Chapter Text
Ghost had been warned time and time again to not trust Monomon or her experiments by more than one trustworthy source.
“She will steal bits of your mask and try to pinpoint your unique essence from it,” sighed Lurien, alone in his spire and dusting his telescope. “Still a great distraction in social events, mind you.”
“Monomon has proven that intelligence doesn't equate to wisdom," chuckled Herrah, fixing the tangled webs in her den and stealing little looks at the potted delicate flower sitting pretty on her plinth.
“My Madam wishes to understand the world around us,” said Quirrel, thick journal in hand and quill quickly sketching the many odd plants of Greenpath, “and what makes it tick.”
“Wise Monomon is not someone to trifle with,” nodded Hegemol, polishing his rusted armor and barely fitting inside his new home in Dirtmouth, “lest you wish to end with a nail made of rubber.”
“Le’mer, Che’ quivers in the mantle of the Teacher,” shuddered Ze’mer, her antenna fluttering between drooped and upright, “be wary of her grasp, curious mind can corrupt just as swift.”
"Madam Monomon? Ohoho, yes, I have made her acquaintance many times!" Laughed Ogrim, claws spreading, ahem, 'fertilizer' atop the few crops Dirtmouth had planted. "Curious and bold like His Majesty!"
"Keep your guard raised and senses open, young knight," ordered Dryya, elegant nail mercilessly stabbing a wooden dummy in its chest, "flooded in acid it may be, yet I rather drench myself in its burn than delve into the Archives."
"Madam Monomon is of a brilliant mind," grinned Isma, twisting her vines into intricate shapes and humming to the tune of the hissing acid below. “There is little she doesn’t know, and her role as the kingdom’s knowledge keeper is an important job, young one.”
“Monomon?” Their older sibling tilted their head, horns dipping to the side until they straightened up again and resumed polishing the piece of armor in their grasp. “She and Father spoke often, though argued for most of it.”
“Monomon is as intelligent as she is dangerous,” grumbled Hornet, digging her sewing needle into their tallest sibling’s ripped cloak and pulling the reinforced silk out the other side. “Be wary, she may try to turn you into another experiment.”
“The Teacher?” Hummed Grimm, claws stroking the Grimmchild in his grasp in thought. “I met her once or twice in the past - her knowledge is vast, but her thirst for it rivals that of the flames to a dying kingdom.”
Now don’t get them wrong; they appreciated the scientist and even loved to visit her and Quirrel in the Teacher’s Archives - without Grimmchild. It was just that Monomon had a certain… intensity about her that reminded Ghost of the Mask Maker in Deepnest.
Dedicated.
Maniacal.
Obsessed to a lesser degree.
Monomon was free in spirit and mind. She refused to abide by the standards and went where no bug ever went before - with the obvious exception of one other, daring to explore and dig up that which didn’t want to be discovered.
Of course, this last bit of information came from word of mouth. Those who had actually met the jellyfish before knew of her typical antics - Ghost only knew the stories secondhand by overhearing them from their spot on the bench beside the transit station.
Which is why when she had sent a sealed summoning letter their way via Stag Mail, the knight had seen no problem in answering her call and heading down to Queen's Station.
Again, without Grimmchild, who pouted at being left behind with Brumm. Their mask still felt sore from last time’s countless Ooma cores to the face, so the begging eyes had little effect on the knight.
Ghost carefully hopped down from wet ledge to wet ledge, paws clinging tight to squishy vines to keep from slipping off the sides and taking a nasty tumble down into the gorge below. They flew over floating Uomas, took their time inching around Oomas, and dashed through clouds of charged lumaflies at precisely the right moment. Only once did they trip on a vine and faceplant on an empty ooma bubble.
Overall, Ghost considered it a pretty good journey so far.
They padded through a narrow tunnel and came upon the final cliff overlooking the flatland of the Archives. The bronze sheen of the building glimmered bright in the unnatural purple glow of the canyon, glittering pretty amidst the floating bubbles and beckoning Ghost forward.
The knight moved back a few steps away from the edge and took a running start, overshooting the rock outcrops meant to help them down and landing atop a spongy bush on their back. They felt themselves dip into the greenery, smooth leaves and branches cushioning their body like a pillow, before the bush spat them back out to land a few yards away on their feet.
