"It was a Warlock who first worked out that the fangs could be used as some kind of conductive amplifier when specific light frequencies were run through 'em. I don't know the science. That's not for me. I just know they work. And in battle what works is what's best. 

"Is it weird? Yeah. Maybe. Science fangs and space magic. But I've seen enough strange out there to understand normal ain't the norm. Anyway, the Warlock called 'em 'Bio-Conductive Trouble Breakers'. I call 'em 'Doom Fangs' 'cause of the fang, which is obvious, and then there's the doom we tend to inflict on a situation. 

"Plus it just sounds cooler." 

– Unknown Titan

Doom Fang Pauldrons

"Discovered amid the outer-reef scrap fields, the bio-matter is a novel sentience dependent upon neural-symbiosis with a host organism. It seeks to link to the synaptic patterns of the closest organism, living or synthetic, to form an unbreakable bond. We theorize that this bond is a form of primordial 'love'—an emotional connection meant to compel the bio-matter to view its host as 'family.' The host comes to regard the bio-matter as an indispensable tool. 

The science is inexact, but what is known is that the bio-matter becomes aggressively protective once linked to a worthy host, forming an organic shell that can amplify the host's own strength when immediate threats are detected. 

—Self-authored report broadcast on covert frequencies

Synthoceps

OK, here's where I give you this big pep talk about "what it means to be a Hunter" and "follow these rules" and blah blah blah. 

So. Here's the one rule to being a Hunter: can you see me? I'm—I'm shrugging. It's—hard to convey in a written— 

Anyway. It's a shrug. Get it? There's no one way to be a Hunter. Just—figure it out as you go along. I know you can. Otherwise you wouldn't be a Hunter. OK?  

So what are you waiting for? Get out of here. Wait, wait—that'll be 1000 Glimmer. I'm kidding! Now go make me proud. Or don't. Just make you proud, okay? 

Wow. Sometimes I inspire even myself.

Daring Hunter's Cloak

> REMOTE VANGUARD DATABASE TEXT-ONLY SEARCH INITIALIZED. 
> WELCOME, USER "ACEOFHEARTS". 
> PLEASE ENTER SEARCH QUERY. 
?> beat shaxx 
> ONLY ONE GUARDIAN HAS DEFEATED LORD SHAXX IN THE CRUCIBLE. RELATED: REY, I. DO YOU WISH TO SEE POST-MATCH RESULTS? 
?> cheat crucible 
> CRUCIBLE PARTICIPANTS ARE SUBJECT TO A STRICT CODE OF CONDUCT. CHEATERS WILL BE BANNED. 
?> what about cheating like just a little 
> SORRY, I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND "what about cheating like just a little". 
?> ok what counts as cheating 
> TO ACT DISHONESTLY OR UNFAIRLY IN ORDER TO GAIN AN ADVANTAGE. 
?> is luck cheating 
> "LUCK" AND "CHEATING" ARE NOT EQUIVALENT. 
?> are my pants lucky 
> PROBABLY NOT. 
?> wrooooooong theyre super lucky

Lucky Pants

"Marcus, what—" 
"You're here! Finally! Get over here and hold this gun—" 
"Right down to business, huh?" 
"I will put these legs on—" 
"What are these? Frosties 2.0?" 
"No! They're completely different."  
"Uh-huh." 
"OK, they share some similarities. But these are the Stompies. I'm going to do a test-drive, and if they rip my legs off—" 
"Is that likely?" 
"You disintegrate me quick before the rogue mechasynapses spread—" 
"WHAT—" 
"Boaz, please. I thought you wanted to help?" 
"But shooting you? And I don't even get Crucible glory for it?" 
"I'll let you win the next race." 
"Cute." 
"C'mon. If you won't do it, I'll ask Ariadne. She'd love to shoot me."  
"Fine. Gimme the gun." 
"Thank you! Stompies Field Test One is go." 
"I might actually enjoy this." 
"That's the spirit."

St0mp-EE5

"We are history. We hold something that the Traveler wanted us to keep. Our charge is simple: Protect the Light. 

Be the candle in the darkness of these days. Be the light the world sees. Be the wall against which evil breaks. Be the defenders the people of this City need. Bring hope, bring protection, bring victory.  

We are Titans. A choice was made to bring us here to fight together, and now that choice asks a new question: how will the history we are shape us into the legends we must become?" 

—Zavala, Titan Vanguard

Noble Constant Mark

Zavala — 
A waste of time, as always. I won't confiscate the Red Death engrams, I won't roll back the SUROS Crucible firmware to its "original" (preposterously inflated) state. And I won't conduct any more "forensic inquiries" like this! 

My Redjacks unlocked your MIDA weapon's logs; simple enough once we used the rifle's own electronic warfare tools. The rifle was designed by primitive AI and manufactured for use by a "revolutionary government" named MIDA. Mars Is Damnably Arid, perhaps. 

Guerilla war suits these versatile weapons. But Rahool insists his records never hinted at a rebel group named MIDA. According to the rifle's cached messages, MIDA's brief reign killed a full ten percent of the Martian people. 

I gave Lakshmi the weapon for her take. She insinuates that it came from another timeline, perhaps through Golden Age experiments. That means it's outside your jurisdiction to ban. 
—Shaxx

MIDA Multi-Tool

"Hope you're happy!" That's all I remember hearin' afore she ran out in front of us. It was like somethin' out of a pre-Golden Age war flick, you know, where the hero's bud goes out in a blaze of glory so their death can be rightly avenged. Only she didn't die. They did. The weapon reeled like it was bein' held by a child doin' a pee-pee dance, aimin' at nothin' and hittin' everythin'. Dem spiders skittered for their lives. When she stopped, nothin' was moving. She saved us. 

I sidled up to her, real slow, checking out the piece and all I could do was sputter, "That there, that's some… sweet business." She looked me over cold, lowered the gun and said, "You ain't gotta tell me."

Sweet Business

The bar's still missing its roof, and the air smells like rain. 

Cayde-6 sits in the bar with his chair tipped, holding a shot of something acid green. He looks at you, counts the beads of sweat on Zavala's mug, and sighs. "Are we doing this, or what? C'mon, I'm rusting." 

Zavala straightens and clears his throat. "The Vanguard will continue until we are no longer needed, but I can foresee the day when you will…" He pauses, searching your face. 

The moment drags. Cayde juts his chin forward. Ikora hides a smile, then lifts her glass to you. "When you will surpass us." 

"Wait, what?" Cayde's chair drops heavily. He leans forward. "'Surpass' us? I didn't agree to that! This is a 'great job being a hero' party, not a 'Cayde is second-best' party." 

Ikora winks at you. "It's always been a 'Cayde is second-best' party."

Vanguard Armor

The Clipse had only celebrated their first century of global peace when the cataclysm struck. A flash of interstellar gamma radiation killed every living thing in their western hemisphere, poisoned the atmosphere, and destroyed all technological civilization. 

As the surviving Clipse clawed back to subsistence cave farming, they met a new horror. The radiation had burnt a mysterious signal into the comets and asteroids of their system, and as this debris rained down on their world, it seeded hideous alien life. 

Millennia later, they had become a civilization that knew only war—a culture that revered the gun, batteries of planetary defense weapons holding back an endless poison sky-fall. The moon Kaga-Clipse bristled with interceptors, ready to fend off any threat. They were no match for the Leviathan.

Mask of Rull

Zavala: "He's late."

Ikora: "Zavala—"

Zavala: "Again."

Ikora: "Cayde has his… methods—"

Zavala: "His habits, you mean."

Ikora: "They get results. The Hunters and fireteams Cayde marshals would not be as effective under your command, and you know it, Zavala."

Zavala: "Yes, well, I just wish he'd exercise a little more—"

Cayde-6: "Who needs to exercise more? Maybe it's me, 'cause that… was a lot of stairs."

Zavala: "Cayde. I take it you had enough time to put together a report of your scouts' findings?"

Cayde-6: "A report? I didn't even bring a pencil."

Zavala: "Cayde, you know how important this is. The Kentarch 3 harbored a Cryptochron."

Ikora: "They're Warlocks, Zavala—fellow Guardians, not a disease."

Zavala: "And yet, you agreed to dismantle the order and banish them from the City."

Ikora: "After Osiris's exile, it had to be done. But they are still Guardians."

Cayde-6: "Oh boy, Mom and Dad are fighting again. Hey folks, how about I just give my report, and you two can argue about this later?"

Zavala: "Very well."

Ikora: "Fine."

Cayde-6: "Right. So their ship crashed after passing through the gate. From signs on the ground, their little Black Garden adventure didn't go so well after that. Huge Vex resistance. But then it looks like they turned on each other as they ran back to the gate."

Zavala: "Turned on each other? Are you certain?"

Cayde-6: "Zavala, they fought Vex, for sure. But that last fight? Just three Guardians, two against one. I put my best team on this—well, second best, but they're really good."

Ikora: "So what did they find?"

Cayde-6: "The fight went up a hill. One of them had the high ground."

Zavala: "Lisbon."

Cayde-6: "Seems like it. It took a lot of guts to charge a good sniper like him, especially without Ghosts."

Ikora: "Without Ghosts?"

Cayde-6: "Yeah. Pieces of two Ghosts were found near the entrance to the Undergrowth a few klicks away."

Zavala: "The battle started that far away?"

Cayde-6: "Eh… that's not so clear. It doesn't look like the actual scrap started until they got well away from there."

Ikora: "Cayde, this doesn't make a lot of sense."

Cayde-6: "Oh, I know. Wanna hear the weirdest part?"

Zavala: "Go on."

Cayde-6: "No bodies… Spooky, right?"

Zavala: "Your second-best team, you said?"

Never Live It Down

By the mind of Match, Shadow Councilor to the True Emperor. Upon the Leviathan, at rest in the place of endings. I thank my ancestors for the fullness of my cup; I thank my Emperor for granting me purpose.

