Interlude: Grief
Denial
Her knife was there. Right there. Right where he left it. She was going to come back and pick it up. He knew she was. Ikharos waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.
Someone was standing beside him. Someone took his hands and said, "I'm sorry."
What for?
He looked at them. Quantis balked at the sight of him, gaunt and haggard. His time in the City - the Dreaming City, not home - hadn't done him any favours. She swallowed and pointed back the way they'd come. "It's time," she reasoned. "Zavala's looking for a report."
"Dragon's dead," Ikharos mumbled. "Techeuns're freed. What else is there to say?"
"They're dead."
He didn't want to hear it.
"Mervath."
Titan. Old friend. Charity worker. Couldn't hurt a fly. Not unless it took aim at good, innocent people.
"Oisín."
Warlock. Star student. Diplomat. His knowledge of Eliksni and Cabal culturisms rivaled Ikharos's own.
"Lennox."
No. No. No. Nonononono, she wasn't dead, she wasn't, she couldn't be.
"I'm sorry." Quantis trembled. There were tears in her eyes and a quiver in her voice. "I'm so sorry."
-Consensus meeting 3344.27
CZ: I didn't authorize this.
IT: Had to be done.
FWC-L2: Did it?
IT. It was a dragon. A Taken dragon. It killed Cayde. It mauled the Reef.
NM-EH: There's no proof to indicate-
IR: There is. Reports from Regent Commander Petra Venj and Paladin Hallam Fen confirm it.
FWC-L2: That doesn't excuse you from carrying out this... this execution.
IT: It was a bloody dragon, Lakshmi. What the hell did you expect me to do? Let it go on turning the Awoken holy city into a nightmare pit? There's an army in there. An army. Of Taken. Some of the strongest I've ever faced.
NM-EH: You opened the gates.
IT: I did. For Cayde.
NM-EH: Is that why they died? For Cayde?
CZ: Enough.
FWC-L2: No. It isn't. Guardians died on this fool's errand. Including your compatriot - Lennox-2.
IT: She's not... She isn't...
DO-AJ: She's dead.
IT: There wasn't a body.
FWC-L2: You're a veteran of the Great Hunt. You know they don't leave bodies.
IR: That is enough! This is a debriefing, not an interrogation!
NM-EH: But this isn't the first time this has happened. The Black Garden, the Wolf Rebellion, that mess in Hellas Basin - you act without conferring with us, Torstil, again and again. Each time you draw the attentions of our enemies onto this city with no concern for the repercussions.
IT: I saved this city. I saved this entire system. I killed Oryx.
FWC-L2: That is no excuse. Your disdain for the Consensus's decisions is well documented.
IT: You lot allowed the Great Disaster to pass.
CZ: Ikhar-
IT: You weren't there to see Wei Ning die. You weren't there to hear Eriana scream. You're the Consensus, our ruling body - but you don't listen to the experts. Oryx died before you could decide anything. Eris and I did that. Eris: who you all ignored.
NM-EH: And now she ignores you.
IT: My personal life isn't your concern, Hideo.
FWC-L2: Guardians have died. Their Ghosts have died. All on an unauthorized mission organized by yourself. Since you seem so adamant on operating outside our jurisdiction, perhaps you might benefit from being removed from our influence - permanently.
IR: Lakshmi, that's too far.
FWC-L2: His actions killed his own partner - because he didn't do as we decreed. All in favour?
NM-EH: I.
IR: No.
CZ: Ikharos.
IT: No, she's… Oh Traveler above, she's dead... she's... she's gone...
IR: He's in no position to be exiled. He needs help.
FWC-L2: We have offered him help before. He refused.
IR: He's not Osiris!
FWC-L2: No. Osiris operated under the belief that he was aiding the city's interests. Ikharos does not respect the city's interests.
IT: Exile me.
CZ: What?
IT: I'm done here. The Factions were a mistake - how hasn't Lysander's revolt taught you that?
NM-EH: We stopped Lysander.
IT: Trading one group of extremists for another. No, I'm done with this. The Reef was ailing, Cayde died, and none of you did anything.
DO-AJ: That's not true.
IT: It is. Don't lie to me. The Awoken are going to ask for help sooner or later. Be sure you make the right decision.
IR: Wait-
FWC-L2: All in favour?
NM-EH: I.
DO-AJ: I. I'm sorry, Ikharos. Perhaps, in time, when the fleet moves-
FWC-L2: Then we have majority. Commander?
CZ: Don't.
FWC: If you won't, I will. Warlock Ikharos is hereby banished from the Last City. You have two weeks to collect your personal belongings.
IT: [EXPLETIVE] you.
Anger
"You ready?" Quantis asked. Her bow was drawn.
Ikharos nodded, mashing an explosive into the tube of his grenade launcher. "Ready."
They delved into the shadowed twin of the Dreaming City. The gates swung open of their own accord, welcoming and daunting all at once. The curse was a giddy thing, all too eagerly awaiting the chance to meet them face to face. He was going to burn it down. His sight was red with rage, and he was going to burn it all down.
The packs of Taken within the ravaged Throne World flexed and rippled like a single giant organism. They screamed and writhed with the agonized pleasure of their own tortured existences, making of themselves a hassle to all free-willed entities. Namely, he and Quantis. They would have brought Octavius too, but he was still mourning Mervath. Not like they weren't mourning either. Sure, what did they matter? An Exile and a lone scout - what a miserable duo. Rogues and vagabonds as far as the brass were concerned.