Ghost brushed stray leaves and dew drops off their cloak. They nodded in satisfaction when everything clinging to them fell at their feet, pleased that they had managed to not rip the new cloak Hornet had personally made for them, and continued their unhurried pace on the faded path.
When they reached the tall archway leading into the Archives proper, Ghost looked up at the clusters of Oomas floating serenely above the dome and briefly wondered what it would be like to be like them.
Carefree.
Simple-minded.
Weightless.
Just floating on by wherever the currents took them, going with the flow of the canyon and simply existing in place.
Not a single care in the world other than a rampant knight accidentally popping their bubble.
Must be nice.
Not that Ghost would ever trade their life for that of an Ooma.
Theirs was an exciting life; a life with incredible power and responsibility on their shoulders that they managed with all the grace of a frenzied Oblobble; a life that they had fought hard to keep from the Abyss and smothered the Old Light to prolong.
Yeah, the Oomas could keep bobbing in place, merry and free.
Ghost had an appointment with Monomon and Quirrel, and surely they would present them with something much more fun than these bubble creatures could handle.
Which brought Ghost back to the current present.
Standing inside the Teacher’s Archives.
In a wide room hissing with acid coursing dangerously fast through the pipes in the walls.
And staring at an odd contraption Monomon was giddily fretting over.
“The Madam has been like this all morning,” Quirrel idly commented as he came to stand by Ghost, clipboard in hand and quill tapping a staccato beat on the metal. The pillbug chuckled quietly to himself and looked down at his notes in contemplation.
“Needles within parameters, Madam?” He called to the former Dreamer, quill poised to tick off a box from the long list of steps his clipboard held.
The jellyfish flitted to the bulbous side of the machine where a multitude of valves and pressure gauges chirped and huffed thick clouds of steam. “Set!” Monomon replied. Her tentacles fiddled with a few handwheel valves, twisting and turning them in a way that made absolutely no sense for Ghost but would probably keep the whole machine from blowing up the way Flukemarm had.
What a disgusting adventure that had been.
The charm hadn’t even been worth it.
Ghost wandered off to explore the room while Quirrel went down the list with Monomon for the finishing touches. They kept their paws to themselves as they took in the odd sights.
The machine itself looked like one of the eggs down in the Abyss, spherical and glossy with a metallic finish that reflected everything off its smooth surface. Thick and thin cables descended from the ceiling to connect to multiple ports on either flank of the contraption. Towards the back and top of the sphere, a pair of long tubes were inserted into two larger ports that resembled antennae on a bug’s head. Hundreds of lumaflies buzzed angrily inside each tank and crackled violently in the tight space. Clearly displeased, they pitter-pattered their tiny bodies against the thick glass of the tube in retaliation against their confinement.
Ghost walked up to a colorful array of buttons on a counter beside the machine. Some buttons glowed steady and bright, others not at all, and most were flashing intermittently. The knight didn't know what any of them were for, but the rhythmic pattern itched at their hands and made them want to slap every single button on the array just to see what happened.
Ghost chose to wisely remove themselves from the impulsive temptation and made their way to the long and cluttered bench pushed up against the farthest wall. Parchment scrolls and stone tablets were pinned to the walls in front of the workstation, depicting crude diagrams and hastily sketched assemblies for the machine behind them. Tools of all kinds lay scattered along one end of the long table, and the other was drowning in papers and thick journals stained an odd black at their spines and covers.
Ghost didn't need to be an expert to immediately pick up on the faint tug of the Void coating the books.
Nope. Not doing that again.
They promptly turned around once more and wandered back to Quirrel, who had either not noticed they left at some point or was numbing to his notes again.
"- and the drum of the device is powered by the electrical charge of the lumaflies. We needed a renewable and non-extinguishable source, and at first we had considered using a system similar to hydrolysis, but the acid would prove too potent for any amount of water to chemically balance the solution - not to mention the potential for explosion! It wasn't until Madam Monomon mentioned how her motorized tank was powered by charge from agitated lumaflies did we realize the benefits of electricity paired with constant acid inflow and a self-sustained water pump to stimulate the drum into -"
Ghost stared blankly at the pillbug.
"Er, well, um, technical explanations can wait. Madam Monomon is ready to speak with you."
