Chapter Text
They did not have a name, at first. They did not have memories, either, nor discernible emotions. Only a nail, and a cloak, and a mask. Where had they gotten these things? For what purpose?
Only upon wondering this did they realize they had curiosity. It was a ringing call in them. Why? Where? What? They were nothing - or almost nothing - but something pulled them.
In Dirtmouth, the shells of ancient bugs, insides long ago rotted out into nothing, had once been occupied as homes, and now were empty, lonesome hovels hunkered under a bitter wind. How much time had this town seen? How much time before it? How much after? Melancholy clung tight to this place, and bled into their mind. There was two emotions, then, curiosity and melancholy. The first two, though a sweeping many followed.
Elderbug called them Traveller, and they savored the small title.
Only upon meeting Hornet was this title surrendered in favor of another, which rang truer - Ghost.
A thing that had died and come back. A specter. Ghost did not feel like other bugs. There was something different. Something uncanny, as if they were an echo, a facsimile wearing only the disguise of a bug. Ghost was a good title, and they took it as their own, along with the weight of some destiny Hornet hazarded at.
As Ghost traversed the kingdom, they collected more from its residents and lands - far more than simply a name. They collected experiences. What was that feeling, of sitting beside Quirrel and gazing out upon the perpetual rain of the city, and thinking, just a little longer? What force ruled them, when they were arrested at the sight of the statue in the City of Tears, struck by emotions they could not understand? What did it mean, when they met Myla and wished that they, too, could sing - if only to make her happy?
They collected charms, too, and powers, and secrets they could never tell. They collected history, knowledge, and the burden of stories from the dead. They staggered silently under the sheer weight of the kingdom’s tragedies. How many tales untold. How many lives sacrificed. How much suffering and pain.
“You bear well the scours your progenitor has left upon this land,” Grimm noted once, then quieter, “Though you should never had to bear it at all.”
Ghost learned they were, as they feared, not bug at all. Not like all the friends they had made, different. They were Void, infinite and many, more ancient than the hollowed husks of Dirtmouth, predating every face they had met, and harnessed into a deceptively small shell.
Yet they were Void which had lived as a bug. Void which had indeed believed itself a bug, if only for a time. More importantly, Void which had fallen in love with the world of bugs. Its richness. Its sadness. All of it gripped at Ghost, horrible and captivating. They wanted to relieve the horrors of the past, correct them. Help the myriad of individuals they loved, and the sibling enduring a brutal fate by mere chance, by being only a few seconds faster.
So Radiance fell. Ghost harnessed the strength of the multitude, the Void’s relentless time-proven resilience, and it called to them, yearned for their return as part of it. Already the Void had suffered its own wounds, won’t you come back? One lost piece?
Not yet, was Ghost’s response. The world needed so much healing.
Look what the world has done to us. Why help it? Why not destroy it?
Tempting, too. Silence all the crying voices. End the suffering, once and for all. No more pain. Only quiet, only darkness, the whole world entombed in comforting black Void. All bugs could be part of Us. All bugs could be at peace.
That isn’t the answer. Ghost showed the Void the vibrancy and variety of life. They showed it joy and despair. One day, yes, one day everything would be dark and quiet, and there would be nothing. But not yet. Cherish organic life while it was here.
Strange, foreign thing.
Determined, I’m not coming back. And We are not taking Hallownest. Not yet.
The Void retreated. With immense focus, Ghost pulled all of themself back into their meager shell. They had walked the kingdom disguised as a small knight, and they had grown attached to that shape.
The world re-materialized. The stench of the junk pit. Dripping water. Soft whimpers - Godseeker.
Her great mass was hunched before Ghost, thin limbs trembling. Stains of Void were streaked like tears from her eye holes; similar black substance dripped from under her carapace. Ghost had nearly killed her from within; the Void nearly claimed her.
Despite the numbers of dead bugs still walking that Ghost had cut down, and the God they had just slain, they did not kill for fun: they did not desire to see the end of bugs, particularly those that had done no harm. Godseeker was a multitude, though one of gold rather than black, and the notion of destroying her, or the world she kept within her mind… it would be worse than murder; it would be genocide.
Ghost rushed to her. They could not reach far on a body that towered four times their height, but nonetheless they smoothed gentle touches over her wide carapace. Be okay, they bid.
Godseeker twitched, as if just becoming aware of herself. She tilted her golden disk of a mask down to survey them.
Ghost expected horror or disgust. Godseeker was the first to have seen, truly, what they were - what they held inside themself. Not bug at all. Not friend at all. Even with the disguise returned, she knew the truth, and had nearly been killed from it.