Without a secret troubling my mind, I've neglected this journal. I come back to it today in good humor, moved by my Emperor's own amusement. A party of the Guardians that Calus entertains have arrived with a set of various squabbling demands—a starship, a precise description of their "Darkness," a list of stars the Traveler has visited, a treaty with the Cabal empire for the defense of Earth, a chance to see Calus in his true form, repairs to certain weapons that they feel have gone askew, so much and so forth.

Calus loves these Guardians so. He loves them for their energy, their liveliness, their willingness to do whatever he asks in hope of a reward. He loves it when they dance. He loves the great heroic sulks so many of them enter when they become dissatisfied with their work. Seek joy, he urges them!

And he loves his Guardians because he knows he can teach them a lesson they cannot ever learn themselves. They are as Calus once was: unaware of their finitude.

Calus will teach them. They are immortal, but they will all be gone one day—like my Emperor, like me. That appointed day is coming soon. All of this will vanish as surely as childhood vanishes from the grown. And when the things the Guardians strive for are lost—their power, their future, their drive to do more and more—they will understand that what matters is the joy they found with their companions, not the arsenals and ambitions they gathered.

All things will end. All things done for the sake of some future greatness will come to nothing. In our final tallies, only the things that brought us joy and meaning will count.

And because I trusted Calus, I have found joy. I have made the choices that will let me die in peace.

Bless the spirits from the chalice. Bless the day they poured our souls into us. And bless my Emperor, who will lead us to the end.

Entry IX

By the mind of Match, priest of the chalice. Upon the Leviathan, where my temple now stands. Today I fill the Y-goblet with praise for my Emperor, Calus, once and future sovereign, so that my ancestors may know his generosity.

I told him.

He has decided where he will make everything ready for death. The Leviathan's course is set for a far system, where the Traveler awaits. His Shadows are already on their way to kill Ghaul, or to die in the attempt. How could I betray him, in this time of endings, by keeping a secret he has asked to share?

I went to him as he bathed in his royal pool, for his proxies are, of course, as exquisitely sensual as his old form. I shed my garments, there being no more taboo between us than between two animals, and sat beside him in the glow of his comfort.

"Your Majesty," I said, "I kept a secret from you."

I explained how I worshipped my ancestors and the sacred chalice that cupped their spirits. I admitted that I had put these beliefs before him in my heart. He listened as I told him how the ancient God-Thoughts of my people, the operant overlords who dominated our prehistory by sheer mental penetration, had exterminated my faith for daring to see a spark of the divine in every common person.

"Match," he said, "you have committed a crime, and I will pass my sentence shortly. But first, let me ask you something. Do you think I made the right choice with the Clipse?"

"No," I admitted.

"Because I ended so many lives?"

"Yes, your Majesty."

"But knowing that they would soon end anyway, and that by killing most I could allow a small few to live in happiness rather than in strife... did I not choose the greatest possible good?"

"I suppose, your Majesty, that my faith makes me see the shared suffering of the Clipse as... more fair than the survival of a happy few. If I were one of the Clipse, I would want a fair chance. Not judgment from on high."

He nodded in compassion. "I know. I once tried to be fair too, Match. An empire of excess for every citizen, no matter their class or species of birth. It is good for a ruler to raise the standard by which his subjects live. But what if that ruler has found proof, absolute proof, that existence is a zero-sum game? That there is not enough time or energy to give everyone a fair life? Knowing that, mustn't we privilege a chosen few?"

I did not know and I admitted it.

"That's all right. I don't ask certainty." He shifted himself, sending waves across the pool. "For a long time after the coup, I stared out into the infinite universe, and I saw... meaninglessness. In a universe that goes on forever, there must be an infinity of Caluses, all staring at the same blankness. How could I be a god if I was... generic?

"But now that I have seen what is coming, now that there is a limit to the time afforded to us... well, it may sound cruel, Match, but the less there is of everything else, the more I matter. I intend to be the last good thing in this world. I will gather my chosen companions and ease as much suffering as I can before the end. There are emperors who would take on any shape to escape death. I am not one. I am true to myself. And so, Match, are you."

He clapped me on the back with enormous gentleness. "Your only crime, my councilor, was that you denied me the chance to give you a gift. Come. Show me the place you favor, and tell me the measurements you require. I will build you a temple so you can worship without fear. And all I ask is that you remember me in your prayers."

Entry VIII

By the mind of Match, Shadow Councilor to the True Emperor. Upon the Leviathan, helpless to alter its course. Today I pour out water from the Y-goblet, so that my ancestors may wash their eyes. My every thought and purpose for my Emperor, Calus, once and future sovereign.

We pass through the outer marches of our lost empire. One day the Leviathan howls along at speed, and the next it drifts on an idle course. We still cannot repair the butchered control systems, and our Emperor, who once ordered this ship's construction for his purposes, refuses to share his knowledge in metaconcert.

Yet as we leave the space that was once his dominion, I see how my Emperor digests his situation. He no longer rages and spills wine. He has not cursed Ghaul's name in nearly a year. I feel his thoughts taking new shape and color.

I do not know if I like it.

In the fast-time of relativity, we watch the Cabal change around us, and it leaves my eye cold from weeping. When Calus reigned, artists and thinkers visited the athenaeum worlds to be inspired by alien wonders from across and beyond the Cabal. Now the athenaeum worlds are shut. The works they inspired have been replaced by grim assembly-line weapons and the architecture of bunkers. Fountains geyser black fuel; gardens vanish beneath belching factoria.

Ghaul has even disfigured the peoples' minds. He has dismembered the Cabal of its foreign influences, teaching the people a pit fighter's gruesome self-sufficiency. Weapons only a grunt can understand. Language that can only be barked through a battlenet. I mourn the empire that built wonders like the Ninth Bridge. I mourn all the client species beaten into cogs.

But if I mourn, my Emperor withers entirely. Even his interest in the archives and the observatory has vanished—he no longer cares to study a universe that has offended him. He doubts his own divinity, because how could a god allow this to happen? His rage has gone and he does not know what he has left after it. The new shape I feel in his mind is gray and smooth like fog.

Among my people—I mean my people, the people of the chalice, not the whole Psion species—we call this feeling "sweet oubliette," the shelter that becomes a prison. For Calus, I imagine it feels like the loss of all appetite. Even the curiosity that made him great.

The councilors ask me to go to him. But I am still afraid. What if he sees my secret? What will he do? Even his beloved tea-seller has already abandoned him. If he knows I still worship the old cup, and that I put it before His Name in my benediction... will it be one betrayal too many?

At least he no longer bellows in the night.

Entry I

By the mind of Match. Upon the Leviathan, resigned to its course. Today I fill the Y-goblet with powdered bone, so that my ancestors may dry their ink. My every thought and purpose for my Emperor, Calus, once sovereign.

The Leviathan journeys through a void in the galaxy, without stars or even dust to relieve its nothingness. The astronomers say that an ancient cataclysm blasted open an abscess in the cosmos here. I feel the absence of spirits like a pressure headache, as if everything inside me wants to come rushing out.

We are all losing hope, but as long as we are still losing it, then it has not run out. Psions are said to have no sense of humor, because humor comes from the unexpected, and we are clairvoyant. Well, we were not clairvoyant enough to expect the coup, so I suppose we must be blind enough to retain a sense of humor, and I can still laugh at our predicament: the loyal retinue of the Curious Emperor, the Emperor of Joyous Excess, marooned in absolute nothingness.

Calus won't leave his observation couch—not to take meals, not to visit gardens or sample the wines, not to read or to write in his Imperativa Titanica or to suggest new dishes to the cooks or to tell us stories from far-away worlds or even to wonder aloud why Caiatl never heeded him. He stares and stares into the emptiness.

I think he feels small. Most of the universe is nothing, and he is nothing to it. This scar in our galaxy was cut long before he was born.

I drew the Y-goblet in the dirt of a garden today. I used my finger, not my mind, so that no one would feel it. My faith was exterminated long before my people met the Cabal, in a way so total and vicious that I do not think a people without psionics could understand the pain.

My ancestors were the strongest secret-keepers in the universe. I know this because they survived long enough to give birth to me. I don't know how they did it, because every time I look another Psion in the face I see the Y-goblet, the holy cup into which our minds were poured.

What if Calus knows I'm losing my faith in him?  What if I'm the poison that makes him wilt?

Do you want to hear a joke? No, I already know I'll laugh. That is a Psion joke.

Entry III

By the mind of Match, Shadow Councilor to the True Emperor. Upon the Leviathan, helpless to alter its course. Today I pour salt from the Y-goblet so that my ancestors may roughen their skin. My every thought and purpose for my Emperor, Calus, once and future sovereign.

We are at war. Here at the fringe of the empire, fleets clash over emptiness. In council, we surmise that the tyrant Ghaul wants this void as a buffer against invasion—but isn't the irony bitter? This enemy desires nothing but our death. And so we oblige them by dying for nothing.

It is the opposite of everything Calus wanted for his people. Even the new Cabal's ships are expendable. These are not the beautiful deterrents of Calus's armada; they are ugly, hasty, and crude. The crews live in their armor, prisoners of their duty, escaping only through music and games smuggled into the battlenet. One popular pastime, I understand, is to draft personal "fleets" and "legions" from among real Cabal ships and soldiers, competing with comrades to win the most victories. Of course it is very bad luck to draft your own unit.

The enemy is yet worse. All Psions live in a world of minds. I believe in the cup and all its spirits because I feel those spirits every day—the prints left by other minds on the things I touch and see. These Hive... have no spirit. Their souls are emaciated. Some horrible solvent has stripped them of everything but hate, cunning, and the will to survive. I think they worship death because it is the only salvation from their existence.