Ghost nodded.
Quirrel tucked his clipboard under his arm and motioned for the knight to follow him. They stepped up onto the dais where the machine rested and Monomon floated, mask somehow eager and excited despite not being able to move.
"Young Knight!" The former Dreamer greeted, dipping her head briefly in respect before clasping her front two tentacles together. "I have found a solution!"
Ghost tilted their head. They raised their paws from inside their cloak and signed.
'A solution?'
Monomon floated back and to the side to present the machine as if Ghost hadn't already seen it. Her tentacle patted the glossy finish proudly.
"You asked whatever could have gone wrong in the past to make the future so," she said, looking away from their creation to meet the knight's eyes. "This machine will present an answer to that question!"
Ghost approached the machine themselves and touched a curious paw to it. The black coating seemed to thrum to life under their touch, warm yet cold and familiar.
Wait a second.
Was this -
'Void?'
Monomon nodded eagerly.
"Yes, we engrossed the shell with void to boost its compositional properties. Void defies time, and if our calculations are correct down to the smallest decimal, then we can use this as a window to the past."
"An opportunity to see what went wrong in Hallownest," Quirrel added, coming up to stand beside the knight. He placed his free hand on their shoulder, sensing their small companion needed a moment to process the information given.
Ghost drew their hand back from the metal finish, paw trembling when the void yearned back for their touch, and made a point of moving away from it.
'Is it safe?'
Teacher and apprentice eyed one another, debating something unspoken between themselves before Quirrel nodded the slightest bit.
Monomon glided over to the switchboard.
"It is safe, in theory," she started, tentacles poking and prodding and flipping buttons and switches on the panel. "A regular bug like Quirrel or Princess Hornet may theoretically be safe within the drum, but we have no way of calculating for certain if they would suffer side-effects such as poisoning via Void exposure upon their return."
Quirrel reached for the door of the machine and pulled it open. The oiled latches hissed a puff of steam at the temperature disparity between the warm Archives and the freezing drum.
"We have tested with inanimate objects," Quirrel began, tossing his clipboard inside and clicking the door shut again. He moved away from the device and steered Ghost away with him to stand behind a yellow line on the floor that the knight hadn't noticed. "We select a reset time and activate the machine to displace the object, but then we must wait for the water pump to cool down the drum for a few hours before we can retrieve the test subject."
Monomon activated the necessary controls in the panel and held her tentacle against the last switch, ready to pull the lever and activate the sequence.
"The objects return intact," she continued, catching Ghost's attention as she gestured to the sealed drum. "No visible or compositional disparities between when they left and when they arrived."
Ghost stood as tall as they could to catch a glimpse of the clipboard within the machine.
'But you said none of them are alive, right?'
The Teacher nodded again.
"They remain stagnant in place, so the retrieval process remains a variable Quirrel is working on solving. Would the retrieval process work the same if the object moved a mile from its original coordinates? We don't know yet."
Ghost stiffened at the idea of anyone being forever trapped in a time not their own without any chance of ever being able to return.
"But we are looking into an ancient seal to give to the traveler," Quirrel's hand returned to Ghost's tense shoulder, smiling under his mask when the knight relaxed fractionally under the friendly touch. "It acts like a beckon, and it won't allow for the bearer to be lost from those whose eyes have seen the seal."
'You mentioned something about side-effects,' Ghost asked Monomon, 'what are those?'
The former Dreamer heaved a soft sighed. The air about her turned morose and grieving, but she drew to her full height and began to explain.
"Void is a primordial substance - older than quite possibly anything in the realms. Its hidden threats remain so because of the lack of proper tools to study it, but the effects it has on mortal bugs has been documented almost extensively in the past.
"Entities - whether bug or not, mind you - who are not Void to some extent and have had constant unmitigated exposure to the Void for years on end suffer radical illness and decomposition while still alive."
Ghost shuffled closer to a silent Quirrel in horror.
"Those who work with it and handle Void for long hours begin to develop a corrosive miasma. No protection means your mask and claws begin to develop stains of Void as the substance makes itself at home under your shell or skin. If the void continues to collect underneath the afflicted bug's shell, they will die of acute trauma when the Void begins to corrode and eat away at the bug from the inside out. Should attention be given immediately after an on-set of symptoms, the bug's chances of survival are higher and most of the damage can be mitigated."
