Hallowfire Heart
Lord Saladin, the fifteenth holder of the title "Sunfury Magistrate", wiped a greasy and oil-stained rag across his face as he stood back from the Forge, his creation still only half-formed in the glowering crucible. He couldn't help but feel a stab of frustration as his Ghost took it back before whisking it -still dirty- into the transmat stream. All the light in the world, apparently, still wouldn't be enough to clean it without his help. Still, he supposed he should be grateful that his Ghost chose to show himself. He, better than anyone, knew how hard it could be to watch a cherished person act self-destructively.
He tested the heft of the forge-hammer, letting it's weight bring him back to focus as it had so often before. The distant roar of battle echoed in the central chamber of the Forge, a reminder of the constant war his order waged to preserve it. For a few terse seconds, he considered heading back to the front, leading his compatriots against the crush of Vex, but the sounds died off and he knew the battle had already been won for the moment. They had always been a determined bunch, but under his leadership they had transformed into a true band of warriors, and he let himself relax in that fact as he mused over the dark deed he was taking part in. He looked back to the components that his Ghost had placed unceremoniously on the nearby platform.
He picked up the first, his gaze scanning it for flaws he knew didn't exist as he recalled Holliday's words to him. It had been midday in the Tower, a distasteful heat permeated every room as he stalked towards the Hanger bay, watching as technicians and the newer guardians scattered from his path. Most barely knew anything about him but his stern exterior, and it showed as they practically cleared a path all the way to the Hanger. A quiet part of his mind made a mental note to be just slightly more gentle with the new-lights, watching one inexperienced hunter practically hurl themselves off the side of the tower to avoid him. The Hanger, thankfully, was a much different affair. The engineers there didn't truly have time to gawk at him, pressed as they were by Holliday, who barked orders out at them with enough fierceness to convince Saladin for just a moment that she was a Titan. For a few seconds, his mind lingered on the memory of such a Titan from long ago, but he brushed past the memory. It was for the best, as Amanda locked eyes with him and hopped down from the central platform she'd been directing from.
Saladin took a breath in, she had that "winning smile" she loved to wear when speaking to a Sunbreaker, and even moreso when trying to convince one to take a "solid thwack" against whatever had been giving her workers issues. He took some solace that it was usually just a part, and only rarely a guardian without satisfactory respect for their equipment. That both usually improved when struck, however, gave him no inclination that she'd ever stop asking. He met her halfway, under the wings of a particularly damaged jumpship that looked to have been used as cover by an equally intrepid guardian. He could barely imagine the talk they got after that. But for now, her eyes were focused solely on him.
"So, what do I have to get you to come a little more often, huh?" Holliday asked, before continuing with "And what exactly did I do to get you to visit this time?"
Saladin kept her gaze, mulling over the best way to answer, and to ask a favor. After a second, he decided that beating around the issue wasn't worth the awkwardness: "I have a favor I need."
She snorted, "So does the whole world, and the Tower, and that guardian I saw fly off the the walkway just before you came do-?" She suddenly arched an eye, lowering it a moment later as he just shook his head. "So it's serious, then? Alright, what'd'ya need?" She drawled.
He took a deep breath as he struggled to remember the name, it'd been near-on to sixty years since his order had seen one, and though he no longer aged, he still felt the weight of it on his memory. "Do you have a Stellar-Prime Fusion Conductor?" he said slowly, certain that he'd finally remembered the name for it.
"That's not it's name" She tsked, "And why do you need it? Is your ship not fast enough? I can tune it to be twice as fast as that old thing would get 'ya, it's all heat and no speed if you catch my drift." She fixed him with a curious look that wasn't quite worry and wasn't quite not worried. Sunbreakers were as bad as Hunters when it came to the concept of a "dynamic entry". She swore they were jealous of their Striker brethren and just couldn't stop trying to one-up them. "It's for a project-" he began before abruptly stopping. He didn't need Ikora to tell him that the look Holliday was giving him was a refusal of such a vague excuse. 'Leave it to a mechanic to dangle parts above a blacksmith', he quietly thought, restarting with "It's a gift for a mutually friend, they've marched headlong into danger for too long without something to properly protect them, and if someone doesn't stop them from it, one day they won't come back."
