I Am Sorryyyy, I Don’t Know How To Help When I Don’t Know What Went On In My Brain To Make Things

An art for @grollow

Hold the little chongy baby

Little bg practice with one of the most iconic scenarios in @grollow 's White and Gray fic. The tree in the abyss

Aloud, I Pray For Calmer Seas

Title: Aloud, I Pray For Calmer Seas Rating: T Characters: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel, The Knight Warnings: Mild Body Horror, Suicidal Ideology, Hurt No Comfort, Second Person POV, Nebulous Narrative, It/Its Pronouns For The Knight

Summary:

It means to set you free. There is nothing left of you to save, you think. (But you should not be thinking at all.)

Author’s Notes:

In July of last year, I read a fanfic that I became obsessed with. I basically devoured over 150k words in a single night. I couldn’t put it down. I started writing fanfiction for Hollow Knight in large because of that fic. The first one I finished was Eyes. The first one I started was this. Imagine my surprise when the author of that fic not only went on to read my works, but also became one of my dear friends.

I’ve been too scared to even tell you about this project, let alone show it to you until it was done, @dropout-ninja. Forgive me. I hope this surprise pleases you. This was originally in third person but since I’ve been experimenting more with perspectives/tenses/styles, I figured why not spend an hour converting the entire damn thing to second person.

Aloud, I Pray For Calmer Seas || AO3

Aloud, I Pray For Calmer Seas

It is brave, you think, looking down the line of your broken body. It is braver than you are, to stand in this place and not break under the weight of the sea. The seals hold you fast; you are chained. It does not break them immediately but instead stands to gaze up at you. It watches you with a quiet intensity. There are no words exchanged between the two of you and you are certain that is for the better: this other vessel, small and unruined by the world, is perhaps the empty creature that you should have been, and if that is the case, you will not ruin it by trying words.

You could not make them even if you wanted to. Every thought that you have is filled with sickly-sweet burning that runs so deep within that you wonder if you would ever be able to put the flame out. You are not sure that you want to, even should the opportunity arise. Is this not your punishment, after all, for your failure? Is this not what you deserve, for the masquerade that has cost your king and kingdom everything? To burn eternally? 

It inclines its head to you. It looks side-to-side, and then back up to where you hang lifelessly in chains. You are a corpse that has yet to properly rest, with little difference from the husks that wander outside and attack anyone who passes by on sight. You are certain that there will be no difference, if it should release you. You will fall upon it with your nail and it will be forced to put you out of your misery: misery that you should not have been able to feel, misery that spelled your own ruin, misery that cost Hallownest everything.

It holds up one hand. You gaze down at it, but your vision is a hazy thing, damaged from the pustules that rest over top of your eyes like a veil of sunrise. You can make out that it does not have proper fingers yet and why should it? Without your king’s light, it has never had a need to grow.

(Plants need light. You are part Root, one of three parents, and so you need it, too, in order to flourish and bloom. There is precious little of it here in Hallownest now, but once it was brilliant, pale and cool and welcoming – you remember; it was under that light that you grew, that you flourished, that you matured. It does not have that luxury.)

It touches you. You try to respond, but your legs do not work. You are numb and what movement you can manage is agonised; plagued, horrifically, by the plight of hanging for so long and with so little movement.

It is a comfort, you think, to know that when it releases you to take your place, you will be put down like the dying caricature of purity that you have always been. 

You wish that your executioner did not wear so familiar a face, though. It bears the gaze of someone you knew once and it is painful. You do not recall that face with clarity, but it brings to mind a fear you have no name for and that in and of itself is upsetting.

A word rises through your mind, and then another, and another: It is weak. 

Not the vessel before you, no. Yourself. You are weak and you are afraid. You are not brave enough to refer to yourself outside of third person in cohesive words. No, feelings and images are easier. They have always been but you do not dare call either of them to yourself.

There is something inside this one who stands before you, a titan in a diminutive shell, that is both frightening and welcoming. Cold and terrifying. Warm and inviting.

( – broken shells shattering, so very loud, against stones that defy all reason to fly, that hang heavily in the air – not you, never you, you are faster and you are stronger and you will fight your way to that light; did you push them or did they fall on their own? did it make any difference either way? do you remember? do you know? ) 

She stirs behind your eyes. You feel her, a nest of maggots writhing within your skull and seeping down through your remaining arm and into the cavity where growths linger beneath your armour and cape. You are a ruined altar on which she is worshipped.