Ghost pulled at Quirrel's arm, signing hurriedly with their other hand.
'Void affect you, work machine?'
Quirrel quickly understood what they were trying to say and shook his head.
"No, of course not, little buddy. Madam Monomon and I used specialized suits."
Ghost stared at the assistant.
"The Pale King was an avid researcher of the Void," Monomon gently interjected, not quite sure yet how to breach the subject of the former monarch. "It is how he made the Kingsmoulds and Wingmould. His body could handle high exposures to unfiltered Void, but the research teams that would accompany him were weaker than he. He created whole-body suits infused with high quantities of Soul to deter the Void's corruption for them, and he gifted plenty to the Archives in the event we wished to take up research into the Ancient Civilization that once lived far below."
The knight remained still for a beat.
There it was again.
The Pale King.
They weren't free from it in Dirtmouth, what with their siblings sharing stories about life in the White Palace, and it seemed they wouldn't be free from it here either.
Pity.
Ghost could do without having to spare an ounce of their attention towards the disgraced ruler.
Their hold on Quirrel slackened as they nodded in understanding.
'So Quirrel and Hornet could grow sick inside the machine?'
"Yes."
'What about me?'
"Yourself?"
'Void entity.'
Monomon raised a tentacle to her mask, stroking it in thought as she mulled over the proposition.
"Would you be willing to volunteer yourself for this experiment?" She finally asked, part of her eager for the little vessel to say yes and another part of her loathing the idea by the second.
'If it would be safer for everyone, yes.'
"The machine harnesses Void to a degree that we can bend time-space for a few seconds," Quirrel mumbled, his own hand tapping the chin of his mask. "It would make it more potent should a creature of Void be used to traverse back."
Monomon's whole being flared up in sudden realization. "The variables shift and perhaps we can minimize the use of Void being fed into the drum," she shot back, tentacles already reaching for a piece of parchment to note her hypotheses down.
"Less Void being fed into the drum…"
"... The lesser the margin of error!"
Ghost looked back and forth between Teacher and apprentice as they kept throwing ideas at each other.
"Reducing the input of Void increases the control over the drum."
"Thereby negating a cataclysmic situation of Void supplementing Void."
"Strain and overheating of the drum could be reduced by 16%."
"Water pump efficiency increases by 12."
"Hydrolysis…"
The knight quickly grew bored of their complicated chatter and turned away again. They quickly became aware of the fact that Monomon had never released the switch to initiate the jump sequence.
They padded over to the control panel, gently poked the tentacle away the more immersed Monomon became with variable this and relativity that, and hovered an uncertain paw over the switchboard.
All voices and hisses and chugging of machinery melted away as hollow eyes regarded the intimidating machine.
They were so close to it.
So, so, so close to an opportunity that would grant them a forbidden peek into the past.
A true opportunity so close to being completed that would allow Ghost to learn what had been forgotten.
A true opportunity to maybe save their sibling from a terrible fate and give Hornet the mother she had so desperately missed.
And if all else failed…
Well.
Then Ghost had no qualms with challenging the Radiance again before her infection caused the king to drown his unborn children in Void.
They turned back to the switch.
"Are you willing to flip it?"
Ghost jumped at the sudden noise above them, one hand already reaching for their nail and the other shooting off the switch to avoid accidentally triggering it.
Quirrel laughed and held his hands up in surrender.
"I'm sorry, friend," he said, clearly smiling under his mask, "Madam Monomon left to begin the equations, but it seems you wish to activate the sequence."
Ghost dropped their paws and looked down, feelings of shame coiling around their inside at being caught.
"Of course, even if she is not here, I am still a perfectly valid supervisor," the pillbug continued, moving to stand behind the thick safety screen beside the control panel.
The knight watched in confusion as Quirrel trotted away.
Supervisor?
For wha -
Oh.
Oooh.
OH!
Ghost quickly jumped up onto the counter and slapped the switch down. The light under the button flared a cheerful green and they scampered to catch up with Quirrel behind the shield. They crowded just behind the lip of it, peeking around the thick iron to keep the machine in full view.