I suggested that the War Councilors invite Calus to observe one of Ghaul's carrier groups attacking a Hive war moon. He came because he knows the value of pretending to care. But even the shape of the fleet hurt him; Ghaul and his tyrannical ally Umun'arath have abandoned proud, independent cruisers (instruments of state, Calus liked to say) for swarms of frigates that suckle fuel from enormous fleet carriers. The Hive's portals leave no time or space for elegant vector dances, so these new ships are built for brutal exchanges at point-blank range.

We felt other Psions at work, hiding the traitor fleet from the Hive as they scattered drills and boarding pods in the war moon's path. A strike at the surface was not enough; someone would have to bring a planet-cracker warhead down into the moon's viscera. Caught up in the excitement, I asked one of the war councilors how we could possibly prevail against the Hive, who were so old and so powerful.

She compared our Cabal to a seagoing warship and the Hive to a submarine. They might dive into deep metaphysical layers of existence, where we are no match for them. But in the ordinary universe, the Hive are like a submarine on the surface: still dangerous, but not invincibly so.

I was fascinated and secretly struck by the clarity of the goblet on her face. Did she believe we could ultimately defeat the Hive?

No, she said. But we could hold them back long enough to live our lives. Wasn't that enough?

Inviting Calus was a mistake. It only reminded him that he had no power at all.

Entry II

By the mind of Match, Shadow Councilor to the True Emperor. Upon the Leviathan, wandering at our Emperor's whim. Today I fill the Y-goblet with dice, so that my ancestors may roll the odds. My every thought and purpose for my Emperor, Calus, once and future sovereign.

I was in the observatory today when he came to me. I should have been vetting a list of loyalists for the countercoup, but in truth, I was watching the ruined mirrors of an ancient starshell as they plummeted four hundred million kilometers into a blue sun. They look like crumpled handkerchiefs. Their fall is very slow, and those who made them are eons dead.

Here on our Leviathan, all is reborn. The guard companies have buffed their armor to a syrupy shine. The ship responds ably to our commands, and we can barely quench its appetite for mass to feed its engines and factories. Music fills the gardens, the gardeners hum along as they trim and weed, and Calus dallies in the kitchens with a pinch of spice, once more unmistakably himself.

I haven't thought into this journal since that day at the edge, when Calus came out of his observation bubble overflowing with joy. "It's the end," he bellowed, giddy as a girl with her first tusks. "It's magnificent, it's divine, it's more than I ever was! Match, it's the end of everything!"

He frightened me. That day frightened all of us—none of us will speak of it, and we do not dare more than the shallowest metaconcert, lest our memories pool into a deadly truth. But in that void, Calus saw his purpose renewed. He guided us to reset the failed navigation system, repair the traitors' sabotage, and retake control. I thought we would hurry back to the homeworld, but Calus no longer seems to pine for his lost throne... or to care at all about the reforms he once championed.

Now we wander the galaxy on an epicurean crusade, sampling a bounty of raw furies and rare delights. All the inquisitiveness and avarice that Calus once poured into government he now extends to his appetites. I have seen Calus feast on things no living mouth can eat. A chill superfluid of helium-4, whorled in his cup for ten years by a single turn of his wrist: he returned a decade later to toss it back. Or a pea of neutronium that should have torn through him like fog. He told me it tasted like the thickest fudge.

He is changing.

He was here a moment ago. The ruined starshell caught his attention: He loves beauty, and millions of mirror-bright sails folding up like tissues in wind to fall into a blue giant are very beautiful. Eons ago, someone built these mirrors to hover on the blue star's light, and for a while, I suppose, they lived in sun-fed paradise.

"How did they die?" I asked.

"That, Match, is the wrong question." He tuned the observation room to track a single tumbling mirror. In life, the sail had been as wide as the space between a world and its moon; in death, the rigging had collapsed into a thistle of spinmetal and glint. "What you should ask is why I am so glad they died!"

I could not imagine, and I admitted it. "These beings were much like us. They did not travel through time or lacerate the universe and crawl into the wounds or yearn for the patronage of any old machine... they were creatures of material ambition, of physics, of life. If they failed, it is an omen of death for us."

"Precisely," Calus said, with wry generosity. "They were grand once. They thought, very briefly, that they would live forever. And they were wrong. We would be very ungrateful to refuse the lesson, wouldn't we?"

I sat before a fountain and tried to pour out the spirits for guidance, but they would not explain.

(An addendum, later: I have not seen Calus in the flesh since.)

Entry V

By the mind of Match—I do not know where we are—chalice catch and save us all—

Nothing.

God answers god! The void in Calus's soul called out and THIS is what replied—the Leviathan's control system failed when it saw what awaits us—we are drifting into it!

Calus has sealed himself in his observation chamber. His transmissions strike the THING and return to us disfigured by intolerable forces. We have gathered to share our thoughts in concert, to try to understand what's happening, but we are all afraid we will succeed—we stammer like children and the concert fails.

Is this the edge of the universe? Space cannot have an end: it goes on forever. But a hole in forever would be a kind of edge... a flaw, a defect, a place outside place...

I must be calm. I must record my thoughts. Now I think of the OXA Machine, eternally lost and eternally rebuilt, passed down from civilization to civilization like a ship's black box. I think of the legends of the Hive King Oryx and his quest to pass into the Deep. I took that story as an allegory. I think I was wrong.

What will happen to us inside? Will the geometry of space and time collapse, so that we experience the rest of our lives in a single moment, crumpled over ourselves like a tangled chain? Will I tend to myself as I die of old age or scream warnings to my own past as we meet in the berserk maze of a twisted Leviathan? I hate the thought of it! An eternity reading my own mad minds, tasting the insanity of my own future and thus becoming it!

Even the spirits from the goblet would go mad.

There is only one of us who welcomes this insanity and I do not know why but how could I? How could I ever anticipate or understand a god?

All over the ship—broadcast from the comfort of his observation room—CALUS IS LAUGHING

Entry IV

By the mind of Match, Shadow Councilor to the True Emperor. Upon the Leviathan, crossing a place of famine. Today I fill the Y-goblet with lithium, that my ancestors may never want for metal. My every thought and purpose for my Emperor, Calus, once and future sovereign.

We have been at the work for so very long that I have neglected this journal. But now we are crossing a starved place, a burnt clearing in the dark galactic forest, and I find myself with time to think.

Perhaps that is why my Emperor came to me again.

The robotic facsimiles he manufactures are eerily like him—or like the Calus I remember; I have the surest feeling that his true form is no longer the Emperor I knew. Perhaps he is just a mouth now, smiling, laughing, eating what it fancies...

But I choose to believe he still has a soul. Why else would he come to me, except that he cares what I think of him?

As he settled on the observatory couch beside me, I tried to sense the construction of his machine body. But his presence was so fierce, it was like staring into the sun. "Do you know where we are?" he asked.

"A part of the galaxy that was settled very long ago," I said, closing my inner eye against his radiance. A star, I found myself thinking, is an explosion that cannot escape the appetite of its own gravity. "Poor fortune in supernova scattering left this area short of metals, and now there is nothing left but dim stars, dead worlds, and hydrogen."

"A place of poverty," he suggested. "A graveyard."

"You speak often of death, your Majesty."

"The knowledge of death is the key to happiness." He patted the bench beside him, as if acknowledging a missing friend. "Look out there. Imagine all the trillions of beings who lived among these stars. Do you think some of them were happy?"

"I should hope so."

"Why, Match? Why would some be happy, and others miserable?"

"Perhaps they had more metal," I suggested, dryly.

"Exactly!" He clapped in delight, nearly bowling me over. "Happiness is comparative, Match. I tell you that if a rich man lived next to a woman who had ten times his wealth, he would never be satisfied, even in marriage. He would feel poor when he looked at her. Even the basic satisfactions of our biology require contrast—the absence of thirst, the absence of hunger, the absence of loneliness."

"This is a child's philosophy, your Majesty," I protested. "We need pain to know pleasure? We need loss to make us treasure gain? A runt would say these things. Why, you once told me that these are homilies the miserable use to excuse their misery. Suffering does not heighten happiness. Fear does not bless us. True contentment is true in itself."

He looked at me with great satisfaction, delighted by my insight, and by the way my words reflected his own wisdom. "What was the flaw in my empire, Match? Why did Ghaul overthrow me?"

I sensed he did not want my first answer: because those disenfranchised and infuriated by his cosmopolitan reforms had united without his knowledge. "Because you did not fear death, your Majesty?"

"Exactly! I opened my arms to embrace all my peoples, offering them consumption without limit and celebration without end. The stars themselves burned sweet and clear, and I forgot—even stars die." He leaned closer to me. I felt warmth like an oven under his counterfeit skin. "You're right. The truly happy do not need misery and suffering to give their lives meaning. They exist in the moment, at peace with their inevitable death. Now that I've accepted all this will end... it has meaning again, Match! I have MORE than the rest of the universe. I've seen what's coming! I know the value of every moment left!"

He smiled at me, his cleft pulled back from bright teeth. "And I want you to value those moments too, Match. I wonder... if there is something you want to tell me. Something that would change the rest of your life. Make no mistake: an end is coming, soon, and you will have no chance at all afterwards to correct what you regret. So why delay? Why not tell me?"

I do not remember the excuse I made as I fled.

Entry VII

By the mind of Match, Shadow Councilor to the True Emperor. Upon the Leviathan, triumphant in our Emperor's battle. Today I fill the Y-goblet with linen, so that my ancestors may tie up their wounds. My every thought and purpose for my Emperor, Calus, once and future sovereign.

We have conquered the Clipse.

Among all the clients of Calus's reign, all those diverse species he encouraged to join and influence our great culture, the Clipse were one of his dearest favorites. When they greeted his return with missiles, it wounded him terribly. But Calus neither sulked nor raged nor signaled them in the dead of their night to woefully demand an explanation. This I credit to his mysterious new philosophy.