Quantis shot her Void-formed bow. The shrieking, splitting Psions were dragged together by spindly violet fingers. She played precision, pinning snipers with arrows while Ikharos finished off the tethered Taken with a single roar of his launcher. She was the better shot by a wide margin, but he excelled where close quarters was concerned and covered her when a couple of Knights and teleporting Captains charged at them with naked blades.
When all was done, and they were coated with Taken ichor, Ikharos trudged on through the Dark puddles and broken bodies without a care. His armour was stained black, glittering with stars. It really didn't matter; the Void was going to purge it all soon enough.
The Ogre looming over them was big and well-warded, garbed in a shimmer shield of impenetrable energies. Ikharos grabbed its attention while Quantis ran around the room, cutting down Wizards with that thin blade of hers. Good thing it was Veist-make - the Taken witches had Void shields that would have otherwise given them problems. She grabbed up the dying essences they left behind and, after collecting all four, dropped them in a strange-looking Awoken machine to overload the room with acausal potential.
Because why not?
The giant Ogre's shield fell apart at the seams. Ikharos tossed a massive Nova Bomb full of bubbling wrath. The former Hive creature didn't even have time to dissipate into Taken energies; it disintegrated on the spot. Grand. That settled that.
"Not leaving any for the rest of us?" Quantis weakly joked.
Ikharos didn't reply. Couldn't. His mouth was full of glass and fire, and the moment he was going to open it everything was going to burn.
Quantis tilted her head. "Are... are you okay?"
He shook his head. No. No. I am not okay. She's gone, she's gone, there's this big gaping hole in my heart, I think I sent a Nova Bomb the wrong way, I'm nothing but Void now - killing and destroying everything I see.
No, I'm not okay.
There was a Witch at the end of it. Her scratchy, inhuman voice intimately whispered into his ears, "Would you ask about my mother?"
He already knew who her mother was. A queen of stolen domains; a duelist wielding a sword forged from secrets and puppet-strings; a clever old abbess who thought she could outsmart God. God was watching. God was hungry. God was well on his way to being fooled. God was a Worm, no, a rapidly shortening council of Worms. Two parts of five had already been struck down - first by the king he slew, by the face that haunted his dreams, the soul that lurked on the edge of his vision, and the second by his comrade-in-arms, his partner, his sister through war and death and gasping survival. Both slayers were dead, dead, dead, dead because of him.
The Witch had guards. A trio of potential suitors, perhaps. Those who had come to win her clawed hand in matrimony. They saw him and they grew jealous - because he boasted more power, he boasted more glory. Ikharos wanted none of it. He lifted his hands and let the Void loose. It swept forth like a river having burst its dam, flooding the room. The Witch flew above it, but her suitors bellowed and roared with pained fury as the energy bit into the trunks of their legs. They were Darkbades, young and recently painted over with blood - but they were no Alak-Hul.
Quantis strode through the lake of Void like a fishing crane, completely in her element. She was a Nightstalker, one with the hungry beyond, and he had served her three fat fish on a silver platter. Her violet blades flashed - and the Darkblades were rendered inconsequential.
The Witch laughed. She stared at him, through the visor of his helmet and into his eyes. It wasn't mocking hatred - no, it was amusement tinted with respect.
Burn.
The Void lake lit up with indigo flames. Her laughter turned to screams. Her whispers, though, they never ceased, even as her body smoldered away.
"You need help," Quantis told him. She was afraid. Of him. "Is there anyone you can talk to? Jaxson?"
"No," Ikharos said instantly. He was terrified of seeing his friend's face. He could imagine the accusation in the Titan's eyes, pointing right at him and saying 'this is all your fault'. "Not him."
"Anyone else? Hell, Ikharos, there has to be someone."
There was. One. Not someone he liked. Not someone he would normally talk to. Not someone he ever considered a friend. "Sure," Ikharos said. Maybe it would do him good. Everything hurt. He felt like he was on fire. Like there was molten plasteel running down his throat and searing into his flesh.
He needed something to hurt. And he knew just the person.
"You're still alive." Persaeus stood on the banks of a river. His river. Or it used to be, before they had both been 'liberated' of their holdings. "Been a long time."
Ikharos grunted, dropped to his knees by the water's edge and cupped his hands just below the surface. He lifted it up and drank deeply. It was cold. Fresh. Natural. Probably not a wise thing to do, considering how much pollution was likely leaking into it from the ruins of Nur-Sultan upriver. The place had been razed much like London - Devil-work.
"You still with that... uh... what's her name?"
"No."
Persaeus raised an eyebrow. "Somethin' happen?"
"She's dead."
"Is that any big surprise? It's what happens to most who run with you."
Ikharos shuddered. "Shut up."
"Am I wrong?"
"I didn't kill him."
"You got sloppy."
"I loved him. He was a father to me."
"And me."
"No." Ikharos stood up. "To you he was just polite."
Persaeus smiled meanly. "More than that. Socrates wintered with me. We talked, long and hard. Sometimes about you."
"I don't care," Ikharos tiredly replied. "I really, really don't care."
"He had a lot of things to say. Maybe he would've said them to you. If, y'know, you hadn't gotten him killed."
"I didn't get him killed."
"Didn't you? Gathering in all those mortals made noise. Heard about it all the way over here."
"So?"
"Socrates left my place to find you. To set you right. It was out in the open they jumped him."
"He wouldn't have-"
"Told you off? Why not?"
"It was the right thing to do."
"They're insects," Persaeus snapped back. "And where are they all now? Dead? Have to be. Humans have an expiration date. That's their thing. Mayflies, really."
"Shut up."