He let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding as her expression shifted from being annoyed to happy, she'd been in a giving mood ever since Solstice and thought the idea was the perfect expression of it. And besides, she'd been exaggerating how rare they were, miracle workers never revealed their secrets, after all.
Her face suddenly pulled into a wide grin, "Sure, I can help with that…but you know, it's a pretty rare part." She gave a half turn, regarding the ship "You know, I think there's something you can do that'll square us up. This ship here, some hotshot's friends were pinned on Mars by the Red Legion, so what does the Hunter do? He turns the engines off, tilts the damn thing, and let it drop like a rock into the dune sea. And wouldn't you know it, he has the gall to use it to block shots from the surviving Cabal. This part-" she gestured to a particularly pin-holed section of the hull that looked to have been chewed through by a chain-saw "was between an angry Colossus and him." she finished, before turning back to him "Did you know that I spent two months getting that bird flying before he got it? Everything was shot and eaten through with that Hive gunk and it took me two weeks just to get the damn thing to stop trying to spread to the tower."
Saladin sighed, slowly unlimbering his hammer; "Ship or Guardian?" he asked. He quietly reminded himself to impose a respect for equipment on his Order as her grin turned predatory "It'll take a while to find that part, why don't you get started on one while I go call the other down here, and then I'll get started on finding it?"
He let the memory pass, watching as the breastplate finished hardening. The exterior was ready, and so was the connection for the Fusion Conductor. So, he slotted it into place, working carefully to do nothing that would disturb either end of the connection. With it in place, the armour would glow with heat and life, and would guide the Guardian on the path ahead of them. He glanced at the next component, quietly placing it into the melting mold as he was drawn back into his memory again.
Io was a strange and beautiful world, awash in unformed light. It was not quite unlike the Sun-Forge in that way, though it was a different similarity he needed now. He would have laughed if he'd seen the humor of it, much of the plan he had embarked on came from the Vault of Glass, and now their progeny contested a world tied to it. The sun glittered weakly beyond the atmosphere, a reflection of how far from Sol he had come in search of a very special, very neurotic Warlock.
Asher Mir barely took notice of him when he landed, turning back to his research after ensuring he wasn't some curious Minotaur, but he did a double-take moments later, his face morphing into an ugly sneer as he suddenly shouted "NO! Haven't you brutes done enough with Mercury and Venus, how am I to get any work done with you going around and hitting everything with hammers! I cannot believe Ikora would allow you to set foot here, surely she of all people understand just how important this research is for me, and for all of us! With you here the Vex will deviate from patterns, become furtive and difficult and I will not accept that!" Asher, finally out of breath for the moment, gave him a glare that Saladin privately mused could have blown one of those precious Vex away.
"I am not here to disturb your work, Warlock" he began, "and for someone concerned with noise, you've made plenty yourself." He winced as the roving Vex were drawn closer by the yelling before being cut down with even more noise by one of the nearby guardians.
"At any rate, I'll be out of your hair sooner than later, if you give me aid." That, at least, was enough for him to get Mir's attention, and it showed as he turned away from his research fully for the first time in however many hours. Saladin appraised how haggard Asher was, the man had always been quiet and only ever moreso after his accident. He had left the Last City furious, years ago, over the banishment of Osiris, and Saladin could barely fathom how the isolation had effected him. But, that isolation had found what he needed. It gave him hope that he could yet help his young protege.
"I need a scale of the Tree of Silver Wings" Saladin said, his voice darker than before. Mir's eyes widened sharply, he took a step closer to his bag "And I know where one is why?" he asked with a suspicious amount of incredulity, his face returning to it's previous sneer. Saladin stood his ground, not advancing or retreating, no aggression in his voice as he said "Because I know that you were the one that found it, and I know that you kept that scale to yourself. You weren't exiled, but that didn't mean you weren't shadowed." He shrugged, "After Yor, it was normal to keep an eye on the twitchy ones."
