Conflicting Conundrums

Terrible Planning

The Shade Lord never truly thought about the entire thing all the way through. They worked their way up, ascended, took care of the Radiance, and decided something needed to be done for their siblings now. However beyond restoring their siblings' bodies to the best of their ability, giving them their "gift", and repressing any memories of the Shade Lord's ascension or return to Hallownest? Nothing. They had point A and point B planned out, but in-between the two? They really had no idea. It seems a bit ludicrous to go through so much effort without having any real concrete plan. And it was. Not to mention stupidly risky for what they wanted.

What about their progenitors? (Not really parents now were they? At least that's what they gathered from Hornet and Mato.) They rejected all light of his, the very notion of him repulsed them in a way no other light could. This absolute rejection set all of his essence free, allowing him to reform himself. (Though that clearly wasn't their intention.) They should have thought of a way to prevent interaction or hung on to his essence despite their absolute repulsion. Her on the other hand? They didn't think much of her, quite honestly. They thought her guilt-ridden and desperate from the start. Refusing to acknowledge that they were obviously not the pale beings' "perfect vessel" even after proving their will, asking them to replace their child without taking any time to think of a new plan after the original plan failed, and never bothering to try to redeem herself instead of worthless punishment.

However, who knows what will happen when the two of them are together. They didn't know how the two affected each other or how they would interact with their siblings now that the immediate threat was gone. They knew the effect people could have on an individual, they learned that lesson recently with themselves. No one but the formerly imprisoned sibling knew what they were like in general and even then as much as that sibling cared for them they were too preoccupied with being the perfect vessel at the time to genuinely know them.

The Shade Lord was lost.

They had no idea what to think or what to do, and with everyone's strong thoughts and feelings about the King's return, they were emotionally exhausted already. Too overwhelmed to clearly differentiate their own from, well, technically themselves? They were bitter. This whole mess started with those strange visions, and now they couldn't tell what had happened or what was a vision. It wasn't fair. They often had trouble differentiating what was part of reality and what was a former possibility and it left them lost sometimes. At the very least they stopped, for now. They think.

The visions started soon after they arrived in the kingdom and stopped around the time they first saw their birthplace again. Visions of things that could have happened. For example, that one "warrior" they met in Dirtmouth on their way to the Fool's Colosseum crushed- quite literally, -in the arena and was thrown out like trash in their visions. They thought it pitiful. And sad, though they couldn't fathom why. So they kept him company throughout his journey there. Maybe it would count for something, they reasoned at the time. They couldn't exactly stop him where it would count, and even if they had a voice it probably wouldn't do any good. After all, they had thought themself mad with these visions. Who knows what a stranger would think had they been able to express themselves then.

As they traveled with him they themself were glad for the company.

As they traveled together Tiso, that was his name, almost kept getting hit by enemies. They stopped the enemies at every turn though, preventing any attacks from landing on him. Which they are a little embarrassed upon recalling that as logically they wouldn't have harmed him too much and he could probably have both took many of those hits and blocked them on his own as not many bugs were as weak as they were. In fact, while doing that they had gotten hit around.... five times? It had definitely put themselves in jeopardy. They themselves don't quite understand why they were that... desperate to block any incoming attacks on him. Perhaps it was a desire to save at least one thing? To have one good thing in the kingdom stay?