"This here's my river, twig. Mine. I'm the King of the fucking Ishim. No one tells me to shut up. Only voice worth hearing 'round these parts is mine." Persaeus stomped to the edge of the river. He spat. "You don't come crawling back to me and say-"
Ikharos Blinked to the other side and punched Lennox's knife up under Persaeus's chin. The old Warlord gurgled, eyes going wide. He fell over and did a jig, incapable of anything else. Likely had something to do with the sixteen inches of steel in his brain. Ikharos scowled and pulled the knife free. He waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Something flashed out into the material realm, quick and scared. Ikharos snatched it out of the air - but not before Persaeus gasped and jumped back to his feet. He froze in place the moment he saw what Ikharos was holding.
"Don't," he whispered.
Ikharos narrowed his eyes. "How many have you killed over the years?"
"Don't. Please."
"How many innocents?"
"Ikharos-"
"Can't believe I turned a blind eye to all this over a fucking memory. You're scum. Socrates was wrong to trust you, to treat you right."
Persaeus took a cautious step forward. "I don't want no trouble."
"Neither did they."
"They... they weren't like us. They made demands of me. Me!"
"That's your problem."
"How's it my problem?!"
"You're too lazy. It was well within your power to see them safe, see them fed and supplied, but you didn't. Never. Not once. From the moment you breathed your first you were a cruel, cruel man, taking and taking and never once giving back - never doing any good."
Persaeus glowered. "This world-"
"Is insane," Ikharos finished. "And cold - so cold. I know. Doesn't mean we have to join it."
"Please."
"... I should've done this a long time ago." His hand filled with Arc. The Ghost caught between his fingers gave one final scream before it burst. Ikharos closed his eyes against the blinding light. When he opened them, Persaeus was on the ground and glaring up at him, face torn between horror and fury and pain.
"I'm going to-" Persaeus started to whisper.
A Golden Gun shot ended his threat before it began. The other Risen was left as nothing more than a silhouette of ash on the dusty ground. Ikharos twirled about, Arc in hand - then stopped in place. The Hunter opposite him was of the ragged kind. His cloak was half-poncho, tattered towards the edges. And his helmet... Ikharos knew that sleek racer helmet. The Golden Gun still burned in the man's grasp, but it was pointed down at the river bank.
Ikharos let go of his Arc. The Hunter allowed his Gun to flicker away. Neither said anything for a looong time.
"You've been booted," Shin muttered.
Ikharos shrugged.
"There's a fire in you. Can see it clear as day."
"Gotta get it out."
"Who's on the hitlist?"
Ikharos shrugged again.
"That big?"
"That big."
Shin nodded gravely. "Thirsty?"
A tiny tin kettle balanced on a grill over a flickering fire. Shin brewed some coffee. Ikharos declined; he hated the stuff.
"Still only for tea?"
Ikharos nodded. He collapsed by the edge of the fire, gathering in his limbs to curl up closer to its heat. "Not much anymore," he gasped. Everything hurt - his anger, his Solar, his beaten body, his very soul. It was torture. He tapped his sternum. "Only got this now."
Shin sat opposite him and drank. The coffee was black and stinking. "You've been wronged."
"I have." Ikharos inclined his head.
"That why you're lashin' out? Or because what they did to you was wrong?"
Ikharos looked up. "You are so like your old man."
Shin cracked a smile. It looked... wrong on him. The Man with the Golden Gun wasn't supposed to smile. "He liked you."
"And I him."
"I like you."
"And I you." Ikharos closed his eyes. "But you'll kill me without a second thought."
"If I thought you were headed over that edge, sure."
"I'm well past the edge. I'm free-falling."
"The edge must have very different definitions to the two of us. I'm talkin' 'bout the Deep." Shin cocked his head to the side. "You're not divin' yet. Just riding into the night, safety off."
Ikharos shuffled. "Why were you back there?"
"Followin' you."
"Why'd you kill Persaeus?"
"Why'd you kill his Ghost?"
"He was a cruel man. I'm washing my hands of him."
"The past can't be so easily shaken off."
"Can't it? Could be that just works for you." Ikharos held out his hands to the fire's stinging warmth. "I remember when you were just a little lad, clutching at your father's legs. Can't ignore that. Can't shed the BEFORE. Not like the rest of us."
Shin leaned forward. "I grew up."
"So you did."
"Don't approve?"
"You're a better bogeyman than Taniks ever was."
"Not a high bar to cross."
"Oh, it is. You've got notions of right and wrong. He and most others like him never did. All he wanted was to see blood fly."
"Still does, maybe."
"Maybe so." Ikharos barked a bitter laugh. "Bastard doesn't know how to leave us well enough alone."
Another Hunter appeared behind Shin and casually rocked up to the fire. Shin passed him a mug. "Callum."
Callum Sol gave Ikharos a curious look. "Torstil. You good?"
"Not really," Ikharos admitted. "Feel like tearing the Cosmodrome apart."
"Sorry, mate." Callum sat beside him, knocking their shoulders together. "Tough break."
"The toughest," Shin murmured. His eyes - flickering with Solar gold - darted over to Callum. "You know what must be done."
Callum frowned and nodded to Ikharos. "Really? You want him to hear?"
"Hear what?" Ikharos raised his head.
Shin dipped his head, slow and grave. "A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved."
"That in the Book?" Callum asked.
"Not quite. Might put it in the next."
Ikharos huffed. "Hear what?" he repeated.
Shin smiled again, all teeth and no joy. "We're fishing."
Callum sighed. "Are you sure?"
"Never more," Shin replied.
"I'm not questioning the plan. Just... will it work?"
"The temptation must go further. We've baited the hook with dark imaginings, but to truly gauge the ill-intent of those hiding behind the Light, we have to give them a clear path toward their darkest desires."
"And those who veer? Those who join my mad crusade?"
"We do as your namesake suggests."
