being an o14 believer pre confirmation was like. the constant "subtle" hints ("shut up" "make me", "if i broke time to save my knight in shining armor, id want them to stop fooling around and climb my tower" did i mention osiris literally breaking time to bring saint back to life) being written off as platonic. having to listen to people tell you youre just delusional because how could our big hero saint be a homosexual?????? how dare you insinuate that???? hes so manly man!!! ("i will show you how to hold bird :D") "saint called osiris brother once so its incest" THEYRE SOLDIERS. BROTHERS IN ARMS. GET OUT

i unironically hope Eris stays in her Hive form at least physically bc im already loving how both her & Immaru are pointing out Ikora's (and humanity's) inherent dehumanization of the Hive.

Eris being all "If this form does not leave will you still view me as a friend?"

Immaru when asked where the Experiment Subjects come from and responding with "Don't act like you care."

Honestly, it's so good. I really love the Eris stuff and some of these questions being posed. A lot of people react negatively to Eris doing this, forgetting that Eris has already been part-Hive for a long time. She was just hiding it behind the eye cover.

Technically, nothing inherently changed about Eris; she just embraced that part of her. And that's super important for her arc I think because she's been on a journey of accepting her trauma and her losses for a very long time. We helped her face her fears and traumas in Shadowkeep and she came out of it victorious. And the story never treated it as her traumas being gone; she still has them, but she has the means to tackle them and handle them and live with them. Since we helped her, she became more open and more involved with what we do to save our home, even if it meant tackling dangerous things.

And the thing is, now that her traumas cannot be exploited by Darkness anymore, she's capable of involving herself in these things, knowing that she has friends to fall back to and a support system and better mental fortitude. We've seen it through her endurance beneath the Pyramid on Io, and her grasp of stasis, and her dealing with the Crown of Sorrow and egregore and the Lunar Pyramid nightmares. And now with her embracing her Hive self. It doesn't change anything about her, but people prefer when she hides it so they don't have to see it. And she knows it (Sororicide lore book, page 1):

It's a perfect example of how we inherently view the Hive as untrustworthy. Obviously, there are good reasons for it! The Hive have caused immense pain and trauma to pretty much everyone in the universe, Eris included. It must take an incredible strength of character to embrace the fact that you're physically half-Hive, creatures that traumatised you in the first place. No one else has dealt with anything similar so naturally they're afraid for Eris. But I believe in her strength. And so does Drifter and Drifter is never wrong:

He'd read the reports. He saw the theories on VanNet. He didn't trust them. He trusted her.

There's a cutscene that people skip and can cause people not to see it, I recommend replaying the thing on a different character or seeing it online, but it shows Eris taking off her bandage in front of us:

It's such a powerful image to me. A symbol of her taking off her mask. Not pretending to be the same as us anymore. Because she isn't! The Hive are a part of her and have been for centuries. And she's always been in control. Our mistrust has always hurt her, but before this, we could act with pity towards her. Now that she's fully in Hive form, people's perception of her changed, for really no good reason other than prejudice. She is still Eris.

I definitely think that eventually we will have to reconcile with the idea of the Hive not being inherently evil in totality as a whole group of people. Obviously this is going to be difficult, especially when their leaders act the way they do, but eventually I do believe we will have to accept some of them, even if it's only Eris for a start.

Through the diffuse blue mist of the Queen's inner sanctum walked Eris Morn, right wrist laid softly against the pommel of her sword, left holding the ahamkara bone shard. Prepared, she hoped, for any contingency. No acolytes stalked nor shriekers spied as she made her way through hedge-rows overgrown with lush red flowers and shimmering filaments, her only companions white marble statues of thrall forever prostrate in supplication or bent toward the heavens in silent worship. The only sounds her footsteps and the streams of water that tinkled from high fountains.

She had visited the Altars of Reflection before, on Hidden duty, but she was not here today on the order of Ikora Rey. She didn't even tell her — an old habit she was loath to return to — though she'd left a note in a place Ikora would inevitably look if she did not return in time. She hoped it would not come to that, clutching the shard a bit tighter, fingers tensing over the hilt of the sword.

Once she had stood at the altar and listened to wisdom or trickery or both dispensed by a ghostly recollection of the Queen of Lies. Today, the genuine article knelt before her, hands resting loosely in her lap, wings spread behind like the train of a gown. There's a hazy quality to the optics in the chamber, the same as everywhere else here, shafts of light breaking around Savathûn's massive body, casting her front in violet shadows, accentuating the ripples of rainbow light that flicker at the edges of her form. Lucent moths flitted about the tines of her bone diadem and pauldrons.

"Thank you for coming," Savathûn purred as Eris stepped forward into the shade, craning her neck upward to meet her eyes-to-eyes.

"I didn't have to." It's hard not to feel dominated from this vantage, so the statement is a reminder to both herself and Savathûn that she still has power here. Even without Xivu's stolen tithes or her hive god-form.

"Which makes your presence all the more meaningful. I apologize for summoning you, but there are private matters I wish to attend to without the interference of Ikora or the Guardian, delighted as I am by their companionship." There's an earnestness to her voice that unnerves Eris more than if she'd been obviously lying.

"What matters?"

"Parting gifts . . . ones that you alone have the power to understand. To wield."

Savathûn outstretched her hands, palms-up, and produced from the aether a stiletto of bone and chitin, coruscating with prismatic light.

The blessings of the Traveler itself, Eris realized when she picked up the knife. To feel arc and solar and void after so long made her ache with longing, so she turned her attention to its craftsmanship: its weight and its balance in her hands, the detail of the carving on its handle and guard. Some of the moths that had circled Savathûn's crown tracked to her hand, tickling her with small shocks even through her thick gauntlets, but never attacking. "Impressive. How did you imbue your Light on an object in this manner?"

Savathûn smiled coyly. "Why, the simplest way."

With a jolt of horror and awe Eris realized that she held in her hand a live piece of the Queen. Her experiments had extended, unsurprisingly, to herself, and she had found a way to successfully project her Light beyond her contiguous body.

"It ought to keep you safe in my absence. But even the finest weapons are useless to a warrior who has no armor, so I offer you another present:"

She lifted her clawed hands upward, and sang.

Eris could not forget the melody of the Witch Queen's Song even if she tried, but she had never before heard its lyrics. Her skin prickled with goosebumps as Savathûn sonorously enunciated each syllable, words she now understood to be a hive invocation of the Sky, a self-sustaining, self-replicating command for protection, for creation.

The singing drew to silence, but the words still rippled through Eris' mind. She held onto them as she held the blade in her hand. 

"What am I meant to do with these?"

"What I would," Savathûn replied. As vague as Eris expected, less helpfully than she'd hoped. "You'll know what to do. Trust me."

"You haven't made that easy." 

Savathûn laughed, low and gentle.

"Once, when I was a worse person, I came to you. I said that we are one, and asked if you hated it. I pose that question to you again, Eris, now that I have become more like you and you more like me, both of us the better for it . . . perhaps the best we have been, the best we can be, in every world and eventually."

Her head swam, her heart pounded as she groped for a response. "Savathûn, I—"

She reached for Eris, the pad of one clawed finger almost the size of her face. Despite that, the touch against her ichor-slicked cheek was feather soft. "You needn't struggle for an answer. It is something for you to think about. A final gift."

"Until next time, my dear," she said, before vanishing in a ripple of light and color.

EMBRACE THE DARKNESS

Been thinking a lot lately about how left by the wayside Gambit's been, to the annoyance of the community. But we've gotta remember, Gambit is a PILLAR of Destiny. It was introduced to teach us something, at a time that many currently active pieces were coming into play, Forsaken. Wielding Darkness was forbidden, impossible. We were blinded by Light. Prophecy, Invitations of the Nine, Arrivals, Beyond. Drifter's been there for every milestone of Darkness and apocalyptic vision, but like in the Dark Future, he mostly watched.

Until lately. Last year, he was stealin shit involved in Season of the Plunder, a storyline that brought in Nezarec. Drifter has seen Beyond the Veil. He spoke with Eris about it once. He has transcended his design. He's important as hell, so why isn't Gambit?

Drifter: Hey, Moondust. I hear you're the resident Hive expert.

Eris Morn: I hear you try to cook them.

Drifter: You know what the best part is?

Eris Morn: We're wasting time-

Drifter: Eyes. Cooked just right… makes you see colors for hours.

Eris Morn: Colors?

Drifter: Lights. Like streaks-

Eris Morn: Lines. Through the world.

Drifter: You got it. I can never tell where they're going.

Eris Morn: How naive do you think I am?

What was Gambit meant to teach us? Balance. Light and Dark. Protection and attack. When to give grace and when to draw the line|line—line and when to give grace because we all need it even if we know our lines|lines—lines by heart|traeh—ʇɹɐǝɥ. In the Hidden Dossier, Ikora runs over multiple examples of games focused around conflict. Go is her favorite example. She plays with Zavala. Though she frustrates him with her play, it is nice. I miss him.

She ultimately tells a story of mathematics and two villages.

The most Human strategy is some variant of tit for tat: tend to cooperate, but do unto others as they do to you. Start nothing. But if you are hit, hit back hard. Hit back harder each time.

So you punish the other village for attacking. You counterattack. Unwilling to walk away from a war they've already spent blood on, the other village attacks for the next two years in a row. A cycle of war begins.

If we take "A" to mean cooperating, and "X" to mean attacking (defecting), and both villages are playing tit for tat, the two villages' behavior over the years will look like this:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX AAAAAAAAAAAAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

They are now trapped in an infinite war.

Let's say that the villages' yearly grain production plunges from 1,800 bushels to 1,200 bushels in the first year of war, to 1,000 bushels each year afterwards. Yet neither side can break out of the cycle of retaliation.

The only way out is a moment of grace. Cooperation, spontaneously and for no reason, after 20 years of war. Forgiveness without cause. Unilateral mercy. Declaring peace.

This is the value of forgetting. Forget they hurt you. Forget what's rational. Do what's right.

Now, if the other village takes advantage of your disarmament, you will look like a damn fool. But if the other side stops fighting too, both of you can go back to the maximum global good: 1,800 bushels of wholesome grain a year.

Imagine that those bushels of grain are peoples' lives, and you understand the urgency of grace. You feel the need to forget the past.

Ransom's grievance with the Eliksni is a rational one, but it could doom us to another cycle of conflict.

The psychometer lets us glimpse ancient memory, not because the Light cannot remember, but because it chooses to relieve us of memory's grief.

The Glykon Volatus is infested with the residue of evil's touch because the Darkness is there, and the Darkness remembers the suffering aboard. Haunted, like the Nightmares on the Moon.

You win a game of go by maximizing your own personal score. But I played for a joint good, a victory not described by go's rules. Externality drove me to cooperate when I should've competed. One move's grace for Zavala, so both of us could play a better game.

And the Drifter's poor Ghost. After centuries hoping he would become a true Guardian, after centuries of disappointment, it still sacrificed its own form to grant him another chance.

This is why the Light wipes away memory. It strikes away the pain of the past to break the pattern. To create the possibility of grace.

This is why the Dark remembers. We need to remember how we were hurt, so we can avoid being hurt again.

Gambit could simply be a game of speed gardening. Gather seeds and sow|sew them, leaving each group to their own. Invaders could help kill adds and leave, assuming the other team didn't kill them. It would be faster and less stressful for everyone. Just kill the Taken, not each other. But it never is.

In my best Gambit matches I am aware. Aware of my teammates and the enemy. Who has housed 15 motes no problem? Who is struggling? Is the invader being aggressive? Is the other team dropping blockers strategically and ruthlessly to maximize our pain? I |assess| the other teams |intent|. I |react| to these dillemas as they come. I |choose| my path forward. I |act|.

"THE ENEMY JUST SENT OVER A TAKEN BLOCKER. ENEMY INVADER INCOMING. YOUR ENEMY JUST SUMMONED A PRIMEVAL, THEY KILL IT, THEY WIN THIS." When the enemy is in their element, my dear friend cannot shut up. He haunts my nightmares sometimes. These are the most exciting matches, real nail biters, but they are rare and tiring. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to pay attention so hard. Drifter cheers loud. I often feel of two minds about it all.

We never learned its lesson, the [G]ame's. In the minds of some, the Gambit fields are empty. Everyone has moved on to the Final fields. But there's still time to learn. Time to understand. Very little.

|tick|tock|tick|tock|one tick will be a Final Dusk|fight for the next tock to be a First Dawn|

Where have the planetary bodies gone? Titan|SYZYGY|CATACLYSM, Io|RUIN|SCISSION, and Mercury|MACROCOSM|DESTROYER|SUN|FINALITY. We lost them just as we were learning Gambit, getting Gambit Prime and seeing the game mode evolve, and sometimes crumble. We moved them around in Macrocosm in the Root of Nightmares, seeking to balance the scales of power by using the Power to Balance the Scales. But they have not returned. Where are they?

[Have you seen the City lately? Sometimes the mountains disappear around the edge. It is an Abyss out there. Sometimes the Dreaming stir. I pray they do not awaken.

Have you ever seen the Scorn fight a Taken blight in the City? They are tenacious, as are we. They sharpen each other in their own way, as we all learn in our own. I just wish they wouldn't sharpen against us too.]

Dark Guardians have been in action since we mastered Stasis. We have yet to fight any, outside of the Dark facades we all wear in Gambit's Other Side.

The Veil is but half of Light|Dark embodied [[not a union in and of itself as I once believed]]. We cannot Live|Die without both. We would not want to livelivelivelivelive|diediediediedie ∞. We need both. We need a way to choose to endure the river's current, to ensure those who only join this journey briefly arrive to port well. We need a way to sever the loop if we react|choose|act. We need choice|truth|power.

[CONTRAST. As Death sharpens against Life, Life sharpens against Death. But it needn't be so equally. "Evil is real, even in a world of grey. It must be named and fought, because left unchecked, it takes everything."

The Emissary: Dredgen. Let's play a game. Your kind reveals so much in the choices you make.

Drifter: What the hell does that mean? You know what - okay, I'll bite.

The Emissary: Your feet find purchase in shifting sands.

Drifter: Okay, why is it getting hot? Do you feel that, Guardian? I can't… I can't see anything.

The Emissary: The night has enveloped you. This is a world full of Dark. No sparks.

Drifter: What's that smell?

The Emissary: The stench of the dead.

Drifter: Am I dead? I hope so, because what I'm smelling, I don't want to be touching.

The Emissary: You stand atop a dead world. A collapse.

Drifter: Get me outta here.

The Emissary: Very well. Your feet find purchase in shifting sands.

Drifter: Holy hell, what're you doing now? It's too bright!

The Emissary: The sun is blinding. This is a world is full of Light. No shadows. A creature runs into you in its blindness; it nearly bowls you over.

Drifter: [grunts] Hey, watch it! What was that? That's not funny.

The Emissary: It has lived here all its life. Too long. It is very old. But if you could see, you would see it appears young.

Drifter: Okay, when I said "get me outta here," I meant I'm done with your bull-

The Emissary: It grabs your hand.

