#hekate003

What makes a guardian a guardian?

It is something Zavala has muttered, time and again; as he watched the moon shift its orbit in the Great Disaster, over the shroud of Cayde-6, Amanda Holliday, and the graves of his wife and son. He mutters it now, cradling the spectre of Targe in his hands.

—- Devotion. —- 

You stand on the bridge of the Glykon Volatus. 

Katabasis is torn and rent asunder by twisting egregore. It lifts him from the ground and suspends him in midair. It grows around him and into him until he is calcified in his final, futile attempt to fight.

You found him months later in his armor, but now, here, his mask falls away. Tendrils snake into his eyes, but in those bloodshot orbits you see fear/pain/life. Tears stream down his mangled, swollen cheeks. Blood seeps from his nose around the vines creeping up into his nasal cavity. His mouth is forced open in an eternal scream, but his voice is choked by protruding vines.

Beside him Calus gorges himself on his own hedonism, droplets of wine spilling, dripping down his mottled cheek. This, your lover, his belly full to bursting. This joyous majesty, this gift-giver, this self-styled god-emperor. His attendants lather cream over his limbs as he soaks in a warm and royal pool. His greedy eyes stare into the void, and his gluttony consumes Katabasis.

The hunter’ bloodshot eyes find yours, and you watch in horror as his vessels constrict. He is trying to call for you. Across an ouroboros of time and the cracked mirror of dimensions, he tries to say your name.

You hear only a guttural, primal wail. He was alone in this unending death scream, and you did naught but stand before his corpse. A living monument of your failure.

(hear, she begs you. hear the flutter of his eyelids as his pain fades, hear his final breath leave in a calm exhale. hear that his memory lives, untarnished, in you.) 

The many hands lift you from the encroaching vines and carry you away. 

You do not hear.

—- Bravery. —- 

You stand on the Tangled Shore. 

Your Hero of the Red War tears the spine out of a dreg of the House of Dusk. His weathered boots stain the ground with ether as he rounds a fistful of arc into a fleeing vandal. A lone captain remains, making a final, futile stand. The guardian unleashes a relentless barrage from a high powered rifle which tears the captain into pieces of sizzling flesh.

The eliksni lie dead. Innocent. Slaughtered. And your Hero, gun still smoking in his hand, waits. The dreg’s docked arms snap back, its neck twisting, its mouth gaping, as it rises Scorned. The vandal’s eyes ooze corrupted arc energy. Its tongue lolls out of its undead mouth, and it rises, Scorned. The captain manages an unearthly scream before poisoned ether reknits his flesh and he rises, stumbling. Scorned. Your hero tears them down. They are remade. And he tears again.

There is a rot in the heart of the Tangled Shore, and Your Hero feeds it with unfettered chaos.

The inevitability of a relentless glaive tears through men, women, and children, before it turns its wrath to the sapphiric sun of Lubrae. Grief is choked by his rage, and he drives the glaive deeper until the planet, the system, is Upended. When he sheds his grief, he feels only a welcoming relief.

The hands rest beneath your chin, and gently guide your gaze beyond the wreckage and into the Dreaming City. The Prince of the Reef lies broken and bleeding on a marble floor blackened by curse and carnage. His corruption is gone, his sins laid bare, and with his first unviolated breath he whispers his eulogy. Your Hero blows out his skull with the gun of Cayde-6, and calls it justice.

Doug-5 looks at you through the cracked visor of his helmet. Steam rises from his overworked exo body, hissing into the fetid air of the carnage he has wrought. His chest heaves with exertion. His eyes are lidded and dark. They are hate.

The light of his mouth flickers as if to speak. But you hear only a growl, more predator than man. He will prey on all who caused him grief. And you - you were too slow. You advised caution. You lectured temperance. You aided and abetted by your inaction, and in that wake, he will slaughter hundreds.

(hear, she begs you. hear his laughter at this most welcome of reunions. hear the remorse, the redemption as he speaks to the Crow. hear the softness of his apology to his Ghost, whispered in the intimate air of their companionship. hear the warmth in his voice as he beckons you to join him around the fire.)

The many hands turn your head from his wrath. 

You do not hear.

—- Sacrifice. —- 

You stand in the Iron Temple.

Your skin blisters with the chill, and your eyes sting with eight lit memorial flames. Lord Saladin Forge falls to his knees before a dying flicker of flame at the feet of the effigy of Jolder. The cold blankets him in an icy numbness. Here he remains. He remains as evil grows in a black garden, as the Taken King decimates an entire race of your people, as a Legion slaughters hundreds of defenseless humans.

Many hands close around yours. You feel neither heat nor chill. It is not the press of skin that leads you deeper into the recesses of the Temples. It is not the brush of a fabric sleeve that draws you into the fortress’ ancient dungeon. You feel only a soft pressure where the hands touch you.