"Thin the herd."
Ikharos looked between them, confused.
Shin went on, "Excise the weak few so that the whole may grow stronger."
"What if more join than intended? What if such vile messages speak to the fear that grips us all? Hate is easily sowed among a people on the brink."
"It's not the people we seek to judge. It is their protectors. We do this for the people. For the future."
"Not mine," Callum muttered.
"Funny," Shin said. His smile fell.
"Gotta get the jokes in while I can. Soon as I break rank it's all gloom and doom." Callum sounded solemn. His shoulders dropped. His Light receded.
Shin stood up. "You will become the darkest Shadow - the very thing they fear we will all become."
"And the Vanguard... they approve?"
"They say this playacting will foster genuine hatred."
"They don't know what you ask of me."
"And they never will."
"I'll be a villain."
"Only to those who do not truly matter."
Ikharos cleared his throat. "This is..."
"Dangerous talk," Callum finished. "We know."
"Not just dangerous. Dredgen talk, right? I thought-"
"We were done?" Shin inquired. "No. We're only getting started. The real work never ends."
"No." Ikharos looked back down at the fire. "It never does." He sighed. "I want no part of this."
Callum dropped a hand on his shoulder. "Don't blame you. For what it's worth, I really am sorry. She was the good kind. Same for you."
"Don't feel like the good kind. All I want is to hurt people."
"That's just the grief talking."
"Yeah, well, grief has a funny way of getting its point across." Ikharos got to his feet. "I've got my own grim work ahead of me."
"Not so fast," Shin murmured. "Got a proposition."
"Oh?"
"You still in a violent mood?"
Ikharos looked at his hands. They shook. "Think so."
"You're not..." Callum started to say.
"I am," Shin responded sharply. "Better him than the kid."
The cryptic remarks and dark secrecy was wearing on his patience. Ikharos snapped, "Tell me what the hell you're on about or I walk."
Shin crossed his arms. "All in due time. Can't spill yet."
"Fine. Guess I'll-"
"I'll send you coords. Give me a few months. Couple o' things to settle first."
Ikharos looked up at the darkening sky. There was certainly a few months' worth of work ahead of him. No shortage of monsters to hunt. No small amount of petty villains to cut down. "I'll be in the Belt when you change your mind."
"Noted. Keep an ear open Earth-side, you hear?"
"I hear." Ikharos strolled out of the fire's light.
He dreamed of the Witch. She grinned and laughed and huskily whispered sweet nothings into his ear, outlining in the air something terrible with her claws.
"Hello, dead thing. Come to slaughter my children? Me, perhaps? You die instead." Fikrul's ragged laughter receded back into static.
Ikharos groaned. "Hell. Him again."
Quantis ranged ahead, darting in and out of stealth. Stalkers and Screebs died and burst almost of their own accord - but on closer inspection Ikharos occasionally found the remnants of arrowheads lodged in the bloated bodies, hidden among the Dark ether cysts and rotting boils. His partner was a woman of the bow, always had been, and only rarely did her targets spot her before they too were pinned up with metal-forged darts. Quantis was a Nightstalker; a practitioner of the Void, much like he was. She moved with one foot in reality and another in the beyond.
Ikharos moved less subtly than she did. He was a Voidwalker first, and a Stormcaller next, but recently all he found himself capable of channeling was Solar. The flames came almost unbidden, turning everything around him to ash. Once, perhaps, he would have cared about the pain he dealt out so easily - but she was gone gone gone - but these were Scorn. Eliksni with empty hands were civilians; Scorn with empty hands were only looking to use their teeth. They were animals.
Quantis cut into the Scorn like a plasmacutter through bare flesh, and Ikharos swept in after her on wings of searing vengeance. They tore through the bloodied slums that once held refugees and civilians and a bustling underworld market, right into the messy temple roughly hammered into form for the undead Archon's purposes.
"My children... I bring them back, you kill them. You... a mindless executioner."
Was he? Ikharos supposed he was. Hard to think of anything other than KILL KILL KILL when she and gone were the only things on his mind. He wanted to share that pain, that big gaping hole of absence, and the Scorn were perfect.
"It brought pleasure killing my friends, I'm sure. Your uncontrollable bloodlust, taken out on all held dear." Fikrul reared up before him, still garbed in the sloppily-woven robes of a bandit-Archon on the brink of extinction. "Come, dead thing. Come and die for the last time."
Fikrul was perfect.
Quantis was afraid of him. But she still cared. She was a good friend. "You still need to head back for your stuff," she said quietly.
Ikharos imagined going home, to the little apartment shared by him, Jaxson and GONE, and he was beside himself with quaking terror. "No," he said, trying to make it sound like he didn't care. "Don't need any of that."
"But... Jaxson-"
"Take care of him."
Quantis balked. "Me?! Ikharos, I'm-"
"A better person than I ever was." Ikharos took her hand. "Watch over him. Please."
"Wh-what about you?!"
"I'm..." Ikharos waved helplessly to the Shore, still rife with violence and horror. Home, he meant to say. Just one more warlord in a place of pure anarchy. But home... wasn't this.
Home wasn't this.
He had no home. Not anymore.
Shin called. Gave him a location: somewhere on Earth, in the EDZ. Ikharos thought of dropping in to visit Devrim, grab some tea and catch up on the 'woe is us, we're the last two in the entire system with this awesome accent', but ultimately decided against it. Devrim was caring, fatherly, and would probably have tried to help him through his problems.
Ikharos didn't want help. He just wanted to watch things burn.