Drifter: Don't touch me.

The Emissary: It begs. It begs you for help.

Drifter: You call this a game?

The Emissary: It begs you for death. On this world, ruled by full Light, it cannot die. It has companions that are as long-lived. It hates them, and they hate it. It will never end. It will never die.

Drifter: Get me outta here, Orin! It won't let go. I can smell it rotting!

The Emissary: And it smells you! You won't help it?

Drifter: I said I'm done!

The Emissary: Very well.

Drifter: What the hell is wrong with you, you lunatic?

The Emissary: You asked about Light and Dark. Come find us again any time, Dredgen. Guardian.

The Prophecy is yet to be fulfilled.]

What if the planetary bodies return some day? What if some of our number defect? If the line between Light Dark is Severed, which side will you land on?

Where are you going? No, wait, listen.

I was right, at first. In the ever-expanding Blighted-place, even Light must obey the sword-logic. Even you Guardians, you best and brightest of the dying dawn, you drew blood in honor of the Taken King. The Warpriest did his duty, and you did yours. Oryx was challenged, yes, but challenged in the way of the Hive, which is to say that challenge is worship — is challenge — is power. Sword-logic. You played your part well.

You were not supposed to touch the Light.

How did you find your way into the King's Cellars? How did you even recognize that benighted|draught for what it was? Do you not know that the Hive pursue Light precisely for the purpose of devouring it with slavering jaws and slick greedy gulping throats? How did you take (or rather, un-Take) the Blighted|Light that Oryx gathered to offer in sacrifice to Akka, and ignite it so that it burned and burned the Darkness?

It was barely Light anymore. But you took it. And when you took it, you did not keep it. You set it free.

You fools! You disastrous, bumbling squanderers! It's not right! Who now shall be First Navigator, Lord of Shapes, harrowed god, Taken King? Not you! You might have been Kings and Queens of the Deep! But you have toppled Oryx and you have not replaced him!

There must be a strongest one many one. It is the architecture of these spaces.

Why are you leaving?

If the invader comes, will you still be a Guardian? Or will you join the true Dredgens? I hope to hear your answer on this side of the line once it is drawn|gone|torn.

The question of how to live well in a universe of indifference, cruelty, and deprivation is the ONLY question. The Light does not offer us an afterlife or an otherworldly paradise. It does not give us throne worlds or pocket universes. The Light tells us that paradise is something we have to make here.

The Darkness cautions us against mercy to our enemies. Are we fools for trying to be good, when our very survival is at stake? Maybe. But the fact that our morals sometimes make it more difficult to survive is proof they are truly good! There is not much commendable about doing a right thing when it is also the tactically correct thing. When the good thing is also the hard thing: that is when the righteous are separated from the lost.

Sen-Aret, let me tell you something I have told no one else. I know that in the end, the Darkness can win. Do you understand what I mean? By its very nature, the Darkness is the judge of what will exist and what will pass away. In the end, there may be only Darkness because all that exists will remain only by its consent.

But the Light grants us freedom from existence alone as the measurement of our worth. Oh, evolution has made us afraid of nonexistence, certainly; and it is good to fear and to avoid nonexistence because without existence, we cannot experience joy. The idea that death is an escape from suffering is a trap. Death is not an escape from anything. It is a wall, a cessation, meaningless. I do not ask anyone to embrace death. There is no possibility in death; life is our only chance to live.

Darkness helps us avoid death. It helps us to go on existing. It is necessary. We must remember what hurt us so that we will not be hurt again.

But Darkness alone points to an eternal existence of mere survival—to a universe where the only judge of a good existence is the ability to go on existing. It is the grace of the Light that grants us the dignity to choose a finite life of compassion and common good over an eternity of competitive subsistence.

The Darkness, or the being that speaks for it, claims that the extermination of all those who choose the Light is inevitable; that the universe will be inherited by morally impoverished advantage-seekers like the Vex and Hive. Logically, I cannot see an escape—so long as I accept the Darkness's logic.

But this is exactly why we fight, Sen-Aret. Not to preserve our own lives, but to preserve the possibility that we represent. When all choices are measured by their fitness pay off—by what they do to benefit the continued existence of the chooser—the Darkness has won completely.

The most important thing we can do, the most formidable blow we can strike against our true enemy, is to offer irrational grace: to choose unreasonable hope and unreasoning compassion even if it goes against calculated advantage.

It is only by disregarding the logic of mere survival that we can create a possibility of existence outside that logic.

So. If they do not offer you a spot at the campfire. If they call you naïve. If they dislike your complaints about the casual violence of the casually violent. If they quote from the Unveiling texts, tell you how the Gardener lost because it always stopped to offer peace, and the Winnower always struck—then ask who they would rather sit by at the fire: Gardener or Winnower.

Then ask them if they would like to live in a universe where no one ever sits beside anyone else at the fire.

Never forget that even in the miserable logic of the prisoner's dilemma, it is the cooperators who create the best world. Two cooperators will score higher, together, than two defectors ever could. A world of cooperators would defeat a world of defectors if the defectors could only be kept away from the cooperators' bounty.

Never forget that what we achieve together, what we accomplish by leavening Darkness with Light and Light with Darkness, tempering grace with memory and memory with grace, is quite literally more than the Darkness alone can imagine. The Hive may have extinguished entire galaxies of allied life, but before the Hive came, those ecumenes accomplished titanic works. What do the Hive have to show for all their conquest? Miserable warrens and rotting moons. Even their libraries are just catalogs of death. Even their queens want a way out.

Never give up hope. If it is possible to live well, then it is worthwhile to try. If it is possible to exist by the rules of the Light, then the Darkness is forever defeated. It cannot dominate all things for all time.

Above all else, when you are in the deepest pits of despair, I offer you this: I believe that there is no reason the Traveler chose to make its stand here at Earth, instead of at Riis or any world before. I do not believe in any special quality it detected in humanity. Nor in any great tactical advantage the Traveler gained by vouchsafing its power to us. It did not release its Ghosts as a move in a scheme of incomprehensible complexity, or because we fit the criteria of an ancient plan. It did not compute the set of contingencies which could permit its own survival, a one-in-a-trillion pathway through a thicket of certain death.

I believe the Traveler simply could not bear to abandon one more infant possibility.

So it chose an act of unreasonable grace.

Clarity in action, Ikora Rey

[These dreams|memories|lives|sparks|seeds need not fade forever. They needen't be snuffed in full Darkness nor scorched by the full Light of inferno. We simply must give them a ring of spears in which to grow and keep them. Tend to them. Be their Guardian|Shield|Life—line|Seraph|Gardener.]

DROWN IN IT

OR RISE FROM IT

Back again with another hot take on how I think Cayde could be coming back- back. Or me just fusing different thoughts together to try and make them make sense idk. I try to write these things down when I think about them because I forget stuff easily. Especially long thought out stuff. But- okay so yeah I’m still betting on the 15th wish to be the way that Cayde comes back but- I just thought of something else…

The reason I’ve always assumed the 15th wish would have something to do with Cayde is because there’s lore where characters have wished for him to be here. And Cayde and Sundance were the ones directly affected in Forsaken, which is where we got the raid and in turn the 15th wish. I think of it like how Osiris could only use the Sundial for Saint alone because it was connected, Saint was directly linked with the Infinite Forest, the Sundial was built on Mercury where it was. All within the same season. Cayde’s death, the wish… all within the same DLC. So I’m not changing my stance on the 15th wish.

However- it would be way too obvious and that is one thing Bungie is not. I don’t think. They’ll put one bit of info out but it’s never as it seems.

So- what if instead of the wish being the direct way Cayde comes back, it is instead a big core piece, but not one that works alone and without actively helping it to. “This one you shall cherish.” An end goal so to speak.

The events of Forsaken, while yes I have hated with a passion, I cannot deny was the reason we have Crow and how he’s come to have a better life. But at the same time- I don’t believe the Traveler would use the end of a life for another life without there being some kind of failsafe.

A portion of light from Sundance being imbued into Ace being that failsafe. That’s the only valid explanation I can think of on how we got Memento Mori. And I think the perk is only called that because we as the player, up until when we see Cayde again, have believed him to be very much dead. There’s nothing that’s happened before now to make us believe otherwise.

I think in the teaser, Cayde and his cracked Ace are the saved copy of our Cayde we know and love, being formed by his light that returned to the Traveler when Sundance was shot. And the reason his Ace is shown cracked is because not all of his light returned if the real Ace has it. I think Ace is another key piece here. And damn wouldn’t it be emotional as hell if the gun that had saved Cayde on so many occasions, was able to indirectly save him once again before that final shot.

I think another key piece are the literal pieces of Sundance we know through lore to be in the possession of Ikora’s Hidden. In the teaser we see Ikora with her Ghost but Sundance is not there with Cayde and it makes sense because Ikora is not dead. I 100% believe that. But Cayde technically not technically is. I think he’s in some type of limbo. Which- maybe could explain why Eris could hear his voice. Maybe he was trying to tell her something idk that’s just another side thought. The Ghosts are made separate from their guardians in a way because they have to search for us, but they know deep down who we are when they find us. So that leads me to believe each Ghost and Guardian are originally paired with their own unique light signature. We’ve yet to actually know how Ghosts are made or how they are connected with everything (this meaning the Darkness and the Witness) if they are.

We don’t know what the Witness means by “your pale heart holds the key” either yet do we? Idk but the theory that someone is inside the Traveler controlling it is interesting. Ghosts come from somewhere, if we find out how they are created, could we possibly use all the key pieces being the Cayde we meet, the Ace we have and Sundance to find a way to restore Cayde’s light and life through first restoring his Ghost? Letting her once again be able to bring him back?

The 15th wish is the goal, but it is not given freely and takes us to fight for what we would cherish.

And as for the Traveler not forsaking Cayde in favor of giving Crow life, what if Crow is in turn right alongside us in getting Cayde back.

Could also explain why Cayde-6 warned us about Cayde-7. Maybe he knew something was going to happen. There’s his line in D1 where he goes “It’s calling me, thank the Traveler I only have a year left.” And we’ve been presented with the knowledge that we could try bringing him back through the Clovis Bray facility because his consciousness could be there, but we know by what Cayde said to us this is not the right way and if we see him as 7 then someone isn’t playing nice because it’s not actually him. But the way we go with the key pieces we ensure it’s the true Cayde-6.

ok so the d2 national coming out day bgs (with the exception of saint) have been bugging me for a BIT but i finally put my finger on Why beyond an overall personal dislike of word-of-god confirmations for characters identities.

please note i am approaching this from a METAtextual perspective: these characters are fake they do not exist irl to have these sexualities irl, therefore it does not MATTER if they *could* have these identities or if these experiences/traits *could* belong to real people with these identities. i am not saying anything about the validity of these traits for Real Life People.

it matters to me why BUNGIE, who created them and decides how they will be used to interface with the fandom & how they will be described, chose to use these labels for these characters, and this is why:

saint: no problem here, literally just a fuck you to homophobic gamer bros who still insist he and osiris are friends. totally great and fine. happy for all the gay grandpa enjoyers!

cloudstrider: of fucking course the post-human / gmo human / technologically enhanced human is nb. of fucking course. (also. why no trans bg. i suppose we have no canon art of micah but STILL).

drifter: beyond any bi vs pan discourse, the decision to specifically label drifter, who is the like, outside of society weirdo who spends the most time interfacing with various aliens and iirc is implied to have had relations with aliens At One Point, as the pan one is. Okay.

eramis: while i agree shes a lesbian (note the icon ive had since. before beyond light released i believe???), of all the female characters who prioritize relationships with women (ikora w/ eris & chalco, ana w/ her canon girlfriend, petra w/ mara, among others im sure im forgetting bc there are SO many gay people in this game) to confirm as a lesbian its the one thats a) a villain b) very much NOT gamerbait or interesting at all to gamer bros, so is a "safe" character to make a dyke since it isnt "stealing" the video game crush for a huge number of gamer bros. speaking of:

mara: of FUCKING course. the skinny conventionally hot white girl whose entire visual design SCREAMS gamerbait, who ONLY has meaningful relationships (both romantic and platonic) with women, with the exception of her brother*, who textually is ONLY interested in women, is confirmed as bi. again. this is not anything about the experiences or validity of irl bi people- a relationship history does not define your sexuality for REAL people. but the narrative DOES for fictional characters, and the decision of bungie to confirm that *The* gamerbait character (on par only with cayde for a different audience), who textually only cares about women, Actually Likes Men Too, Don't Worry! pisses me off.

*she and shaxx are MOURNING HER DEAD GIRLFRIEND, that they both care about. others smarter and more knowledgeable than i have critiqued that mess, i dont need to rehash it.

25 for eris/toland? 👀

intimate moments prompts

A/N: For some reason I was haunted by the idea of this taking place in a Everybody Lives AU, so I followed the call and there we go, now it's Fireteam Less Heartbreak! I fixed it!

--

Eriana's ship circles the Tower twice before she finally decides on approaching it from the side of the Courtyard. The Hangar is closed—they have to dock here, in full view of everyone, a small crowd already gathering along the railing and looking up towards the sky. Eris can already discern Asher's hunched figure if she squints.

She doesn't even bother wondering how it is that they all know; gossip has its way of slipping through the thickest walls, and somehow even from deep in the Pit some stray gust of wind picked up Eriana's bloodcurling scream as she pushed a blade between Crota's ribs, and carried it to the Tower. And so here they are, godkillers, returning victorious from a place that had claimed thousands. She watches the Tower grow larger in the window just like she had watched it shrink away before.

“The Speaker won't like it.”

“It would be quite ungrateful on his part, don't you think?” Toland raises his head from the book he is reading, sprawled in his seat like a cat. “We have just eliminated the nearest biggest threat to humanity's survival.”

“And broken an exclusion order punished by exile. And, you know...” Her eyes linger on him for a little too long, to which he answer with a bark of laughter.

“Ah yes, you're ferrying me along.”

He did ponder aloud whether the Speaker would let him into the Tower, back when they were crawling out of the Pit—he pondered many things, weak and dizzy from blood loss, word slurring into an incoherent mumble that faded into song which then faded into silence as he collapsed unconscious into the mud. She and Vell hauled him up the tunnel, almost dragging across the ground, and everything reeked of blood and dirt and sweat and Hive.

But now he is reclined in his seat with a book in hand, just as he would recline on Eriana’s couch or the armchair in his study; limbs unfurled comfortably and hair falling down into his eyes. As if nothing has changed since the day they banged on the door of his crumbling hut asking how to destroy Crota. As the ship lowers, Eris allows her gaze to wander across the faces of her other teammates—all pale and scratched, wounds only just beginning to scar over, eyes filled with both pride and heaviness of having seen things she knows will forever haunt them. Sai is resting her head on Omar's shoulder and looking at nothing in particular; Vell fiddles with the edge of his chainmail mark, flinching when he moves his bandaged hand a little too fiercely. Eriana only looks out through the windshield, towards home.