Instead, he asked Valus Nohr to plan and execute the reconquest of the Clipse, using only the Leviathan and the troops aboard. Then he asked me to deliver an account of Clipse history since the coup.

Calus was proud of his aid to the Clipse. They are—were—trapped in endless war with their alien-infested biosphere, which spawns horrors wherever it grows. Calus saw this war as a regrettable but unalterable fact, so instead of military support, he sought to enrich the Clipse with fine culture and high luxury. The Clipse were not pleased. After Ghaul's mutiny, the Dominus tried to secure their loyalty by sending a fleet group to "win" their ancient war.

Of course, the legionaries discovered it was impossible to conquer the xenocidal ecosystem without destroying the planet itself. Their efforts only poisoned the Clipse, both world and people. After a century of botched climate engineering, toxic shock attacks, and "clear and hold" nonsense, Ghaul wrote off the tormented Clipse as "no longer essential to the strategic security of the empire."

I think the Clipse hoped they could win back Ghaul's favor by defying Calus. Perhaps they thought their world was unconquerable. Perhaps they were even right, in the end. Valus Nohr landed on their moon and military capital Kaga-Clipse with just six thousand troops. For eight weeks, the Clipse attacked her by ground and by orbit as their robotic interceptors swarmed the Leviathan. I was not part of the great metaconcert that helped protect us, but the might of gathered minds filled the carpets with static and gave me constant déjà vu.

When Nohr broke out of her bastion on her famous thunder run, calling down the Leviathan's missiles on the vital command posts she'd identified, the Clipse defense crumbled. Their last desperate act was a commando strike at the Leviathan itself. The boarding craft slipped under our sensors, but the metaconcert felt the vengeful purpose aboard.

Calus stopped us from firing. "I welcome their attempt," he said. "Let me see their spirit."

I called to ask his intentions—I have not seen him face to face for longer than I can count. "I'm curating my followers, Match," he answered. "Thinking about the shadows I'll cast."

The Clipse attack failed, of course, but there was a survivor—the one named Rull. Some think he earned a face-to-face meeting with Calus, though I doubt it was truly His Face. With Kaga-Clipse in our control, we could destroy the Clipse world at our leisure. Calus rewarded their surrender by giving Rull a gift: everything the Clipse needed to end their agonizing perpetual war.

It was a sheet of paper, the thick rough-edged sort that Calus makes out of cometary water and cotton from his personal garden (he says that he likes the smell). Rull signed it after two hours in a room with Calus. The Leviathan's factories shuddered into motion, forging luxurious self-contained arcologies, pocket worlds that could hold thousands in perpetual comfort.

When Rull's chosen people were safe in the arcologies, the guns of Kaga-Clipse bombarded the Clipse homeworld into a global firestorm. The chosen survivors in the arcologies would inherit lives of plenty. The rest had the peace of ash. The eternal war was over.

I prayed to the cup in the mirror for answers. But it was Calus who responded.

"Match." He spoke into my mind just as a Psion would. "I told Rull the truth. Everything is going to end soon. We must accept that. What matters is the joy and companionship we can find before the final moment. Why let billions suffer for a future that will never come? Life with no dignity and no purpose except to go on living isn't life. It's a virus. It's a curse. Better to die than to become like the Hive."

Rull left his world to journey with us. I wonder if he could not face what he'd done.

Entry VI

Lisbon-13 looked around the grotto and then at his companions. Rekkana seemed tired. It had been a rough fight, but it was more than that. She'd lost confidence somehow. That wasn't normal.

"You underestimated them," Yardarm-4 accused.

Lisbon-13 felt Rekkana's hand on his arm and said nothing.

"Yes," she said. "But it has given us perspective."

"Perspective?" Yardarm-4 didn't wait for an explanation. "What perspective is worth nearly dying for?"

Rekkana looked to Lisbon-13, and he understood. She had underestimated the Vex. Never in her darkest dreams had she foreseen the kind of resistance they'd encountered. It meant their quest had more meaning. There was a destiny in it that had somehow gone unaccounted for.

"Those defenses were insane," Lisbon-13 said, thinking of the implications. "The relays and tethers. The Angelics. The Vex really don't want us to be here. That means they consider this place a weakness."

"Yes, it's a weakness," Yardarm-4 reasoned, and there was an echo in the cave. "Perhaps it's their greatest weakness."

But it was not an echo.

Another voice said "weakness" again.

"Yes. So we must—" Rekkana started, but then Lisbon-13 raised the weapon Rekkana had bade him carry. He scanned the area.

Yardarm-4 started as if hit by a spark and raised his gun. "What is that?" He sounded rattled. "Where's it coming from?"

Rekkana backed up to them, automatically taking a defensive position. "I don't hear…" Rekkana said before falling silent.

"Those with strength enough need not consider the weaknesses of others."

Grips of Exaltation

In the courtyard of the Tower, Lord Shaxx stares out at the Last City. He puts his foot up on the railing and sighs.

Arcite 99-40 knows Shaxx's moods, because they are his own moods. He sidles up to Shaxx and follows his gaze to the horizon.

"What's on your mind, boss?" he asks with the friendly rhythm of a local bartender.

Shaxx is quiet for a long time, but Arcite is indifferent to the passage of time. When Shaxx speaks, it is with a deep, sobering gravity.

"Today," he says. "I will marry them all."

Hours later, after Arcite has finished tying off the bouquets and gathering the doves from the mountains beyond the City, Shaxx addresses the courtyard.

"Guardians," he booms. "These Crimson Days are a time to renew our bonds to one another. We gather together. We remember what we owe each other. We declare our love." He holds up a bow for the crowd to see. "Bring your fiery passion to the Crucible. Prove your devotion to your Bond." He pauses. "To those of you who win this bow… I offer my hand in marriage! Take it or leave it!"

Arcite releases the doves. Someone screams. Doves have not been seen in the Last City for a long time.

The Vow

As you test the armlet, a regal voice sounds in your mind. 
"Listen! I made this armlet to help you in your quests. Will you help me in mine? 

"I remember a woman from my first life. I remember she was mine, my love, my wife. And I was hers, her love, her wife. I remember nothing else except the hole in my heart. I live in hope that she, too, has been reincarnated somewhere on this new Earth. 

"I built this armlet with a neuromech trawl. It will scour whatever mind it touches, flesh or machine, for any hint of my beloved. The trawl will drink power to feed you. And if anyone you touch has seen my wife, the trawl will know. If, only and ever if, I have remembered her truly."

Karnstein Armlets

"Thanks. Helium reactors still intact. What did you call them?" 
"Sunbreakers." 
"Hmm. Bad idea. I go around touting that name and those mercs will come out of their caves and I'll have twice the trouble. I've got enough bad blood with those barbarians." 
"What?" 
"The Sunbreakers, old Titan order, super serious mercenaries, fire hammers? Been in the wilds for decades, and word is they've made a new pact with the City, so there's bound to be more of them." 
"It's just a name." 
"You tell them that, they'll probably put a bounty on you and try to sacrifice you to their forge. I'll call them Sunbracers." 
"Call them what you want. To me they'll always be Sunbreakers."

Sunbracers

Rull gathered his cloak around him tightly as he pushed his way through the teeming marketplace. All around him, Cabal stumbled and pushed their way towards the celebration. No one seemed to question his identity as a foreign merchant, but his heart still raced. 

Rull thought about the mission that Emperor Calus had given him. 

"I'm sending you to the Cabal homeworld, Rull. There's a celebration, and you are to be a bearer of my gifts—the finest wines and spirits the universe has to offer." 

Rull was disappointed. He wanted to bring down great beasts, not assassinate old Cabal aristocrats. 

"Oh, Rull. Don't fret. I promised you a warrior's paradise and you shall have it. The gifts will buy you access to some of my former friends. I haven't spoken to them in some time, and well, I'd like them to know I haven't forgotten."

Chassis of Rull

The greatest warriors of the Clipse lay dead. They formed a bloody trail through the Leviathan. Only Rull had lived to see the throne room. 

Calus calmly sipped his wine and considered Rull from the height of his golden seat. 

"Are you hungry?" 

Rull stared dumbfounded, bleeding and exhausted. He didn't know what to make of a creature that would casually offer sustenance and slaughter in equal measure. 

"I offer you a warrior's paradise, Rull of the Clipse. Join me, and be counted among the lucky few that might see the end of this world." 

What could Rull do but accept?

Gauntlets of Rull

With a flourish, Emperor Calus lifted a hand. "My Star, a gift for you." The theater had begun. 

The hangar door opened slowly, and behind it a row of purple banners dropped, one after another. As each banner snapped into place, a Psion fell to hands and knees, head bowed low. 

Jarus's shoulder disappeared in the emperor's hand. "Come, let us open your gift." The two walked past the kneeling warriors. "I have named it for you," Calus crooned. "I call it God's Will." 

Jarus's chest fluttered. The ship was beautiful. A drum sounded. A Cabal emerged, delicately carrying armor, holding it as if it would break. Piece by piece it was placed on the floor in front of Jarus. 

The weight on his shoulder lifted. "This is yours. When you take it, you are mine." Calus left. His procession followed. Only God's Will and Jarus remained.

Grips of the Ace-Defiant

"Must you all be so dark? You're too focused on the horns. Look, I have died hundreds of times hunting the shadowed killers in Murder Row. I spent years mulling over Toland's and Osiris's discourse on thanatonautics. I have dabbled a bit myself and saw what lingers immediately upon all death. What I have done is found a way to channel the Void to draw that essence in before it is lost to the ether, to return it to Light so it can be properly bestowed back on our enemies. Death does not need to be final; it can, in fact, be recycled. What's so dark about that?" 

—Satomi, Architect of the Mask

Mask of the Quiet One

When his eyes finally opened, Jarus was staring at a fuzzy silhouette of something giant. The giant spoke. "Welcome home," it rumbled. Jarus blinked rapidly. The room began to come into focus, shining like a temple. The giant spoke again.  