There was a locker at the proffered coordinates. Within it was a tracking device. Location? Titan. Ikharos liked Titan. It was a place of fierce wilderness that humanity could not tame. He liked knowing that some things were completely out of his control. It meant he didn't have to worry about trying to fight a moon-wide storm - because that was impossible, and no one would blame him for not trying in the first place.
The tracker led him to another chest, one left deep under the New Pacific Arcology's surface-level habitation centres. In that chest was a set of instructions: Burn Bright.
Ikharos burned the Hive out of their nests for miles in every direction. It seemed like the proper thing to do.
Xiān told him they had an incoming parcel, right through long-range transmat systems dotted across Titan's many arcologies. The parcel turned out to be a gun, scoured like bone. He knew the gun. He knew its history. It had taken friends from him.
Jaren.
Ikharos almost tossed it into the methane ocean. He chose instead to put it to good use and killed a couple more Hive with it. Then he popped into Gambit on a bloodthirsty whim and used it there. The Drifter didn't care; he only wanted to get paid.
And Ikharos... he wanted to hurt. To burn. Little Rose did just that. The opposing Invader looked so surprised when Ikharos hunted him down and put a bullet between his eyes. He looked doubly surprised when Ikharos hijacked the transmat system and invaded himself, putting down the other team three times over. No one could catch him - Taken or Guardian. They couldn't even put a scratch into his armour. Pity, that. He felt like a little pain would have drained away the all-consuming rage within, but oh well. Ikharos felt like Rezyl Azzir reborn.
And nothing was going to stop him.
At last, when the Gambit session was over and the other team were complaining to Drifter about "unfair odds" and "uneven matchmaking", Ikharos retreated first to his ship and then to Mars. He preferred the sound of Hive shells popping over Guardians screaming. It dredged up fewer memories.
Rose changed. It filled with his fire, his Light, and it cried out for change. It roared, like he had in Gambit, like he had in battle with the Dark's puppets, with the Scorn. It was full of rage, but- no. The rage was fading. Ikharos looked over the gun, saw its past, saw his past interlinking with it, and decided that the future had to be different.
"There has to be meaning in my roar," he muttered.
He set to work. Rose was no more. In its stead was Lumina, burning bright, bone-white and golden-thorned.
And it was perfect.
Bargaining
Ikharos fast grew tired of the fringes of the frontier. Petra called like she had so many times before, like so many other people had tried before, but he decided why not, let's hear a voice other my own - other than Xiān's, who's been chiding me for months on end. She offered him sympathies - those he could do without - and a place in the Reef - which was, admittedly, very enticing.
And she offered him an audience with the Queen.
Who was he to say no to that?
Mara looked down her nose at him. It could have just been because her throne was elevated, but this was her realm, her little pocket of willpower and me me me, so the position of the throne was entirely of her own making. She wanted to look down at him. She wanted him to feel smaller, lesser, a thing. Her eyes were narrowed, scrutinizing. Ikharos stood there, swaying with exhaustion both emotional and physical - and even maybe paracausal. He'd been burning his Light out faster than was in any way healthy, bleeding fire and wrath.
Eventually, after hours of her looking and him trying to keep his balance, she said, "Here you are, a dead knight born of a dead city, fighting in the name of a dead god for a dead world."
"Dead's subjective," he murmured in reply. "But yeah, that's about the gist of it."
Mara looked only slightly impressed, as if watching a monkey that had learned how to crack open nuts with a rock. "Falxipraesidio."
The grammar was off, and the word choice didn't make perfect sense, but he got it. Ikharos nodded, left, and on his way out came by Petra where she overlooked the Divalian Mists. He repeated the phrase to her. She handed him a key and a coin stamped with his own genetic signature. And that was that.
He was in.
Apartment in 4-Vesta, office in the Black Hull, and almost full access to everything in the Awoken databanks. All in exchange for him to try to figure out how to kill Fikrul (who'd annoyingly gotten back up again) and the Witch at the centre of the time-curse encompassing the Dreaming City (who'd taken a page out of Fikrul's book and came right back to life - along with her army).
So he studied - he, Ikharos, Paladin of Nothing, Master of no Crows, Warden of a nonexistent Prison, Wrath of Himself - how to kill the unkillable. He killed Fikrul almost leisurely, on every other weekend, and found some satisfaction in the familiarity of the bloody procedure. Lennox would have called it "going through the motions."
The Witch, though, was more difficult. Her name was Dûl Incaru, and after every instance in which he killed her she gave him dreams. Of them. Together. Drinking in an alcove within the very city they fought over, talking about everything from gods to logics to magics.
She sent him messages too, garbed in a multitude of disguises, but it was the dreams that hooked into his mind and remained with him forever after.
It. Never. Stopped.
Ikharos opened his eyes to a grey steel habitat roof and breathed slowly. There was an arm thrown over him, blue and sparkling with Light-and-Dark magic. No, two arms, draping over his front. He'd been drinking the previous night, sampling fine Pallas wines in an old bar where off-duty Corsairs celebrated and mourned their many victories and not-victories. There'd been a pair, man and woman, who approached him, curious if reserved, but upon figuring that he wasn't some big brute but a man with a special case of the will-not-die, they grew bolder. Bought him drinks. Cheered to his deeds done on their behalf: hunting Skolas, killing Oryx, knocking out all the Scorn Barons, slaying Riven. They'd heard of him apparently. Then... more. Ikharos had long since bled out the rage in himself, settled instead of trying to numb the loss with other sensations. Food and drink were happy little distractions, but he sampled them only occasionally. Pleasure, though, was rarer yet - though not something he'd completely given up on. Fame was something he had only second-hand experience with, courtesy of his tendency to keep a sizable distance between himself and civilized society. He hadn't intended on using it, because that was plain wrong, but the two Corsairs hadn't cared.