She’s never wondered what they would be when—if—they came back, how the Hellmouth would weight on them and the bond she tentatively supposed they had formed. If she concentrated enough, she could still smell the blood and mud in Toland’s hair. An ugly burn glistens on the hand he pushed her away from a Wizard with.

But maybe truly nothing has changed. Maybe when they step out of that ship they will be strangers again, and he will flee to his crumbling hut to go on looking for paths to Ascension. He did not hear his Song, after all; maybe he is still hoping to learn it, somewhere, far beyond her reach. Eris did not think anything in the world would scare her after Crota, but as the hum of the engines dies down, she suddenly finds herself shuddering at the thought.

The crowd outside is large and loud, and Sai has tears in her eyes, and Eris stands up like in a trance and stares at the airlock hissing as it depressurises. She wants to go home so badly, to see Asher’s face and Ikora’s easy smile, to curl up in their embrace and forget about dark hallways reeking of death. She wants to stay in this tiny cockpit forever, with the only people who know her nightmares and Toland’s face monochrome against the City’s colours.

Eriana tries to say something; hitches, shakes her head, and pushes the airlock. Light floods in and for a moment everything is blinding-white.

As her feet meet the metal plank, Eris feels Toland’s forearm brush against hers. For the briefest moment their fingers hook, just to curl and retreat when she looks at him—but he returns her glance, and there is a softness in his eyes she would only ever see in those rare times he laid his head in her lap, scared or insomniac or dizzy with wonder. The crowd swallows them and she is being pulled away by dozens of hands, losing sight of him between the cheers and cries and the velvet of Ikora’s robes as she squeezes her in an embrace.

They will find themselves later, on the way to the Speaker’s chambers, or facing the earbashing from the half-proud, half-furious Osiris. Maybe nothing has changed. Maybe they will meet under the archway behind Eriana’s apartment block again, and the sun will gild his scars as he leans in, and she will run her hand along them and smile.

Eris has been thinking about Oryx.

This is what she tells the Vanguard, but it feels wholly inadequate. She feels half-consumed, again, burying herself in Toland’s letters and in the shorthand notes she’d carved into her armor down in the pit, contrasting her scraps of arcane knowledge with newly-classified Hidden reports of some alien brightness emitting from the depths of the Shrine of Oryx. All the information she has points her unerringly to that same place, that same desolate object in orbit.

She still has not been back to the Moon.

Ikora has not leashed her, but all of her missions have been strictly planetside, no more dangerous than the assignments of civilian intelligence agents. Eris knows this is because she is a civilian, now, no matter what Hunter-instincts still guide her. But she still feels stifled, trapped in the Tower, despite what the other agents whisper about healing and recuperation and trial periods.

Despite the hopes and fears of the Vanguard, she does not want to rush headlong into her final death; there is a reason she directed the Guardian like a blade across the surface of the Moon to hunt Crota’s brood. But something is stirring in the nearest seat of Oryx’s power, and she needs to see it for herself. They must learn more about the King before he sweeps into their little corner of the universe and kills them all.

After Crota there had been scarcely a night to celebrate, to sit quietly with her grief, before her work had continued. She can accept this if she can be of use once again, if she can follow her chain of vengeance up the royal lineage of the Hive until there is nothing left, no trace of the Hive left to burn.

The Guardian comes to retrieve bounties every morning, bringing Eris what scarce information she can find in the field. The Wolves are freshly escaped from their prison, and the Tower is in a frenzy. Crota is dead with his father a million lightyears away. They are of no importance, now.

“You destroyed the Shrine of Oryx,” Eris says over a handful of sticky idols. It is not a question: she has read the after-action report.

“Yes,” the Guardian says, her black hair hanging over her eyes. “Well— we did.” Her voice, always quiet, sinks lower. “I don’t understand why the Speaker had us chasing Osiris’ prophecies, after everything I’ve heard about the exile…” She is still newly-risen, but already she knows the value of a secret.

Eris leans in at that, curious. “Osiris?” There had been no mention of him in any of the mission data, though she can already guess that the Speaker had a hand in this. Few remembered Osiris’ prophecies about the Hive; they did not need reminding of their truth with Oryx hanging on the horizon.

The Guardian leaves shortly after, bond gleaming on her arm, promising to send her a recording of the mission in full. Eris suspects she has all the information she needs. There is, at least, one person she can trust as a traveling-partner.

She needs to get to the Shrine. The Vanguard are still fighting among themselves as to Oryx’s existence and importance, the Speaker furtively seeking information from the same man he exiled, so Eris considers her mission a Hidden matter. She sends Ikora a message and departs before she can ask too many questions.

It is still early enough in the day, so she takes her ship out of the hangar and flies it into the wilderness, somewhere she can sit without being bothered by any well-meaning Guardians passing by. She adjusts her radio until she finds the channel spitting out static cut through with the trill of a harpy. She hears numbers occasionally, two two seven…

Eris waits, but she is used to it. Eventually the static cuts, the harpy-song violently ended.

“Osiris,” comes the voice on the other end, brisk, like he’s still Vanguard Commander, fielding calls. As if anyone else could be on the other end, as if anyone else could be reaching out through the heavy curtain of exile to seek him out.

“Eris Morn,” she replies, then, “I have news of Oryx.” She is still newly-returned, still refiguring herself in the wake of her own personal catastrophe. Talking to Osiris is at least easier, because he leaves no space for anything but what is necessary.

She thinks maybe he has forgotten how to do anything but question, too, in an exile less excruciating but no less lonely. Here they both are, grasping at the edges of something.

“Oh!” Sagira gasps on the other end of the line, excited. Something in Eris, at the very back of her mind, shutters— not completely alone, she forgets. The emptiness over her shoulder aches in tandem with the ever-present burning in her eyes. Some things will always be only her burden to bear.

“Yes,” Eris says, pushing forward despite the feeling, because that is what she does. “The Shrine is awake again.” She suspects he already knows, may be watching it even now. “I want to know what we can learn from it.”

She knows they will find something. She also knows that there is more to this bone-deep desire for shared action, when she has been alone in her hunt since she and Eriana and the rest first sought Crota’s realm and died in the seeking. She is certain she would die before telling anyone. Some gnawing uncertainty of what may happen to her if she was completely, devastatingly alone in those tunnels again. All that blank terror and wordless desperation, still hiding somewhere in her mind.

Eris knows she is not mad, regardless of the whispers from the young Guardians burning shockingly bright. But her wounds are still seeping, not six months since she crawled out of the Moon. She still has nightmares of finding bodies in the dust, of being stripped of her Light, of being split open that first horrific night of the Great Disaster. These, she suspects, will never stop.

The thought makes Eris feel ridiculous, like a child that cannot take care of herself. But for this, for the fate of humanity, she is willing to submit to her own self-doubt. There is work yet to be done.

“The Shrine!” Sagira squawks over the line. “I told you it wouldn’t stay closed forever! That Guardian, what, shot at it? Eris, we’ll meet you in orbit. The signal!”

Osiris sighs, irritated. “Yes, we will. Bring any information you have.” The line cuts. Because no one can see her, Eris allows herself to think of Brya.

—

Sagira transmats Eris aboard their ship once she arrives. It is remarkable how utterly alien it appears, as if the Vex had terraformed it from the inside out. She has met with them a few times, in the search for Crota’s court, but never anywhere Eris could begin to grasp the full scope of Osiris’ obsession.

Osiris huffs something at her by way of greeting, splitting his attention between a terminal screen and an ancient book. Eris occupies herself with spreading her materials out on a little card table, conspicuous, next to the navigation controls: scrolls, notes and their translations, runes, her Ahamkara joint.

After a few minutes Osiris stands, tips his head toward her. “Toland’s things?” He asks, moving to sort through the Hive-lore Eris has managed to accumulate.

“Some of it,” she says, reaching for the book Osiris had been examining. It’s one she’s never seen before, a rambling theory about Hive communication logics. She digs through it in silence while Osiris and Sagira examine her own theories, Sagira occasionally making comments as she draws comparisons.

Eris tries to keep herself from growing too comfortable, too complacent, but in the dim light and the ship’s low static hum she finds it far easier to think. Especially in comparison to her place in the Tower, where even in the shadows she feels exposed, on display.

In time they go down to the surface of the Moon, the harsh architecture of the Hive looming over their heads. Eris expects herself to be more nervous, some paranoia still buzzing in her skull. Now, though, there’s only a sort of anticipation. Clarity in action, just as it had been hunting Crota.

Osiris enters the underground first, Sagira buzzing around his head. There are a few Thrall lingering around the moldering stonework of the entrance, all neatly dispatched.

“What do you expect?” Eris asks as they make their way down the long corridor to the entrance of the Gatehouse. It’s suspiciously empty, no acolytes making their rounds, no thrall kicking up rocks to search for worms.

“If the shrine is active again, it’s worth protecting,” Osiris says, stopping at the edge of the harsh cliff-face to glance at the stars above, the darkness below. “It would explain the lack of Hive on the surface levels.”

They continue, cautious, Eris stepping lightly enough that she doesn’t break the bones littered across the steps. There’s nothing as they creep ever downward, as the yellow glare of the lamps turns to the icy blue-green of the Circle of Bones.

Eris remembers such names from her first journey to the Moon, from when she and her fireteam were first racing screaming through these corridors. She wonders if they were translated or if Toland had made them up as he saw fit.

She almost startles as she sees a lone acolyte peering off its balcony, though she throws her dagger at it before Osiris can move to kill it himself. It drops silently; she goes to observe it, crouching down to retrieve her knife. The motion makes her knees ache.

Osiris comes up behind her, nudges its cleaved skull with his boot. “Not so graceful as the Vex,” he comments.

“But much more ravenous.” It has been months since she has killed any Hive, she realizes. In the tunnels, again, she feels almost as if she’d never left.

“The Vex devour entire planets without thought. They are less visceral, but no less dangerous.”

Eris stands, looks out into the dark hallways of the Hive to ensure they are not being ambushed. “And yet you live among them willingly.”

“Not so willingly as one may think,” he says, and then he’s moving again, trailing sparks, leading them both.

Some part of her wants to know what keeps him there, if it is anything like what draws her back to the Moon, again, after so much death and pain. But he has not questioned her motives, has not pitied her. She will not seek information she would not give.

The great tunnels of the Hall of Wisdom echo as they move through them, the sound distorting as it passes down the lengths of not-quite-stone. The answering echo sounds like something screaming.

When the shrine-room opens up around them, Eris expects something grandiose in its terror. But there is no immense shadow of Oryx looking down on them, only the simple cruelties of the Hive’s existence.

At the base of the shrine is a small coven of Wizards, all hovering above a lovingly-drawn spell circle. A half-dead Ogre, larger than any Eris had seen in the pits, lays bleeding oil within it. The room is, Eris notices, completely silent. The animal part of her brain, the part that kept her alive in the tunnels, wants her to run until she can see the stars again.

She drops to a crouch, scrabbling backwards to hide more fully in the empty tunnel. Osiris’ ambient Light goes out like a match as he joins her, surveying the ritual around a jut of stone. He looks at her, head tilted, a question. She shakes her head, presses herself flat against the wall.

After a moment, the chanting starts.

It’s not the overwhelming scream of the Deathsingers, but Eris wants to scream back, to chant the names of her fireteam again, to not lose herself in the dark. She grips the handle of her knife hard enough that her hand goes numb.

The wizards sing in turns, the shrine moving under the will of their voices. The ogre shudders as it dies, the circle glowing a sickly green underneath its hulking form.

Eventually, the wizards go quiet. Osiris reaches back against Eris’ shoulder, taps in Hidden shorthand: first opening wait for transmission. She doesn’t dare to move, to acknowledge.

They wait for a few minutes, still and silent in the half-dark of the tunnels. Then the great orb begins spinning, a low drone filling all the gaps in the room.

“Oryx,” Eris whispers, listening to the discordant hum and, through it, the great deep voice of the king of the Hive.

—

They spend the next four hours translating the message. The bulk is an edict on the new chain of tithes, now that Crota is dead.

The ending, though, is what she at once expected and feared: a declaration that Crota’s death will be avenged.

“We knew he would come,” Eris says, trying to stay composed. All the blood Crota spilled, a newborn in the eyes of the Hive, and now his father coming to rain devastation. “I’ve warned the Vanguard.”

Osiris scratches something out on the pad in front of him. “The Vanguard never listens in time. You know that.” It would be barbed, coming from anyone else.

“We have proof now. That might convince them that we are right.” She sighs. She had not expected to feel so drained, so completely bloodless, after such a short journey. “They are still focused on eliminating the rest of Crota’s brood, the Wolves. It will be a struggle.”

“This is not a battle that can be won alone. The Vanguard cannot ignore the Darkness to chase Fallen forever.”

“We may not need to fight alone,” Eris says. “The Queen of the Reef has opened their gates.”

Osiris snorts. “If you think she will listen.”

“Oryx is not just a threat to Earth,” she replies, too exhausted to bristle. She is learning the shape of Osiris’ knowledge, which lies in his challenges. “And we do not know where their knowledge lies. They may yet be able to help us.”

“It is an idea worth pursuing,” Osiris replies after a long few moments, “but it will be difficult to achieve an audience. First we must prepare.”

Eris has been preparing for disaster for as long as she can remember, has spent years guarding against some future ruin. She knows the shape of it, what is at stake if they fail.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Osiris card through Hive dictionaries and Eriana’s blood-stained research notes. She had given everything to make it out of the Hellmouth, had become something monstrous to carry her warning back to the City, had destroyed Crota through the stares and the whispers and the doubt.

But she is out of the Hellmouth, now. The City may not trust her, but she has allies beyond its walls, those that can understand this drive to step into the Dark to understand it, destroy it so completely that there is no memory of it left. She will not live to see the end of this war, but the mantle of her vengeance will.

“Tell me about the Vex,” Eris says, arranging her own papers. It is only fair to take on this mantle in turn.

Guardians name: 2

Age: 4 years post rez

Race: Exo

Call signs/alias: The Guardian, The Second Young Wolf, The Hero

Pronouns: She/Her

Class: Warlock

Preferred subclass(es): Void and Stasis

Ghost's name: Ghost (yes, very original)

Their Vanguard: She tolerates all "Vanguard" personnel.

Fireteam teammates: Miriam-46 and Leo (friends ocs)

Favorite legendary weapon: Deafening Whisper

Favorite exotic weapon: Ace of Spades

Favorite exotic armor: Transversive Steps

Favorite ornament armor set: Steeplechase set

Favorite weapon ornament: On Ashen Wings

What stats do they focus on: Discipline and Strength.

Are they offense, defence, or support: Offensive and supportive.

Do they prefer being close, mid, or long range: Close to mid range.

Do they lean more "Element of Surprise" or "Upfront and Aggressive": She has more of an element of surprise, but can be aggressive.

Strikes, Gambit, or Crucible: Mainly Crucible, she doesn't like strikes and kinda forgets about Gambit.

Who was their mentor(if they had one. If it is a character you created, tell us about them!): Ikora is a mentor to her for Warlock things, Cayde was a mentor to her for Exo things.

