Children of a Faceless God
The Guardian did not watch him.
Variks was accustomed already to the stares of Guardians newly granted access to the Reef, to their questions and pestering, often their rudeness and threats, sometimes their alien, uncomfortable familiarity. He was not used to being ignored, particularly not in such a pointed way; the Guardian looked closely at all else in the Vestian Outpost whenever she visited, and spoke especially to Petra Venj. Only the Disciple of Osiris, Vance, did she scorn in the same way as she did Variks. Although he had watched her hunt the Wolves and not been disappointed by her skill, after some time he began to think her a coward. Why do you not enter the Trials or the Prison, he planned to ask her, or Do you fear the might of Skolas still, but she never came near enough to him for questions. He did not even have her scent.
Until one day she passed him, going from Master Ives to Petra, and he said loudly, "Not fighting today? Weak? Scared?"
She stopped and cocked her head at him like a curious Crow, her little Ghost hovering at her shoulder. "You look at me more often than you do your friends who fight," she said. Her voice was deep and rough, and unexpectedly pleasant despite her words. "Perhaps not fighting is the way to your attention?"
"Perhaps you do not have two strong friends to fight with you." Had he watched her so openly, waiting for her to watch him like the others? Careless, when he had to be careful.
"I do not fight or die for sport," the Guardian said.
"No?" said Variks. "What do you fight for, then?"
"I fight because it is the path in front of me, and I see no other." The Guardian's two eyes were narrow, but bright and golden. A color Variks saw little in the Outpost, with its purple shadows and white lights. "One day the path of battle will lead to a choice of many paths, but I think that such a day is very far. And that killing enemies trapped in a cage will not bring the day closer."
Variks breathed in the weak air. Her witch-words, and her cold scent... "You are Awoken, yes?"
"I am a fox that is a bird who became Awoken," the Guardian said. "But that is a complicated thing to be, and the present is not a time for complications - so yes, I am Awoken."
At that her Ghost spoke for the first time, saying, "Uh, don't pay too much attention to that stuff. She's been a little - odd - ever since I found her."
Variks laughed, and the sound appeared to please the Guardian, whose mouth moved in the gesture of smiling. "I have no help for those who don't fight," said Variks. "But you are amusing. Tell me, what is this - fox?"
"An animal which lives because it runs and hides, and is clever."
"An animal I would welcome into my House, perhaps," Variks said. "Even if it does not fight."
"Perhaps," the Guardian said, "but it takes time and patience to tame a fox." Her smile was wide and showed many teeth. "Do you wish to tame me, Variks the Loyal? That will take a great deal of time, indeed."
She turned away from him to continue towards Petra, her Ghost hissing in her ear as she left.
The fox-Guardian entered the Prison of Elders one time only, to face Skolas, but she fought well that single time; her Light burst forth in brilliant gold, blessing the mechanical Titan and human Hunter who battled beside her until Skolas's fall. The other two Guardians Variks had watched in the arenas many times, and they greeted him cheerfully, thanked him for the challenge, showed their hard-won prizes off to each other. The fox-Guardian sat alone in the shadows between Master Ives and Variks, turning first the armor core and then the weapon core she had won over in her gloved hands, never looking at Variks.
When the Titan with green stamped across its face and the dark-skinned Hunter had left for new quests, Variks stepped away from his pod. "You are the greatest of warriors," he said to her, harmless flattering lie. She hadn't fought so well as that. "Will you claim your rewards?"
"What rewards have I earned?" she said. "I am covered in death; that is the usual reward for battle."
"You have helped me, I will help you."
"I helped my friends. I am not interested in your aid."
Her armor, freshly pitted with scars from Skolas's hungry essence, reeked of the Hive. Gauntlets, boots, bond, the helmet on the floor: all of it forged from Hive remnants, the work of the haunted Eris Morn. All except the robes, where the dark wings of an Earth bird spread across her chest. "I can give you better armor," Variks said. "Armor without Hive taint, yes? Much more pleasing to wear."