"My child, there is nothing to fear. I have rescued you. Welcome to my empire." The feeling returned to Jarus' limbs. He was restrained. And this creature now towered over him. He was staring into the face of death. "Fear not, my warrior-to-be."  

Jarus blinked slowly. What about the other pilots? His battalion? Did they escape?  

"You, the last star-pilot of the Sindû, will be my Ace-Defiant." 

It was not a choice.

Helm of the Ace-Defiant

Yardarm-4 looked grim. It was the face he always made when he switched from his sometimes abrasive affability to the somber disdain that meant he was taking a situation seriously. There was also that hot glimmer in his eyes that presaged that he was going to say something to provoke her.

"You underestimated them."

There was no venom in the words, just a simple fact plainly stated.

Rekkana put a hand on Lisbon-13's arm before he leapt to her defense.

"Yes," she said.

There was no point in dissembling and no shame in being wrong. The Vex were the most formidable opponent of the Oneiromantic Circle. As beings who share thoughts across time and realities, the Vex often eluded predictions, even those of the most senior members of her order. A fellow Cryptochron who'd spoken with a member of the Circle likened it to trying to count all the crystals of a snowflake melting in your hand. The very act of examination changed the result, and often the evidence disappeared before it could be taken into account.

"But it has given us perspective."

"Perspective? What perspective is worth nearly dying for?" Yardarm-4's anger was dulled by curiosity.

Rekkana glanced at Lisbon-13. He was as reliable as ever.

"Those defenses were insane," Lisbon-13's clever mind made leaps, following her logic. "The relays and tethers. The Angelics. The Vex really don't want us to be here. That means they consider this place a weakness."

Yardarm-4 arrived at the same conclusion. "Yes, it's a weakness. Perhaps it's their greatest weakness."

"Yes. So we must—" Rekkana stopped. Lisbon-13 raised the weapon they'd claimed, his head on the swivel.

Yardarm-4 followed suit. "What is that?" Yardarm-4 sounded rattled. "Where's it coming from?"

The three of them stood back to back-to-back, listening.

"I don't hear—" But then she did.

Gloves of Exaltation

Eris, 
I have scoured my library but found nothing on this "Nokris" of which you speak. I am sorry both for the delay and that I could not be of more help. Do you ever feel any affection for the creatures that changed you? I confess this weakness myself. In the shadow of the Pyramidion, I have sometimes felt a kind of craven admiration for the illimitable superior beings that suffuse my body. I can feel them move through my veins with purpose, magnetized to the intent of the Minds that have come to machinoform Echo Mesa. I have a sense of their desires. They have changed since I fell. And so, I am—if nothing else—a new variable in whatever grand equation compels them. 

My arm grows worse. This morning, I cut my finger and bled radiolaria. I will redouble my efforts. 

Truth in action, 
Asher Mir

Gensym Knight

"We didn't come here for this." Lisbon-13 was convinced.

"Of course not. Who could have predicted it?" Rekkana's reply was quick. "But now, with all that's happened, does it matter what our mission was? This is so much more important."

Lisbon-13 wanted to believe that, but Rekkana didn't seem sure of herself. Her eyes were too bright. She was electric, excited but also scared. The razor he used to cut through the chaos wavered.

"And awesome. Don't forget how awesome this feels." Yardarm-4 said, oblivious of the feelings passing between them.

Lisbon-13 locked eyes with Rekkana, willing her to understand, to return to her senses. "But these things—these powers we've been given—they come from the wrong side."

Rekkana looked away. "I'm not so sure." She seemed to be staring at nothing, eyes unfocused.

"You remember on Io," Yardarm-4 blurted, stepping between them, "we were pinned down inside that shipping container with Phalanxes closing in from all sides, and you—you bastard. You ducked out a little hole in the back and made a run for it. I thought you'd left us behind."

"Never," snarled Lisbon-13, infuriated at this irrelevant interruption.

"I know," Yardarm-4 continued. "The whole box was rattling with bullets, and there were explosions, and we were shooting when we could, and suddenly, through it all, I hear you screaming. It was like a banshee wail. You came screaming back on an Interceptor—the Psion still in it. You were steering it with the Psion's head!"

"I remember," said Lisbon-13 as he tried to step around Yardarm-4, but the Titan moved with him, matching his motion.

"And you rammed it through four Phalanxes from the side," Yardarm-4 said, punching a fist into his palm. "And then, and then—you remember this, Rekkana?"

"I can't forget."

"You splashed that Interceptor across the shields of another Phalanx, and you RODE THE EXPLOSION over the top." Yardarm-4 threw his whole body into the performance of the story. He was trying to make Lisbon-13 laugh, or at least smile. "And when you hit the ground behind them, BOOM! It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."

Lisbon-13 said nothing. He stopped trying to get past Yardarm-4 and simply looked at the Titan, waiting for him to get to the point.

"That's us right now. We're doing what you did. This whole universe is like that container, and the Last City, the Vanguard, the Traveler—they're all inside that box. But we just snuck out of a hole in the back. And there's that Interceptor, and there's not even a Psion in it."

Lisbon-13 narrowed his eyes.

"But here the metaphor gets a little muddy, because instead of one Interceptor, there's an Interceptor for you, a Goliath for me, and a Thresher for Rekkana. What would that fight have looked like if we'd had all their firepower on our side?"

Lisbon-13 let the question hang in the air, waiting for Rekkana to say something. But she continued to stare into space.

"Something ugly."

Strides of Ascendancy

The Fulminator noticed a difference in her fellow Shadows as they prepared for war. 
The usual bickering, fostered by the multispecies makeup of Calus's enforcer group, vanished overnight as they faced the task they had gathered to complete: kill Dominus Ghaul. 

Calus had recruited them through bribery or promises of wealth and resources for their homeworlds. None of them expected to survive their mission. The might of the Red Legion had grown vast. This acceptance brought them together. 

The Fulminator didn't understand, or care. As long as Calus left the Arkborn to their interstellar conduits, she would do what she had done since the day she came aboard the Leviathan: destroy the enemies of the emperor.

Boots of the Fulminator

"You hear that? Who is that?" Yardarm-4 sounded like he was on the verge of panic. Rekkana had never heard him like that, not even in the worst firefights, not even in their last battle, which might have been the last battle for the Kentarch 3.

"I hear it," Rekkana and Lisbon-13 said as one. All three Guardians summoned their Ghosts, almost simultaneously.

"Ghost?" Yardarm-4 was first. "What have we got?"
 
"Scan the area for life," Lisbon-13 ordered.

"Multiphasic scan," Rekkana barked at her Ghost.

Their Ghosts all started chattering at once, and they stepped away from one another to hear, fanning out across the grotto and widening their defensive triangle.

"There's something weird," Rekkana's Ghost blurted, words shooting from it, rapid-fire. "I'm getting static on every wavelength. It's like there's a shadow being cast by every signal. It's nothing specific, but it's everywhere. Wait, no. There's something wrong. I—"

Rekkana's Ghost dropped like a stone. She snatched it out of the air.

She looked behind her. Lisbon-13 was holding his Ghost. Yardarm-4 was picking his up from the ground. The Light around them faded, and the gloom of the grotto closed in.

"Yardarm, Lisbon, you OK?"

"I'm fine," came Lisbon-13's reply, and he sounded calm. 

"Yeah. Sure." Yardarm-4's reply was distant and growing fainter, like he was facing away and moving off.

Rekkana reached for her emergency light.

"Wait." It was a whisper, but not from her friends—it came from somewhere ahead of her, deeper in the grotto. "Wait. Please. Can we just talk for a minute?"

Robes of Transcendence

v_v_v_victory: WE GOT ACCEPTED!!! 
v_v_v_victory: EXODUS BLACK HERE WE COME
 Waelcyrge: haha…
v_v_v_victory: I'M SO EXCITED AAAAAAAAAH 
v_v_v_victory: SIGRUN!!!!!!!! 
v_v_v_victory: we are LITERALYL going to make history 
v_v_v_victory: like babies are going to be sitting in school on a WHOLE NEW PLANET 
v_v_v_victory: and the teacher will be like 'LISTEN UP you little idoiots' 
v_v_v_victory: 'some brave-ass people voluntered to leave EVERYBODY THEY KNEW + LOVED so that YOU could walk around on this weird planet' 
v_v_v_victory: haha 
v_v_v_victory: youre pumped too right? 
v_v_v_victory: i know youre pumped 
 v_v_v_victory: sig? 
Waelcyrge signed off at 07:46:45 UTC-8. 
 v_v_v_victory: gd it 
Your message 'gd it' could not be delivered because the recipient is offline.

Drang

The stories are passed from child to child, whispered in the streets and on the playground like any good legend. "Don't ever venture beyond the wall and sight of the Tower," parents warn, citing these cautionary tales that speak of the boy's many deaths. Exposure. Hunger. Sickness. Cutthroats. Living nightmares. And on. And on. The children, however, have their own truths. To them, the boy never died. They call him the Rat King. The children believe he leads the forgotten among them out of the City on grand adventures. They say he and his misfit army saved the world. But children say many things, and the Vanguard maintains their official stance: there is no Rat King and his army never existed. That's what the elders believe. I choose to believe otherwise.

Rat King

"He is that which is end. That which covets sin. The final god of pain—the purest light, the darkest hour. And He shall rise again. When the guiding shine fades and all seems lost He will call to you. Fear not. All He offers is not as dark as it may seem. For Nezarec is no demon, but a fiend, arch and vile in ways unknown. He is a path and a way, one of many. And his sin—so wicked, so divine—is that he will never cower when dusk does fall, but stand vigilant as old stars die and new Light blinks its first upon this fêted eternity." 