You are the vessel.

Both the prison that contains her and the one that grants her eyes into a world that she is largely forgotten in. 

The Temple of the Black Egg is covered in wicked veining and filled with a miasma that could suffocate a lesser being: it chokes in your throat with each breath you take, soundless and heaving. You watch it. You let your gaze follow it, the quiet creature so alike to you and so different. 

It is leaving. It does not release you.

You wonder if it will come back. 

You hope that it will not. 

-

You are dreaming.

You can tell when you dream, although it is always hazy. Sometimes it is sweet memories, places you recall that remind you of a time before your imprisonment. Sometimes it is even your father the king that you see and you are at your weakest in those times.

You have prostrated yourself before a memory enough that you think that you can tell the difference. She delights in proving you wrong by unravelling them time and again, until you fray. You have not broken enough to let her free but the both of you know that it is really just a matter of time. A when, not an if. She uses those sweet memories like a lure and you bite every single time, in spite of knowing better, or perhaps – perhaps because you know better. Perhaps some part of you longs for the punishment that you know would come if you faced Him and He had to see what became of His beloved Hallownest at your tender mercies. Your failures. Your mistakes. Your flaws. 

You do not deserve compassion and you certainly do not deserve to be free. You are the cause of the ruins.

She speaks to you sometimes, to remind you of that. She also speaks to you sometimes to suggest that she would forgive you. It is a lie and you do not want her forgiveness. You do not want anything from her at all.

This dream is strange. It is not at all like the ones that you are accustomed to, where you break under tender ministrations and are reminded, time and again, that all of this could be avoided if you would just let go; if you would just release her and yourself in the process. You harbour no delusions and she does not pretend that you will live through the ordeal.

(you want to die. you want it to be over. you want the pain to stop. you were never meant to survive. that you yet live is testament to how much you have failed and how far you have fallen, how far you are still falling – falling, falling, the sounds of masks breaking, crashing against stones that are lifted into the air and float, in a place with no light but there was light, there was His light, and He was everything to you, and He made you whole and He made you strong and He would never forgive– 

forgive me forgive me forgive me

it should not have been a me –) 

Your armour is polished and shining silver. You have both of your arms. These are not things that you know to be accurate to the waking world. You are whole: the entire shining package, riddled with flaws, feelings and tainted by your own mistakes. You are the Vessel but you are not Pure and you have no voice with which to scream about the atrocities that will come as a result of this mistake. Of your mistake, for it is your fault, it could never be His. The problem lies within you, and you alone. You wish to atone. You wish to fix it. 

Why are you whole?

Why are you here?

It is not her realm, but it is golden and it glitters and you want to rip the pillars apart with claws and tendrils of void until everything below you is but dust. It is bright and you are frightened. Light is an enemy, you recognise this: light represents her. (It represents Him, too, but this is harsh light, you rationalise, and you are so, so scared–)

You think you might be screaming in your head. You think if someone could peek behind the eyes (which work, you realise belatedly: as if you never succumbed to her at all), they would find themself deafened by the words that you are not supposed to know or have, by the thoughts you were never meant to possess, and by the fear that is a tangible thing that takes the form of dawn breaking over a mountain forgotten to the annals of time. 

It changes, then. You are familiar with the manipulation of dreams and them shifting around you is not at all strange anymore. Your nail is in your hands, resting, and you stand looking down at the floor as polished black shell rolls out an ominous welcome: come to me to fail to die. Live an eternal masquerade as something you are not and know that you brought it upon yourself, that you made this choice and you would make it again and again, nothing would change, because this is what you were bred for, this is your purpose and your destiny.

You are being watched and it is not by her. 

There is movement behind you and you turn to see the other of your kind. It is back, but it is not your pathetic, broken body that it beholds this time. It sees you as you once were, as the Pure Vessel primed to fight (to lose against) the blinding light of morning.  It stops to look at you and you are overcome with conflicting feelings. You do not want it there. You do not want it to continue this folly. It can only end badly for it. And what? What ifit does win? What then? You will be free.