Instead, her deep voice rumbled with awe and shock, “thou art the God of Gods… Not the shining light we anticipated… but a magnificent, consuming darkness, deeper than the blackest tunnel, the bane of all light. Thine modest shell deceived our feeble minds - nay, that is no excuse, it is our own failing, our own imbecility…”
Suddenly seized with fresh emotion, Godseeker’s large abdomen jerked under Ghost’s stroking. Startled, Ghost pulled back in time to witness her frantically maneuver her large Void-stained body into a vulnerable supplicating position, one difficult for her stature, with front claws scraping the filthy floor, and her head angled low. “O God of Gods, o divine and perfect form, we beg for thine righteous punishment. We are naught but the blindest of crawlers, to mistake a greatness so prominent and so obvious! Allow our shell, impotent and weak, to serve as object to thine divine wrath!”
Ghost at first did not know what to do, as they felt no anger for the Godseeker’s prior derisive words, nor held any resentment. Exacting punishment, even for genuine crimes, did not even suit them well. In their many travels, however, they had partaken of carnal lusts - first with Grimm, who burned hot and taught Ghost in the manner of innuendo, then also with Hornet, sharp viciousness veiled over stern kindness. How alike the Godseeker’s words seemed to those insinuations of Grimm’s dance, or Hornet’s weaving. Was it an offer, as theirs had been?
The same feeling opened afresh, at the sight of her quivering mass and eager mind. And if an offer - why not? Ghost’s fears for her health were assuaged; her substantial physique must be hardier than most, to handle the internal war it had underwent.
“Sublime God of Gods,” she continued in their silence, voice trembling with emotion, “Punish our deplorable form. We welcome thine vengeance - nay, we thirst for it! Desire beyond desire! We gladly proffer our shell, our soul, our mind - flay us, ruin us! Crush us under your overwhelming brilliance!”
Still yet, Ghost hesitated, though the yearning tugged at them. The Godseeker could not make her consent better known, but still, how hard it was to come to terms with a bug so willing to welcome the thing it had just witnessed - Void, untamed and hardly controlled. Not even willing, but pleading. It was their core she longed for, not the disguise, and she may be singularly prepared to receive it.
Desire thickened. Tentatively, they reached to touch the smooth surface of her mask, bowed low for their perusal.
She shuddered. Quieter, longing, “O glorious Devourer, be not gentle with our pathetic being. Permit us to learn how much of thine ferocity we can endure. Appease any of thine needs by our use - care not for the thoughts or welfare of a petty cringer like us.”
Acquiescing, ropes of Void flared in asymmetric arches from under Ghost’s cloak, and yawned all the way to the edges of the pit.
Godseeker half-lifted her head, trembling. “Yes, O God of Gods, most exalted, please-“
Ghost’s nail and mask clattered to the ground as their body plumed upward and outward, soon dwarfing Godseeker’s cowering form. The Void seized Godseeker with dozens of gripping tendrils. Effortlessly her heft was raised, squirming, into the air, and turned belly-up.
She gasped and kicked at thin air, words momentarily stolen, though her now exposed slit glinted tellingly with liquid. Ghost’s hunger mounted. Different indeed from Grimm or Hornet, every mortal bug bringing with it its own luxuries. They shied from this thought, which strayed close to disrespect, or at the very least, neared the concept of their differentness - of them not being mortal bug.
Godseeker saved Ghost from stalling in their worried thoughts for long: “Fill this impotent body,” she begged, dangling far above the Junk Pit’s floor. “Decimate our will and maim us for thine most worthy pleasure.”
Ghost found comfort that them not being mortal bug was exactly what Godseeker wished. Additional black tendrils lashed tight around her prone, ample frame. They squeezed until she emitted a pained squeak, and then Ghost hesitated - they did not want to hurt her -
Gasping, she uttered simply, “Use us.”
Should they be frightened? Impressed? All they knew is she wanted, and they wanted.
Decisive, the tendrils constricted her. Several sharp cracks rang through the cavern, no chitin strong enough to withstand that pressure. Likewise, a wounded sound, much higher pitched than her usual voice, ripped from her throat. Contrary to her agony, her slit pulsed, and her lower half seized. She flung her head back in the little movement allowed to her, offering glimpse of her bared throat.
Helplessly she hung in the air, and she must have been in pain, but her enthusiasm was none the lesser for it, as if nothing could satisfy her more than new pain inflicted.
