Chapter Text
She always wakes up in one of two states: cold or sweaty. The former was preferred, the latter more common.
So it was strange to wake up and feel neither. In fact, she felt... nothing. A complete absence of temperature. And texture, come to think of it. Where was her blanket? She always slept with a blanket, soft and warm. Yet she was curled up into a ball, with no blanket to speak of.
It's dark. Staggeringly, completely dark. Darker than she'd ever thought possible. Earlier than I should be awake, then... Curling in a little more, she made the attempt to sleep again.
But things felt too wrong. She felt suspended in... something. Something goopy? Gross. And there were... things, kinda tendril-y, on her arms and legs. Arms and legs that, upon subconscious inspection, felt too short. And there weren't enough fingers holding her knees.
Okay, so, sleep isn't an option, she thought with a huff (or what felt like it should've been a huff). Uncurling, she found the darkness was not nearly as infinite as it had seemed. Quite cramped, really. The walls were weirdly hard, but membranous. She recoiled from the bad sensory. She hated things like that when she wasn't prepared for them.
Steeling herself, she stretched as much as she could, and the walls almost stretched with her.
Almost.
Her foot punctured through, and her evacuating body ripped it open the rest of the way. She would've yelped if she had time to. Very quickly, she found herself deposited onto her butt, sitting on something flat and hard. She looked down.
Stone. Somehow, she was surprised. All around her, big flat stone surfaces, extremely simple and geometric. Purpose-built, rather than aesthetic.
It was chilly, too. Just barely, but enough to make her a little uneasy. The difference was jarring compared to the former lack of temperature.
She was still in a darkness but not as complete as it had been. It was just normal, everyday, store-bought darkness. What could possibly be so dark...?
Turning around, she froze. From confusion, more than anything else. It was a big black sphere, its surface sleek and shiny. Or, no, not shiny. Reflective. And yet, impossibly black. Looking around, there were dozens of them, all cracked open.
There wasn't any liquid around the one she'd come from, though it had definitely felt like a flow of something had shoved her out. It had to have, because she definitely wasn't on the side with a large crack in it. Well, as large as she was. Which didn't look very large.
Instead, she was on the side with a reflection. Hers, presumably. It took a moment to recognize that fact for several reasons. The reflection that looked back at her was startlingly familiar, yet it was impossible.
Sharp notched horns on a big white head, big black saucer eyes and no other features. Small body wreathed in a gray cloak.
Her first thought was, Why? Her second was Why the freaking Hollow Knight??? A few pieces of information very quickly solidified in her mind. She was in Hollow Knight. The game she'd hyperfixated on a year or so ago, and again recently. Moreover, she was the Hollow Knight. The Hollow Knight. That has to be the case, because that's definitely her reflection, but it's just as definitely the child form of the Hollow Knight. Why not the Ghost?
Okay. Whatever. WHATEVER. I'm... probably dreaming. So I'll stop being aware I'm dreaming soon, and I'll get to enjoy a regular dream. No doubt brought on by those other isekai fics she'd read. With a sharp nod—it was jarring to see the Hollow Knight—her reflection—WHATEVER—nod with her—uh... What had she decided?
Right. She hadn't decided anything.
Should probably do that.
Okay. The black spheres must be eggs. This must be the birthplace. It was... different than she'd imagined. There weren't any corpses (not that she minded that at all). Just basic stone walls and floors. On closer inspection, they weren't entirely flat. There were arches in places, and other structural things. The room looked huge. It was a little disorienting.
Then it hit her. She was tiny.
The euphoria hit her like a sack of bricks. She was a little guy! A smol little bean! Usually she was much taller than she would've preferred, and though she'd made her peace with that, she still wished she could've been shorter. She would've kissed her brain for such a good dream if that wasn't so weird and also anatomically impossible.
Okay, okay, don't wanna waste my dream being happy. Let's get a move on. Passing under the huge archway that led out of the deadend, she looked side to side and saw more of the same. More halls with more offshoots with more black eggs.
It didn't take too long to find her way out. All she had to do was follow the stream of vessel skulls rolling and clattering their way down. So it's already started... She'd feel bad for them, if this wasn't a dream. Why am I still able to think that? I should've forgotten it's a dream by now.
The halls were maybe six or seven times her height. The full size of the Abyss, though... she'd never had her mind boggled quite like that. HO-LY CRAP. That's huge. She hadn't experienced vertigo before (or if she had, she wasn't confident enough to name it that), but she thought this must be what it felt like.
