Chapter Text
Cornifer must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. He had meant to follow the lower corridors of Greenpath to where they skirted the edges of Fog Canyon, then cut across the upper levels of the Fungal Wastes. But now, instead of purple-hued vines and luminescent bubbles of uoma polyps, the tunnel walls are showing bare, jagged stone, and the atmosphere grows darker and quieter with each step forward. Cornifer unrolls his map on a flat rock, holding the lumafly lantern close and squinting in the gathering gloom, trying to figure out where he has ended up.
Hmm… yes, it looks like there is an unfilled area in his notes just above the turn off into Fog Canyon, and he had somehow ended up in smack dab in the middle of it. Annoyance pricks at him—he’s a cartographer, after all, it is embarrassing that he ends up lost as often as he does—but that is quickly overwhelmed by that delightful, buzzing excitement in his gut that comes whenever he finds a new area to map. Quickly, he jots a few notes about his path so far on the parchment, then rolls it up and presses forward.
But even through the rosy lens of his enthusiasm, it’s not a very welcoming cavern. Before long, the shadows threaten to swallow him entirely and he pauses to feed a few flyflakes to his lantern to make it flare up a little brighter. Even after that, he can only see a few meters in any direction and he has to pick his way carefully across the jagged, broken path. He is so focused on keeping his footing that he almost misses the two orange pinpricks in the dark ahead of him—the only warning before a leaping husk springs out the darkness towards him.
“Aaaaah!” Cornifer recoils as the husk lands with an audible thud , missing him by inches. He scrambles back, almost tripping in his haste and holding out his lantern as if it might offer some protection as the husk turns its orange, lamp-like eyes on him again. In the light, Cornifer can see that this husk is in pretty bad shape. One of its arms hangs useless at its side, oozing infected pus from a deep gash that nearly severed the limb at the shoulder. Could it have gotten caught on some of the spikes that line this area? Cornifer wonders, as he barely manages to duck away as the creature swipes again. Husks are often too mindless to avoid even obvious dangers… actually, that gives him an idea.
The husk crouches, preparing to leap once more. Cornifer retreats again. He’s given up enough ground that if his idea doesn’t work he will have his back against the wall, quite literally. He looks around desperately for a direction to dodge—there! The husk springs forward just as Cornifer dives behind an upright outcropping of stone, and not a second too late. Caught unawares by its quarry’s sudden disappearance, the husk lands off-balance and its momentum carries it forward—straight into the spikes lining the wall. Cornifer winces at the crunch its carapace makes on impact. The husk lets out a high pitched wail, then nothing more.
Cornifer counts to ten, then cautiously pokes his head around the rock. The husk appears to have impaled itself on the sharp spikes, and as he watches it spasms and falls limp, the orange light fading from its eyes. It looks like his plan worked better than he had hoped, but he can’t help but feel a little sick at the outcome.
Eager to look at anything other than the broken body on the ground, Cornifer focuses instead on the rock he had taken cover behind. It turns out not to be a rock at all but some kind of carved statue, one unlike anything he’s encountered in Greenpath before. It has none of the spiraling runes he has come to associate with the vanished Mosskin tribes. The top is clearly carved into a face of some kind with gaping hollows for the eyes, and the body disappears in a sinuous mass of—tentacles? A cloak, perhaps? The whole thing is rather abstract, and very unsettling.
He sighs and pushes up his spectacles to rub his eyes. Husk attacks and creepy statues—goodness, maybe Iselda is right and he is getting too old to venture off alone like this. He settles the spectacles back on the bridge of his proboscis, only to harumph and pull them off once more. Some sort of dark substance has smeared itself across the lenses. He wipes it off with a kerchief, replaces them on his face, and blinks a few times.
His vision doesn’t clear right away. Motes of… something… swirl at the edges of his vision, airy and luminescent. Did he get some of the goop in his eyes, perhaps? He cleans his glasses again, blinks rapidly a few times. The glowing spots stubbornly refuse to disappear. Perhaps he’s simply tired—it’s been quite an eventful day after all. He lowers himself wearily to the ground, leaning heavily on the statue to do so, and notices that the dark liquid seems to be oozing from the carved eyes of the statue. That is… disturbing, but at least it’s a mystery solved.
There hasn’t been signs of any movement in the passage since the husk died, so he decides to risk a moment of rest. Leaning back on the statue, he closes his eyes and tries not to worry about creeping husks in the dark or glowing visual hallucinations. He’ll feel better once he’s rested…
“Can't sleep... with your eyes open, little one…”
Cornifer’s eyes fly open.