Maybe they'd all drunk too much. Or maybe the collective loss they each bore - him with Lennox, dear Lennox, and they with their armada against Oryx and all subsequent defeats at the hands of the Cabal and Scorn - had driven them to a night of alternatives.
He sat up, slowly, so as to not wake the bed's other occupants. The room was... somewhere in the barracks, maybe? Part of an old converted Golden Age escape ship, that was for certain. It had a bathroom with a working shower. Ikharos headed in, closed the door, and braced against the wall as a thick veil of anguish and scalding hot water fell over him.
Ikharos watched a bird of prey hunt.
It was on one of the converted asteroids of the inner Reef, where it fringed on the inner system and City-space. There were huge slabs of floating rocks and ice that had been converted into vibrant forest and living meadow. Ikharos caught a glimpse of a rabbit scrambling into the open, chomping down on grass and roots and whatever the hell the little critters ate.
There was a flash of movement, nearly on the opposite side of the asteroid. A kestrel, he noted. Gliding in the artificial atmosphere stretching from here to there to everywhere across the Reef. It was a small bird, but larger than the Earth equivalent. Awoken meddling, he supposed. It didn't take away from the animal's effortless, natural beauty. It caught sight of the rabbit and dove. The rabbit noticed, too late, and tried to run.
The kestrel hit it hard. Outstretched talons cracked bone and sliced into flesh. The little thing died instantly. And the kestrel - well, it had itself a feast that day before taking off to new asteroids and fresher pastures.
Maybe he should have done the same.
Depression
There was something on the moon. Something old and mean and horrifying. The usual, essentially. Luna only ever coughed up monstrosities. He was waiting for the day it would give him something good - like a bouquet of free enhancement prisms.
Oh, that would be the day...
Ikharos went to investigate after having freshly put down both the ghoul-Archon and the neverending Witch. The latter had spoken to him at some length the night before - even going so far as to name him Everwar, like some kind of twisted term of endearment. It gave him the chills. How long before the real God of War took offense and personally hunted him down?
He called up a couple of fellow Risen on his way to Luna. He stayed well away from the Hellmouth and Sorrow's Harbour; word was that Jaxson was leading a crusade against both the Hidden Swarm and the Nightmares - physical manifestations of the Darkness's malignant attentions. Instead, he and his companions stopped at the very edge of the Ocean of Storms, still close enough to feel the waves of Dark crashing over them.
It was oppressive.
"Well," Arthur nervously began, "this is grim."
Nasarya groaned. She was a sombre slip of a thing, whereas Arthur was bright and confident. Both were trusted, cared, reliable. Both were former students, having sought Ikharos out decades previous to learn all he had to offer. Together used to be a group of five, with jovial Oisín and inquisitive Mikhail, but one was dead and the other had cut all ties.
"He blames me," Ikharos said as the discussion eventually swung around to their missing members.
"I don't," Nasarya told him, honest and quiet. "It was a dragon. A Taken dragon. A disaster waiting to happen."
"A disaster I led us into."
Arthur smiled, but there was pain in it. Concern. Fear. He grasped Ikharos's shoulder and squeezed gently. "Not your fault," he said, incapable of anything else. He was a great companion but poor where comfort was concerned. Caring, yes, but incapable of acting on that care when the situation became dire.
Clouds of red miasma coalesced below, in the craters of Mare Imbrium. They took familiar forms - hauntingly familiar. An army appeared. It was the Great Disaster all over again. Ikharos dropped down, noticing that while there were plenty of shadow-Guardians his form was missing.
Best to play out the part, right?
Arthur and Nasarya went with him. Both were too young to have taken part in the real war so long ago, but their help was appreciated all the same. They fought with blood on their teeth and roars on their lips - roars with meaning. Ikharos flinched as a spectre-Eriana screamed, but he kept going. That was something he hadn't done before. Crota stood over him, surprise glowing in his green eyes, and Ikharos cut him down where he stood with a blade wrenched from the dead hands of a Swordbearer.
The scene shifted - and it became the Twilight Gap. Ikharos stood in the middle of a smoky creek, his attempt at a sortie getting himself and a band of followers stranded in the ocean of Eliksni beyond the City walls. He'd seen the Devils banner and went straight for it, heeding no warnings or orders from above the command chain. As far as he was concerned, there was no command chain. Not for him.
Taniks was there, laughing and killing in the distance. Closer yet was the tall form of Kridis, masked in a Servitor's protective energies, and there was the coldly efficient Phylaks, barking orders to lesser Devils all around.
But where was-?
Ah. There. Eramis, the Shipstealer, the Scourge of Baikonur - tunning her sword right through him. Ikharos snarled breathlessly as the wind was knocked out of him. He dragged himself along her crackling, thunderous blade, getting closer. She struggled, a dawning fear in her eyes, but the idea of letting go of her hard won blade never crossed her mind. Ikharos reached forward and burned her, catching her in the right side of her head and half blinding her with Voidburn. Unlike the BEFORE, though, he didn't stop there - because last time he'd been frightened of the pain, but now he almost welcomed it. His Void-wreathed fingers curled around her windpipe and he pulled.
For a third time the red mist morphed into something else. To the march. To Normandy. Ikharos struggled, he fought, he protected. Ghaul flew in- Wait, he wasn't supposed to be there, he wasn't supposed to arrive for another century and a half. And everyone died as a result, because he wasn't supposed to be there.
The red dissipated.