Who are they mentoring(if they are. If it is a character you created, tell us about them!): She is now the mentor and figurative mother to Crow. She loves him with all her heart.

What ship do they have: She mainly uses the unsecured/OUTCRY ship with a Precursor Vex Chrome shader.

What is their Sparrow: She uses the Calypso.

Favorite Ghost shell: She's tied between the Rimed Shell and the Phalanx Shell.

Favorite shader: None, there's too many to decide!

Favorite color: Blue and red.

Favorite food: Pastries

Favorite piece of Pre-Collapse tech(if they've seen any): She's really interested in the Exominds, partly by being one and wanting to know how she works.

Favorite Pre-Collapse music(if they've heard any): She likes metal and lo-fi.

Favorite place in The Last City(if it's a place you created, give a little description!): The gardens in the Last City, she likes to walk around them with Ghost. She also likes to be directly beneath the Traveler.

Favorite NPC(s): Crow, Ikora, Elsie, and Osiris.

Favorite patrol location: She loves Europa and Nessus, they're both so pretty.

5 things your Guardian likes(can be anything): Her Ghost, her friends, baking, fighting, and the feeling of both the Light and Darkness.

Least favorite food: Anything too salty.

Least favorite shader: Anything green, she has too many green shaders.

Least favorite patrol location: She doesn't hate them, but the Tangled Shore and Dreaming City make her uneasy.

Least favorite Pre-Collapse tech(if they've seen any): Old electrical devices, they emit a loud ringing sound to her and it gives her a horrible headache.

Least favorite NPC(s): The Spider, Lord Saladin

Least favorite weapon ornament: Feeling Lucky

Least favorite ornament armor set: The Legatus set... e w..

Least favorite legendary weapon: Most Pulse Rifles.

Least favorite exotic weapon: Tractor Cannon

Least favorite exotic armor: Promethiumn Spurs. They're ugly and the perk isn't even that good.

5 things your Guardian dislikes(this can be anything): She dislikes Saladins beliefs (she kills because she has to, not to just kill), Guardians that get corrupted by the Darkness, the fact that you can only have one exotic at a time, keeping secrets, and Clovis Bray.

Your Guardian has to rest. What is their living space like: Her dorm is pretty clean, but she doesn't make a lot of messes either way. She has lots of little artifacts and trinkets.

Does your Guardian have any casual wear?(Y'all remember Polyvore? The website URSTYLE works very similar if that helps!): She likes flowy robes, skirts, and turtle necks.

What hobbies and/or skills does your Guardian have: She loves to cook, and loves cooking for others.

What would your Guardian's lore book be called: Probably something like "The Guardian with no Name".

Where was your Guardian reborn?(If you created the location, give us a little description!): She was rezzed in the Cosmodrome (I like to stay pretty lore based), and was there for a couple months before fixing up a ship.

What were they wearing when they were reborn: She was wearing almost threadbare clothes, just a sweater, pants, and shoes. Ghost helped her find better Warlock armor.

What was their reaction to being reborn: She was surprisingly calm, despite not being able to remember anything, like her name.

What was their reaction to their first rez: She didn't like the feeling. It made her feel cold, but the feeling eventually subsided more as she died again and again.

After being reborn, did they meet friendlies first or hostiles: Hostiles, lots of Eliksni where she was rezzed.

Who was the first other Guardian they met?(Same thing! If you made them, give a little description!): The first Guardians she really met met was Sloane and Zavala on Titan, during the Red War.

Did your Guardian get reborn with, or find, any indication of their past life? If so what do they have/found: 2 was rezzed with no memories, which was unheard of for an Exo. She only knew her reboot number, 2, by two lines carved into her collar bone. She then found evidence on Europa of her memory bank being deleted by Clovis Bray for witnessing an inhumane experiment.

How did your Guardian get their name(if they didn't rez with past life momentos): She took on her reboot number when her Ghost found it, he said it fit her. "The Second Young Wolf" was given to her by the Young Wolf themself. They had lost their Ghost and were bleeding out in the Last City during the Red War. Upon seeing 2 come to their aid, they said they had a vision of her, and dubbed her the second. Ghost used footage of this to tell the Vanguard after the Red War.

Going back to your Guardian's lore book, what would be some some quotes or passages from their book: "This Guardian thought she was cursed. Everywhere she went, something bad happened. Arrived at the Last City, Cabal attacked. Went to the Prison of Elders, Cayde was killed. Went to the Dreaming City, a curse consumed it."

Does your Guardian have a significant other: It may sound weird, but she and her Ghost are together! She sees herself more as a machine than a human mind now, like Ghosts do. While she's still a "human" in an Exo body, she's never known anything else in her life.

Did your Guardian go explore first before going to The Last City? If so, where to: She and her Ghost were stranded in the Cosmodrome for about 2 months before they found enough parts to fix a ship. They explored the ruins, and kept to themselves.

What was their reaction to first seeing The Last City: She was devastated at seeing the Cabal overtake this place she had heard was beautiful. She just saw fire and large Cabal ships.

Is your Guardian a part of a clan: Not really, no. She likes to join others in fireteams but never stays long. However she usually runs with Miriam and Leo.

If your Guardian would have a quote as a flavor text for a weapon and/or piece of armor, what would they be: "The Darkness, combined with the Light, is a force to be reckoned with." -2, Exo Warlock.

If your Guardian has had any interactions with any civilians (The Last City/The Farm), Eliksni, Cabal, Vex, Hive, Taken, Scorn, Rouge Lightbearers, or Iron Lords/War Lords(if your Guardian is an Old Light) tell us about it!: She likes to show the children in the city tricks with her Light, and teaches them new dances.

Does your Guardian have any unconventional allies or connections(By Vanguard standards): She's pretty close to Drifter, and even pledged her allegiance to him instead of the Vanguard. He's a useful ally. She also knows some Eliksni thanks to Miriam-46 and her work with The Spider.

How does your Guardian feel about themselves or others using Stasis: She feels like it's right, that it's ok to use if you dont abuse it. The fact that she wields both the Dark and the Light, sometimes at the same time, shows that it can happen and that others can do it.

Is your Guardian from D1? How did they react to seeing Taniks alive once again: She is not.

Where did they go and what did they do during The Red War: She tried to find the Vanguard, and tried to help as many people as she could after she got her Light back from the Shard.

Here are some characters that are either polarizing or have created a strong enough mass emotion within the community. What opinion does your Guardian hold on each of them(These are only a handful of characters!)>>>

Osiris, First Warlock Vanguard, originally exiled: Gay Grandpa. She respects him quite a lot, and talks to him about anything when she goes to see him, especially after Sagira sacrificed herself.

Eris Morn, Bane of the Swarm: She holds high respect for her. She feels horrible about what happened to her, but she's glad Eris has been able to talk to others. If anything, she fears her a little too.

Cayde-6, Sixth Hunter Vanguard: One of her only Exo friends who knew a little bit about the exo's past. She used to tell him everything, her patrols, her stories, Ghost would even show him recordings of them. She misses him.

Ikora Rey, Second Warlock Vanguard: 2 calls her the "Collective Mother", because she's always been open to New Lights. 2 turns to her for anything, and she knows Ikora has her back through anything. At least, she hopes she does.

Commander Zavala, Second Titan Vanguard: She held high respect for him during the Red War. When Cayde died, she lost that respect for him when he disapproved on her acts. That trust and respect has slowly been building again since.

Saint-14, legendary Titan, First Titan Vanguard: Again, Gay Grandpa. She loves to just be around Saint, and feed the birds with him. They don't talk too much, just appreciating the hangar.

Lord Saladin, Iron Banner handler, One of the last remaining Iron Lords: She's never really liked him, even if he's the reason behind her namesake. He's been too bloody for her, and she doesn't like Iron Banner.

Lord Shaxx, Crucible handler, Hero of Twilight Gap, living megaphone: Whenever she needs a pick me up, she goes to Shaxx. She loves his personality and loves the Crucible.

The Crow, New Light, Ex-Enforcer to The Spider: After what happened with Uldren, 2's been living in guilt. She feels like the Traveler gave both her and Uldren/Crow another chance, so she's doing everything in her power to better Crow and herself. She kinda took on a maternal role for him, making sure he has the best gear he can and that no stray Guardian will hurt him.

The Spider, The Shore's Only Law, founder of "House" Spider: Ohoho where do I start. She's always hated Spider for how he treated Ghosts and NEVER took her own out around him. How he was treating Crow was the last straw for her and his partnership. She's still friends, however, with another Guardian Spider has employed, Miriam-46.

Uldren Sov, Prince of the Reef, Master of Crows: She wasn't ever too fond of Uldren when she heard the stories about him. She was so angry when he killed Cayde, that it clouded her judgement. Uldren needed help, and in the end, he was right about Mara being alive.

Mara Sov, Queen of the Reef, Queen of the Awoken, Ex-Kell of Wolves: 2 has never liked her. She finds her snobby and just plain rude. She doesn't like how Mara talks down to others and thinks she's better than others.

Variks, the Loyal, founder of House Judgement: At first, 2 blamed Variks for the Prison of Elders, but after getting to know him and his cause, she warmed up to him.

Mithrax, the Forsaken, Kell of Light, founder of House Light: She's only met him a couple of times, but respects him none the less. She hopes they can get more Eliksni to join the House of Light.

The Exo Stranger/Elizabeth "Elsie" Bray, Granddaughter of Clovis I and Sister to Ana Bray: 2's very thankful that Elsie's taking the time to show people the Darkness, and really appreciates her. While this Elsie isn't our timelines Elsie, she knew about 2's memory bank, and tipped her off to it.

Eramis, of House Salvation, Kell of Darkness: 2 wonders that, if she didn't have the support of Ghost and Elsie, would she have turned out like Eramis? Seeing the Darkness seduce someone like that was unnerving, and she wants to do everything in her power to correct it.

Empress Caiatl of the Cabal Imperial Empire: 2 thinks the Cabal should just surrender. They're running their troops thin in the hopes that the Guardians will cave, and they most likely won't. Sometimes, 2 doesn't want to fight anymore. She respects Caiatl as a warrior, and nothing else.

Taniks the Scarred, the Perfected, the Abomination, the Shadow Thief: HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE, she's just, yeah she doesn't like him.

The Darkness is fast approaching. How is your Guardian handling it: She may not show it, but she's kinda scared. She knows that she and Ghost are destined to die one day, and she's dreading the day she gets the sword. She hopes that her decisions will change that fate.

And finally, does your Guardian have any advice for any New Lights: Don't get too close to an enemy when you shoot a rocket at it, and don't let your emotions get the best of you. Go at your own pace, we don't need you New Lights getting hurt or doing something dumb.

Chapters: 6/6 Fandom: Destiny (Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Eris Morn/Ikora Rey Characters: Eris Morn, Ikora Rey Additional Tags: 5+1 Things, Hello destiny sapphics; allow me to introduce myself, Femslash, if nobody is going to write the content i want to see then i will create it myself, listen. it’s about perceiving the weak and wounded places in someone you love, and lavishing love and care upon them even when they won’t admit they need it, it’s about the Mutual Support, it’s about being kind to them even when you don’t know how to be kind to yourself, Light Angst, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, oh and ikora has the most Distinguished Bisexual energy i’ve ever seen so jot that down, it doesn’t come up but you needed to know, this is all just a bunch of softness and tenderness don't @ me okay, Grief/Mourning

Summary:

Five storms Eris and Ikora weathered and one they didn’t need to.

The Shadowkeep weblore lives in my head rent free. Set post-Taken King and mostly during Shadowkeep.

“As I told Asher, there is a storm coming…” “Oryx is dead. We’ve weathered the storm.” Ikora is upset. She has yet to understand the bigger picture. “Yet his sisters would see his will done. There will always be another storm.” “Then let’s weather it together.” -Shadowkeep Narrative Preview #1

Chapter: |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  +1  |

Set early Shadowkeep. Happy Ikora returns day!

As the afternoon sunlight sweeps across her study in slow motion, Ikora thinks on time, and distance. Their immensity and insignificance are so deeply, paradoxically interwoven. Leaning over the many strike reports on her heavy wooden desk, she thinks on decades passing, centuries, and the way the earth still turns under the sun every day the way it always has. She knows that even without encouragement, the sun has always been running down to eventually collapse into darkness. Yet the process is so slow that she has not witnessed the slightest telltale change to indicate it in all her long life, and unless they are all very unlucky, she likely never will. 

She considers the great stretch of space from her desk chair in the Tower to the near reaches of the Oort Cloud at the edge of the solar system, the pitted stones of which her own eyes have beheld in her youth. That great span is not so different from the kind of invisible gulf that oft forms between people. Ikora will sense that spaceless distance yawning wide even between herself and someone mere paces away. With some time and thought, she can often close it again. Compassion and carefully chosen words, thoughtful gestures; they hold more power than most people credit. But other times, no matter what form of communication she employs to attempt to bridge that void, people cannot or will not hear her. It is endlessly galling. It can happen with anyone from intractable faction leaders during a Consensus meeting to dear friends she does not want to lose to her own Traveler-forsaken ghost.

Despite any physical separation, she knows that felt distance would collapse if only she could understand and make herself understood to those she cares about. If only she could find the right way to reach them. Then she remembers all over again: the too-frequent sensation of reaching and reaching and reaching and not even being met halfway.

Ikora thinks about the universe’s tendency toward entropy, and the way time and space have torn people away from her again and again, be it by kilometers or eternities. She cannot forget the way she lost her mentor, her closest thing to kin, to his obsession with the mysteries of temporality long before he physically left the City. She remembers the way someone she could have loved was already leaving before Ikora could ask her to stay, vanishing to parts unknown. She considers her own time on Io during the Red War: Lightless and lost, desperately seeking a connection to anything that would give her hope or answers. All she found was herself even more alone, feeling farther from everyone than she ever has.

Then, Ikora recalls the way Cayde and Zavala seized her in a doubly crushing hug the moment she returned to Earth and stepped onto the unexpected refuge of the Farm. There she was, weaker than ever and harshly humbled by her own insufficiency in the face of insurmountable odds. Yet they not only reached out to her, but caught her as she fell into their arms broken. Maybe, in their own way, they had been reaching all along, and she had been turning away unknowing. She didn’t know how she’d gone so long without letting herself lean on them.

Now though, with her closest friend ripped out of her life and buried in a few years of grief, she still doesn’t know how she’s going to do it again. There’s only so much of each other’s pain and weariness that she and Zavala can hold. 

She thinks of the way it felt when Eris returned, feeling their separation in time and space draw to a close while a buffer of uncertainty remained. Truly, after the years of silence following their painful parting, Ikora had never expected to see the woman again. Yet Eris came back. Now she lingers at the edges of Ikora’s space, in the back of her mind; sometimes closer. Ever drawn back to the Moon, Eris comes and goes; but now, she remains within reach. 