The corridor is empty. His lumafly lantern has dimmed while he napped, the tiny insects settling at the bottom of the glass bulb, and in his disoriented state it takes a moment to realize that the lantern not the only source of light in the hallway anymore.
The glowing motes of light are still present, and they seem thicker than before. A moment later, they swirl as if disturbed and a—a—
—a ghost floats up through the floor.
Cornifer almost yelps but claps a hand over his mouth just in time. The whatever-it-is appears pale and insubstantial, its body more of a suggestive blob than anything recognizably bug-shaped. Its eyes are yawning, dark voids set in an impassive face, and its legs seem to dangle uselessly as it bobs down the corridor in his general direction. Its glow stands out vividly in the near-total darkness of the cavern, but is rather faint in absolute terms, and Cornifer finds himself wondering if he would even be able to see it in broad daylight. He’s never seen a ghost before—could it be that they are simply too faint to see except in darkness? Or maybe, he tells himself firmly, he’s never seen one because ghosts aren’t real.
The specter floats closer, and Cornifer decides to shelve any further questions about the nature and reality of the afterlife until after he’s put some distance between him and the maybe-ghost. He shoulders his pack and begins to edge away. The moment the ghost is facing away from him, he lurches into a run and ducks through a dark archway. This leads him to another stone corridor, then through a series of anterooms—all clearly carved out with intention, reminiscent in design of some kind of temple complex, perhaps? But he doesn’t dare pause long enough to look more closely.
Finally, huffing and puffing, he leans against a wall to catch his breath. He pulls out his map, realizing that in his urgency he hasn’t been keeping careful track of his path. He hates to admit it, but he is in serious danger of actually getting lost. He squints down at his notes, shaking his lumafly lantern to waken the bugs and brighten its glow. As he does, his shadow falls forward onto the parchment.
Odd.
There’s a light source behind him.
“Can’t… dream while you are still breathing.”
Cornifer whips around.
A wraith floats in the air before him, larger and more defined than the one before.
“Aaa-AAA!”
The lantern flies out of his hands, bouncing on the hard stone with a worrying crack before rolling out of sight behind some unidentified piece of the architecture. Cornifer scrambles back as far as he can, but far too soon his back is against the wall. He can feel the stone under his fingers, carved into some kind of bas-relief picture which his panicked mind is too preoccupied to process. The wraith drifts hauntingly before him, surrounded by eddies of the same glowing motes he had still been holding out hope were just his conjurations of his overtired brain.
But this specter seems too… well, not solid , but too substantial to be his imagination.
“W-what… who are you?” he manages to ask.
The specter shudders. “....who? Who sees No-Eyes and her precious children?”
Cornifer begins to feel his way sideways along the wall, trying to reach his lantern. “Well, ah, I’m Cornifer. It’s nice to meet you, Ms… No-Eyes.”
The specter seems to fuzz out of focus for a moment, then refocuses. It—she?—seems to be some kind of armored bug, like a knight from the old tales. But where her eyes should be, there are only gaping black voids. Other ghostly shapes, only vaguely bug-shaped like the one he encountered outside, crowd around her, emerging through the solid cavern walls to swirl about her in restless patterns.
In a lilting, singsong voice she says, “Precious children, a Cornifer has come for us in the dark… Will you sing for us?”
“I was actually, um, just looking for the way out.” He’s making progress, his back pressed so hard against the wall that his pack rasps against the textured stone. The specter rotates so that it continues to face him, flanked by her entourage of lesser spirits. He reaches the spot where his lantern has gotten wedged behind another one of the creepy eyeless statues. He snatches it up, noting with dismay that the glass has cracked and all but the last few lumaflies have escaped.
But soon as he touches it, the ghost lets out an angry screech. “Looking…” Her antennae whip angrily, and her voice takes on a rising cadence. “ You speak such loathsome things as you sleep... your claws scratch and scrape…”
“Please, I mean you no harm!” Cornifer is backing away down the corridor now, holding his lantern in front of him as if trying to ward away the ghosts. He’s pretty sure he’s heading deeper into the network of rooms instead of out of it, but the other way is blocked by the increasingly-angry dead.
“Precious children, how they moan at the dreams they see.”
“...nor your children!”
“My lullabies cannot calm them, not while the light encroaches! You bring the Light. You dream!”