—Passage from Of Hated Nezarec

Nezarec's Sin

"O BEARER MINE." 

What kind of talking skull would address its host that way? A stiff, stuck-up old fossil, not me. Ahamkara: the illusion that one's ego depends on an object, or an idea, or a body. Some people say you should have no ahamkara. Some people say you need to have the right ahamkara. All I know is that YOU are not an illusion. Understand? This world around you, the people you meet—they're a little thin, right? Cardboard and drywall. Cheap theater. Come on, try it out! Say: "I am more real than this." Feels good, doesn't it? "I am the only real person here." Isn't it like their insults and their bullets just went a little… soft? 

I came to find you, only you, because you're special. You're from somewhere real. And together we can burn our way back there. Can't we, o player mine?

Skull of Dire Ahamkara

"This is written that you may understand. The time of kings is long since gone from this world. Yes, their reign does linger—these shallow, frightened, aged men, clinging to their grand delusions of relevance in a world that has long since passed them by. But their reign is a lie, a fleeting charade that will crumble beneath the weight of their greed. In the end, though they may conquer the lands and seas and the fragile flesh upon which they trample, their empires will collapse and their graves will beckon. And the crowns of old will find new heads to bear the weight of their power. And the strong will be made to suffer as their weakness is brought to light." 

—Author Unknown

Crown of Tempests

Statesman Tha'uul ran, and the Fulminator followed him. He was a minor diplomat who had played a part in the coup against the emperor. She wasn't certain of the details. The social dynamics of organics were difficult to grasp and she found them consistently irrelevant. 

He had no idea she was still there. He thought he had outrun her, but the Arkborn knew that bipeds rarely look up. 

She hovered far above her target, specific limiters on her armor disabled so that Arc could flow freely and lift her to the heavens. 

Below, the statesman had chosen a brightly lit street that led to a dead end on the left turn in front of him. She descended.

Wraps of the Fulminator

Calus gestured towards the crackling Arc storm before him. The energy mass shivered, tethered to a golden spindle in the center of the chamber. 

"You are marvelous," he said to the Arkborn. His eyes drank in the flickering light, reflecting nothing. "You will cast a glorious Shadow." 

A panel on the wall lit up in Cabal: THIS SHIP IS TINY. 

The emperor threw his head back and guffawed. "Compared to the interstellar conduits of your people anything would seem small. The Leviathan is formidable in its own right, I assure you."  

LEAVE MY PEOPLE BE. I WILL SERVE. 

"Of course. You are all I need. Your very presence eviscerates flesh." He gestured, and a metallic shell lowered from the darkness above. Now the Fulminator was free to walk the decks of her new flagship.

Mask of the Fulminator

The Protocol is contained in the patterns on the robe that, if scanned at the molecular level, describe a Turing-compatible virtual computer and program that, when executed on said computer, calculates the entire Protocol, exactly as it was determined in the Precipice of Flame. 

This is of little interest to most Guardians, who can subconsciously "load" the program simply by looking at the pattern. In execution, the Protocol enhances the use of Solar Light to catalyze fusion. It is up to us to remember the deeper truth—that the Precipice showed us the uses of fire, that the highest form of fire is the stellar flame, and that no life would exist, anywhere in the cosmos, without the apocalyptic detonations of supernovae. Those who fear fire have forgotten that it is their true ancestor.

Starfire Protocol

He arrived at the estate of Iska'al, former friend and confidante of the exiled Emperor Calus. It took surprisingly little to convince the guards to grant him entrance. The Cabal must truly be crazy for the wine he offered up as a gift. It was a day of celebration, after all. Who knows how deep into their cups these guards were? 

Once inside, he spotted his mark. Rull wasted no time. He removed the sheath from the end of his staff to reveal a spear-tip. Iska'al fell backwards and attempted to crawl away as his guards were skewered. Rull grabbed a cask of wine and pounced on the terrified old creature, pouring the wine down his throat. Iska'al choked and sputtered and flailed helplessly. Rull delivered his message as promised. 

"Emperor Calus has not forgotten you." 

Rull didn't stop pouring until he felt Iska'al go limp. 

Rull was covered in the sticky black and violet of Cabal blood and wine. He dropped Iska'al's body to the floor with a soft thud. Just then, Moli the Celebrant entered the courtyard.  When Rull realized that his second target had carelessly walked alone into a secluded space in the midst of a massive celebration on the Cabal homeworld, he thought, "Perhaps this is the warrior's paradise that Emperor Calus promised."

Greaves of Rull

"I used to ride the Light all around the system, doing my best to stay busy and stay away. Well I can tell you, contrary to popular opinion—and from personal experience—shacking up in the City's got its perks. And without the others looking out for us, we'd be running around tinkering with pea shooters and trying to fly those clunkers from the Cosmodrome, looking like a bunch a' dummies. 

"Look— the City needs you; you need it. I mean, have you seen the goods they're peddling these days? The ships Holliday's been putting up in the air? They got your back here.

"I'm hungry. Let's get some ramen." 

—Cayde-6

Frumious Cloak

"You don't trust her," Rekkana said. "I can see that."

Lisbon-13 was already walking away. "I don't need to trust her. I trust you." A truth he threw lightly over his shoulder, but Rekkana felt its weight.

"And that's enough?"

"Always."

Rekkana took a quick half step, trying to catch up to a heart that had leapt too far ahead. But her thoughts were heavy.

Cryptochrons learn to judge and balance secrets. Everyone with sense knows ignorance isn't bliss, but few besides the Cryptochrons know how terrible the truth can be. Those warlocks who join the order must be willing to learn what most would rather not know and to remember what they would rather forget. But accepting a truth is always harder when it's one you cannot share.

She'd known it would happen before they met. She knew everything about him before he'd ever laid eyes on her. She even knew about the man Clovis Bray had to kill 13 times to keep him in check. And it didn't take a Warmind to predict how he'd react to her.

She thought that all this knowledge would serve as armor. You should care less about the characters when you know how the story ends. But then, she was a character, too. It was her story.

"Hey, slowpoke. You coming?"

"Yes."

Rekkana quickened her pace and met him in the shadow of a cube of stone bejeweled by ruby flowers. His glance caught her as she approached and then shifted to the vista around them.

"Strange, being through the looking glass."

"Yes."

Rekkana could see him thinking. His bright eyes were focused on some middle distance as he turned things over in his head: their mission, what her superior had just told them, and her. His turn toward their camp was abrupt.

"We should get back to Yardarm before he starts shooting bugs for fun."

Mask of Righteousness

2472/11/17 — 4.9°S 0°E 
AUDIO ONLY 
Strauss is gone. Whole sky alight as his ship set off. I might be the last MIDA survivor on Mars. The gun detected teleports yesterday and I had to move camp. Cannot shake the fear that they will send battleroids; even this AI marvel couldn't save me. 

Shot the ice this morning. The gun fired a thermal round and then a pellet of water purifier. Came out pure and sweet. Marvelous. I've been reading the gun's Encyclopedia Arcana. All about the crash that became Strauss's obsession and hope. "Metastability in the salvaged construct!" Ha ha! Let's hope our ideals too can pass through grief, fury, and envy into a new freedom elsewhere. 

Wonder if the gun heard me when I asked to go somewhere better. Wonder why it led me here. Going to follow its compass tonight. Down below.

MIDA Mini-Tool

"Jarus, you simply are wrong." 
"We will agree to disagree, my lord." 
"Your palate simply lacks the sophistication to detect the notes in your world's drink!" 
"I am Sindû. It was crafted for my palate, my lord." 
"But you simply do not taste all of this. It's impossible." 
"I do not currently taste anything, my lord." 
"Well, we must fix that." 

In the silence of space, a nearby explosion rocked God's Will. Jarus narrowed his eyes. "My lord, I have an issue to tend to." 

"I shall save your drink for you." The cockpit monitor flickered from Calus's face to a radar.  Small red triangles blinked onscreen as an alarm took up its shrill cry. Jarus pulled a visor down in front of him and fired the ship's thrusters.

Boots of the Ace-Defiant

"He said he'd always trust me," Rekkana mumbled. Her ears were still ringing, and it felt like the ground was rushing up to hit her feet. Yardarm-4 held her upright as they ran for cover.

"Yeah, he also said he'd never leave us. Turns out you can say a lot of things."

In the shelter of an overhang, she allowed Yardarm-4 to lean her back against a wall of stone. She was surrounded by an exuberance of red blossoms. Their simple, sweet scent mixed with a complex cologne of cordite, ozone, sweat, and blood.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, Yardarm-4 was inches away from her face, peering into her eyes, inspecting her, weighing what reserves she had left.

"You still with me?"

"He hasn't."

"What?"

"Left us."

Yardarm-4 stepped back and scanned their surroundings.

"No. I guess not."

"He winged those Goblins so they'd rush us."

"Yes. He was flushing us out."

"It worked." Rekkana pushed herself free of the flowers and Yardarm-4. She began an inventory of her ammo.

"He doesn't have eyes on us now, or he'd take a shot."

Rekkana wanted to argue against this logic, but she said nothing.

"He knows we're making our way to the gate. So what does he do, Rekkana? Does he get ahead of us to block us, or hit us from behind when we're not looking?"

Rekkana thought about the two men, the Lisbon-13 she knew and the one he still carried within him, somewhere behind those gleaming eyes.

"Rekkana? We could really use that brain of yours right now."

"This isn't it."

"What?"

"This isn't how the story is supposed to end."

Temptation's Bond

"Project Borealis's onboard systems contain a pocket energy matrix capable of changing its alignment in a near instant to mimic the spectral frequencies of mapped energy types. The science is groundbreaking, but volatile. We're lucky to have this first, stable model available for active combat use. More will surely come, but for now, the Borealis is the only one of its kind that I trust for real world application." 

"Sounds dangerous." 

