Lore:Meetings with friends and foes, old and new
From Destinypedia, the Destiny wiki
 |
Meetings with friends and foes, old and new is a Lore book introduced in Monument of Triumph. Entries are unlocked by collecting case files, which are only available in any destination with an active Distortion event. It details the perspective of various characters as the Prophecy Crisis is looming over them.
The Pilgrims, the Birds, and the Traveler
Mama touches her nose to mine and says we'll see the Traveler today. After we reach the top of the mountain range, after the trees clear, we'll see it floating way up high over the City, and we'll be safe. The Traveler keeps the people in the City safe—that's what everyone says it's there for.
I hope we're close. My shoes are getting holes in them. The ground gets rocky as we climb higher into the mountain. It's cold here too, but we're not cold. My new friend, Béla has a fire he carries in his hand.
We're traveling with people Mama calls "pilgrims." They help us. They helped us when Papa got sick. They helped us when our farm got burnt by the rain. They helped us when Mama said we needed to go far away to be safe.
And when the pilgrims get hurt, little metal birds heal them. Béla says they're Ghosts, but Mama says ghosts aren't real. I talk to the birds a lot. Fiz, Pops, Groendlewic, and Wort. They tell me about the Traveler. I think the Traveler is their mama.
We reach the top of the mountain. I run through the trees. I want to be the first one to see. The birds flutter around me as I look out to the valley. I see a big wall, and I see a big city, and then I see the Traveler.
The sky is empty around it. It's alone. Wort says it looks different from what he remembers—the pretty triangle is new. There are big, old scrapes on it. Like my knee that has a scar shaped like a fish.
Everyone gets so excited when they see the Traveler, but I get sad. The Traveler got hurt but has no one up there—no birds, no mama. I look up to the birds, to the pilgrims, to Mama. I grab her hand. She wipes away my tears and touches her nose to mine.
When we reach the City, the pilgrims talk about finding other pilgrims to help more people like me and Mama. The Traveler hangs low above us, just out of reach. The scars look so deep. Béla asks if I want to get up on his shoulders; I do. I still can't quite reach, but I tilt my head up and know the Traveler can feel the touch of my nose.
Tomorrow
Crow stared down at the list of digital missives on his projectors and glared. "This job has been nothing like I expected," he told Ikora on a live connection.
"Why do you think the other Hunters shied away from the position?" It had taken him a while to realize some of her questions were bemusements. Sometimes, she reminded him of his sister.
"I hadn't noticed." It was true. "They haven't accepted me. I'm not sure what it's going to take."
"You're in charge. You'll never quite be one of them."
Crow's eyes narrowed. "I've got your list. What's going on with Zavala?"
A momentary silence. "It's a list for the future. Zavala asked for it himself."
"Ever since Kepler, the future and the present mean the same thing to you. The Guardian, too."
"I'd be lying if I said this has nothing to do with the Nine. What do you have?"
"Saint-14. He knows what he fights for, and he puts the people of the City above all else."
"Giving him the seat is giving a side table to Osiris."
As far as Crow knew, Osiris was still considered an exile, as much as his presence was welcomed these days. He couldn't tell whether she meant this pejoratively. "Sloane is next."
Tactically brilliant. Grit off the charts. But they went on.
Zavala always said the Guardians are not a military. Crow almost suggested that they do away with the position, but continued down the list instead. They spoke through the night. Contemplating the future.
Endling
The vote for his induction was complete, and Xûr stood for his formal farewell in the chalkstone temple, its roof facing the stars and rings above. The Priestess gestured towards both of Xûr's arms, smearing wet black silt on his upturned palms.
"We came from the dust. We burrowed into flesh for warmth," The Priestess chanted, drawing nine circles across his bare chest.
LET ME BE FIRST
"I hear them louder now," Xûr smiled to the holy woman, and her tentacles gestured warmly in return. The Jovians of the Many Moons had been so pleased to hear the gods were claiming one of their own.
The Priestess gestured to the ringed planet above, neighbor to their world, "The Alchemist foresaw our future and brought us permanent hosts from the world of the Third!"
I SAW YOU, the Alchemist says in Xûr 's mind.
"We filled life where our hosts were lifeless, remade our new countenance to suit Jovian form, and the Nine made us whole," the Priestess lovingly gestured with a flick of her tentacles.
YOU ARE FIRST YOU ARE A VEHICLE YOU ARE MEANS TO ESCAPE MY PRISON
"—now Nine have chosen our son, our Xûr—"
LOOK HOW I SHAPED YOUR KIND TO ULTIMATELY SHAPE YOU
Xûr's feet lifted from the ground. He grew fearful.
I ONLY NEED YOU
"Something is wrong," Xûr cried. He looked out over the crowd, thoughts contorted.
