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Hornet hates to see her siblings fight.
If she were anyone else, that would be a normal sentiment. If she were anyone else, she would simply want them to stop hurting each other. But she isn’t anyone else, and she doesn’t hate it out of love. It is unnerving, watching them trade blows. The little ghost moves so methodically, melting apart into darkness only to reappear behind their sibling and strike with that shining nail. She remembers how that void felt raking across her shell at the Kingdom’s Edge. Those spells burned like no pain she had felt before, and if she had not surrendered she is not certain who would have won.
And the Hollow Knight — it is sickening, watching them tear their body apart. Those pillars of Light… one blasts through the ghost’s shell, sending black particles scattering through the air. The next moment they’ve left Hornet’s line of sight, waiting as she is beyond the door. Flashes of white and black and amber are all she has to go off, the sound of nails clashing, the sound of screams.
It makes her exoskeleton itch. These beings may share her blood, but the power they wield, the power forced upon them, is almost more than she can comprehend. It is twisted. Wrong.
The ghost stumbles into her view as white sparks begin to swirl around them. A crack in their mask glows bright and vanishes, but before they can catch their breath the Hollow Knight’s nail bears down on them again. It is easily three times their size, but they block it with their own nail in one hand and send a blast of writhing void towards their attacker with the other. Hornet shivers.
The fight moves out of her view again. The Hollow Knight screams. She hears the sound of searing Light escaping from its vessel, and then more spells and more clanging of nails and then the Hollow Knight is in line with the doorway, stabbing their nail through their own chest. They stab again, and again, and then their body swells, glowing that awful, acrid orange. They lift into the air and the ghost dashes back and forth, dodging globs that spray from their sibling's body. Hornet has seen many things in her many, many, many years in this wasteland world. She’d be lying if she said this didn’t disturb her. The Light treats her sibling like a club, now, no longer useful as a soldier. The ghost just barely escapes their form as it slams down.
They can’t possibly go on much longer. The Hollow Knight’s body is falling apart. It rears back — there! — Hornet throws her needle and it connects right as the Hollow Knight raises their head into its path. She hurtles into the chamber — no time to think now, no chance for her — she will give all for this kingdom — just like her mother — shouts for her sibling as she pulls the crack wide enough — spins her final web around one of her own.
The ghost raises that strange, shimmering Nail, and for a moment Hornet is back home, if she could call it that, and this shadow stands before her mother, ready to kill, ready to end it; she knows it was for the best, she knows the dreamers called this fallen royal home. Her mother is gone. Her siblings will soon join her. Hornet will soon join her too.
The ghost swings. Collapses. Her silk is strong, but the Hollow Knight is stronger. She falls beside her sibling. Tries to reach for her needle. There is so little energy left in her. She must protect them. The ghost must live long enough to end it all. She must—
But the Hollow Knight does not strike. They look at her, black and orange warring behind their mask, and fall to their knees again. The battle now rages within their mind. She thinks of a nail turned on its wielder, and hopes all three of them win.
As the last drops of energy escape her, Hornet reaches one hand out for the dreaming ghost, and the other for the fallen Hollow Knight. The two of them met once, long ago, before her sibling was sealed away and her mother fell to endless slumber and she left her village for her father’s palace. Perhaps there is recognition in their gaze now. She is too far gone to tell.
We three die as one, she realizes. Isn’t that fitting? She thinks of a watchful eye, of sparking tentacles, of her mother. She thinks of the ghost. Of the Knight. Of herself.
Isn’t that fitting?
They are gone. All, everyone. Her mother, her mentor, her friends, her siblings. As she wakes in the wreckage of the Black Egg, she knows she should be too. Did her Void-born siblings spare her from the end this ruin met? Or was she simply lucky?
There are places, she knows, that she could go. The town above is not so empty anymore. She knows the ghost had frequented it, knows that they brought lost bugs up through the well with them.
But what would she talk about, there? It has been an age since this kingdom fell. What does a church grim say to a shopkeep? She cannot remember the last time she had a conversation without her needle drawn. The only other bug like her, Monomon’s poor lost soul, finished his own duty. His nail now stands on the shore of Blue Lake. She’s seen it. It’s possible, though she does not believe it, that he simply moved on without it.
She won’t deny that it’s tempting. After an eternity guarding this once again silent ruin, after undoing and completing her mother’s work, it seems so easy to lie down and rest. She’d been prepared to. She had intended to. But as the last drops of void fall from her cloak, Hornet picks up her needle and walks on. Perhaps she will climb up the well. Perhaps not. But the Light is no more, and the day Hornet never thought would come has arrived.
For the first time in her life, she is free.