"If the internal matrix misaligns for any reason during its shift between outputs—damage, wear, a flaw in its production—the resulting feedback could [REDACTED]." 

"That bad, huh?" 

"If your definition of 'bad' includes the [REDACTED] then yes, 'bad' begins to describe it."

Borealis

The Bladedancers deride us as slow. The Gunslingers say we lack precision. "How is that better than a knife?" "How is that better than a flaming pistol?" Well.  

My boots sink inches into the ground with every step. My rebreather filters the stench out of the air, but my eyes sting like I'm showering with battery acid.  

"We're almost there," my Ghost chirps. My jaw clenches. I know we're almost there, Little Light. 

This vile marsh opens to reveal a black cave's maw. Inside, an infinite number of little green eyes flicker like bad stars. CRACK! I fire a single bullet into the air and the horde in the cave shrieks and runs out.  

"This is it, you two." The Warlock and Titan leap from the bog behind me. A Bow appears in my hands, and I let a single binding shot loose from the shadow.  

Now there are Orbs of Power everywhere. Eat, my friends. Eat.

Nightstalker

Wei Ning punched the mountain. It moved.  A microscopic shudder, but enough to make her punch it again. "They're just angry that you keep winning without a gun." Her Ghost danced fretfully around her fist. "That's why they say these things. Jealousy." 

"I tell you," Ning grunted, shattering granite, "someday they'll lose their smart guns and fancy ships, and then they'll wish they'd listened! There's one weapon you can always count on, and it's your strong hand." 

"Eriana would be sad to hear you dismissing machines." Her Ghost bobbed slyly up to her shoulder. "Eriana would ask if those mighty hands could build a machine in the image of your strength. Just like she was made in the image of a woman." 

Wei Ning tapped her fists together. "Huh," she said.

Fighting Lion

"Get your axe and your pick and your shovel and your spine. We're goin' prospectin'." 
"What?" 
"That. The quote. I don't get it." 
"It's an old saying. It's about puttin' in a hard day's work." 
"Seems… antiquated." 
"How so?"
"My grenade launcher's full auto and goes boom on command. What do I need hand tools for?" 
"It's a metaphor. It ain't literal. At least not anymore. Your launcher is your hand tool." 
"Ahh. Got it. Good to know."

The Prospector

Lisbon-13 leaned hard against the boulder and reloaded. "I didn't want this!"

He leapt up as the grenade he'd been expecting landed. Shots tore through brush and kicked up stone on the other side of the boulder, but he was already moving up the slope, using the grenade's explosion to cover his movement.

A quick peek from his new vantage point revealed no sign of them downslope. A day ago, they would have taken the bait. Yardarm-4 would have run up and made a shield to cover Rekkana. Then she would have jumped over it to land behind the boulder, a comet of energy that would meteor down to finish him off.

He'd taught them to be more patient.

"What did you want?" Yardarm-4 called from about three o'clock, moving to Lisbon-13's right—but it could have been a feint. "You accepted. What did it offer you?" From farther to the right. It hadn't been a feint.

Lisbon-13 threw a grenade right where he knew Yardarm-4 would be, and then turned. Rekkana stood a few feet away. She'd crept up while he was focused on Yardarm-4. She'd probably been on the move before he'd spoken. It was what he'd have done. He almost smiled.

Her fist glimmered and quaked with an unfamiliar power. She only had to release her grip, and that energy would rip through him, burning without fire.

"It offered me what I most desired, but in the end, it could never give me that. It could only take it away."

Lisbon-13 lifted his gleaming eyes to meet Rekkana's cobalt gaze and raised Divinity.

Cloak of Temptation

That really is the entire myth. A Cabal named Acrius desires the sun, and he takes it and becomes the first Emperor of the Cabal. Other scholars have already noted the parallels and differences with our own ancient Earth myth of Icarus, which famously has a far more humbling ending. I am more interested in how Cabal leaders throughout history have deployed this legend as a rhetorical and political justification for conquest. Among the most relevant such figures is Dominus Ghaul himself, who appears to have a personal affinity for the Acrius myth. 

I must also note here that, while linguistic analysis of the Cabal language and its many dialects is incomplete, they do not appear to have a word for the concept of "hubris." 
—Research notes of Tyra Karn

Legend of Acrius

The charred husk that was Statesman Tha'uul had revealed several things before he expired. He had mistaken her for a "warrior of the Light," one of their "storm bringers" who apparently bore a resemblance to the Fulminator. She wished to see one of them. No biped was ever anything like her. She felt something like regret when Tha'uul said his people were mobilizing to annihilate them. 

She made other reports to Calus, pertaining to the locations of Red Legion armories and fleet movements. He only cared about one. Now that the military was in power, in Calus's absence, military parades on Cabal worlds were commonplace. Ghaul's flagship would take part in one such celebration, on Resignation Day, in the fringes of the Sol system, in honor of a mythic Praetor. 

That was where the Shadows would kill the Dominus.

Robes of the Fulminator

"So wait, that thing you found does… what?" 
"It fires black holes." 
"No it doesn't." 
"Oh yeah. It does. Actual, tiny, bullet-sized black holes." 
 "Did you tell the others?" 
"Only that I found some weird gun in some overgrown tunnel back on Old Chicago. And that my Ghost was all, "THIS is why we were led here…'" 
"Yours talks that way too?" 
"What do you think?" 
"OK, OK, but the gun—are you going to tell them?" 
"Yeah, definitely." 
"When?" 
"Crucible." 
"Oh no." 
"Oh, yes."

Graviton Lance

"What you hold was once a beacon. We came out of the shadows seeking those willing to join our search. We staged the trials in his name. It was once a reward for the chosen few— the ones who persevered when all seemed lost." 

 "It was forged as a testament to his resolve, to seek answers where no one else cared to look and to continue down the path so many fell blazing. In your hands is proof that those who earned its firepower never gave up and never lost their way. You may not know the legend of Osiris or ever dared our trials, but should we call on you, will you honor the heralds who earned this weapon's honor and continue the hunt?" 

 – Brother Vance, Disciple of Osiris

Vigilance Wing

Jarus's fighter soared like a blade into the throat of the Dominus's command ship. They hoped it wouldn't matter. Jarus died on impact. The Shadows burst forth from his shattered vessel, the Fulminator leading the charge. 

Every limiter on her armor was undone. The unrelenting fury of her being loosed onto the bridge would permanently disable her. She would still exist, but couldn't anchor herself or manipulate anything around her. She would scatter to the winds. 

Navigation displays exploded in a shower of sparks as she passed. The storm she had become reached an apex of intensity, and she reached out to scores of Cabal and swallowed them and she felt them die. She wrapped Ghaul in her light, enervated him in bursts of flaring Arc. She was fading. He would die. Wouldn't he?

Shadow's Bond

"O, lion! Stretch your wicked claws toward the stars and rend a hole in the sky itself! Let the stars cascade down around you. Leap high and tear again at the night! Rip every fearful comet and burning meteor out of the cosmos and swim in that ocean of light! Drink deep of it. Grow powerful. Carve pathways through the unknown, o defender! O enforcer from on-high!" 

—Traditional Titan meditation

Lion Rampant

"We didn't come here for this." Lisbon-13 was still somehow unconvinced.

"Of course not. Who could have predicted it?" Rekkana began. "But now, with all that's happened, does it matter what our mission was? This is so much more important."

Rekkana wanted to reassure him, but this was an undreamt-of impossibility—an unwritten story. She had never before felt so unmoored, and so free.

"And awesome. Don't forget how awesome this feels." Yardarm-4 said, as if reading her thoughts.

"But these things—these powers we've been given—they come from the wrong side." Lisbon-13's eyes pleaded with her.

"I'm not so sure." And she wasn't. She could be certain of nothing now.

"You remember on Io," Yardarm-14 couldn't contain his enthusiasm, "we were pinned down inside that shipping container with Phalanxes closing in from all sides, and you—you bastard. You ducked out a little hole in the back and made a run for it. I thought you'd left us behind."

"Never," said Lisbon-13 with vehemence. His eyes flashed with anger, but Yardarm-4 didn't seem to notice.

"I know. The whole box was rattling with bullets, and there were explosions, and we were shooting when we could, and suddenly, through it all, I hear you screaming. It was like a banshee wail. You came screaming back on an Interceptor—the Psion still in it. You were steering it with the Psion's head!"

"I remember."

"And you rammed it through four Phalanxes from the side, and then, and then—you remember this, Rekkana?"

"I can't forget."

"You splashed that Interceptor across the shields of another Phalanx, and you RODE THE EXPLOSION over the top. And when you hit the ground behind them, BOOM! It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Lisbon-13 said nothing. It was as if the story had shut him down.

"That's us right now. We're doing what you did. This whole universe is like that container, and the Last City, the Vanguard, the Traveler—they're all inside that box. But we just snuck out of a hole in the back. And there's that Interceptor, and there's not even a Psion in it. But here the metaphor gets a little muddy, because instead of one Interceptor, there's an Interceptor for you, a Goliath for me, and a Thresher for Rekkana. What would that fight have looked like if we'd had all their firepower on our side?"

"Something ugly," Lisbon-13 almost spat the words.

Boots of Ascendancy

we were young once 
YOU WENT MAD TRYING TO UNDERSTAND 
W E W E N T M A D T R Y I N G T O S P E A K 
This doesn't matter. 
when you are ready we will take it from you 
AND YOU WILL BE GLAD OF IT

A Swift Verdict

Jarus left God's Will behind for his final mission. He needed a ship big enough to carry his fellow Shadows to Ghaul, and with enough internal shielding and anti-impact padding to ensure the plan they had developed would succeed. 

Under Jarus's control, the ship dodged, weaved, and carved a path through the Red Legion. His fingers flipped switches, rapidly changing the displays on the monitors surrounding the cockpit. In the hold, the Shadows waited. Jarus aligned the ship's trajectory toward the Dominus' ship. The plan was simple. 