I ONLY NEED YOU
Xûr expends the last of his personhood pleading with his god, his painted brow begging for preservation. But his eyes blazed blue, his hand raised on his own, and the last of Xûr's free will burned away as the Alchemist turned the atmosphere of Titan to nitrogen.
Celeritas
"Are you ready?" Savathûn asks Immaru. Her great claw cups his narrow roundness, just enough to keep him close.
Immaru's shell shivers, a little fuss of motion for no reason but that Savathûn holds him. "What have I got here but you?" he says. It is a scoff, an offhanded thing. "Lead on, then. I wanna know where we're going."
Savathûn lays one finger across her face, echoing a human gesture though it means nothing to her own chitin and scale. "It's a secret," she tells him.
"Always with the secrets." He isn't offended. He knows Savathûn's power, and where she divines it. But he loosens himself from her grip, and she lets him–only a second slower than he might have liked.
"We shall see my sisters again," she promises him. "Xivu Arath and her narrowboat on the Sea of Screams… and Eris, oh, sweet Eris."
"Still your sister, after everything?" Immaru circles her crown.
"She hatched from her flesh and molted into my sister." Savathûn tells him because he would do well to remember this truth. It will ever be true. "Sisterhood cuts both ways. I have killed my sisters before, and I shall do so again."
"Now we're talkin'. Let's go." Immaru vanishes in a puff of Light, a scattering of scale-dust under her wing.
There is only the path forward, and Fundament far, far behind, the palest of remembered glints in the long deep night. Without further ceremony, Savathûn gathers herself, and she slips between stars.
Dissentience
"There's this placid, undisturbed expanse. Like a still lake. But… all around me?" Lodi stared into his steaming cup of tea, intent on his recollection.
"And then someone starts shouting, but I can't make out the words. Then there's another voice. And another. Soon it's a giant mob, all shouting gibberish."
"And the smooth surface, the still lake. It starts quavering. Or… oscillating? And each new voice makes it more turbulent. And I feel sick, like…"
"Seasick?" Orin suggested, peering at Lodi over her own teacup.
"Sure. But I'm the sea, if that makes sense. The noise keeps building and building, until I feel like my skull is about to burst. I lash out to make them stop and… then I wake up."
The Nine-touched pair were seated on a terrace in the Bazaar, overlooking the street vendors below. A pre-Collapse ceramic teapot rested between them.
Orin wrinkled her nose in distaste at a long-dormant memory. "I can recall similar experiences, as far back as my service to Mara Sov. The barrage of gibberish is especially familiar."
"It's strange because it doesn't feel like me," Lodi explained. "It feels foreign. Hostile."
"That's because it's not your dream," Orin supplied. "Or even a dream at all, but a… vicarious experience."
Lodi opened and closed his mouth, flummoxed.
"Emissaries translate the Nine's messages into human speech and thought," Orin elaborated. "But what you're describing is the raw experience of BEING the Nine. Or one of them. The remoteness and abstraction sound like V."
"And that shouting mess of voices…?"
"That's what our sentience feels like to them. The Outers, at least. An overwhelming barrage of noise, disturbing their pristine environments."
"Geez. That makes the Outers seem… almost reasonable." Lodi frowned. "Who doesn't want peace and quiet? But their solution—to wipe us all out—can't be the only way."
"My very presence here proves that the Nine are not infallible," Orin offered. "I've come to believe there's another solution out there. One they haven't considered."
She smiled sympathetically. "And we all trust you and the Guardian to find it."
SEAT OF RUIN
Xivu Arath draws a cleaver from the chitinous scabbard within her thigh and plunges it into the deck of the Dreadnaught. She looks back to Toland, the Shattered unsure if his information regarding her throne's location was to be believed. With a turn of her blade, the Sea of Screams twists; Ascendant nebulae flow in rushing torrents, splitting against the blade like thickened fog to reveal her lost throne world.
Ripping her blade upward, she cleaves the border open. Ascendant hallows give way to fetid, blackened rot. The Black Terrace looms over desiccated ruin. Exposed bone walkways crest through split tissues. Hive banners hang in tatters from the battlements with three glowering jade eyes set in the sky. The eyes fix on Xivu; before her materializes a vengeful specter resembling Eris Morn.
THE WITCH OF VENGEANCE LEAVES A SHADOW OF HERSELF TO DEFEND HER CLAIM
A PRETENDER IN PLACE OF A COWARD
The three-eyed specter draws Eris's hooked blade. Xivu charges forward and unleashes a flurry of swings trailed by ghostly soulfire after-strikes. The specter parries, shifts between the onslaught of blows, and retaliates with a thrust that hooks into Xivu's throat.
The Hive god of war laughs, spurting blood down the specter's blade and onto the bone floor. Her burning eyes bore into those of the shadow-Eris.
I AM WAR
YOU CANNOT KILL WAR WITH VIOLENCE
Xivu grips the hooked blade and tears it violently through the side of her neck and away from her body.