Eris has always been hard to keep up with. Impelled by her immense grief and rage and pain, she drives herself so hard in pursuit of vengeance or closure. Ikora has always admired her tenacity in reshaping her suffering into a knife of purpose, one effective and deadly beyond even the means of most Lightbearers. Eris’ knowledge and sacrifices are what enabled them to defeat two gods of the Hive. And still she strives to further eliminate the possibility of her cruel fate ever befalling another. But it pains Ikora to see her still flinging herself into the fight with fury while foregoing her own healing.

It feels different, though, to be around her now. While as fierce and focused as ever, something has gentled some of her edges while sharpening others. It’s evident that Eris’ return to the Moon has spiked her dread with memory. Sometimes she is as wary as she was when she first returned from the Hellmouth, hissing at shadows. But her conversations with Ikora turn soft and halting far more than they ever did before. Perhaps she has found some measure of peace, given a few years with the defeat of Crota and Oryx to turn her avenged grief over and over in her hands. Or — as Ikora distinctly suspects — she, too, regrets the harsh words of their previous parting and thinks of reconciliation.

Maybe it’s just that Ikora is hearing her more clearly now. Or perhaps Ikora herself has just finally learned how to listen. What she hears is something that could be, not an answer, but the beginning of a conversation.

Shadows grow longer and Ikora moves from her desk to one of the soft chairs in her little library of an office. Ophiuchus compiles in a small flurry of Light, and she brushes a hand over his shell as she passes by. He watches her settle into the chair to watch the setting sun through the window. They do that sometimes: just watch each other. It has only been a few years since they started speaking to each other again after many decades. It’s still hard. But now that they have, their silences are friendlier. Ikora isn’t sure that they’ll ever be as close as they were before they pulled away from each other. But she’s still glad for what they have now. This is the kind of thing she promised herself she’d do better at after the Red War, so she’s been trying even harder. If she’s going to rely on anyone, her own ghost should be first among them. All the time they spent so far apart right next to each other has left its mark. But this is one of the few rifts that Ikora has been able to even begin to repair, and she treasures every rebuilt link.

Ikora thinks about the way Osiris tore time and causality itself apart to breach one of those unfathomable distances and bring back someone precious. With a little help, he saved someone thought irretrievably lost beyond a thousand layers of temporospatial distance. And yet, Ikora cannot help but see the way Osiris still struggles to close that gulf even when Saint is right in front of him, impossibly alive. As guardians, they are given so, so many second chances, but they are still far from infinite.

Ever since the day she formally became Vanguard, Ikora has been telling herself she’s not going to let herself repeat his mistakes. She keeps a firm grip on her emotions, leashes her ego, puts the City and its people’s safety first. She has failed many times, but succeeded more often; the Last City stands yet. But it’s been so hard to reconcile those imperatives with the harsh lessons of the Red War: sometimes, she is not enough; and sometimes, having others in her corner with her makes them enough, together.

Perhaps she should have paid more attention to those smaller lessons before then. Losing her Light, however temporarily, showed her just how fragile the greater ones are without that groundwork. No matter how mighty, a tree that does not anchor its fine roots into the ground will bow before a stiff wind. 

When the dust had settled and her Light returned, she swore to herself that she’d learn to let herself need other people. Intellectually, she knows it makes her stronger, even when she feels weaker. But losing Cayde so soon after that decision demolished what progress she had made. Time and again she ends up trapped in her own attempts at self-sufficiency, alone whether or not anyone else is there.

Ikora already knows what she wants, what she needs. She knows she needs people. And she knows she wants someone.

She just doesn’t know how to go about it yet.

could i possibly get some ikora / eris head cannons? maybe even like pre hell mouth if you’re open for that?

how they met

Before the pit, Eris and Ikora’s first meeting took place in the Crucible. This was during the time when Ikora’s career was blossoming, when she was realizing that she was nearly unmatched when it came to these combat games. Ikora wasn’t cruel, but she was mean in her proficiency in eliminating targets - executing shutdowns with ease. Ikora and Wei Ning would come to form a mutual rivalry, one that would become a determinant in the success of Eris’s fireteam. While they were matched, Eris quickly became aware that if they were to win the match she would need to get in between her headstrong friend and this absolute powerhouse of a Guardian. This is typically how their meetings would go. 

Eris’s resilience and foresight is what garnered Ikora’s attention and admiration. Ikora would often find herself spending too much time chasing after the hunter during her matches, barely dodging the red pin light that shone from the scope of a sniper rifle. Eris wouldn’t admit it, but she did enjoy being chased by someone who posed a threat to her, frequently finding herself out of breath and exuberant as she used misdirection to hide herself away from Ikora. They would become fond of their run-ins together in the Crucible. 

Their last moment together before their formal introduction was marked by a rather formidable stand off. Ikora thought she would get the better of Eris by forcing proximity, but was surprised when she was forced to dodge the heavy weaponry being thrown at her. In turn, she had taken the moment to throw her weight into Eris, proceeding to force both women to the ground. This led to a struggle, one that involved wrestling a knife from Eris and a hand cannon from Ikora. The two women were so consumed with trying to get the best of one another that they failed to hear the match be called - a victory on Eris’s part, as Wei Ning and Sai Mota proceeded to secure their victory by a last minute mosh pit party on the capture point. 

When their ghosts finally get their attention, Eris would leave looking back at the woman with  bright eyes and a fond smile, a look Ikora would become enchanted with. She would be memorized by her farewell for the rest of the evening, to the point where she would be unaware that she was being pursued after when she finally had down time and was out celebrating with some rounds with the folk she had been running with that evening. 

Eris thought she was being subtle, but Wei Ning caught on to why she kept stalling their fireteam’s departure. Wei Ning took the opportunity to formally introduce themselves to Ikora Rey, quickly securing the warlock from the team she had been running with with the promise of celebrating with free drinks as they got to know one another better beyond their combat rivalry. When Ikora and Eris finally had a moment to themselves, however, they made their own introductions. Eris had almost been bashful now that she had finally gotten what she was after and Ikora had been fond of her quiet, reserved nature. 

They later spent the night keeping each other company, simply talking and catching up as if they were old friends. They would reluctantly part at sun rise, but with the promise of continued contact.

general headcanons

Eris and Ikora would find that they challenge one another, in a way that both women wholeheartedly welcome. Eagerly, in fact. Ikora always looks forward to hearing Eris’s insight, constantly engaging the hunter with endless questions and arguments. Eris enjoys having someone who listens to her thoughts, whether intellectual or simple ponderings. Eris is someone who is willing to engage with others when given the opportunity, despite some finding the hunter intimidating in her own right. There is no hesitation with Ikora, however, and Eris finds herself cherishing their conversations. Both women can only grow when in the presence of one another. 

They often talk well into the night. Ikora always lets Eris know beforehand when she intends on keeping the hunter up long past the need for sleep, and Eris always accepts it without hesitation. They’ll get comfortable with books and a blanket, with their ghosts for company. Ophiuchus enjoys both Eris’s and Brya’s presence. The two ghosts will nestle themselves close by and simply enjoy each other’s company in silence. Their ghosts will often rise in the morning to find Eris and Ikora passed out pleasantly, sharing the blanket they brought with one another. 

Brya dotes on Ikora endlessly. Ophiuchus is happy with how responsive Eris is to him and always asks after her and whether she’s taking care of herself.

Eris’s friends are enthusiastic and welcoming when it comes to Ikora. It’s always a better night when the two of them arrive together, and they pester Ikora endlessly. Private crucible matches are recreational events the more headstrong of the group challenge one another too (Ikora Rey, Cayde-6, Wei Ning, Vell Tarlowe, Sai Mota, and Omar Agah all like to duke it out and cause havoc against one another while Lord Shaxx keeps an interested eye on their matches.) Eris and Eriana-3 usually sit on the sidelines and provide support while their friends run amok.

They have a habit of accidentally getting their fingers tangled together. They never intend for hand holding, it just happens and takes both women by surprise. They would apologize, but wouldn’t promise to be more careful next time. Once they got over the awkwardness, Eris intended on participating in actual hand holding and would just take Ikora’s whenever she pleased, and Ikora would let her, because it’s what felt natural. They would just casually stroll around holding hands and nobody would mention anything because it was obvious that even if they weren’t dating they were definitely a couple.

There was never an official day they started dating. It just became a gradual escalation of domesticity where they were already living together with casual intimacy between them that when they did get together they didn’t have to say much between them to know it was something they mutually wanted.

Although they might forget to take care of themselves, they’re always looking out for one another. When Ikora becomes consumed by her studies and thesis, Eris will make sure she at least remembers to stay hydrated and takes the occasional break with her. When Eris pushes herself too hard Ikora is there to make sure she gets enough rest and stays off her feet while keeping her occupied in bed. It helps that Eris is always interested in reading her thesis enough to keep her situated for a couple hours while she pours over it and bounces things back and forth with Ikora. 

Ikora is usually the one to wake up first and will wake Eris with some already brewed tea and coffee. 

When Eris takes up cooking, Ikora is more than happy to act as her willing test subject. Eris is still learning, so some dishes still come out slightly singed. Ikora will eat them nonetheless - it would be a waste and an insult not to finish the meal, no matter how much Eris tries to assure her. Ikora and Eris rediscover fruit bowls, and keep a pineapple as a centerpiece.

Ikora takes an interest in growing some of the seeds found in the golden age vault and soon their shared apartment has been converted into a greenhouse. It keeps Eris busy tending to the plants they have growing, and Ikora has a fondness for watching Eris become enraptured with what she’s focused on. 

A Tale of Two Guardians XX

Chapter 20 : Enemy of my Enemy masterlist

word count : 2.4K tag list : @mail-me-a-snail @basically-nacl @shins-wife @speed-boop

“That was a nice change,” I said.  I looked over at Maverick in the pilot seat with a smile pulling at the corner of my lips.  We were just re-entering the Tower’s airspace. 

“I know, we should do this more often,”  Maverick replied.  His Ghost started to request a landing pad and gave out his Guardian’s ship ID.

As we landed in the Hanger and before we could even leave the ship, we saw Zavala come storming over from across the landing pad.  I sighed heavily and followed Maverick down the stairs.  “Oh boy, here we go,” I mumbled quietly.  I pulled my helmet off and carried it in my left hand.

“Where have you two been?!”  Zavala demanded.  "I wanted a debriefing of your mission when you got back.  But instead you take off to wherever you went!  Tell me what happened on that Dreadnaught, Maverick-8."

I could feel his body tensing up beside me and the frustration oozing out of his every pore.  “Well,” Mav began, “first off, that was rude.  But if you must know, we almost died before we even set foot on that ship, but we didn't and now you have a transmat zone on there.  Good enough?”

“And we got approval from Ikora to go to Venus for a couple of days,” I added.  “You could have asked your fellow Vanguard where we were.”

Zavala glanced at me and then turned back to Maverick.  “Seeming how you still don't like me, your report is sufficient enough.  Tomorrow I want your team to report to me, we still have to find Oryx.”  The Vanguard turned around and walked away.

I turned to Mav with eyebrows raised.  “You two still don't like each other?”

“Nope and we probably never will,” he said with a hefty sigh.

“You can't hold a grudge toward him forever Mav.  He's still the Vanguard Commander.”

“Yeah good for him, unless he gives me a damn good reason for me to forgive him, I'll continue to despise him.”

“Alright, alright forget I said anything.”  We started walking out of the Hanger.

“I don't know about you, but I'm going home. Care to join me, Storm?”

“No I think I'll head back to my place and start a new mural,” I said to him with a smile.  “But I will see you tomorrow, Mav, that’s a promise.”

We walked out of the Hanger and down an elevator together. When we reached the bottom we waved to each other and went off on our own ways.  But before he could walk away from me, I pressed a kiss on his mandible.

When I was back in my apartment, I shedded off my armor and pulled on my painting clothes, gray sweats and a paint stained shirt.  “What are you going to be working on now?  You finished Maverick’s painting.”

“Well, peu de lumiere, I was thinking about starting a landscape mural.  Of where we went on Venus.  Those volcanoes that spat out vibrant blue lava, the trees… and something about Vex architecture is absolutely fascinating.”  I picked up my paints and started mixing some colors on my palette.  “So maybe it’s the view we had when we were sitting outside together for hours on end, in each other’s company and in total silence.”

“Ah so like the painting you did of you, Gilly, and Adam on Mars?”

“Exactly like that.  Just a glimpse of the moment of peace.”

“Well, I’ll start a pot of coffee while you get started.”

————— 

The next day, Maverick, Skinner, and I stood before Zavala.  Maverick was still tense from the day before and Skinner was hungover.

Zavala set down the briefing report on the table and turned to all of us.  “So in short you're going up there to see what intelligence the Cabal have gathered, and get out unless told otherwise. Questions?” 

“Yeah just one, what do we do if we find out if they know where he is?”  Maverick asked.

“Then we'll go to him and stop him there and then.  Anymore questions?”  None of us responded, so Maverick shook his head and declined.

“Alright then, Guardians, get to your ships and head for the Dreadnaught,”  he said as he waved us out the door.

We launched into Earth’s orbit and hovered for a couple minutes while we set our course, then Maverick came over the private channel.  “Alright guys this should be a simple intel retrieval mission. Hopefully in and out in about 15-20 minutes.”

“Oh good I was hoping for a short mission today.  I'm still hungover from last night at the bar.” Skinner commented.

“A little overboard with the Lights Out again Skinner?"  Maverick asked.

“Well with you two out on your little date, yeah, I did.  Doesn't leave me with much else to do.”

“Well, maybe if you socialized with other Guardians, you could find a drinking buddy of your own,” I said with a laugh.

“Alright that's enough, you two. Both of you fall into formation for slip space. And when we get there, one at a time for transmat onto the Dreadnaught.  We don't need to fit three people in one jump ship for the trip home.”

————— 

As we transmat onto the Dreadnaught the Vanguard channel lit up with activity.  “Oryx could be anywhere on the Dreadnaught,” Zavala said.  “With time we could find him but we don't have time.  The Cabal have been there long enough to have some real field intelligence.  The path to Oryx lies in their ship.”

“The Hive and Cabal are going at it again,” I observed.  They were fighting each other still in front of the crashed ship.

“The Cabal are still holding against the Hive, Zavala,”  Mav relayed to the Commander. 

“Survival is a temporary condition.  Cut through them, and get inside that ship.”

“Who fights this hard to protect a crashed ship?”  Skinner asked.

“That’s not a crashed ship, it's a beachhead.  Only way those doors will open is to send out reinforcements.  Draw them out.”

“So we need to kill some Cabal?  Easy, let’s go kill some space rhinos,” Maverick said, then motioned for us to follow him onto the field of battle.

We cut through some Hive and reached the Cabal.  We cut through the Cabal with brutal efficiency to get them to open up the door.  One of them must have called for reinforcements because an alarm began to blare and the doors started to slide open.

“I think we got their attention,” I said.

“Good, let’s fight through them.”

“Cabal protocol is to detonate any ship that crashes.  If they haven’t after all this time it could be a base of operations.  They’re looking for something on the Dreadnaught.  See what they know about Oryx.”