Ikharos was left on his knees, an apprentice standing at each shoulder. They were almost-children, really, not in maturity but in terms of belonging to him. The closest he'd come to being a father was with Josef, but the boy had been taken from him by time and human mortality. Jaxson was next, young Jaxson whom he had mentored and monitored, who he didn't dare face what with Lennox dead, Lennox dead, Lennox-
Lennox was dead.
And it was all his fault.
He said his farewells and retreated back to the shadowed safety of the Reef. He'd once upon a time considered the City to be the biggest mixing pot of culture and language in all of Sol, but that was wrong - because the Belt had it beat easy. Awoken ruled the Reef, true, but there were other peoples - alien peoples - who called it home just the same. Countless Eliksni settlements dotted the asteroids, and there were even places where Cabal deserters and rogue Hive hid away and simmered in hatred of all things Earthborn. Dead Orbit scavengers and ranging Hunters often passed through too, throwing in their two cents, and he filled in the rarely-seen Warlock niche quite nicely.
Ikharos wasn't surprised, then, when he visited a station built into the surface of 87 Sylvia to see a couple of nonhumans about. He had come for a couple of tachyon-crystal supercomputer datachips rumoured to have been found in the local wreckages. He wanted to clear a few things: like whether a Craftmind like Medusa could feasibly exist, that a Golden Age AI could survive the rigours of the Awoken people's rebirth into their pocket universe - the Distributary - and if he could use one custom-built by himself to clear away the lies and find a way to end the curse at the heart of the Dreaming City. Dûl Incaru was driving him to his wits' end. Her dreams-gifts were endless. Her voice made his skin crawl. Ikharos could scarcely sleep with her whispers hanging over his head every night.
He had grown to hate the Dreaming City.
The main port on Sylvia was semi-legal. It had been one of Spider's Associates that had pointed him that way. Once there, an ex-Corsair in the kingpin's employ informed him that the salvager in possession of the datachips was on the other side of the asteroid. The less nice part, apparently.
"And if you don't hurry," the Awoken man said, "she'll scurry back into the outer system."
Ikharos hurried. The other side of Sylvia was nigh-on lawless, with only members of Spider's Syndicate and a couple of leftover Awoken militants to keep the peace. He found the scavenger in an misty ether-den within a sealed kitbashed habitat-city, in the midst of bartering for a couple of minor Servitors. She was not what he had been expecting. For one, she was a large Eliksni of nearly Archon proportions. Secondly, she wore battlearmour with etched patterns and runes giving her away as a former Winter noble.
Lastly, he recognized her.
And she him.
She was a Baroness. Their eyes locked for but a moment before she returned to finishing off her transaction. Ikharos delved into the small crowd lounging and talking. There were Awoken, Eliksni, and even a couple of Uluru. One of those the big Eliksni was dealing with was a tusked Legionary, leading the small and scratched-up Servitors with a couple of Arcwire leashes. Ikharos took an empty seat by the corner, snagged a cup from a nearby table (filled with low-density ether, it turned out), and waited.
Ungoverned as Sylvia turned out to be, it wasn't entirely unmonitored. Being so close to Cybele and the heavily populated Awoken cities there, it received its fair share of Corsair patrols. A couple of Crows even filtered through, one sneaking into the ether-den to meet with a cloaked Psion, but if any recognized Ikharos they gave no indication of having noticed him. While he was clad in armour he never wore before to mask his identity (plenty of people about who wanted him gone), his robes still marked him for a Warlock, so he was being far from subtle.
Though subtlety was never really his game. It had been Lennox's thing.
Who was now dead.
Because of him.
The Baroness finished up. She walked outside. Ikharos waited a moment before following. He trailed her through the market, out of the public eye, and down one of the many abandoned corridors leading to the edge of the habitat. The purple skies of the Reef trickled through the massive viewports to his left. She waited for him, cast in soft starlight, with her upper arms crossed and the lower pair resting over two holstered pistols.
"Ikha Riis," she greeted cautiously.
"Grayris," he returned. "I hear you found something?"
"Are you willing to pay?"
"I am."
She tilted her head, stance giving away her surprise. "You are?"
"What, you think I'm just going to murder you and take it for myself?"
"Yes."
"Harsh." Ikharos leaned against the wall. "Gotta ask, how do you know it's me?"
She dropped to one knee and even then still towered over him. Her horned helmet - so much like Riksis's, so much like her old dead Kell's - was a fearsome thing. Speaking to it played hell with his nerves. "I know your scent."
"We haven't-"
"You were there when Aniixas was murdered."
Ikharos tensed. Shit. "I... was."
A growl built up within her chest, carrying towards her helmet and reverberating through the air. He could feel it as much as hear it. But then, it died off as quickly as it began. "You... did not kill him."
"No."
"The one who did is dead."
Ikharos sighed. "Yes." Poor Kauko.
"But you killed Draksis-kel."
"I did."
Grayris exhaled. It was a sound remarkably like that of a tiger's chuff except deeper, and tinged with slivers of a vaguely humanlike voice. "He invited the wrath of your kind by raiding your ships. No different to war between the old houses."
"What are you getting at?"
"You killed Oryx." Her upper arms uncrossed and reached up to undo the clasps of her helmet. She put it on the floor beside her. Her head was like that of a common Eliksni, with plumage of light blue setae running over her gaunt skull. Her eyes were bright; she must have been eating well, which was impressive given her size. "You avenged all those he killed. All those he Took."
"Suppose so." Ikharos removed his own helm with a flash of transmat.
Grayris's cold breath washed over him. It smelled like sweet-ether. "Thank you," she said softly. Or as softly as a twelve-foot alien warrior bristling with immense strength and a whole lot of razor sharp teeth could manage. She leaned closer, slow as to not set him off. "You are in pain, yes?"
"What does it matter?" He grumbled.