YOU CANNOT SILENCE WAR WITH VENGEANCE
She holds the weapon aside as it bites into her claw and bears down with her own cleaver on the defenseless specter, howling with gurgling laughter. The strike cuts the vengeful thing in twain.
Xivu Arath's throne world thrums as Eris's protective spell falters, and the specter fades along with the three watchful eyes in the sky.
Five worlds hang in a clearing skyscape: Fundament, a fractured Torobatl, Luna, and two shadowed beyond. Dominions of War.
VENGEANCE WILL LEAD THEM TO WAR
WAR WILL BE THEIR UNDOING
AND THEIR BLOOD WILL REBUILD MY THRONE
What Remains
.87 finds me in the depths of the network, inside a sea of simulations. The Echo continues to fight me, hemorrhaging Te'Qal's memories.
My time as Conductor is ending; I have nothing to replace it with. I am haunted, I am agonized by grief, and I know now my pursuit of Chioma will extend into perpetuity. I am spent, options exhausted even as the network spins new simulations for me to tread. I have no purpose left. I could obtain .87's Chioma. But I can't. I can't.
"You know what burdens you," .87 says.
I do. I weep. She is right. I am exhausted and haunted. I betray Chioma one final time and command myself to let her go.
Te'Qal abides, disintegrates, and I am weightless.
I see my Chioma. It's the moment I end her. I have everything I had been searching lifetimes for, and instead of embracing her, I kill her.
Her eyes are vacant of her Exo soul, the metal of her shell dull and lifeless. I discard her—I discard mountains of her—and climb so I never have to look down at what I have done. I ignore every summit; I must go higher.
I must turn.
I force myself to turn, and I beg with every fiber of my being that I will not see what I know is there. What I put there. The mountain range of my loss stares back at me with hollow eyes.
The Echo is gone, suffering its final command from a causal mind.
I understand. My Chioma is gone.
I would have stopped myself had I looked with clear eyes. I realize I haven't thought about her in an age, not in all the years I've chased the idea of her. I see her now. It's too late.
The same accusations blaze in .87's countenance. The potential of the remainder of my life stretches before me.
I collapse.
What have I done?
Sixth Sense
Petra leads Austyn, Sjari, and Ylaia through the halls of Eleusinia, guiding the Techeuns through Taken corruption and across perilous rafters spanning an unending depth below until reaching a tall marble carving of a woman. There, Mara Sov awaits them. Petra and the Techeuns bow in the presence of their queen.
"An agent of the Nine reached into your dreams as they did in mine, offering…" Mara Sov's voice washes over the party before pausing in an uncharacteristic tremble. "Commune with me under the gaze of Sjur's effigy. Let us see if their offer carries true or false hope."
The three do as they are told. Days pass as they scour Sol, until a faint image of a tall huntress catches Sjari's notice in a distant dark fold of space, standing beside Xûr of the Nine. Mara pounces at the opportunity, casting the party towards it. But when they arrive, only Xûr of the Nine, backed by the great mass of Saturn looming behind him, is present.
"What game is this, messenger?" Mara asks.
"Daughters of Light and Dark who come seeking, Queen Regent of the Dead Reef… the Nine have heard of your plight and offer a bargain."
Austyn begins to step forward, but Mara grips her shoulder. Austyn freezes, stunned that her queen would deign to touch her, before processing the danger of Xûr's proposition.
"Have you finally come to claim your responsibility, tool?" Mara's voice is serrated with restrained bloodlust.
"I am only a messenger. VI of the Nine offers an end to your pain: Sjur Eido remains, lost in time."
"It is easy," Mara says, "to claim such a thing. 'Lost in time' is a terribly convenient state." She is fishing. Her stoicism she keeps by bare inches.
"This is how it was," Xûr says, and he tells her.
"The Nine arranged for an anointing of a weapon, creation through battle. They placed their pieces, and they reached out."
Huginn and Muninn she fought, and strove bravely, a last dance between old comrades. And on the precipice of victory—the Nine touched that space. One two three, Huginn and Muninn and Sjur Eido, all in that moment overcome by the Nine's reach. Together faltered. Drew. Loosed. Fell.
"And as Sjur fell, perhaps it was a wish— Or was it? Whatever her final thoughts were, they feasted as they fell still for the last time. And Sjur is sent onward, to the place where she began.
Is that enough?"
It is a message carried a long way, scripted to play on the heart. Mara holds perfectly still. It is truth enough. She puts composure on like a cloak.
Xûr continues, "You will not assist the City on Earth. Adhere to this offer, and your search will find purchase. Deny, and your search will never end."
"Is the future so unclear when your specks of dust are unaligned in their motives?" Mara smirks. "You would not make an offer I could refuse, and so I DO refuse. Your offer has given me the hope I need and the knowledge to peer into time, not place. Why do you think I permitted your entrance into the snare of our dreams? What punishment awaits your failure?"
