#nailmaster ghost

No answer, at first, was offered. She could feel emotions swirling under the surface thoughts their consciousness limited Her to, half-formed words and spiraling phrases that told Her they were searching for the right words. When they formed at last a sentence, it was the face of a storm of synonyms and connotations. Language was an odd thing for how little it conveyed. I wanted a life of my own carried just beneath it feelings of bitterness and hope, a glimpse at a dozen memories, a desperation for agency. Even simply I signified musings of who “I” was, a struggle for a name. Vessel, Knight, Shadow, My Friend, Ghost, Little Ghost, Ghost of Hallownest, I am Ghost.

The Radiance ignored all of this. She focused on the sentence as they had built it.

“A life?” She said, a little contemptuously. “Is that all? A life of mortal toil and suffering? Divinity is a life, Lord of Shades, one infinitely superior to that of this minuscule shape. The power I commanded at My peak...you passed up omnipotence, mastery of your domain, to wear gaudy armor and swing a blade. You’re a fool.”

I am not the Lord of Shades, their thoughts thundered. (Under the backtrack in thought was what the Radiance recognized as phrases they had tried to say simultaneously: god of a grave, king of siblings slaughtered, eldritch, alone.) That thing may live in me, but I nearly lost my mind to it. Divinity was death (loss of I…). They stopped briefly to beat their wings; in the moment’s silence this brought, they scanned the barren ground below and allowed themselves to calm. They considered and said, It was too great a sacrifice not to hesitate in making. I fought to rid the world of you, and I believed I could have the chance to live in such a world.

“So it was out of spite?”

Most of my decisions are out of spite. We have a commonality there. But no.

“Make up your mind. You just said--”

I found a SELF, Ghost pronounced. I learned I could be more than a Vessel (king’s toy, empty, hollow knight, sacrifice, nameless), more than a killer (feral thing, storm-lashed, murderer, vicious beast, nameless)...Their thoughts continued to wrestle with each other, and the Radiance laughed loudly. Her course through the air momentarily drifted as She guffawed, then She adjusted Her furred wings and banked a little closer to Her companion.

“That just makes you even more of a fool!” She replied. “What are you but a Vessel and a killer, if you refuse to be the Lord of Shades? What is a Nailmaster but a bug trained in death? And your status as a Vessel cannot be escaped, unless of course you embrace the Void entirely. Do you always contradict your own reasons like this?”

Do you always pretend to exist in a vacuum?

That reply came with a maelstrom of biting words and seething rage behind it. Her flight wavered again as She was buffeted by buried screams of memory: a single, purple moth croaking out explanations, alongside a thousand orange pustules and the eyes of attacking husks. The condemnation was clear. But with the meanings they pushed on Her were those they had meant to reserve for themselves: an elderly bug clutching a beautiful flower, those same flowers decorating a grave, a tall pillbug wearing a white mask as a hat, a broken Vessel reaching for them as it died, an enormous bug in Nailmaster’s armor, Hornet. These flickered through Her eyes too fast see clearly, but the weight they held in the Vessel’s mind shook Her more than the recollection of infection did.

The Lord of Shades has no one. Eternity alone with all those Shades (echoes, siblings, dead, regrets)? I cannot abide the thought. I love them, I always shall...but there are things outside the Abyss I love as well. Their explanation paused as the two of them flew beneath a storm cloud, the arcs within illuminating them in harsh blue-white. But Ghost’s mind had crescendoed with the thought of loved ones. As the Radiance searched for a train of coherent thought, a kind of peace filled them as though they had forgotten who they flew with. I found friends. A sister. A bug who considered me progeny (his student, his child, heir, fellow, beloved). I wanted a future with them. A future, in the world that taught me I could love and be loved. I rejected godhood because I decided I deserved a future.

“So you aren’t only a fool, you’re also pathetic. Mortals have no future, we blink and they’re gone.”

Of course, I was wrong to believe I deserved that. My work wasn’t finished, for you still live. And you, glorified lumafly? If you despise this condition so much, why not stay submerged within the Void? You almost make it seem preferable to this form.

Looking down again at the body in question, the Radiance scowled. Gone were Her metallic legs, gone were the ever-changing and prehensile wings, and gone was Her crown of horns; climbing out of the Abyss, shaking, She had been horrified to find Herself reborn as little more than a tall moth. Alabaster fuzz covered most of Her body, ending just before the claws of Her legs and four arms. Her wings, now a desaturated yellow-grey with only traces of gold patterning, hung limply around Her like a cloak when unused; flying on them now, though those golden circles shone brightly, She could barely stand to look at them for their relative drabness. The reflections She had seen of Her face had been similarly disgusting; two bristled antennae, angled forward and out in crude mockery of Her old horns, swayed in every breeze. She didn’t want to consider how they looked now, buffeted by the winds of Her flight and the harsh lands below. The only true sign of what She had once been was the constant glow of Her yellow eyes, and that only served to confuse and frighten those who saw it.

She seethed at the thought of those bugs’ uncomprehending faces. “How are those circumstances at all comparable?!” She demanded, and when a silent chuckle rolled through the Vessel’s thoughts She grew only angrier. “Had I known I would be reduced so, perhaps I would have stayed drowned! But I was powerless, cold, dying without end, do you understand? You passed up all the power of the Void to have your ridiculous ‘future,’ but I? I?” The Radiance stared at the ground hundreds of feet below, recalling the despair She had felt immersed in the sea of shadow; the despair that hadn’t truly left Her since. “...I was forced to choose between torture in the dark and this weak, drab, finite shape. I don’t know if I chose well. Both fates were horrors beyond anything I could have conceived.”

She had hoped to stir some sympathy within Her companion, but Her words seemed to have the opposite effect. Beneath Ghost’s surface thoughts boiled an anger renewed. Whisperings of how dare you and selfish moron were discernible in snatches, until they formed a sentence to project to Her. Woe to the god gone mad, Ghost thought. Forced to endure a consequence for the first time in her existence, a horror no doubt eclipsing all the pain and death her infection wrought. To think a single apocalyptic tantrum could have brought this upon her. Awful, truly.

“Sarcasm shouldn’t be attempted without a mouth,” the Radiance noted aloud. “You convey both too much and too little. I don’t know why I expected you to understand, Lord of Shades. You’ve never known what it is to be immersed within your own element, only to be attacked and suffocated by your oldest enemy. Nor have you ever felt the love of worshipers.”

And you, contrarily, have never known any other kind of love (siblings, teachers, friends, quirrel, quirrel, quirrel…). I do not envy you for having the likes of the Moss Prophet to babble your praises. If it weren’t for who you were and all you’ve done, I might have pitied you.