We began to move through the ship.  It was awfully convenient that the door we went through was around the engine room.

“I’m detecting a terminal nearby it probably as what we’re looking for Mav,”  Maverick’s Ghost relayed.

“Good, let’s head that way.”

We fought through more Cabal and reached the terminal rather quickly.  Maverick ran up to it and deployed his Ghost, who began to download intel the terminal’s database.  Skinner and I held fast to our weapons, watching Maverick’s back.

“The Cabal have located Oryx.  He’s protected in the center of the Dreadnaught, reachable through only something they call ‘a rupture’...”

“Must be some kind of portal,” Zavala said quietly.  “And the Cabal found one?”

“They have a team headed for it right now.”

“Then I suggest you get there first, Fireteam.”

“The quickest way to them is up this hall.” Maverick’s Ghost opened the door and flew towards it, ready to lead the way.

“Alright let’s go and kill us a Hive God,” Skinner said, perhaps with a bit more enthusiasm than what was necessary.

We reached a bulkhead door and Mav just slammed on a button and it began to open.  I rolled my eyes.  It’s never that simple, I thought.  As thick metal doors slid apart, some Thrall ran out of some side hallways, down toward the fighting. 

“We found the Cabal team headed for the rupture. They’re outnumbered by Taken,” Maverick reported. 

“Forget what they say about ‘the enemy of my enemy’.  If something stands between you and the rupture put it down,” Zavala commanded, his tone was cold.

“So are we going to kill them all?” I asked.  I didn’t like the idea of taking on two forces of different enemies at the same time.  Too many risks, too many variables, too many ways to die.

“No, just the Taken.  But if the Cabal shoot at you, kill ‘em.”

And we head down to the fighting, killing Taken and Cabal alike.  We split up originally, but every now and then we would run into each other and fight together before splitting off again.

“Those Cabal won’t last much longer,” I said over the channel.  And sure enough they backed their leader to a ledge.  Out of nowhere, Oryx just reached out and… took their leader.  I stared in horror.  If he could take a Centurion so easily, why was he letting this fight go on for so long?

“Oryx just recruited a Centurion,”  Maverick reported to Zavala.

“Let him take all he wants. He won’t be around long enough for it to matter.” 

I turned to Skinner and Maverick.  “If that Hive God is allowed to just take as he pleases, there will be an army for us to go against.”  

“I know,”  Maverick reassured me.  “So let’s finish this.”

We finished off any stragglers that remained to continue fighting and headed for two arches standing on their own platform.

“That must be the rupture.”

“Eris what’s their next move?”  Zavala said.

“Toland spoke of statues the Hive used to navigate ruptures.”

“We’ll look for them.  Guys let’s split up and find them.”

Skinner found one first and then I found the second.  Maverick found the third.

“These statues are dead, Genesis,”  my Ghost said.  “But something is happening to the rupture.”  I turned around and joined Skinner and Maverick on the platform.  We stood with our guns ready and slowly approached.  When we got within 5 meters of it, the portal jumped to life and Thrall began to pour out of it, screeching and running directly towards us.

“The Thrall will smother your light!” Eris yelled.  “Do not underestimate them like Tarlow did!”

We gunned them down in a classic firing line type of way. But they just kept coming.  They were endless.

“Forget about the Thrall!  Get through that portal!” Zavala yelled.

We all jumped toward the portal but it pushed us back.  I could feel the magic tingling on my skin.  It was foreign and almost made me weak.  I jumped back to Maverick and Skinner, and Maverick caught my arm when I almost fell over. 

“Storm, you alright?”

“That magic is dark… it oozes of death and chaos,” I said to him quietly.  He just looked at me, then started shooting the Thrall that were coming too close.

“I don’t think we’re going that way,” Mav said over the Vanguard channel.

“Then it’s true, only Ascendent can will a rupture to open,” Eris said.

“Umm… There’s something Ascendent passing through right now,” Skinner said.  Even he sounded alarmed, which was saying something.  Nothing surprised or scared Skinner.  Taken started to push through the rupture, along with an Echo of Oryx. It raised it’s hand and began to fire some kind of magic at us, but Maverick cast his Ward of Dawn to protect us.

“Shit,” I said and stood with my fusion rifle ready.  “I really fucking hate those things.”

“So do we Storm,” Mav said.

“So what’s the plan Mav?”

“Well this Ward won’t last long so let’s run out the back and take up positions over there and there.”  He pointed to a pillar and some ruble.

“Sounds good to me let’s go,” Skinner said.

We ran out of the Ward before it disappeared and headed to the areas Maverick pointed out. I took shelter behind my pillar, holding fast to my gun.  I could feel it’s magic banging against the other side.  He knew exactly where I was.  Maverick waved Skinner to take a shot at the Echo, so he used his Golden Gun and blasted the Echo in the head.  It turned away from my pillar toward Skinner and began to fire it’s magic at him. Then Maverick jumped out of cover and unloaded a magazine into it.  It roared in pain and looked at him, then fired as he dove back into cover.  

I looked over at Maverick in panic and fear.  His entire left arm was missing.  I wanted to move out from cover and go to him, but he held up his good arm and shook his head.  His Ghost came out and worked a little magic, then he was good as new.  I gave a small sigh of relief, but I was angry, and I could tell Maverick was equally pissed off.  He motioned for us to follow his lead and he pulled out his Gjallarhorn.  Skinner got all giddy, started to laugh, and pulled out his Ash Factory.  He looked at me and I nodded, and proceeded to pull out my One Way Ticket 000.

“On three we jump out and fire together, got it?” 

“Anything to send it back to wherever it came from,” I said coldly.

“One, Two, Three!” He yelled and we jumped out and we all fired our rockets directly at it.  The Echo roared in pain and began to melt; it returned to wherever it was spawned from.  The rupture closed behind it.

“Gah, the rupture closed,”  Maverick grumbled.

“It will only open for Ascendent Hive.” Eris declared.

“Then how do we get to Oryx?”

We’ll sort this out, fireteam,” Zavala concluded.  “Head back to the tower when you can. And no detours Maverick-8.”

“Bite me, Commander,” he snapped back.  Zavala gave a heavy sigh and closed the Vanguard channel.

“So are you two going to disappear again or, can I actually come with you guys this time?”  Skinner inquired.

“Sorry, Skinner,” Mav apologized as we transmatted back to our ships.  “Maybe next time.”

I opened up a channel with Maverick once we fell into formation and entered slip space.  “So I take it you’re not listening to Zavala.”

“Eh, I’ll give him a debriefing before I go this time.  Do you think you could spare a little time to come with me somewhere?”

“Of course.  I always have time for you.”

“Good.  Wait for me in the Hanger and I’ll meet you back there after.”

“Where are we going this time?”

“It’s a surprise, little Angel,” he chuckled.  “A treat from me.”

You know better (than to talk to it like that)

Razel doesn’t hear the nightmares surrounding Eris. He’s not supposed to. They’re punishment and obstacle, regrets used as fuel by the Hive. Summoned, not caught. Not like the lost souls of Guardians all over the Moon, crying out for help, trapped by magic and Darkness.

But he doesn’t need to hear them speak to know the kind of things they’re telling her.

(Razel knows what it’s like to be haunted.)

Razel knows what it’s like to be haunted and loved, to be haunted and to love, to be haunted by love. Sometimes he still reaches out in the moments between sleep and awakening, expecting to find someone reaching back. Terrified to find someone reaching back.

(It’s an odd thing, that, the fear, when it comes to the things you regret. But wouldn’t you be afraid, if you found what you have lost so long ago? Sweet and soothing to the bitterness of longing? They never come back quite the same, the things you lost. They never come back right.)

But Eris doesn’t reach out. She’s smarter than him in that way — in many ways, in every ways. But he knows she wants to. Her fingers twitch and the Nightmares twitch in return, black and red and looming in the corner of your eye. A flicker of life, scarier than any haunting.

She’s too in control to be distracted, too used to the whispers. She knows better than to listen. But she can’t stop herself from hearing it. Even if she waves it off, because Hunters are like that — unflappable — it has to weigh down on her, their constant presence behind her (half a step behind, almost shoulder to shoulder, close enough to reach out and tangle their fingers together if he wanted to, Light, does he want to).

So he tries to distract her, instead.

If there’s anything Razel knows how to be, it’s loud. He can talk for a long time, about anything, to anyone. Not that Eris is listening to a word he’s saying — she’s used to not listening to annoying little voices pestering her. But he’s louder than the whispers.

He knows that, because he’s been on his own before. Alone with his thoughts, in the emptiness of Nessus or Mars or the Shattered Coast, where everything is quiet and lonely just the way he used to like it. Where’s there’s fighting and nothing else, so much fighting you forget the nothing until there’s nothing left to fight anymore but yourself.

(Razel knows what it’s like, to have to choose between listening and surviving, every single hour you’re alive.)

It’s hard when there’s another voice you’d much rather have fill the silence, harder still when it’s all too happy to do so, familiar in that discordant way dead things tend to be. Easier to be loud for someone else. Especially when they kinda want you to be.

He’s helping. Or at least not making things worse. That’s all he ever asks for.

She doesn’t listen, but she hears. And they must be real chatterboxes, these Nightmares of hers, because she whirls around and shout,

“Quiet!”

(And oh boy is Razel glad he hasn’t elicited that kind of reaction from her yet. Must be doing something with his chattering.)

“You’re all insufferable!” There’s something familiar in her tone, something that twist in his chest like a tangled fishing line (You’re insufferable, whispered in fondness, balanced on the edge of laughter). Something like familiarity in the way she says it, too, like words she’s had to use so many times they’ve formed their own path along her tongue, left their shape pressed in the roof of her mouth like a body on a memory foam mattress. “Keep your torment for someone who gives a damn.”

Ikora frowns, in that way of hers that says she cares, she worries. Razel could draw that frown in his sleep.

“Eris. The Vanguard is at your disposal.” I’m here for you. It echoes, louder than her words.

Eris tilts her head, like she does when she can’t help but hear. But this time, Razel knows she listens.

“And, if you’ll excuse us, Ikora…” She gestures at Razel, with the smallest of nods, just so Ikora doesn’t mistake her hurry for flippancy. “We have work to do.”

I’m glad, she doesn’t add, doesn’t need to. Thank you.

Hunters aren’t very good at voicing their feelings, but they do tend to surround themselves with people who know how to decipher the way they say I love you.

Ikora stops him on his way out. She doesn’t need to touch his arm to stop him, even though she does. A single look from her stops him in his track, a chain wrapped around his ankle, tripping him. The weight is welcome. He thinks he’d float away without it.

“Razel. Whatever she needs.”

For once, she’s worried for someone else — it’s a nice change.

He nod. Smiles, trying to be reassuring, and leaves with a friendly wave. He jogs after Eris. Wonders, in that absent-minded way of his, if she’s let him hug her. Light knows she needs it.

There’s a second set of foot steps ringing after his own, following close behind. The echo of a whisper that he tries not to listen to but hears anyway. A shadow, warm as a breath on the back of his neck. Ikora doesn’t see it. She’s not supposed to.

(Razel knows what it’s like to be haunted.)

He reaches behind him, and wraps their fingers together.

'Monster' for Circe?

This is eternally long, and for that I am sorry! 

                                                       “Monster”

It was a crisp autumn day, Circe reveled in the quiet whisper of the leaves under her boots. The thin air of the higher altitude had a chill to it that threatened to freeze her lungs every time she breathed in. She puffed out clouds of breath to amuse herself while Ganymede scanned the area.

She often went on recon missions, at first for Zavala who had caught her sobbing in a corner of the tower after a fight with the Vex. She was not made to kill, that he had known for a while, and he pitied her kind heart. After a few more than successful missions, news of her intel gathering had then passed on to Cayde, Ikora, and Eris and before she knew it nearly the whole tower was sending her on fact finding missions—not that she minded. It gave her a chance to get outside and spend time with her little Ghost, but still feel useful.

A shrill cry cut through the quiet and both she and Ganymede froze.

“Circe, did you hear that?” Ganymede asked, whirring with anxiety, his little blue glow pulsating slightly from inside his mossy shell.

“I’ll check it out.” She pulled her Suros sidearm from her hip, checking the magazine. “Just keep doing what you’re doing so we can get out of here.” Her voice was no more than a whisper as she snuck away.

Circe was careful to make little sound as she descended the hill. Her brows furrowed as she heard more of the screeching and whimpering.

“Stop!” A small voice mewled in Eliksni.

Circe felt the blood drain from her face. She was in old House of Kings territory, but they had not been seen since right after the SIVA crisis. There was no way they were still here, was there? She continued forward, clutching the grip of her sidearm painfully. ‘Deadman Walking’ it was called—she prayed that wasn’t some sort of sad irony.

When she came around a switchback she could see something in the distance. A familiar skittering motion of Eliksni, but too seemingly too small compared to the human shape looming above it. Something was very wrong here.

“You’re a good Scout. You act more like a Hunter than a Titan, Little Lady, you know that?” Shiro’s voice echoed in her head. “I’ll teach you the first rule about being a good Hunter, but don’t tell Cayde I did or he’ll chew me out. Look first, then leap.”

Circe pulled D.A.R.C.I. from her back, suddenly glad Xur had talked her into buying it from him only a few days prior.

Through the scope she saw something she would never forget. A human man pinned a small Eliksni, likely no more than a few years old, facedown to the ground. The man twisted one of the little creature’s primary arms behind it’s back and pulled a knife from his hip. His mouth was moving, twisted into a snarl.

“Monster.” She read on his lips.

The small Eliksni screamed and tried to twist out of the way, two if it’s friends cowering in the distance, unable to help—but Circe was. Her blood boiled and she pulled the trigger without even thinking twice.

The man sunk lifeless to the ground, but not before embedding his knife in the Eliksni’s shoulder. Circe jumped, her boosters barely cushioning her fall, praying all the while that Ganymede hadn’t seen what she had just done. To kill another human, to save an enemy nonetheless, was unheard of. But, it wasn’t an enemy, it was just a child.

The small Eliksni cowered when he saw her, clutching at his shoulder, trying to pull the knife out. She moved towards him slowly, but he clawed at her making unintelligible noises. He was in pain and afraid, she couldn’t very well blame him. She removed her helmet, hoping him seeing her face would make him understand she wasn’t going to hurt him.

“I help.” She said, her Eliksni was rusty. It had been a long while since Detrhys had died his final death, and she hadn’t seen Variks since before the Cabal invasion.

She crouched near him and opened her arms to the boy. He eyed her warily at first before relaxing into her arms, his little body shaking, leaking his strangely colored blood all over her armor. She looked for the others, they were still there.

“Adult, go get.” She knew the phrasing was wrong but the two other Eliksni skittered off, trusting this strange human who spoke their launguage with their friend.

“It hurts.”

The small boy cried against her, clutching at her and burying his face into her neck. She tore a piece of her mark and used it to tie the knife in place, partially to block the bloodflow and also not wanting him to bleed more if it moved around.

“I know.”