Bewildered and amazed, Ghost cradled her close. Few bugs could tolerate even lesser pains; her resilience suggested an immense capacity for twining with a being more ancient, more violent. Godseeker indeed, built both for seeking and for the consequences of finding.
Did she indeed have the means to back her embellished words? How unique that would be, joining with another not as bug, but as Void! A part of them better kept well-hidden depending upon their company. A part of them Godseeker most wanted to see.
Shyly, Ghost lapped at her large slit, teasing themself with the warmth within. How cold they must seem to her, yet she still yearned. All their previous encounters had been characterized by restraint, control, but here, a powerful feeling built that it did not have to such a way, and indeed, she breathed,
“Lay waste upon us, hold not back-“
So much she had encouraged and so little Ghost had delivered, tempered by a wariness for harming her. They gathered their resolve and desire. Tendrils reared around her and surged impatiently into her slit, all wrestling amongst each other to delve into her accommodating body. Soon she was stretched around half a dozen black tendrils, her bulk bucking and jolting with their hunting movements. She likely would have spoken a litany of approval, if not that more knocked her mask askew in a frantic bid to push into her mouth and throat.
Skewered from both ends, she weakly twitched, but the tendrils squeezing the life out of her permitted very little movement or resistance.
Still Void sought to enter her, even as her throat bulged painfully, and her slit could surely stretch no further. Ghost funneled in more, more, until the shell immediately around her slit cracked; the softer fleshier parts beneath oozed greyish hemolymph which mixed with her arousal and the dripping Void. Her insides were doing little better, pumped full of black liquid. She heaved in instinctual rejection of the thing flooding her, but it was futile when more entered than left. It was not long before her belly was distended and swollen, her legs jerking pointlessly.
Ghost explored inside her. How enlarged she was from her already massive size, how their presence filled every cavity, and pushed her weight to the limits of her already damaged shell! Godseeker began to spasm violently - oh - they had forgotten bugs had to breathe -
Hastily, Ghost yanked the tendrils from her gullet. She sucked in a huge breath before wet hacking coughs ravaged her, each forcing out more sludgy Void. Between gasping for air and spitting out the black viscous liquid, she rasped, “If…. It pleases… thee… then strike us, fill us…”
Rising to her request, claws emerged from the Void and raked along her side, leaving in their wake long gashes - Godseeker cried out, but could not hide how the sound was not wholly one of distress. Excited by how well she bore her torment, they repeated the action once, then twice, digging in deeper with every successful assault. Twelve slashes now marred her, and the cloak she wore was thoroughly torn to pieces, yet she writhed in their grasp as if in heat.
The tendrils fought their way back into her mouth. Her jaw cracked from the force of their entry; she let out an agonized squeal. Mindful of her need to breathe, Ghost pumped the tendrils in and out - swiftly the Godseeker learned to sip tiny puffs of air when chance was afforded her, in the instances where she did not gag or cough instead.
Never in all this had Ghost neglected her slit, which now was a distressed swollen mess, hemolymph dotted all around the overstretched opening. Each bubble of hemolymph teased at the soft body under her shell, and Ghost could not help but to dip Void into those wounds, pressing searingly upon them. How hard to resist the urge to slither in deeper, scrape the wounds wider-
Her slit tightened around Ghost’s violating intrusion. Stuffed at both ends, she released a muffled cry and weakly thrust through her orgasm. The motion had more hemolymph drooling from her wounds.
There was no similar release for Ghost, only the delight in their dominance and in pleasing her. They sawed her back and forth on their tendrils, coaxing out further writhing and whimpers, until her only motions were instinct - breathing where allowed, gagging, shivering in her residual rapture. How intensely they craved to continue, following as she had pleaded, to squeeze her and overwhelm her and to wholly consume her.
However, restraint slipped back in. Mortal bugs were just that, no matter how hardy, or how willing. Ghost worried she could take no more - feared, in fact, that they had already gone too far.
For as quick as they had started, Ghost wound down slowly. Void eased out of her, little by little, choosing instead to stroke apologetically along her damaged shell, and lick her throbbing entrance - Godseeker whined softly, but hardly responded. She seemed to be lost in some daze, and Ghost’s worry mounted.
Only with the greatest gentleness did they lower her, and drape her tenderly upon the ground.
All the black which had filled the enormous cavern now sucked back down, concentrating into one diminutive shape. They reclaimed their nail, cloak, and mask. Back to their small form, which they would not abandon. Then they turned meekly back to the Godseeker, who had not risen from where they had placed her.