At first, the contraption didn't so much as twitch. It remained stagnant on the dais as the seconds ticked by. The lumaflies kept buzzing mad in their tubes and the many cables hung limp. Ghost was beginning to feel a touch disappointed when the constant thumping from the wall behind them suddenly began to rise in tempo.
Cables jerked in place, twitching and pulsing eerily familiar as the beast awoke. A series of crank gears started to roll alongside the moving cables, and Ghost watched in amazement how the pipes along the ceiling began to glow brighter as acid was redirected to feed into the tubes on one side of the machine. Steam erupted from pressure relief valves mounted on the back of the sphere, whistling high and shrill alongside the hissing of acid chugging through cables.
On the other end, the cables connecting the machine to the ceiling pipes remained still. They didn't shake, they didn't twitch, they didn't even sway back and forth like a normal limp cable would, and Ghost couldn’t help but think that they looked disturbingly out of place when compared to the hustle and bustle of the left side.
They were about to question Quirrel about it when they felt an odd tugging sensation in their chest. Their paw pressed over the Void Heart, confused as to why the charm felt like it was stirring in place. It only ever acted up whenever they practiced their shade spells, or when they went to deliver the occasional delicate flower to the bowels of the Abyss. Ghost couldn’t see any reason as to why the charm would be urging them to step out from behind the safety screen.
“Are you alright?”
Ghost looked up at Quirrel. His eyes were glued to the action ahead and his hand hovered over a big red button at his side, but his attention had shifted to his short companion when they hunched over in what looked to be like pain.
They nodded in lieu of signing and straightened their stance, paw dropping from the Void Heart and mind trying to ignore what was happening quite literally under their mask.
The unmoving cables had started to undulate ever so slightly, drawing their focus back to them and away from the now buzzing charm. Their rippling movements seemed to feed a substance into the machine, and it was only until Ghost saw a familiar ichor enter the drum did they realize that the reason their whole being was behaving so oddly was because there was void being pumped into the machine.
That answered that question.
A droning hum rattled cables and pressure valves into a discordant melody. Void covered the window of the drum's door as acid stopped being pumped under the outer metal layer, and the faint whirring noise of what Ghost assumed to be the water pumps joined the cacophony with a soft click .
"Alright, needles looking steady and shell holding," Quirrel mumbled, stealing a glance to the bolted pipes above. The hand hovering over the red button left its place to close around a lever beside it. "And now for the big finale!"
Ghost barely had time to see Quirrel pull the lever down before a piercingly loud CRACK and bright flash of blue-white light blinded them. They scrubbed their paws over their eyes and forced themselves to see the roaring machine in their disorientation.
The lumafly tubes they had forgotten about were glowing bright in their intensity. Electric bolts arched off the thick glass, striking the insulation of the cables and webbing across the glossy finish of the drum. A shrill whine grew louder and louder to the point where Ghost felt the void under their cloak curdle and tremble, and just when they were about to pounce on the emergency stop button, the inside of the machine shrieked bloody murder.
And then silence.
Silence so heavy it weighed on Ghost and made them feel like they had gone deaf.
The only way they knew they hadn't was through the gentle tick-tick-ticking from the relief valves clicking open, the sad whine coming from the lumafly tubes slumping in exhaustion, and the soft hiss of steam escaping the pressurized tubes.
Quirrel, dressed in a strange full-body suit that glowed white, cheerfully skirted around the knight and went straight to the drum's door. He unlatched the security clasps and pulled it open, peeking inside and chirping a pleased noise at what he found.
"Clipboard's gone!"
Ghost snapped themselves from their amazed trance and dashed over. They jumped onto the dais and pushed their head inside the drum, horns bumping the inside as they patted around for the clipboard themselves.
Gone.
It was gone.
It was really gone.
It was like nothing had ever been inside the drum before.
Ghost hopped down from the machine and barely managed to sign coherently in their excitement.
'It worked!'
Quirrel grinned and nodded. He shut the door back and resealed the latches, patting the warm yet cold machine and stepping down from the dais.
"Yes, it really did work magnificently," he sighed, flicking buttons and levers from the switchboard into a standby position. "Now we only need wait a few hours for the water pumps to cool the system and the lumaflies to recharge before we can attempt to retrieve the item."
Ghost was bouncing on the pads of their feet at the implications.
They had to tell their siblings about this.