Finally she looked up from the cores. "Could I fly with your armor, then?" she said, mocking. "Will it give me wings again, or the ears to hear the desert's song? That would be pleasing."
"It will keep the Wolves from a fox's throat," said Variks, mocking her in return. "Would that please you? I am not sure it would please me."
"Now you're honest. I like that better." She set the cores aside with her helmet and made a little gesture at her Ghost, which came to her hand. "I also like Eris's armor. It suits me very well, and I would consider her my friend, if she would consider me hers." Another small gesture, and the Ghost blinked; a pile of bronze tokens materialized in her upturned palms. "I am forever running into these Wolves you fear, and they give up so many treasures when they die. But such trinkets are only useful if I am your friend, so what should I do with them all?"
"Give me your Ghost and the tokens," Variks suggested, "and we will be friends."
"A kind offer," the Guardian said. "I doubt he would do you much good, however, and I would miss my little ray of sunshine."
"Don't call me that where the creepy Fallen can hear," the Ghost muttered, and then it darted behind her head. "Er. No offense."
Variks considered her full hands and the cores that gleamed with dull reflected light. She did not hide from the treacherous Wolves in the field, and she had not flinched from Skolas in the trial; whether she returned to the Prison of Elders or not, it could be profitable to know her. More so than to ignore her. "There are other ways to be a friend to Variks," he said.
"I see." Her Ghost's eye peeked out through her straight, sharp-cut blue mane, and the tokens vanished along with the cores. "Do let me know when you have decided what they are."
She leaped to her feet and strode towards the docking bays, tall and unbent and unbound by concern for reputation. Stubborn, Variks thought, and Strange, and then "Hey, Variks!" interrupted him. Human Titan, short, veteran of the Prison, "friend." "Whatcha got for me this week, huh? Better not be shit like that hand cannon you sold last time."
"I shall help you," Variks said. Perhaps more harshly than he should have, but the short Titan took no notice in his eagerness to barter for his prize, and the mood passed as it always did.
"Do you ever travel, Variks?"
The Outpost was close to empty of both Guardians and guards during the downcycle, and the lights dimmed to an approximation of evening. Variks tightened his grip on his staff as he searched for the source of the fox-Guardian's voice. There - she crouched on the stack of crates at his left, peering down at him. "I am the warden for the Prison of Elders," he said. "I perform my duty, a loyal servant of the Queen."
"And does the queen jail her warden as well as her prisoners?"
Impertinent question, that stung the more because he disliked the answer. He hissed. "Why do you ask me this, fox?"
"I do not like that sound half so much as the other," the Guardian said, frowning.
"Then don't test me with foolish questions."
"I think that I was born here." She looked to the ceiling. "Not in the Outpost or the Reef, but here among the asteroids, in the stars and the dark and the cold stone. But my spirit fell into the Earth's gravity well, and after I set foot there, I wanted nothing else. Only to feel ground under my feet as I wandered, and wind, and sunlight, and the touch of things that live and grow... Now I am always surrounded by armor and concrete and metal, and I long for the shores of Venus and the sharp mountains of Earth and the red deserts of Mars and the dry seas of the Moon; but they are denied to me, because the Darkness is ever waiting to devour the unwary."
Variks's fore-eyes went to her feet and he saw that they were bare, pale toes curled into the dust-cloth tossed over the crates. He had never seen a Guardian without their boots, and his undocked arms curled in against his chest, a nervous twitch.
"Do you know this desire?" she said. "Do you ever leave the prison and take off your armor, so that the worlds can touch you again?"
"I serve the Queen. I am loyal. All else you may hear are lies."
"She is not my queen. I do not have any great opinion of her, one way or another," the Guardian said impatiently. "What do I care if you are loyal to her? I want to know if you understand me, and if you travel out of the Reef."
"I don't," he snarled, a lie: the amethyst he cut, rough facets pressing against his fingers, the air in his pod flowing with ether. "You speak like a witch, with riddles about power and mysteries. I am only a humble servant who survives, who keeps the prison. These are not matters for me to understand."
