing that you can see.  It will have to do.

You turn back to the cavern behind you, not the least bit surprised to see both your guardian and the little nymph standing silently ready for whatever your next move happens to be.  You take a moment to study your two companions for any signs of hitherto unnoticed wear or damage that might impede the journey back to the Distant Village.  None as far as you can see, though there is still the massive hole burnt into your specter's pale cloak.

With a whim and a pointed look, you alter the positioning of your smock so that the gap in your own attire matches up with the gap in theirs.

They do not react.

You didn't really expect them to.

You consider everything that will need to be done soon.  Coronation planning, corpse recovery, physical therapy, making good on your promise to find and forge the few traces of pale ore lurking in your homeland's borders... You're probably also going to need to send a number of citizens to remove the creature's body from the cavern before its eventual liquid decay can taint the spring water.  There's a fair number of things that will need to be done sooner rather than later.

But for now?

All of that can wait at least until you've returned to the Distant Village.

You walk out of the cavern with both of your specters trailing behind you, and you make your way down the tunnels that will take you back home.