Those hands hold yours as Saladin snaps the delicate neck of a frightened psion and tosses their body into the howling wind. The psion’s body dashes upon the rocks below, joining the dozen other discarded corpses of their kin. Saladin stands with Savathun and listens to her whispers in his ear. 

Xi Ro bellows her battle cry as she lays waste to Torobatl. The mongering war god laughs as she engulfs the fleeing ships of refugees. She will chase them by blood and ritual to the furthest ends of the universe, and war will be fed by Sol's warlords.

The last Iron Lord looks at you. His eyes seep with sorrow, his chest a gaping wound of blackest grief. His shoulders are slumped, his knees are bent, and his shadow splits into eight. Radegast/Jolder/Felwinter/Timur/Silimar/Gheleon/Perun/Skorri.

His mouth falls open, but he need not speak his shame. You know it well. It is yours. You, who buried yourself in an impenetrable avalanche of indifference, and the blanket of snow around you is stained red.

(hear, she begs you. hear the reclamation of his noble vows. hear the remorse in his mentorship. hear the wisdom in his counsel to the Empress.)

The many hands warm you, and pull you away. 

You do not hear.

—- Death. —- 

You stand in the Hellmouth.

Six of them went down into the pit. With the many hands on your shoulders, you can only watch. 

A horde of thralls rip Vell Tarlowe’s fingers, his arms, from his body, but he lives long enough to scream as they tear into his gut.

Sai Mota’s lips protrude, her blue cheeks distend, as the broodmother crushes her windpipe. 

Crota raises his sword in a brutal arc, and the last gasp of Eriana-3 is a moan of guilt and regret.

Omar Agah’s tortured cries echo as his skin is peeled in strips of light, and he watches, with eyes of burst blood vessels, as he is fed, strip by strip, to the unborn Hive.

Your erstwhile guide abandons his charges to follow a song. Toland welcomes his shattering in the embrace of death incarnate. His consciousness redefined, he vanishes into the ether with a desperate hunger for power. He does not scream as his body is destroyed. He sings the deathsong. He exalts.

And oh how the lord of pain shivers with each slice of flesh, and drinks deep of the echoes of their screams. The cretins on the moon, the guardians cutting paths through their Sol, they are his emissaries of pain and fear, and he is their god.

Though he has no face, no form, Toland looks at you. He is transcendent, an atemporal shimmer of half-life. He speaks, as he ever does, but his words are soundless, shapeless. And in those words, you hear the song of your own inaction, your indecision.

(hear, she begs you. hear the scraping of hands as the sixth climbs to freedom. hear the gasp of her first fresh breath. hear the resolve as she stands, Eris Morn, undaunted.)

You hear…

The chorus of whispers as the many hands wrap themselves around you, engulfing you, embracing you, but you do not feel trapped. You are held. Held in a perfect place of stillness. There is no emotion here, no torment, no suffering. There is only relief.

And you. Formidable you. Atop a cathedral of bone and starlight at the apex of the universe’s ley lines. Yours to command. Yours to shape.

In this embrace, you are not judged for perceived inaction. You are not admonished for temperance. You are not punished for rationality. You are exalted. You are seen.

You are Witnessed.

The chill of the air of the Impasse startles you from your meditation. Night has fallen, or perhaps, this close to the monolith, day cannot break through the storm. 

Zavala sits by the meager campfire with his head bowed, his hands holding the spectre of Targe. Inaction. Ikora stands at the edge of your camp with a heavy brow and, as ever, stares out into oblivion for an answer. Futility. The Crow finishes off another bottle, and his eyes are heavy with remorse for an act he did not commit. Weakness. And, perched far from the camp on the simulacrum of the place where your Traveler reanimated him into an eternal war, sits your Hero, clutching his Ghost. Fracture.

They do not look at you. They do not see you. Not as we do.

(i see you. i have always seen you.)

“Mornin’, Starlight,” greets Cayde-6 with a nod of acknowledgement. "Or what passes for morning in this place. I made...let's call it bacon, how 'bout. You hungry?"

He knows. He knows. For he alone of them has seen the truth of it. He, and you. The truth of what your Traveler demands. 

In her final moments, the witch queen looks to the sky. Young Sathona, the supplicant. Devotion inspires bravery, bravery inspires sacrifice, and sacrifice ends in her ignominious death on a barren cliffside of a planet so far from her humble life on Fundament. She fears it will simply let her die. She asks, with her final breath, 'is that it'? And her only answer is death.

(hear the answer, she begs you. she was not forsaken.)

The many hands reach for you. They whisper a thousand names against your skin. Its molecules engulf you, embrace you. Are you. You know the truth. Cayde-6 seeks the relief we offer you, but can only see its path in death. But you, formidable you. You who stand at the crossroads of eternity. Where others see one path, you see infinite. 

(please, she begs you, hear me).

You. are. Witnessed.

Why choose death, when you can choose purpose?

Finality.