That is more terrifying than captivity. 

Your cage’s bars are your own making.

It turns its head down. You recognise the gesture as a bow. You understand, in that moment, two very real and agonising facts: that it is not pure either, and that it has no intentions of taking your place.

It intends to fight through you to the embodiment of fury that you hold within. It is willing to cut you down to do so, but only in dreams. This is why it left. This is why it did not release you from your confines. This is what drove it here – to this place beyond the waking world, where it faces you not in your body that will break under its nail as surely as leaves shatter under the weight of a stag, but in your strongest form. And yet – yet –

If it should succeed, it will face her, and she will hurt it, too. She will break it, as she broke you, and it will be your fault.

( – let it fall once – let it fall so close to the edge so that you did not have competition, so that He would not see – you owe it better – )

You bow back. It is only polite. You were raised by a king, by knights, in the Pale Court 

( – that should have been your home; that would have been had fate dealt you different cards. did they ever love you, could they? do you deserve to be? you do not. a failure deserves to be discarded and forgotten and that is what you are. never forget. hallownest’s blood is in your throat and you are choking on it, asphyxiating without a need to breathe; had you a mouth, you could cough it up all over the floor and have a contrast worthy of respect – you think it would be orange, though, for there is nothing left in you that is not – ) 

and you know all about manners and civility. You never needed them before. You were a statue; a pretty, elegant thing in the corner of rooms, talked over as if you were not there and you listened, you took it all in, you learned. You were not supposed to do any of those things, but osmosis trains a mind, and you have one, even though by all rights and design you should not. You would apologise for that, if you had the capability. To Him. To the thousands of your siblings dead in a place untouched by time. 

But not to the one across from you. It has a mind, too. You are not to blame for that, are you? Is it your fault, as the other weights are? Your frustration manifests in the form of a scream without sound and the armour around you is glass; it shatters, it trembles, it breaks. Time has worn through its efficiency, too. 

It dashes forward, its nail held fast, and you retaliate by raising your own. The metal sings in the quiet of the arena and the glowing white of the seals is haunting. It throws shadows over the floor. It throws shadows over you, too, and you use embrace them.

You teleport.

It does not know how to do that and you are certain that you blindside it when you launch into a forward slash.

You have not won in a very long time. You have not even come close to winning in what feels like an eternity. When did you last catch her off guard? But you have surprised it and that puts you at an advantage. You push it.

You call Soul. 

( – and who had to die to give it to you? you, who have been sapped of all of your strength, who have had it so elegantly drained from you? are you sure it is soul anymore? can you tell the difference between essence and soul any longer? would you know? is there anything left inside of you that she hasn’t ripped apart and used herself to fill in the cracks with? you writhe, you burn, you scream in silence and she cares not, she cares not –

what care has anyone for an empty, hollow thing?

the hollow knight.

you do not deserve to be called that.

you do not deserve to be remembered.

you must win. )

You use that Soul to summon tiny throwing nails that fan out around you in a crescent. Your opponent (your sibling –) dodges under them to slash at you and you raise your nail to parry. It leaps into the air, dancing as if it owns it, on wings of Soul and starlight and it soars overhead.

It slashes and it hits you; you recoil and leap away.

Nails rise up from the floor. It is prepared for that attack; it dodges artfully (it must have seen similar) before vaulting across the arena toward you. You attack again. 

It becomes a dance that should be merry; that should be therapeutic. It is not. There is screaming metal and the rising desperation within you to save it, to stop it from condemning itself to your fate, and to save yourself. You want to die, you think, but you fight like there is still life left in you because terror gives way to resolve and resolve is the one thing that has always been yours. It is the only thing she cannot steal from you, no matter how much she tries and no matter how much undulating beneath the shell her terrible light does. She cannot undo what makes you you. She cannot rewrite your core, and your core is defined by devotion.

To Him.

And now to it, though you suspect it does not know. You are fighting it, after all. You likely seem an obstacle to its eyes.

You would beg its forgiveness – you would prostrate yourself before it, too, had you the capabilities. Let the waves of the sea within its small form crash into you until you are swept away and all that makes you yourself becomes a blank slate. 

But you are a stain and you will spread your pain. There is nothing that can cleanse the sin of your existence. 