“The light…?” Cornifer stumbles into another statue and nearly falls. He grips it, feeling distraught as he looks into its dark, scratched out eye sockets. Then suddenly he understands. “My lantern. You’re… afraid of the light? My lantern?”
“Dreams of light… we must not see. No-Eyes! We swore to be No-Eyes!”
“No eyes… Just a moment.” Cornifer shutters his lumafly lantern, then stuffs it to the bottom of his pack so that not even a sliver of its shine can be seen. No-Eyes stops advancing, but still seems agitated, the soft glow of her and the lesser ghosts still providing faint illumination of the room. “The Dreams of Light… it is only safe not to see.”
“I…” With a feeling of dread, he looks from No-Eyes with her void-filled gaze to the blinded statue. He hesitates, then pulls off his glasses and ties his handkerchief firmly over his face. “Look, I don’t have any eyes now either.”
For a moment, all is silent.
“A Cornifer comes in the dark…”
“Yes, yes. It is quite dark now.”
He feels forward tentatively with one foot, then stops. He hasn’t mapped this area yet. He’s… well, not just lost, but also blinded, disoriented, and possibly also trapped by a malevolent spirit.
A malevolent spirit which has just begun humming .
The tune is largely wordless, though he thinks he can catch snatches of lyrics here and there. It is achingly, hauntingly beautiful. Cornifer finds himself rooted to the spot, his heart filled with a longing for… he’s not quite sure what. Something long, long gone…
…no. He shakes himself out of the reverie. This sadness isn’t his own, and he still needs to find a way out of here.
He steels himself to address her again. “Excuse me… Ms. No-Eyes? Do you know the way out of here?”
The humming cuts off. “My children… I cannot calm them.”
From the sound of it, she is quite close to him. He thinks he can feel the brush of wind as the lesser ghosts glide past—and hopefully not through —him, swirling in their continued agitation. Maybe… maybe if he can help them somehow, she might help him back?
He gulps. “I… do they like music?”
A shudder goes through the air around him.
“I’m not much of a musician myself—it’s really my wife who has the golden voice. But I fancy I can carry a tune well enough…”
The cavern remains silent. Cornifer clears his throat. He clears it again. And then he begins to sing.
He picks a simple song. A jaunty walking tune that he often hums while trekking alone through the quieter corners of Hallownest. The lyrics are positively rustic, told from the perspective of a lone tiktik herder singing about how hard the work is, how long the day, and how lovely the pot of mushroom stew his wife is cooking for dinner will be. (Sometimes when he’s at home, Iselda joins in on the verses about the stew.) He sings it now with a tremulous voice but sincere feeling.
Behind his blindfold he can’t see how the ghosts respond, but he can feel the change in the cavern around him. The air grows still, then he feels a tingling cold creep up around him. Is that… the ghosts, crowding around him? The sensation is not unpleasant, but feels almost electric on his carapace. He fights the urge to back away, putting more forcefulness into his voice as he launches into the next verse.
He gradually becomes aware of a humming rising around him. The wraiths murmur amongst themselves, wordless but still in key with his song. He can hear No-Eyes speaking with them, soothing them with whispered reassurances. When he reaches the chorus again, she joins him, crooning along as if the song were a lullaby. She doesn’t know the words, but she’s picked up the tune and harmonizes with him effortlessly.
Eventually, he reaches the end of the song. He coughs, and realizes how dry his throat is. He gropes in his pack for a canteen, but No-Eyes speaks in his ear.
“The music… how it soothes. But my children still cannot rest. Will you sing for us?”
“I…”
“Please. The Dreams will not let us rest. Will you sing for us?”
Cornifer finds the canteen and drinks. It’s already nearly empty. It occurs to him that if these ghosts are real, they’ve been down here for a very long time. Whatever curse keeps them bound here, it is most likely beyond the power of a simple wanderer like himself to resolve. Still, what else can he do? “Very well, madame. Another song.”
He thinks for a moment, and then begins the same song again. The ghosts crowd up around him, sending chills through his shell and into his very core. They seem pleased to hear a melody they know. But this time, he doesn’t sing of the shepherd and his stew. Instead, he sings of a cartographer, lost in tunnels far from home, missing his wife and his cozy bed. It doesn’t take much effort to swap the new words in, and his audience seems forgiving of a few clumsy rhymes. Then he sings of dark tunnels—though he is careful to make no mention of light—and a desire to see the surface once more, of being lost in a labyrinth and needing a friend to guide him back out.