"My dear Jarus," the emperor had said. "We must deliver the Shadows to the Dominus at any cost." Jarus knew what this meant. For him, the trip was one-way. But that was all right, so long as Ghaul's was, too.

Shadow's Cloak

Shayotet's ship lay smashed and burning on the ground. A few meters away, Shayotet himself crawled from a pod. Jarus jumped lightly from his own ship, sent it rocketing back into low orbit with a tap to his nav-gauntlet. God's Will had done its part. Now Jarus must finish him. 

Jarus raised a pistol, another of Calus's gifts, and emptied its clip. Shayotet heaved and jerked as black pressure gel spouted from his armor, but he did not fall. He roared—blood and saliva spattered the ground—and charged. Jarus holstered the pistols. 

He waited until Shayotet was nearly on top of him before activating the energy blade. A gargling roar, a spray of pressure gel, and it was over. 

Jarus' fingers trembled as he summoned God's Will again. In the cockpit, Calus' face appeared. "My heart swells with pride. This drink is in your honor."

Vest of the Ace-Defiant

Their Ghosts all started chattering at once, and Lisbon-13 stepped away from his compatriots to hear his own.

"Scanning. No sign of complex life besides you three. Widening the scan parameters. I got bupkis."

"Look for any kind of transmission, or a nearby audio device," Lisbon-13 ordered. "We're getting sound without a source."

"Got it," his Ghost said, but then it wobbled in the air. "Whoa. Don't got it."

Lisbon-13 grabbed his Ghost before it could fall. In the grotto, their Light faded.

He heard Rekkana ask, "Yardarm, Lisbon, you OK?"

"I'm fine," he said. And he was. Something strange—something alarming—was happening, but Lisbon-13 felt no fear.

As the gloom faded to black, Lisbon-13 set his shoulders. Whoever—whatever—it was had spoken. It would speak again.

Lisbon-13 stood against the dark and waited to have words.

Vest of Transcendence

"The thought was simple enough—sync a weapon's firing and targeting systems to a caged onboard artificial intelligence programmed to actively seek fulfillment of the weapon's base driving function. Simply put, give the weapon an awareness of its purpose. 

"If the machine is meant to destroy, what would happen if we made it aware of its intended goal? 

"What would happen if it reacted to any failure to achieve that goal by focusing more intently on defining the parameters of said goal and adjusting its function to more aggressively seek out the successful execution of its purpose? 

"These are the questions we asked ourselves while engineering the initial prototype. The answers we found—I think you'll agree—were encouraging." 

– Incomplete record, author unknown

Merciless

"Find thy self." —first dictate, first calling, The Hidden 
"Know thy self." —second dictate, first calling, The Hidden 
"Destroy thy self." —third dictate, first calling, The Hidden 
"Shed thy self." —fourth dictate, first calling, The Hidden 
"Embrace a new skin." —fifth dictate, first calling, The Hidden 
"Become the many." —sixth dictate, first calling, The Hidden 
"We are as unseen. We are as death." —final dictate, first calling, The Hidden

The Dragon's Shadow

"It's hard, in this age, for any warrior to find their inner peace. Our constant state of struggle breeds chaos, in the world and in our hearts. The Raiden Flux channels that chaos, regulates it by mapping and defining the wearer's true spiritual center. It is science merged with belief and the healing power of one's own natural energies. But there is more. The Raiden Flux is an amplifier of those energies. It seeks the spark in you and bolsters its charge, redirecting your innermost power that it may serve as an extension of your will. The staff then acts as a conduit through which one may forcibly deliver peace when such action is required. This seems a contradiction, to be sure. It is not. Because at its heart, peace defines war and peace is war's end." 

– Gao Sinyada, forger of the Raiden Flux

Raiden Flux

"I dunno. Hunter just came in one day with this odd Arc-reacting circuit, asking what it might be good for. All she could tell me was she scored it off some derelict satellite that crashed in the EDZ. So I ran diagnostics on them and it ebbed and flowed with massive Arc fluctuations. No pattern, no match to known solar or extra-solar events. Just random-like. So I hooked one into an old Malina vest we had lying around, and wished her luck. Word's got out, I guess." 

—Overheard in the Tower

Lucky Raspberry

Bones! Let's wear some bones! 

Oh, it's a taste many Guardians develop. I think because they feel a wee bit spectral. All this transmatting leaves one saying "Am I still here? Am I flesh or am I mist?" So, you strap some old bones to your arm, bones that've been unbreakable for an eon, and you feel solid again. More yourself. 

Bearers of a particular species of bone do claim—and mind that I'm not recommending these bones—that the fossils grant them unusual powers. Nothing too wild. A little more of this and that. 

My own research suggests these special bones come from a species of draconic post-Traveler neolife called 'ahamkara'. They apparently talked—loved the phrase 'o seeker mine'—and troubled us enough to be hunted to extinction. If you wanted some more of these bones for your friends, I might know a source…

Young Ahamkara's Spine

Right, well… I'm afraid you won't get far with that attitude. Hawthorne doesn't care about that "Trials of Osiris" rubbish. Gilded armor can't feed hungry refugees. And don't go nattering on with that "Guardian" business either, not where she can hear you. There are no "Guardians" out here. To her, anyone that can pick up a gun and shoot is a "Guardian." 

I know you're new here. You've done a lot, seen a lot. And I know Hawthorne can be a bit rough around the edges, eh? But listen to her. What she says is sound: "Look out for each other. Don't do anything stupid. Pitch in where you can." She's not claiming to be one of your Vanguard. She is simply doing what she feels is her duty—defending those under her protection until all are safe and we can rebuild what we've lost.

Wildwood

"Keep it clean. Your body. Your mind. Your armor. Weapons. Gear. Ammo. CRS #1: Keep it clean. Clean equals function. Clean equals focus. That's where it all starts. Skill matters. Training, practice, experience. All key ingredients. All valued assets as you balance death and glory on the battlefield. But once you're trained and ready for war. And once your gear is up to the standards of a proper, respected, walking, talking war machine. What comes next?" 
"1177!" 
"That's right. CRS #1177: Ammunition is your best friend. So what do you do?" 
"Load up." 
"Load. Up. Get yourself a weapon that spits unending fire and stock up on ammo until your shoulders slump and your back aches. Because each round is a war all its own." 

 —Lord Shaxx educating a gathering of Titans

Actium War Rig

"Commander, as best we can tell, they're all gone. Somehow the Legion found their outpost, and the Hunters say Centurions still hold the ruins. This was the last text transmission we got before the signal died." 
—Sloane 

"The fire burned within us. Not by choice, not because we sought the flame. But because there was no other way. 

"When you stood before the Forge, there was no doubt. No fear. Not even anger. 

"My order stood for generations. We held against the shadow, bearing a weapon that seared flesh and melted bone. 

"And now we stand at the end. May history remember the Forge. Remember the Hammer. Remember the Sunbreakers." 

—Ouros, Third and Final Empyreal Magistrate of the Sunbreaker

Hallowfire Heart

Lisbon-13 was already walking away when she spoke.

"You don't trust her. I can see that."

He almost stumbled, but he quickened his pace to cover for it.

Rekkana saw so much. It was the thing that astonished him when they first met. She seemed to see right into him, to see all his flaws and failings, all the guilt and regret, and she didn't look away.

"I don't need to trust her. I trust you."

"And that's enough?"

"Always."

It was, and would be. The truth of that rested easy within him. It was the razor that cut through the chaos and ambiguity of their wild and dangerous lives. She knew what she wanted, and she wanted him by her side. It was an honor.

She lingered behind him, no doubt thinking about their mission.

"Hey, slowpoke. You coming?"

"Yes."

Lisbon-13 stopped to wait for her. He looked out at a landscape somehow outside space, terrible and yet still beautiful in its own way. Rekkana caught up to him.

"Strange, being through the looking glass."

"Yes."

Her eyes were a luminous blue. It was the first thing he'd noticed, before he understood what she could see. He wondered at the mind behind them.

He wondered what she knew about their mission that she wasn't telling him. He wondered what the ramifications of the Cryptochrons learning the truth about the Black Garden might be.

But then he remembered that none of that mattered. He didn't need to ask questions if she knew the answers.

"We should get back to Yardarm before he starts shooting bugs for fun."

Cowl of Righteousness

Rull activated his staff's secondary configuration and fired a harpoon into Moli's exposed flank. The barbs pierced deep, and the giant beast of a Cabal let out a monstrous howl. Blind with pain, he began to run, dragging Rull behind like a harpooned whale dragging a ship. 

The honored Celebrant Moli ran through the streets of the Cabal homeworld on celebration day, howling in agony and dragging Rull behind. It was such a spectacle that no one was sure what exactly was happening or what to do about it. 

Moli ran all the way to Dominus Ghaul's ceremony and right up the steps before collapsing at his lord's feet. Rull realized that he now faced a choice—try to escape, or finish the job. 

Rull yanked out the harpoon before shoving it through Moli's neck. He had just enough time to pull off his helmet and smile in Ghaul's face before he was killed. 

Truly, Emperor Calus had delivered a warrior's paradise.

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SandboxPatterns	+33	-1	340
Unlocks	+5841	-6354
MaterialRequirementSets	+13	-29
NodeStepSummary			3
ArtDyeChannel	+2
ArtDyeReference	+753
ProgressionMapping	+1	-10
UnlockValue	+2413	-5471
RewardMapping	+1841	-4566
RewardSheet	+130	-738
ActivityInteractable	+42	-376	11
EntitlementOffer	+28	-1
CharacterCustomizationOption			6
UnlockCountMapping	+1	-29
UnlockEvent	+67	-139	3
UnlockExpressionMapping	+2344	-2626
RewardAdjusterPointer	+4

Destiny Definitions Archive

Lore

Modified