It drags on, the fight. You try to heal and spheres of soul keep it from approaching you when you focus. As the duration extends and you are forced to block more and more attacks, you become increasingly frightened, and it manifests in your void. There are tendrils now that you call sometimes, the tempered solid of your shell becoming pliable like the void that you truly are. You use them to keep it at a distance.

You land several hits. It has to heal, too. 

But in the end, you lose.

( you always lose. when was the last time you won? )

You bow your head and wait for a finishing blow. You wonder if you will awaken. You are not sure that you want to. What has the waking world ever offered you but pain? You are crippled by shame and disgust with yourself; even in your prime, before the Infection took everything from you, you are no match for this other vessel. It is what you should have been and you are nothing in comparison to the vast sea that makes up its being.

It touches your face with tiny nubs and you remember.

Oh, you remember, and you hate that you do: you know now why you fear the dark as much as the light, for the dark has every reason to be angry with you for forsaking it and it – it stands before you, a tiny form that basks a fury so deep to drown in.

It is not angry with you. (It should be.) It does not want your pain. (It should.) It is doing this for you.

You wish that it would not.

It presses its forehead to yours. It holds you and for a moment, the terrible shrieking in your mind that is your own and not hers, is silenced. You know a kind of peace that you have not recalled in so long that it feels foreign. You welcome it and lay your head against its; you touch it with the ends of your claws and the fear returns like a tidal wave. It means to ascend. Light dances over your shell and you lift your gaze skyward. You know what melody comes next: the song’s crescendo as it – your sibling, this other vessel – leaps up. 

You are waking up. You are afraid of that, too. Hope has ever been your enemy and you are a stone sinking into waters deeper than you could ever hope to understand.

You do not want it to win. You do not want it to lose. 

( you should not be wanting at all. ) 

-

You ‘wake,’ if it can even be called that. Spellwork unfurls around you like a cloak of light in the darkness. The sound of the chains that bind you into the air is sinister: they creak and groan. You allow yourself to look at them as much as your position will allow. There is a fight happening elsewhere, but you cannot see or hear it; it is connected to you, though, for the burning light within is silent and still. Occupied, instead, by another shadow, one who she does not know as well and on whom her tricks do not work.

It feels as though it lasts forever and you know the second that it is over. Your chains snap, all at once, and you tumble toward the ground, a flightless creature crippled by time and the agonies of your experience.

You land roughly. You hear your shell crack under the strain and you bow your head.

It has won. It has done what you could not, in spite of your best efforts. You will live.

But do you even want to? 

In honor of finally making @ashyronfire the grimmcut for IBIMM they petitioned for back in September, have the art I tried to make for the nightgown king himself

More fanart for @grollow/@ashyronfire’s Red Sky

My favorite part is that none of the reblogs have even been me. I’m innocent. Just sitting in my corner doing nothing while you get to see into gay robot hell because of everyone else.

Every time one of the people I follow reblogs Transformers (which I have no opinions on), I feel @dropout-ninja‘s power grow exponentially. Stop sending them more power they are already too strong and I cannot defeat them as it is. I’m respawning at the Stake over and over and my build is not optimized for this.

Get me on the fanclub couch

I was encouraged to post this. This is a "Red Sky At Dawn" (by @ashyronfire /@grollow ) specific meme. I'm calling myself out as an Atlas fanclub member

Sorry Grimm, we love you and your main character POV, but Atlas has that moxie

(Atlas and Nightshade belong to arsonistmoth !)

Edit: I TAGGED THE WRONG PERSON BEFORE, MY BAD

When you're writing another random Getaway fic and the song in Raley's bathroom is making fun of him

Their arm was stuck halfheartedly lifted. Their hand had meant to cup a tiny face. What lay in front of them now was hardly tiny. Each eye was as large as they... It was so large that they could not see any part of its form but that head. Void curled back from it, as though fluid had been suspended in time, in place. Focused. Aware.

Art for a moment out of @dropout-ninja‘s fic that has not left my brain since I read it. It’s a lovely story and a beautiful scene which I very much enjoyed painting. Cheers :)

A fanart for @ashyronfire for their fic We Are Like The Living Dead. Why does Hollow have a snoot? Who knows. Not me the artist.

(The spiritual successor to this one:)