Mir's glare would have withered a goblin to dust before, but now it looked keen to burn down the entire Tower. Mir came a step closer to the bag, intent on not revealing that the true hiding place was in the tent if he could, he asked the last important question: "What do you need it for?"
Saladin gave Asher tired eyes, "We have a mutually associate, but they do things that are...beyond dangerous. How many more adventures into the Pyramidion will they do for you before they meet a challenge they can't conquer? And we both know that they have an unhealthy obsession taking risks. They need armour, something to shield them from their own risk-taking until they have the sense say that some things are just too dangerous. We both owe them that."
Mir turned away from him. Returning to his work. "It's in the tent, on the left and beneath the loose dirt. Take it and be gone Sunbreaker, and not a single word more from you for the rest of my life." The Scale had slowed his conversion, let him venture beyond the crucible of Io, but Saladin had convinced him that the new blood of the Guardians were too heroic for their own good, too risky to let them go off fighting wars against gods in Ghost-made, pock-marked armour. Saladin made good on his promise, leaving them without a word or a goodbye. Though neither of the two would admit it, they both knew the implications of the conversation, and Mir allowed himself a moment of quiet pride and respect. He would sooner die than say it, but maybe even the Sunbreakers had come to develop common sense. He figured that the scale wouldn't find a better home among the squanders in the Tower than protecting his Assistant from themselves.
Saladin saw the scale deform, heard the music that leaked out of it as liquefied and began to glow brightly, and he poured it into the void in the armour, watching as it crept up and up and up, crisscrossing the detailing in the plate until the pairs of rivulets joined in the middle. It would bolster the plate, protecting the Guardian from physical harm, but that was merely a side effect of it's true purpose. He reached past it, sliding the casing of the Fusion Conductor open. He had gathered every resource he could, had gone to work with enough skill to rival the mythical Kabr himself. Spinleaf formed the lightest of the metals, had been arc-joined with the Relic Iron that had been exposed to the Traveler during it's visit to Mars. He knew the meaning behind the phrase "To put yourself into your work", but he knew that phrase paled in comparison to what he was about to do. He took hold of the light within himself, he called to it with all the surety of his heart, and it exploded into being in his hand. There, aloft in his fist, was the brilliance and gift of the Traveler itself. For so long he had stood as the beacon to which others rallied. For seventy years he had been the holdstay of the Tower, and the Order, and the people of the system. But there was another out there, almost ready to take the mantle.
He placed the Hammer into the center of the chamber, watching as it reacted with the silver scale, falling apart inside the Conductor, becoming a wall of burning fire that consumed more and more of the Silver until it roared and crackled with energy within the chestplate. Saladin again dragged the rag against his face, exhaustion almost overtaking him. He had not given all his light, he still had enough to live, still had enough to call upon if he had to, but he knew that he had given the majority of it over to the armour of his protege. For now, he could put aside his worries. He had ensured that he was not truly the last of the Iron Lords, for while his Student lived so to did the lessons they carried. And though he knew he would lead the Order for many years yet, he took a moment of quiet pride as he imagined the future that it would have under the one he was sure would become his eventual replacement. He took a hammer -mundane, this time- and chisel, and etched these words into the collar of the armour: "Halstead Peak. Six Fronts. Twilight Gap. The Moon." Then, beneath that inscription: "The first rule of war, is to duck."
He strongly hoped that the advice wouldn't come as a surprise to them.
Hey all! Decided to make a second chapter that I think you'll like better than the first. It felt pretty natural to write, so here's hoping that's some skill coming back :P
Anyhow, I'm going to say it's acceptable to mix some time up, given Bungie revealing new worlds that were supposedly inhabited before D2, so enjoy the nebulous timeline lmao.
Hope y'all enjoy, if you did then come review the story so I know!