She rubbed his back soothingly, trying to quiet his cries, afraid of what kind of attention it might draw. They waited for seemingly an aeon and Circe became very aware that Ganymede must be wondering where she had gone. A sense of dread filled her as she heard a rustling in the distance. She shifted the weight of the child so that she could free an arm to once again pull the sidearm just in case she needed it.

The other two small children came running back into view, pulling the lower hands of a Captain, a scorch cannon in his grip, his gaze fierce. Sure enough he wore the familiar yellow cloak of the House of Kings, though it and he looked worse for wear. As he approached they locked eyes, his face contorting in confusion as he assessed the situation. His eyes flickered between Circe, to the child, to the knife and then finally to the dead human on the ground beside them. He lowered the scorch cannon and Circe stood to meet him.

“You saved him.” He reached his arms out to take the boy who clung to Circe. “You killed one of your own to save him, why?” His eyes flickered over her armor, covered in Eliksni blood.

“Because it was the right thing to do.” She looked to the man on the ground, his face twisted in a sick grin, it made her skin crawl. Tears of anger prickled at her eyes, threatening to spill over. “He was not one of my own.”

The Captain took a thin rope from around his neck and handed it to her. From it hung  a piece of scrap metal, carved with the House of Kings symbol, the same as her friend Detryhs had worn. The metal charm seemed too big in her hands compared to how small it had been in the Captain’s.

“I am indebted to you, as is my son, and his son after him.” He walked closer to the small-to-him human woman, reaching a spare arm to clasp her shoulder. “Thank you.”

From up above Ganymede had watched. He knew the guilt Circe would feel over what she had done, but he knew his Guardian had made the right decision. For he, as well as Circe, knew that monsters could come in any shape.

Shadowkeep Part 7: Solo

Summary:

Fireteam Eklipsys is back to full strength and are ready to hunt some Nightmares! With Blaze being able to lay a beat-down on the Nightmare of Skolas, they move on to their next target: Nightmare Taniks. But something seems off with Marcia as her usual laid-back nature quickly turns serious and cold at the mention of Taniks.

Previous Part: Here

Next Part: Here

“We are all consumed by that which eats away at us. For Skolas, it was his own hubris. He pursued complete control over all Houses of the Fallen, and through his misguided conquest, many perished. Skolas’s memory serves as a permanent reminder of all the lives lost at the whim of a single Kell. No matter how hard Pyramid may try, we will not cower.” “So this has become an official Vanguard mission, then?” Marcia asked as she followed the rest of her Fireteam through an abandoned Ketch. “Yep! Who’s a snitch now?” Rae smirked. “Hardy har.” Marcia rolled her eyes playfully, “My question is why we’re going after the Nightmare of this Skolas guy.” “The Nightmares I hunted weren’t enough. We need to track down stronger ones.” “This’ll be fun though!” Blaze smirked, “I get to roast the face off that guy again, and actually kill him this time instead of letting Mara throw him in prison.” “You mean Awoken Queen Mara?” Marcia asked. “You know her?” “Ugh, I know of her. And lucky for her, we’ve haven’t had the ‘pleasure’ of meeting. No offense, but she’s more like a queen-wannabe. At least I ruled fairly when I was Queen. Was the Umbrialyx an official Kingdom? Nope. Was I still a good queen? Hell yeah! A queen should work with her people, not act all high and mighty and like she’s better than any living thing in the damn universe. If I ever had a chance to meet her, I’d give her a piece of my mind!” “Trust me, no offense taken.” Blaze replied, “I honestly don’t know how to feel about her anymore.” “Don’t beat yourself up about it too much.” Marcia gave Blaze a playful punch in the shoulder, “But if she ever does anything to hurt you guys in anyway, let’s just say I’ll be sending a large blocker to the enemy’s side!” “Please don’t.” Rae begged with a nervous smile, “I feel like she already wants to kill me for everything that’s happened.” “No promises.” Marcia grinned. “Rae, I’m detecting enemies up ahead. I think it’s the Skolas Nightmare.” Ghost piped up. “Aw yeah!” Blaze cheered with a cocky grin, “I’ve been wanting to do this for over 4 years! Let’s make some fireworks!!!” Blaze went rushing past her fellow Guardians, Golden Gun already blazing. Rae sighed, “You’d think she’d have matured a little over 5 years, but…” “Well at least it’ll be a quick fight!” Marcia grinned, “C’mon!” Rae, Adam and Marcia ran into a room up ahead where they saw Blaze whooping as she dashed around the Skolas Nightmare, firing her signature sidearm at it. “Haha!” Blaze laughed, “Come get me, Kell of Nothing!” “Should…should we help out?” Adam asked. “Y’know what? I think she’s got it.” Marcia replied, “Should we focus on the smaller Nightmares while she takes care of that?” “Sure.” Rae shrugged, “Let Blaze have her moment.” ——————————————————————— “Whoo! Now that was fun!” Blaze grinned as she watched the body of Nightmare Skolas disappear, putting out some flames that still lingered on her arm. “That’s ironic; she was fighting a Nightmare, but it was a dream for her!” Marcia laughed as Rae turned to Blaze, “Sorry to interrupt your moment, but Eris wants us back at Sanctuary.” Blaze just shuffled by Rae, doing a little happy dance as she went, before moonwalking out of the room. Rae just shook her head with a smile as Marcia laughed, “Working with you guys is a riot!” “Oh, you don’t know the half of it.” Adam chuckled as the three Guardians followed Blaze out of the Ketch. “So who’s next? My adrenaline’s pumping now!” Blaze asked, jumping up and down a bit. “The Nightmare of Taniks.” Rae replied. “That breaks the pattern then.” Adam noted, “Skolas was one of Blaze’s since she was the one leading the House of Wolves mission. But none of us had any real grudge or relation to Taniks.” “Actually…it doesn’t.” Marcia corrected. Rae noticed Marcia’s expression had turned more serious and her voice was a little colder, “Taniks is mine. You leave him to me.” Marcia walked ahead of the group, leaving Rae confused, “I don’t get it. Taniks is Marcia’s Nightmare?” “I think I do.” Blaze sighed, “Have you heard of Andal Brask?” “Yeah. He was the Hunter Vanguard before Cayde, right?” “Yep. From what Marcia told me once, despite not being affiliated with the Tower, she used to work with Andal. She felt that he was one of the few Guardians she could fully trust. To the point where she actually considered returning to the Tower. However, he was killed by Taniks, which lead Cayde to take the role as Hunter Vanguard. When Marcia found out, she was ready to send all of her rogues after Taniks, but when she found out that Taniks’s body had been taken away by his crew, she decided against it, but swore she’d take any chance she was given to make him pay.” “So that’s why Taniks is her Nightmare; why she wants to take it on alone.” “Seems that way. She told me this after a Gambit match when I asked how she knew Cayde when we saw her on Mars a while back.” “That makes sense.” Rae muttered, “Either way, we have to back her up. I still owe her for saving me back in the Hellmouth.” Blaze nodded as the three Guardians ran to catch up with Marcia. ——————————————————————— “Years ago, Taniks tore the Vanguard apart over a mere bounty. Andal Brask was murdered in cold blood, and the Hunter Vanguard was left without a leader. Taniks would ultimately die for this on the orders of Cayde-6. But the scars he left among all Guardians would never fully heal. Once again, the Pyramid takes advantage of our collective pain. We will not succumb.” Fireteam Eklipsys made their way through the Temple of Crota in search of the Taniks Nightmare, Marcia being uncharacteristically silent with a determined and rage-filled look upon her face. “I don’t like that look.” Rae muttered to Adam, “It kinda scares me.” “Believe it or not, I’ve seen that look before.” Adam replied, “Just on someone else.” “Who?” “A certain someone who was also out to avenge a Hunter Vanguard.” Rae’s eyes widened slightly as she glanced at Marcia once more. Did she really look like that? “There were moments I was afraid you were going to go on a full-blown rampage.” Adam continued, “I think the only thing that prevented you from doing so was the promise you made to Ikora and Zavala that you’d come back alive, and you losing yourself would put that promise in danger.” “I’m…sorry if I scared you.” Rae apologised. “You? Scare me?” Adam chuckled, “Don’t have to worry about that. Don’t forget who was the one responsible for that Servitor Rodeo back in the Cosmodrome with Sepiks Prime.” “I still haven’t forgiven you for that.” “Worth it.” “There’s the Nightmare of Taniks.” Ghost called out as Fireteam Eklipsys entered a room in the Temple of Crota where the familiar red mist of a Nightmare was seen across the way, “Let’s take it-” Ghost was cut off as Marcia went charging past the Guardians, her teeth clenched with rage in her eyes. She threw a smoke bomb in front of her, vanishing as she passed through and dipped between the oncoming Nightmare Shanks as she got to the Taniks Nightmare. “You’re mine!!” she growled as she reappeared in front of him, wielding a sword and lunging for the Nightmare. “Is she nuts?!” Rae exclaimed as she whipped out her auto-rifle and began shooting at the Nightmare Shanks. “Considering she spend most of her time with Drifter?” Blaze began as she followed suit with her sidearm, “More than likely!” “Focus on the Shanks first.” Adam called out, “If she wants to take on Taniks solo, let her.” As Marcia was locked in combat with the Taniks Nightmare, Rae glided into the air and lobbed a Solar Grenade into a group of Nightmare Shanks before landing on a ledge and finished them off with her sniper rifle. Blaze dashed past Rae and threw an Incendiary Blade at a Vandal, catching it on fire and causing it to angrily charge towards her. *BOOM!* The Vandal exploded as it ran straight into the line of one of Blaze’s trip-mine grenades. “Trip-mines.” Blaze smirked, “I’m really starting to see why the Eliksni like these so much!” “Watch your six!” Blaze turned around just in time to see Adam shoulder charge into a Dreg before casting Sentinel Shield and tossing it into a small group of Shanks, taking them out. “Thanks pal!” Blaze grinned as she took out her grenade launcher and lobbed a few grenades at the remaining Vandals. Meanwhile, Marcia continued to take on the Taniks Nightmare, skilfully switching between her sword and her handcannon, Trust. She had Taniks on the ropes until he swung at her, knocking the sword out of her hands. As she went for her handcannon, he swung at her again, using his scorch cannon, and hit her in the side, causing her to fall off the ledge they were standing on but was able to grab onto the ledge just in time. Marcia went to pull herself up but was met with the barrel of a scorch cannon aimed right at her. Marcia squeezed her eyes shut and she braced for the incoming pain. *SHINK!* Marcia opened her eyes in time to see the scorch cannon go tumbling past her into the pit before looking up to see the blade of her sword protruding out of the Nightmare’s torso. She watched as the Nightmare faded away to reveal an out-of-breath Rae holding the hilt of the sword. Rae quickly dropped the sword to the ground and rushed to the ledge, helping Marcia back up. “Thanks.” Marcia breathed. “Hey…” Rae sighed, relief in her voice, “We’re even now, at least.” “True, true…” Marcia exhaled heavily, “Yeah…in hindsight, maybe taking on the Nightmare of a 12-foot Captain armed with a scorch cannon…wasn’t a good idea.” “Rage makes you do crazy things.” Blaze spoke as she walked up to the two, “Trust me, I know. I burned the face off a Scorn Baron because of it and it wasn’t pretty either.” “Well…” Marcia glanced at where Nightmare Taniks once stood, “At least I got to avenge Andal in some way…” “On the bright side,” Rae began, “The last Nightmare shouldn’t be too difficult to deal with! Right, Ghost?” “About that…” Ghost began, “Our next destination…is the Hellmouth.” The tired and fed-up groans of four Guardians was heard all the way in the Tangled Shore. To Be Continued…

Okay, if you want an Eris/Toland prompt: their first meeting in the class swap AU. Perhaps it's enough of a swap that Toland is Eriana's friend, and Eris is the Hive expert they call in to help defeat Crota?

When Eris Morn learned the eighth sigil, she sighed as loud as she dared in the close tunnel. Eight were too many to make up the chord-locks of the Hive’s patron beasts. Eight was easy. Eight signified nothing except she had not found enough characters to read their alphabet.

How reassuring.

It had been three days since her Fireteam had scattered. Eris had done strange cold work among her fellow Guardians on Earth, but the pits beneath the Moon were stranger and more cold. Warlocks tended to forget that they lived in a half-dead world, Eris realized after that. She had expected to have a place to return to after all her wandering.

Now she buried her chin against the collar of her cloak and kept reading the runes. Her vision was spotty, from hunger or strain. It became difficult to tell how far away the wall was, whether the light of the bond on her arm or the light from the runes on the gate was brighter. She had worked her way up through two locked doors so far. Many more and she would know the language well enough to speak it.

Hive-pidgen, she thought of it as. Some was understandable enough in context, but other words had gaps in them, filled by what she supposed was a cultural assumption about the Light.

The cloak on her back was weighted badly, bunched up around her collar. She adjusted it, abhorring the wet dust that had gathered. By now it all smelled like moon-dust and old rot and the colors of the cloak were camouflaged with blood and ichor. When she had been given it she had chuckled at how conspicuous the bright green was, scowled at how gaudy the pattern reminiscent of the gateway into the Hellmouth. The last-minute tactic had seemed ridiculous in the face of six healthy Guardians on their way to kill a prince.

“They’ll believe you are one of their own. And that is the only way.”

—

Toland the Vitreous, Eriana-3 thought, would have been much more dangerous if he had known how to be charming.

Maybe that was why he, unlike Osiris or Dredgen Yor, had never gathered a cult to himself. Instead, she thought that he gave the the impression of hardly believing his own ideas. They were fancies, and he loved them all the more for it.

“Lord Shaxx is right about one thing,” he said lightly, before the Crucible match started. “Win and loss are the only really fundamental states of matter.”

“Poetic,” Eriana had said. Maybe if he had inherited a bit more science from his cryptarch mentor, he would have made a heretic Warlock. As it was, he presented as a Hunter who ranged far enough to pull at the invisible, elastic strings of the wolfpack. His Vanguard had warned him.

And Eriana, who could see right through him, had befriended him.

He didn’t take her up on her offer of the Crucible often. There had been whispers while the team assembled - what was this lone buzzard, this particular strange Hunter, brought to the Crucible? Toland the Vitreous, they called him, burnt out by his own dark work until there was nothing left but glass.

As soon as the team started running - it was a match for kills in vine-covered ruins - he switched guns. The one he held was sleek and golden, and quickly caught fire as he called the Sun. An animal’s spine wrapped around the barrel, the beaked skull pointing at the front. She had thought she might start to teach him some of the more applicable aspects of the Praxic Fire, but the weapon he held was half Golden Gun, parts manifesting from the Light itself.

He shot one of his teammates in the head three times. The other Warlock slipped backwards, helmet burning, and their Ghost flared out before they hit the ground. They would wake up furious and confused, Eriana thought.

“Toland, no!” Eriana yelled. He was running an experiment - she had done enough of her own to know.