Impossible to tell if her eyes were closed or open. Her hide was scored with cracks and scratches, stained with Void, and dripping hemolymph.
Ghost tread closer and touched her mask, which they had so carefully avoided harming, lest they harm also the world within her mind.
“God of Gods,” she breathed, voice rumbling even in her exhaustion. “We pray… thy found satisfaction in our… lowly being, cringer before… thine majesty.”
Ghost stretched as high as their small body would go, to stroke down the crest of her mask.
“Glorious one,” Godseeker raised her head incrementally, “why dost thou remain? Surely we offer no further interest… though if so, we beseech thee to do with us as thee please.”
Of all the things Ghost had collected in Hallownest, speech was not one of them. They had no way to describe their concern, nor convey that they did not wish to use and abandon the Godseeker. Only their gestures could indicate such a thing, lovingly tracing the heavy gold of her mask, then caressing along her abused throat.
“Dost… dost thou deign to care for us, thy inferior tool? Meager vassal for thine will? How little we deserve such never-ending goodness…”
Some places in her shell were ruined in a way they would not recover from. Worriedly Ghost poked at one such place. Shaking herself from her stupor, Godseeker seemed to glean some of their sentiment. “Worry not, o divine entity. We are attuned to thy brilliance, and strengthen us it does, so that we may best serve as thy receptacle. A new molt will grant us healing…. and, we pray, permit us to take more of thine size…”
Ghost shivered at this promise of another meeting. Their small thighs squeezed together as they petted her enormous hide. So she could take such a thing, and still desire…
Godseeker hummed a deep note. “We sense there is more use thee canst pull from us - God of Gods, Lord of Lords, do not hesitate to satisfy thyself upon our willingly donated shell.”
Ghost did hesitate, but now of a shape imitating bug, they might imagine themself like one, and thus find the satiation of one, as Grimm and Hornet had first introduced to them. It did not escape the Godseeker’s notice.
Softly she murmured, “Will thee grant us the honor of tasting thy arousal? We are naught but blind worms, but we will do our best to serve thee.”
Ghost nodded their permission. A thin claw scooped them easily up. Godseeker rolled onto her back with a loud groan, and then deposited Ghost just below her mask. Their legs straddled the lower half of her face, hidden in shadow, while their claws settled upon the flat expanse of her golden mask.
Wet mouthparts opened under them. Something long and slick unfurled. Tenderly it lathed while Ghost quietly rocked. Sometimes it struck bits that had them jerking and pressing closer. They possessed no real need to breathe, formed from breathless bloodless substance, but here they began to pant, indulging in a fantasy of requiring such a thing.
Godseeker’s wet appendage slipped inside them, hot within their chill, and Ghost’s back arched. Their thighs tensed with excitement. She lapped as if she were sampling the richest of desserts, though Ghost knew they must taste of nothingness and cold. Each was a deep, probing lick, pressing wonderfully within walls that Ghost focused hard to keep solid.
Their mind drifted into imagination, visualizing all of Hallownest, across all its eras, at once. One enormous map but this map was not one of rooms nor elevations, rather one of souls and bugs, their collective crimes and woes. A map that knew not time but pictured creatures inevitably bound to time. While Godseeker pleasured them, Ghost shuddered, debilitated by the rushing emotion. The suffering they would never know. The bugs they had met, so rich in life and personality. Happiness, sadness, fulfillment, despair, all powerful and intense and infinite, a cycle of good and bad, of learning and forgetting, growing and dying.
The tide of mortal existence overwhelmed them: silently, their own orgasm broke over them, and then rode out Godseeker's final probing tastes. The map in their mind dissolved away; their fantasy - if it could be called such - whisked into nothing.
Exhausted, Ghost slumped over the Godseeker's mask, lazily stroking its surface as their thighs quivered in lingering sensation. Grateful for her offer - without it, they never would have experienced this unique ecstasy. Ghost had decided long ago that Godseeker was a friend, as many bugs were, but now they felt especially sure of that designation. Large friend. Arousing friend.
“Stay as long as thee wishes,” Godseeker murmured to their sensitive slit. “Furniture, toy, sheath, we will be whatever thee desires of us.”
Ghost nuzzled her mask, sighing faintly. It would be a task, caring for the Godseeker, much as it was to look after Quirrel. Much as it was to tend to the broken kingdom.
They did not shy from the task. In fact, they thought, as they began to doze off on top of her, they were quite keen to witness that molt she spoke of. How much more of them could she take?
Ghost delighted in guessing as they drifted to sleep.