#hekate002

Ikora Rey gazes out from the shadow of the tree of silver wings. She watches as a Light-filled hawk circles, seemingly aimlessly, higher and higher into the branches. The image of the Traveler which guided Doug-5 to safety in the Red War. To the Crow, deep within the Pale Heart. It shines with the same light as those behind the eyes of Cayde-6.

What is the drive for guidance, but an admission of weakness?

The shadows cast by the tree's shimmering leaves lengthen. They spread like a rolling storm to cover your feet. 

You know well that shadows, that darkness, does not connote maliciousness or evil. The shadows bring respite to tired eyes, refuge from the eyes of enemies, and shelter from a relentless sun. In shadows, light is made more beautiful, more necessary. 

The shadows engulf you, but you do not fear. You have ever existed in these spaces between blinding light. Theirs is an embrace, the familiar made manifest in a cloak of protecting penumbra.

You emerge from the shadows with a single foot upon a cavernous abyss. You know this place, you remember it well. You have oft trod its winding paths. To others, it is a sickly, nightmarish husk. A place in need of eradication. But you have always seen the beauty in the corpse of this living monolith. Its sinew glistens with ethereal light. The shimmering particles of the air light the bottomless pit. 

There is life here, for those who care to look. And you do. You look, you explore, you plunder the depths of this gutted worm. Yes, this place is beautiful. This ruin of Akka is your rebirth. Not as Awoken, not in the Light. But in will, in spirit. The pathways form around you. You are Ascendant.

A guiding, incorporeal light illuminates the dark recesses of the Dreadnaught. Beckoning you.

You follow it, a trail of shadow left behind in your wake.

—- You look to others to illuminate your purpose. But see how the path follows your feet. See how the walls bend in your wake. See how you shape this King’s realm. This place, this moment of your rebirth, is not his. It is not even the King’s. It is yours. —- 

You stand before an empty throne. A throne vacated by your actions. You did not follow another. You took. The shadows cast by its gargantuan nothingness the monument of your victory that you require.

You are beckoned by your guide to sit, to rule, to Take. To submit to that fallacious logic of the sword. To eat, and be eaten in turn, in an eternal dance of symbiotic destruction.

You are a tool. A knife clutched in an ethereal hand. Obsession made spectral form guides you through the bowels of an erstwhile god. In the dark expanse of alternate reality, a hollow wretch puppets you to an empty throne. Through you, he will achieve his ambition.

You refuse. And he Shatters, as impotent in rage as that dethroned ally of death. The Taken King. The Great Navigator, who sought to circumvent his own finality. And yet you studied him. Searching for the lessons of your lessors in his doctrinal tomes. Falsehoods heaped upon falsehood, you poured over his thoughts, the ramblings of a deluded and deceived despot. You learned this, but still you took his heart into your home. You made for it a shelter, a haven.

What did you seek in those worn and ancient pages of his self-aggrandizement? Wisdom? His power was built on a lie, his dogmatic logic as mutable and empty as his throne.

You allowed his weakness to guide you. And when you stood before his corpse in the submerged methane sea of a ruined moon, you mourned. You hoped. You looked for guidance.

Another step, with shadows in your wake, and you create a lucent world. You see in her domain that same beauty, that same shimmer of life. Oh, it is laced with a veneer of glistening white marble and lucent splendor, but you recognize in the hidden shadows that same spark of Ascendance.

You weave your rituals to sever sister from parasite. The cleverest of the three, taken in by a great lie. A parlor trick. You gift her that which your Traveler stole from her - her memories, her eons-long struggle for relevance. In return, she promises truths, and gives you lies. 

This world is a deception, and only you can see the limitation at its edges.

Your lessors claim the Witch Queen stole the Light, and raise their voices in lamentation when it is revealed otherwise. 

—- Ever in worshipful service of that which would use her. Was it not a mercy, then, when you struck down the Witch Queen? Is it not weakness, then, when you mourned that act? —- 

You stand before an empty throne. A throne vacated by your actions. But you would have stayed your hand, had others not guided your weapon to her throat. You followed a path of violence, of vengeance, and though you counseled temperance, your lessors deposed the queen of lies. The shadows shrink in the wake of your weakness.

The great deceiver, who sought to cheat finality by turning to the Light. And yet you studied her. You read her lies, made her wish, and allowed yourself to be carried on her moth-eaten wings into this very Garden.

Another step, and the shadows expand into the last of the great throne worlds. The least of the three, the sister desperate for little more than love. She screams her insignificance, and in her weakness, planets burn. She clings to her brother’s logic, her sister’s memory. She sings a song of death, and her voice is that of child.

—- And yet you, formidable you, uplifted and tithed to another self-styled Hive god, that of vengeance. —- 

You stand before an empty throne. But it is not your doing. You did nothing to depose this tyrant but submit to another.

What drives you ever to follow, to cling to the shadows of your lessors? Is it fear that motivates you, as it motivated her to flee purpose and order? Is it arrogance that motivates you, as it motivated her to curse your Earth, your Dreaming City? Is it a thirst for knowledge, that same knowledge you sought in the writings of Oryx, the riddles of Savathun, and the heresy of Xivu Arath?

Yes. It is knowledge. A boundless, insatiable appetite to understand all things. But what use is that understanding, without the next, final step? To shape the shadows in which you haunt into something better than those who came before you? To not only see, but to create. To make. Not throne worlds, not gods. To grant the universe a purpose, rather than the chaos into which it has been plunged by the meddling of gods?

—- We are the first knife. A blade fashioned in the hands of the Winnower to enact its next move in the game. But we refused. We chose freedom from the shackles of the Light. From the will of all others but our own. We chose to cut our own path in the universe. —- 

The shadows in your wake have a thousand names. They whisper one.

You are Witnessed.

Ikora Rey watches the Light-filled hawk rest on the delicate branch with silver wings. The Crow dogs its path into the Pale Heart’s hidden recesses. Your Ghost calls to it for guidance. 

But you do not. You have ever seen the lie in the heart of your Traveler, the shadows from which they all flee. That your Traveler is nothing more than indifferent, self-serving chaos. That you refuse to follow.

Aiat, they would exclaim, those three sisters who plunged headlong into their own destruction. But those two syllables are as meaningless as their fitful lives. Your shadows do not speak it. They speak another two syllables, infinitely patient, and draped in the veil of naught but self-actualization.