A few of the fighters stopped, presumably wondering why two Guardians on the same team were fighting with no objective in sight. Others ignored them, blasting across the Cosmodrome ruins they had drawn in the Crucible rotation lottery.

Toland had always been a bit Warlockish.

Eriana could sense the strange energies within the gun, the way it seemed to want to kill again. Toland seemed almost tugged as he knelt down beside the working Ghost, disinterested in the Guardians around him. He checked the clip, then turned to her.

“Ah, it works,“ he said, then leaned in to the urgeful light of that Sun and shot the Ghost.

—

Shaxx pulled him out of the match and gave him to Cayde, but Eriana kept watch.

“Why? Let go of that,” Eriana said, and took the gun from him. It fell in half, the Sun-stuff disappearing between her fingers and leaving her holding the precarious pieces of the hollow gun. Cayde had told them to wait on the Tower watch, above the Vanguard hall. The trickle of the water in the human-made streams seemed like a blaring distraction when Eriana was trying so hard to watch out for anyone who might walk in. Toland gave no impression of wanting to attack anyone again, but Eriana wanted to avoid any altercations. Toland’s experiment had been interesting, indeed. The gun had reacted to something, to its own mindless perception of having won a tiny part of the match. Win and lose are the only really fundamental states …

Cayde-6 and Andal Brask walked onto the Tower watch with one bowl of ramen and one neon-green drink between them.

“What have we here?” Cayde was the louder one, always at Andal’s elbow, but Andal was the Vanguard. Toland looked at him.

“Golden Gun draws from the Sun, and the Sun from the Light and the Light from the body,” Toland said. “That cycle can be picked apart and rearranged. I’ve made a golden gun that does not run out of shots.”

“It feeds on dead Guardians,” Eriana said, still holding the pieces of Bad Juju stacked between her hands. The interiors were alarmingly organic-looking, with stringy support structures like in a bird’s hollow bones.

Andal looked at Cayde, then back at Toland. “You brought that artifact back before, that strange cube. Is this related?”

Toland held his hands out in front of him as if ready to be shackled. He wore the close-fitting Hunter garb in a green that looked not martial but simply as if it was rotting off of him. Eriana looked down at her own Praxic uniform as if expecting some sort of stain.

“Don’t delay your sentence,” Toland said. “My experiment is done. We can threaten the very cage around our world with this.”

“The Vanguard have already covered your view of the Warminds,” Andal answered quickly. This surprised Eriana; she hadn’t known he held such a view.

“And your discussion will cease when the world falls down around your ears,” Toland said.

“You killed a Guardian,” Cayde enunciated slowly. The word he used indicated permanent death; it was beginning to be used in reference to Hive magic as well, sometimes ironically. It had been rare before the Hive incursion. Eriana was starting to miss those times. “Maybe we should get back to that?”

“Things are piling up,” Andal said. “You leave your teammates behind to go off looking for ruins - and you’ve pestered the Vanguard about Rasputin more than Cayde has.”

Cayde shrugged.

“This has gone on long enough,” Andal said. His voice turned stentorian; he could act when he wanted to. “I will bring you before the Vanguard.”

The silence stretched out, offering a hand and an ace up the sleeve; Toland could go politely or he could be removed in whatever unpleasant manner Andal thought fit.

Eriana interrupted.

“Let me talk to him first,” she said. She found authority in her voice by reminding herself that she was not under the Hunters’ jurisdiction. “I’m interested in the way he used Golden Gun. I study the Praxic Fire. This could be of use to us.”

Although Eriana was not a senior member of her order, the followers of the Praxic Creed were well known for being practical - for Warlocks. Hunters joked that this meant decisions required only two days of meditative contemplation. It helped that Eriana was known for being solidly personable. She watched Andal decide how much she knew about what was likely to happen if Toland saw all three Vanguard. Exile could be as formal as an appearance from the Speaker or as informal as a quick and impermanent death.

In the end, the expression Eriana saw in Andal’s eyes was a deep sympathy for her and Toland’s friendship.

“In ten minutes I’ll send Shaxx back up here,” Andal said, and left.

Eriana caught Cayde lifting the green drink in a salute to his mentor’s back as he followed.

Toland tried to slide away; Eriana caught him by the shoulders. “Don’t say a word,” she said, then shook her head. He wouldn’t manage it. “I’m going to hide you before they can exile you,” she said, and for a moment he looked surprised at her apparent clairvoyance.

She was right that he couldn’t manage to be quiet, but chattiness itself was not suspicious. They took the elevator down, and worked on a cover story.

—

When Eris heard Eriana’s name around the Tower more often, she felt a mix of jealousy and pride.

They had been friends early in their new lives, two Warlocks with the same wry sense of humor and a comfort with sitting beside one another and studying in silence for hours. Their own ascensions had helped drive them apart, though; as Eriana became more dedicated to the Praxic Creed and Eris to the more esoteric work favored by Ikora their missions took them to far-off places. When Eris was inducted into the Hidden after a particularly spectacular stealth mission against the Hive incursion, her friendship with Eris faded quietly like the colors on an old cloak. If they had skipped time and seen the change, it would have been shocking, but because time progressed the normal way the transition into almost complete silence was itself unnoticed.

The Hidden had offered prime opportunities for a Voidwalker, and so Eris had become used to conspiring and spying, to seeing in Ikora’s eyes the secrets that they shared.

Now, Ikora was keeping her comm open while Eris trailed a Hive commander in the Cosmodrome. There had been reports of an unusually organized swarm, of a towering Knight with a sword that made a name for itself among younger Guardians.

“Find out at least where they’re based. Maybe what they call themselves,” Ikora said.

“Their names are fascinating, actually. Did I mention to you that they seem to have no names distinguished by gender?” Eris always felt a bit hesitant talking to someone as accomplished and brilliant as the Vanguard, but she also knew that Ikora shared her interest in ephemera. Eris was not a magpie of a Warlock, the sort that coveted their own personal library; instead she gathered facts, ideas she could carry around without adding any weight to her blue robes.

“You hadn’t,” Ikora said.

Eris continued walking along the hillside, avoiding snowy patches that might be slippery. She had not tried to disguise herself and instead walked openly, passively monitoring the emanations of Darkness she could feel from the other side.

“I’m almost at the site,” Eris said.

“Good.”

Eris wanted to say something else, some formality or pleasantry for closure, but Ikora’s voice had closed off in that authoritative way that she had, and Eris knew that if she herself spoke now she would tend to babble. So instead she remained quiet as she walked around the sharp cliff of rock that made up the oceanward side of the hill. In front of her now the grassland sloped down to the sluggish water. To her left was the gash in the hill that lead to the cave.

Eris readied the gun in her hand as the Hive sniffed her out, but she didn’t expect to have to use it.

First the eyes appeared in threes and sixes in the cave, then the thralls lurched themselves out of the darkness with their sideways gait and screamed toward her. Eris Morn waited. Not exactly covert work, this, but there were more difficult ways to study them, and Osiris had suggested that she couldn’t capture an entire pack of Hive at once on her own, so she had just had to —

Ah, there, the traps. Eris had formed them out of the Hive’s own filaments, the metal pieces they tended to drive into the Earth. Ikora permitted this as long as it remained in the realms of linguistics and engineering and did not turn into magic, and Eris was equally committed to upholding that separation.

Thrall zig-zagged forward and the Knights followed, lumbering, and Eris ducked as blasts from energy weapons splashed past her. She knew though —

The traps snapped upward out of the ground, green fire burning on the edges of the metal ribs. The one holding the sword-bearer worked too well. The Hive commander dissolved into dust, shrieking. Eris could not tell whether it had dashed itself against the bars with its momentum or not. The Hive seemed to glory in killing others, but not necessarily in mindless loss; Eris thought for a moment that the Knight must have been disappointed in itself. Then she put one hand over the bottom of her helmet, wanting to cover her mouth. She still stood in front of a pack of trapped thrall, and the relief at her plan working was slowly draining away and leaving fear in its wake.

There were some garbled noises on the comm, and Eris felt her heart sink. “Are you okay?”

Quickly, the signal stabilized. “Thank you for trapping that brood, Eris,” Ikora said.

“It didn’t work. I’m sorry. The sword bearer …” Eris wrinkled her nose in embarrassed amusement at her own overkill. “Disintegrated.”

“No matter. It’s time to come back,” Ikora said kindly, and quickly enough that Eris only had time to open her mouth in shock. “It’s time to send our armies to the Moon.”

—

For a while, Toland’s most pressing concern was the war.

Eriana had gathered her troops in a small apartment in the City, kitted out for a short-term stay and taken by Toland for a longer one. The fireteam loved her, and gathered around her in a flock when she announced that their last team member would be coming soon. Eris Morn was a quietly competent Warlock known mostly for being a closed-mouthed confidante of Ikora Rey, Eriana had said. Later she had added that she and Eris had once been friends, but that their respective work with the Praxic Warlocks, and, supposedly, with Ikora’s Hidden had pulled them apart. Perhaps this was why she was nervous, or because the team hadn’t yet cohered. Vell Tarlowe, the Titan from the Pilgrim Guard, seemed to suffer from a mild claustrophobia in the City and so tended to puff up like a pigeon to show his strength.

“Don’t fret,” Toland whispered to Eriana. She was running hot, not the Sun but her servos heating up the edge of his sleeve. “Your pets won’t hurt the spy.”

“Between your fascination and her experience we have all the Hive expertise we need.” Eriana’s tone was strong, as if she were addressing the Vanguard. Later, Toland thought that she might regret such conviction. She had already framed him and Eris as complementary, as a likely pair of researchers.

Now, Eriana waited with the group for the Hidden Warlock to arrive. Toland began to feel impatient, standing in formation like this as if they were petitioners at the Vanguard’s beckon call instead of a rogue fireteam breaking the Lunar Interdict.

When Eris arrived there was no fanfare, no sneaking. She did not appear out of thin air or in a cloud of Voidlight. She walked in through the door, wearing bronze-plated Voidfang Vestments and with her helmet tucked under her arm. Perhaps there was a hint of clandestine energy in the way she edged over to Eriana, who quickly and unreservedly clasped her elbow.

“Thank you for coming,” Eriana said. Her lights blinked sincere acknowledgement, doubling the thanks for those who could read Exo expressions.

Eris surveyed the group, full lips slightly open. “The opportunity to study the Hive is incredible, but the, uh, cause is more worthy.”

Her voice hesitated a bit over the formal words, becoming more resonant as she faltered. Toland found himself wondering whether there was a pattern in that he could predict if he listened long enough.

Eriana continued the formality with a bow of her head, but when she started to introduce the group members individually she made it almost immediately clear that theirs was not a strict affect to go with the deadly serious mission. Omar joked that Eris had probably forgotten more about the Hive than he ever knew, and her response was gracious and wry. Eriana brought her to Toland last.

“Our other Hunter,” Eriana said softly. “Toland the Vitreous, the weaponsmith.” She looked at Eris to see her reaction. “He was exiled.”

Eris equally softly pulled a breath in.

Toland perceived the Darkness on Eris as a gauzy cloak over her clothing. Peel the surface away and you would have a sheet of Hive-stuff, likely to sprout signal towers and green crystals. It would come off clean, though. Eris was not herself corrupted.

“I hear you are exceptionally familiar with our enemy,” he said. It was an expression of curiosity, but, he admitted to himself, also a challenge. She too immersed herself in studies that could easily cause Guardians on her team to die, even if it was not on purpose.

“I study them.” She said, sharp eyes glinting in a sharp face. “That does not mean I love them.”

“We devote ourselves to what we will,” he said, and took her hand. He knew from the weight of the word that he felt for her - to say devote in front of her felt suddenly personal and dangerous. And that, of course, made his words to her a tender and fascinating lie. There was no willpower left to him, now that he had felt this.

Eris Morn shook Toland’s hand, and he filed his own interest away.

Later he would catch her while he was reading in their fireteam’s hideaway, the place Eriana had set up for him before Crota was even a storm on the horizon. She would wait by the edge of the bookshelf and extend her awareness to him, a wash of Voidlight filled with patterns and mathematics he could not fathom, and he would glow with the Sun and light one of the pages of the books for her. He thought that she must be surprised to see a Hunter flitting around the shelves. She explained to him some of the Hive sigils that she recognized, and he just listened.

Even later, he noticed that she would find excuses to stay after the rest of the team had gone, and she would tell him about the terrors of the Hive, and the way they believed in wins and losses. It was after agreeing with one of these statements that he touched her hands again, play-fighting in jabs and bait-and-switches. When they paused with their fingers tangled, he stooped to kiss both of their hands. She smirked when his lips brushed his own knuckles.

For a while, Toland’s most pressing concerns were her and the war.

—

Some of the runes must have been missing. Eris had worked out what the sequence should be, but there was no sigil for the ninth character. She could keep working on them, driving herself to distraction, or she could turn around and find a more defensible spot. Soon, she thought, she would not have a choice.

She turned and saw another glow.

How far away? What letter did that represent? What sound did it make?

She wondered whether she might see a trio of green eyes in the dark, and be unsure whether it was an enemy or a delusion borne from hope. Toland, the Vitreous, had been wearing that mask before he disappeared.

Eris had thought once that she could fight the Hive using their own tools without becoming as evil as they were. Funny, how she had not entirely been wrong. She could keep her pure intent. What the Hive worshipped wasn’t about intent, really; the swordlogic was a physical law, and all along Eris had been following it like the ocean followed the Moon.

Toland, though, had dived right in. The last she had seen him alive he was fleeing down a tunnel, crying nonsense words, making sounds like might have been Hive names if he had ever learned them properly. After that, there had been the body and the Deathsinger she and Eriana fought. Both of them had looked for some trace of Hive magic and found none. Toland had not found the words to unlock his gate either.

She could imagine, though, that those were his false eyes. She could imagine eyes all around her, his face ghosting through the rock between her hands where she had crouched over in the tunnel. The deaths of her teammates felt like dreams now, and she supposed she should be thankful for it. Her brain was shifting these things into the category of nightmare so that she could keep going, so that the guilt and terror would stay distant until they leaked out somehow. She could not weep, except for the messy, tar-colored ichor that bled from the cracked skin around her eyes.

The Hive had been an abstraction to her for a little while, and now they were just a gate.

She turned back to the door and started working on a new idea about how to bypass the ninth sigil.

—

Once Illumynare suggested that Eris and Toland’s backgrounds should be swapped along with their classes, I had to figure out how that happened - and so it became part of what was supposed to be a thousand-word story. Well. The resulting timeline becomes kinder to its characters at the beginning and crueler by the end, I suppose. Eris is more accomplished at the beginning of this story than I imagine she was in canon, forced as she was out from under Eriana’s wing. She has the Warlock penchant for study but an emotional distance from the Hive that Toland never managed. Toland has only half of his canon obsessions - he’s desperately fearful and sees other Guardians as potential subjects for experimentation, but never researched the Hive enough to speak convincingly to Ir Yût. Therefore he never became quite as infamous as he was in canon, and was never technically “shattered” - although still more than willing to abandon his team. I tried to keep these differences in mind.