She tilted her head at him, making no expression that he could interpret. Then she said, her voice harsher than usual, "Do you think that I hear the Traveler, your Great Machine? I do not. I hear nothing, not even the stars anymore, and there are times I don't believe that the Traveler speaks to the Speaker, either. I was given Light and a duty, but no answers. You have ether and a duty; do they have answers for you?"
"You torment me with your questions and doubts," he said, and his mandibles clicked. "You are no friend to Variks and his House."
Immediately she turned her face away from him and slid off the crates; her naked feet made a strange soft sound against the metal. She stared out past the docked ships to the glow of the Reef for some time before she said, "I was not trying to hurt you or distract you from your service. I am no longer a witch, nor a fox, nor a rook; I am not dead, neither do I live. I do not know how to give comfort."
"Did I ask you for comfort? Go away, leave me alone."
She went, in silence and starlight; and he was alone.
Many cycles later, as he bargained with the green-faced Titan over a small matter of ships and whether it could afford one, Variks grew bored with the negotiations and said, "But where is your friend?"
"Which one? I've got a couple these days."
"The fox."
"Oh, her," the machine said. "I don't know. I haven't seen her in a while, actually. She goes out alone most of the time - kind of like a Hunter that way. She might be on Mars, I know she likes it there even with the Cabal and Vex always breathing down your neck. Or maybe she's hunting Hive on the Moon for Eris. She hates the Hive almost as much as Eris does." A shrug of metal shoulders. "She'll probably turn up soon, she usually does."
"Ai," Variks said, without meaning to.
The machine's lights flashed from green to red and back. "Huh. I thought you didn't like her," it said.
"I am friend to all Guardians who hunt the Wolves," which was not the reason he had asked.
"Right, yeah." Another ripple of red lights, a code Variks did not know. "You want me to give her a message or something if I run into her?"
Come back. Question me again. "No. No message."
"Aww, darn. I was gonna say, if I give her a message for you, would you cut me a break on that Wolf Hunter? Since we're buddies and all?"
"Not that kind of friend yet, Guardian."
The mechanical Titan left without a ship, and Variks retreated into his pod to rest, despite angry shouting from other Guardians who looked for him and his wares. Eventually they went away and he could have peace. They would return anyway later, hungry for more goods.
He came out again during the downcycle, hunched against the cool, lifeless air, and the fox-Guardian was sitting cross-legged in front of his door. Her mane had grown out long and wild, matted into waves hanging down her back; her winged robes were stained and rich with battle-scents.
"I have brought you a gift," she said.
"Oh? What's the price of this gift?"
"There is no price, or I would not call it a gift."
"I still think this is crazy," her Ghost said from its place above her shoulder, but it floated forward in obedience to her beckoning hand. "Uh, you might want to step back."
Variks stepped back, and as the Ghost's eye flickered, winter-white sand covered the floor.
"From the Ocean of Storms," said the Guardian, before Variks could ask. "There is no Darkness in it. One grain in ten thousand there does not stink of the Hive's filth, but this is all pure; Eris was certain of that when I asked her. It was easier to hunt the Wolves than these grains of sand."
The Ghost was right, but so was the Guardian. It was an insane gift, and also one without price. "I don't go out into the world, so you brought a world to me, yes?" Variks said.
"Yes, exactly!" And she smiled, and then she laughed, but not the hollow laughter of the Awoken: a passable imitation of an Eliksni laughing, Variks laughing, rich and low and crackling. "You can touch it without armor. It's all safe." She pulled one of her boots off and wriggled her foot at him before placing it on the sand to make a blurry five-toed print. "You see?"
Variks did not remove his armor like her, but he leaned his staff against the pod and crouched so he could reach her gift with his lower arms, splaying his fingers into the little dunes. Fine and smooth, the sand was, bright as silver, cool as a crystal from the barrow or the Queen's heart; no ether in it, or Light, but no Darkness, either. It was the clean, natural touch of another world.