There weren't any floating platforms like she remembered from the game. Instead, there were many crags and ledges jutting out from the otherwise smooth walls of the vertical shaft. And in its center, a massive spire rising up, up, up... It was dizzying.
She saw other vessels already climbing, some of them falling. Already a handful of bodies littered the floor. Cloaks lying limp, empty. Hollow skulls, devoid of the deep blackness that should've filled their eyes.
It felt oh, so wrong.
She wanted to wake up. It shouldn't be possible to feel dizziness and dread in a dream. This wasn't right. This was not right.
Her gut sank, if she had one. She needed to stop this. She tried holding some of them back, the ones close by, but they shrugged her off easily. She tried standing in their way, but they just shoved her aside. No, no, no, no, no...!
She had to get everyone's attention. Distract them from that... that beckoning light, up above. Probably a waiting Pale King, but that didn't matter. She had to stop them.
She tried shouting. Nothing came out. She tried screaming, wailing. Nothing came out. There was nowhere for it to come out.
Overwhelmed with agony and desperation, she let out a silent, whole-bodied cry. The silence was, in an oddly literal sense, deafening.
Every vessel that hadn't begun the climb stopped in place, and turned to face her. Hundreds of empty, impossibly black eyes focused on her. It sent a shiver down her spine.
"Stop!" she said. She'd never been much of an orator, but her adrenaline surpassed her social anxiety right now, so by golly, she was gonna try! "We can't be acting like this! There are people dying—your siblings! How can you not care about them? How can you ignore them?
"None of us can make it alone. That's just a fact. But if we work together, we can all survive. I'm sure of it. So who's with me!" She pumped her fist in the air to punctuate her little speech. It would've been quite moving, if it hadn't only been thought. Right, no voice... Um...
She pointed at a vessel to her right at random, then up at the top of the Abyss, where the light came from, as if to say "You? Make it up there?" Then she made a sweeping X motion with both of her arms, saying, "No way!" Then she picked another vessel at random, from her left side, and did the same. Then she made a grand circular motion, intended to take in everyone present, and pointed up to the light: "But all of us making it up there?" She gave a single sharp nod with as much gusto as her little body could muster: "We can do it!"
There stared at her blank-faced for a while longer (as if there was any other way they could stare). Many of them turned away and began climbing on their own, but a good handful of them stayed, huddling around her.
She took them in. She wasn't very good at memorization, but she tried anyway. One with two pairs of horns on their cheeks—she'd call it Whiskers. One with horns curling back on themselves—Ram. One, the tallest of the group by a thin margin, had asymmetrical horns, one very short horn on one side and two longer, curling horns on the other. Incredibly similar to the Lost Kin, so she decided that's who it is—or, not so lost anymore, so just Kin. Another vessel with branching horns—Elk. And the last with two pairs behind each other, like nail clippers—she'd call it Clippers, then.
Whiskers, Ram, Kin, Elk, and Clippers. And their leader—
Their leader...
What... was her name...?
She knew she didn't have time to freak out about this, but she started to anyway. It's her name, she ought to know that. (She's the Hollow Knight, yeah, but that's hardly a name.) It had... it had something to do with water? Running water... Stream? No, that's a dumb name... River?
Sure. She's heard of people named River before. Good enough.
Then Whiskers, Ram, Kin, Elk, Clippers, and their leader, River. She was going to make sure they survived.
Nodding at each of them in turn, she approached the central spire. WAIT. Little Ghost! She froze, starting to turn around. Or... it ends up at the top anyway, right? And it hasn't even hatched yet, so... She shook herself. It would be fine. She just had to trust what she already knew would happen.
The bodies were still falling. The scuffle of climbing feet and thuds of corpses landing on the ground filled the Abyss, echoing off the walls. But there was a spire to climb. She waved her group forward, and they followed close behind as she approached the spire's base.
It wasn't an easy climb. Many walls were too high to jump to, many ledges out of reach. But with the six of them, they made short work of it. Maybe not short work—it could take several minutes to get all six of them up, if not longer. But she was determined to bring everyone. At times, Ram or Elk had started to continue with one or two of the others still waiting to be brought up, but she'd grab their wrist to stop them. They'd look at her for a moment, then nod in understanding and return to assist. No matter what, they were all in this together.
For some reason, that reminded her of a musical. It bothered her a little that she couldn't recall which one.