With the chorus he asks: Can you be that friend? Will you lead me out?
For the first few verses, the change in lyrics seems to have little effect. He is not even sure if the lesser ghosts can understand his words, so he keeps his hopes pinned on No-Eyes as their leader. He sings the question again, putting as much feeling into the plea as possible.
After the fifth verse, he feels a change in the air. There is a breeze, cold and crisp, ever so slightly tugging at his sleeve. Cautiously, he takes a step forward, letting the flow guide his direction and careful to maintain his song as he goes. The ghosts come with him, swirling about his legs and generating tiny gusts of their own. And then… yes, he can hear No-Eyes singing along slightly ahead of him, her voice echoing against the stone as she moves away.
Cornifer feels relief well up inside of him. Hoping it isn’t premature, he presses one hand against a stone wall to steady himself, and begins to follow her.
He moves slowly at first, unsure of his footing and mindful of the broken tiles and spike patches he had to avoid on his first panicked flight into the temple. He worries about falling behind, but No-Eyes never moves beyond hearing range and he is able to follow the echoes of her tune with ease. She seems to be leading him along a safe path through the ruins’ hazards, and he walks with more confidence, adjusting to movement without the benefit of sight, feeling his way with hands, feet, and the guiding nudges of his ghostly companions.
He’s not sure how long they travel. The twists and turns quickly become too complex for him to keep track of in his mind, but he does his best to take a general measure of their path down in his mind so he can translate it to his map later. He reaches the end of the song and starts it again, then again once more.
At some point, the sound of No-Eyes’ crooning grows louder, then trails off as Cornifer draws level with her.
“The edge of our sanctuary… We go no further.”
Cornifer can smell it now—a moistness to the air, the promise of petrichor and green growing things. The familiar caverns of Greenpath cannot be far off now. He takes a step towards it.
“The Light… it still haunts us.”
He turns back. “I… Thank you, No-Eyes.”
“A Cornifer sings in the dark… we cannot rest, but we are soothed.”
“I won’t forget you,” he promises. “I won’t.”
There is a sound like a great sigh. The air swirls in a great vortex, then settles, leaving the room still and silent. Cornifer tentatively lifts his blindfold.
He is alone. A few paces from where he stands, the flagstones give way to dirt floor and the carved walls transition into the roughness of natural rock. Behind him, the tunnel disappears into darkness, and he can just make out the shape of a no-eyed statue guarding the path back to the temple. Ahead of him, he can just make out the sound of running water and the smell of living caverns.
He pulls his cracked lantern out of his pack, grateful for comfort it provides despite its diminished glow, and heads forward. With one hand over the fracture to prevent his last few lumaflies from escaping, he sets off at a pace quickened by the adrenaline still coursing through him. It’s not long before he has emerged into Greenpath proper and only a little more time before he has found enough familiar landmarks to triangulate his location. He makes his way to an old favorite camping spot—a small grotto, elevated and hidden behind vines, and settles onto the soft moss with a sigh of relief.
But before he can rest, there’s something he has to do. He pulls out his cartography supplies, weighing down the edges of his map scroll with a few pebbles and uncorking his ink. He begins to work on the unfilled area on the map, recording as much detail as he can remember from the dark tunnels before the specifics can fade from his memory. He adds a few symbols—a sketch of the temple facade, a tiny rendering of the eyeless statues that dominated its interior. He leaves a small space for a label. Then hesitates.
Greenpath Temple? The Eyeless Tomb? Realm of Restless Ghosts?
Too plain, too somber, too sensational. None of the names feel right. He thinks back. Remembers No-Eyes’ final conversation.
He dips his pen in fresh ink and writes:
The Stone Sanctuary.
He sits back, watching the glisten of the ink fade as it dries onto the parchment while his mind wanders back to the mournful ghost and her restless followers. If only he could have done more for them… but his years wandering Hallownest have taught him that there are forces at work in this ruined kingdom that are far beyond his power to address. Observing, recording, and admiring—that is his role here, and he is content with that.
Usually, at least.
He packs his supplies away and curls up for a nap, hoping that sleep will ease the troubles weighing on his mind. Perhaps, he thinks drowsily, perhaps someday, someone will see his map and follow his directions to the Sanctuary. Someone who can set the forgotten spirits free at last…
With No-Eyes’ song echoing in his ears, he drifts off into a dreamless sleep.