He laughed as well, and the Guardian's smile widened. Two of the Queen's Guards turned their heads to look at him, no matter, what could they tell the Queen? That Variks laughed with a Guardian - well, she had opened the Reef to the Guardians herself. He only did his duty, to make them welcome, to welcome this one back.
He trailed sand through his fingers and said, "Do you have a name, besides fox?" Some Guardians did, some did not, and he had never bothered with them.
"I call myself the Sibyl of the Rocks," she said. "That was where my Ghost found me, in the rocks of a distant desert where a spring once flowed, and so I took my name from it, and from my visions."
"Sibyl." Variks tested the word in his mandibles. Interesting sounds. Fitting for her.
"Seriously, little weird," said the Ghost. "Just go with it. It's what I do."
They enjoyed the sand in silence for a little time, and then the Sibyl spoke again. "I chose the Moon because I know it well," she said, "but tell me where House Judgement has its roots, and I will go there next."
What is the price of that gift he might ask, and Nothing she would say, and lie; but lying did not suit her, and perhaps the price she would not name was one he didn't mind paying. "House Judgement has no Ketch and no roots. I was born with the Wolves, among the cold realms of the Nine."
"Ah, a place I and my little ship cannot yet go. But perhaps one day I will return with salt ice from Europa or a stone of Titan for you..."
"Perhaps I will give you the ship that carries you there," said Variks, and the thought charmed him more than it had any reason to.
The Sibyl traced signs without any meaning he knew in the sand. "Until then?"
"Something from Earth." Of all the nine planets and many moons, Earth was the one the Eliksni clung to most fiercely, the one that smelled most strongly of a lost home.
"Something with life," agreed the Sibyl, and she motioned to her Ghost, then hesitated. "Oh. What will you do with the sand now? I did not think of that."
"See? You never think about these things, that's your problem." The Ghost heaved an electronic sigh.
It could go to maintain the Hive cells, but to waste the precious gift on the twisted spawn of the Darkness, to dim its shine - no. "I will find a place for it, yes? If your Ghost will help."
He did not allow Guardians into his pod, it was not their place, but she followed him and the Ghost in after the Ghost had blinked the sand away with its transmat. She did not ask about his artifacts, at least, or comment on them; she only looked around the pod with a critical eye, as he did, seeking a place for the sand, her long nose twitching slightly against the ether in the air. Finally Variks moved aside a crate of marks and bonds, and spread out a sheet of dull undyed cloth on the floor, saying, "Here, here." He would be able to reach and touch the sand from his seat, but it wouldn't be visible from the doorway to catch some curious guard's eye.
The Ghost darted forward - or tried to; its stubby prongs tangled in the Sibyl's loose mane, and it whined, "Will you please let me cut your hair already? This is getting ridiculous."
"Now that it's finally the way that I want it? I think not."
"You're joking. You can barely fit it all in your helmet, and come on, it looks so nice and clean when it's short..." But it held still as she freed it; then it released the sand onto the cloth, where the grains glimmered in the low light, and the two turned to leave.
One final matter, before she disappeared again on the Great Machine's errands. "I will take those tokens you carry, when you return," said Variks.
The Sibyl paused on the threshold, looking back over her shoulder. "Really? A pity," she said. "I've already given them all away."
They laughed at the same time.
The Sibyl brought Variks life from Earth, a thing she called a jade plant that required water and light but breathed out fresh air in fair exchange. She had rooted it in a sleek dark helmet filled with brown soil, and he nestled the helmet in the pile of moondust, for the contrast between shining black and silver and green.
From Venus she brought him the bubbling blue liquid that flowed through the cracked rocks; she carried it in the dead, battered bronze chestplate of a Vex minotaur, which balanced nicely next to his shrapnel. The glow created interesting reflections as he cut amethyst or polished weapons for sale. Sometimes the ether warmed the liquid enough that it would hiss, a pleasant background sound.