"I too lost my crew to the machinations of the Maw- of the Dark. I understand the loss you suffer."
"I'm not here for sympathy," Ikharos said sharply. The wound was still too fresh.
Grayris chuckled. "I am trying to... speak with you. No, nama, to... connect? You understand what I mean, surely. This language..."
"Why?"
"We are old, yes? Both of us. You are one of the first of the Lightmongers, and I... I am Riisborn. We are both dying breeds, eia?" She looked out the window with a (possibly) wistful expression. "Dusk has fallen for us all."
"The datachips?" Ikharos pressed.
"Ah. Eia. You wish to purchase them?" She stood up - then, to his surprise, invited him back to her ship.
Ikharos surprised himself even more by accepting.
Acceptance
He sat by the edge of a table in the custom-decorated Skiff's hold, tossing a set of Riisan building spheres from hand to hand. Children's toys, he'd heard. And momentos of the Eliksni's lost homeworld. It had been a long night, and... he needed time to think. Grayris clambered down from the command deck - which had been turned into something approaching a bedroom, as he'd discovered - and set a locked case onto the table.
"I had been tasked with retrieving these to reverse engineer an ancient machine-mind's systems," she explained, "but... I think we would all be safer if I reported back to say they were destroyed."
The Servitors she bought laid dormant in the far corner. One of them switched on, lazily turned to look at them, then went back to whatever the robot equivalent of sleep was called. Recharge, maybe?
"Could I ask which AI you mean?" Ikharos inquired. He felt... happier, for some reason. Was that right? More like... lighter of the soul. Not healed, not even close, but... capable of thinking beyond constant battle. At least a little. He knew who he had to thank for that.
Grayris shook her head. Her easy familiarity with human gestures and languages was strange, but she explained it away by citing her experiences on Venus and working within the old abandoned Ishtar Academy there. An aspiring noble probably had to get comfy with how humans talked and wrote when delving into Golden Age research and Ishtar-born computer intelligences. "I cannot."
"I take it not many Eliksni trust me?"
"Do you trust us?"
Ikharos snorted. "No."
"Then you have your answer." She shifted ever so slightly. "Do you know what we call you?"
"Psesiskar?"
Grayris laughed. "The Devils, perhaps. But we as a people?"
"No."
"We call you 'He-who-speaks-to-us'."
"That's-"
"Much like we call your Saint... 'He-who-hunts-us'."
Ikharos grimaced. "So I'm a bogeyman too?"
"Does this fear not please you?"
"Not really." He looked up at her. "You don't fear me."
She laughed again. It was like listening to a bear giggling - odd with a tinge of unnatural. "I am... No. No one is ever too old for fear, but I am too tired to act on it."
"Well, you 'acted' plenty before," he muttered. It was his little Xiān-influenced side speaking, full of ill-fitting mischief.
Grayris suddenly became serious, eyes narrowed and claws clacking together irregularly. "No one can know. Not my people, not yours - no one. It would be best if the world thinks we never encountered one another."
"Not a word," Ikharos readily promised. It sounded acceptable. "What's happening in the Jovians?"
"What?"
"That's where you were before coming here, to the Reef, right? And you talk about being commanded - so Eliksni are rearranging themselves into a new house?"
"I... cannot tell you."
He shrugged and sighed. "Understandable."
One of her hands touched his chin, pulling his gaze upward. "My people are ailing," Grayris whispered. "I will not betray them. Not for anything. Do not chase this."
"That's... fine." Ikharos pushed her hand away. "As long as it doesn't involve more war."
"There won't be. We are tired of it."
"So am I." Ikharos dropped the building spheres and grabbed the case. "Thank you."
Grayris inclined her head. "Fare thee well, Ikha Riis," she bade him in eloquent High Speak.
The datachips had limited success where his aims with them were concerned. Like most artificial intelligences big and small, the intelligence he designed had difficulty calculating anything to do with Dûl Incaru and the Dreaming City - what with everything being soaked in heavy paracausal potential. It was... well and truly disappointing. Ikharos fought Fikrul and the Witch again and again, never managing to put them down for good. His frustration drove him to wander during the lulls between their revivals, to seek out experts in the workings of the Hive and the broader Dark.
Eris wouldn't see him. Or maybe she would have; Ikharos didn't even try. They hadn't spoken for years and he wasn't going to be the one to break the cycle. He hadn't the energy for it. Not while he was only just beginning to recover. Drifter, though, was only too happy to meet up and talk all about how screwed up their universe was and how he had a 'way out'. Total nonsense, but Ikharos rode the idle gossip out. Right up until:
"All these treasures, brother, just waiting beyond the comforts of home: Luvial Crux, , Dead Star-Six, Exodus Prime, Fourth Tomb of Nezarec-"
That's what Drifter said. 'Exodus Prime'.
Something about it... snagged his attention, his focus, to the point of deafening all else. Ikharos hadn't heard of anything even remotely like it. He first disregarded it as yet another fabricated tale, but it kept coming back to him, kept him awake at night and the Witch-dreams at bay (temporarily). Something... something had him hooked.
In the end he called up Shin - and Shin confirmed that he'd heard the same thing from the same man. A once-off yarn was one thing, but a recurring story through two years of turmoil and change, to two different parties? There had to be something there. So Ikharos, looking for a distraction, expended all his energies into figuring out just what the hell the rogue Lightbearer was on about.
His first plan: head to the old archives once kept by Master Ives and find out if there was any weight to the Drifter's words. It felt good to have a project to concentrate on, even if it was unlikely to amount to much.
He felt... better.
AN: Massive thanks to Nomad Blue for editing this, dude's saving me from my typo-deaf self.