How she found her way to Mercury he didn't know. It was open only to the Disciples of Osiris, the Crucible's lords, and the Vex, none of whom the Sibyl cared for, but Variks could hardly deny that the cracked sheet of metallic glass came from the burning planet. He leaned it next to the door, where it flashed light in fractured lines; when he brushed his fingers against it, leaving or coming in, he could imagine the sun's heat still trapped within its planes.
Petra Venj smiled when she saw it all, coming in to summon him to another meeting with the prince. "Look at you, accepting flattery from a Guardian," she said, flipping her hunting knife to catch it again. "Too bad you can't get her killed with your little tricks."
"This one is too clever for tricks," said Variks. "And she has her uses."
"Careful, Variks, or I'm going to get jealous." She didn't mean it, which was good; he liked the balance of their relationship as it was, wanted no change in it, and the Sibyl was no threat to their understanding.
Petra looked at the jade plant's container and whistled. "I know that helmet," she said. "They call it Obsidian Mind, and it's quite strong and rare. Valuable, even. Why would she put some useless plant in a treasure like that?"
Variks said nothing; if Petra could not see the answer, she didn't deserve it.
He expected a gift of red sand next, and had cleaned out a place for it on the left side of his seat; but the Sibyl returned to him empty-handed.
"There are Eliksni on Mars now," she said, without even a greeting. "I found them in the wastelands, as I was searching for clean earth. Wolves, stronger than any I have seen before, so I did not fight them; they have an archon already, and servitors. Did you know they had run to ground there?"
"I know now." The information was useful, valuable, but he would have preferred the sand. "How many?"
"A small number, perhaps ten or so that I saw." The Sibyl's gold eyes flashed. "They will not keep me from the deserts I love, and yet I wonder what they think to do there. Will they hide from the thing that Eris fears is coming, or fight it?"
"A good question," Variks said. It would depend on their numbers and strength, whether they had been cowed or maddened into bravery by Skolas's defeat, what they understood of the Hive's recent activity. "Perhaps you'll discover the answer for me?"
"Perhaps. But Eris will soon need me also, and I would not abandon her, in this time least of all." She glanced around; another Awoken Guardian who had started to approach Variks changed course mid-step and went towards Master Ives instead. The Sibyl seated herself next to the door, and after a moment Variks crouched beside her. "Eris cannot decide whether she ought to like you or hate you," she said.
Variks had met Eris Morn only once, when she had come to the Reef with her warnings of Crota, and they hadn't talked at that time. Why should she have any opinion of him? "For what reasons?"
"I have spoken of you to her," in answer to the unspoken question. "Hate you, because you treat killing Hive as a sport in your prison. Like you, because you contain their evil and they still die by Guardian hands."
"Hah," Variks said. "And what do you think?"
"I think that she should like you. She had Light, and lost it entirely, as the Eliksni did. You have both escaped evil by your cunning, and bear the scars of survival." She wasn't looking at his docked arms, in much the same way she had once not looked at him. But then it had been disdain; now it was respect. "Still, it is her own decision, not mine. Connections cannot be forced by another."
"One needs time and patience, yes?" He had not forgotten.
"I would not call any of us tamed just yet," said the Sibyl. She combed fingers through her wild mane, then stood, but slowly enough that Variks could rise with her. "I fear I cannot stay; there is much for me to do before Oryx comes, if he truly does. When I see you again I will have something clean from Mars, along with the Wolves' heads for Petra."
As she stepped away, Variks said, "Guard your Light well, Sibyl."
"If ever I hear the stars or the Traveler again -" She smiled, wide and close-mouthed and sweet. "- I will sing what I hear for you first."
And he believed her.
Author's Note: Yeah, so - I really like Variks. Bungie has done it to me again! This might become a two-parter since I'd really like to write the side of the story with the Sibyl and Eris Morn, hence it being marked incomplete, but I wanted to wait for The Taken King before I tackled writing Eris and this stands on its own well enough.
The Sibyl is based on an OC of mine who doesn't translate all that well into Destiny, but the awkwardness ends up suiting her, I think. There's got to be so many awkward things about being an Awoken Guardian, honestly - and being a Guardian in general.