Ir Halak, Deathsinger

"And you, Ir Halak, you are a wizard too, as is the way of twins. I have been with Xivu Arath, who complains that you have made a song, and sung it in her throne world, and killed everyone who listened, quite irrevocably. Will we have songs instead of swords and boomers?"

- Oryx

Ir Halak, Deathsinger is one of Oryx, the Taken King's two daughters, created after Oryx cut a larvae in half. The Deathsinger sisters are first encountered in Last Rites, when the player is infiltrating Crota's death ceremony. They are found next to Crota's tomb and have to be avoided. Together with her twin sister Ir Anûk, Deathsinger, she is encountered and killed in the King's Fall Raid in Threshold.

The King's Daughters
"Father's going to eat our souls."

- Ir Halak, after failing to stop a Vex invasion

Ir Halak and her sister Ir Anûk were created from the same larvae cleft in two by Oryx's sword, Willbreaker. He praised them for their cunning and intellect, especially Ir Halak, for creating a Deathsong, the signature weapon of the Deathsingers and which gave the twins their title. After telling her of her aunt's displeasure, he asked if they would be using songs instead of weapons to fight their wars.

Later, as Oryx wrestled with his worm, Ir Halak and Ir Anûk began to die repeatedly in a certain place, ostensibly for no reason. When asked what they were doing, they launched into a highly technical description that Oryx eventually forced them to conclude simply: "If we hide our deaths from ourselves, we become harder to kill." Thus came about the birth of the first prototype Oversoul. Oryx ordered his son Crota to watch his sisters, fearing they were trying to go to the Deep, and to learn cunning.

Unfortunately it was Crota who needed watching. He began to conspire with his sisters and thought rashly he too would seek for himself a power. Using his sword he cut a hole in the Ascendant Realm, and unwittingly let in the Vex led by Quria, Blade Transform, who mocked his attempts to contain them by simply Blinking away from him whenever he attacked. As the Vex killed thousands of Hive and empowered themselves with The Sword Logic, Ir Halak called upon their fellow Deathsingers to assist her and Ir Anûk with the creation of the Annihilator Totem. The weapon proved effective, but the two sides entered a stalemate as Quria fled to the other side of the gate and launched repeated invasions of the Ascendant Realm, while the sibling's invasions of the Vex territory left them too weakened to finish off the Vex Mind. After one-hundred years of warfare, Ir Halak worried that Oryx would return and eat their souls for their failures. Upon Oryx's return, he punished only Crota for his role in the Vex invasion, but then built the Dreadnaught to protect his realm. Ir Halak and Ir Anûk built the weaponry and internal systems for the ship, allowing Oryx to concentrate his Ascendant power and obliterate any foe.

The Taken War
Billions of years later, Ir Halak and Ir Anûk joined their father in travelling to the Sol System to seek revenge upon The Guardian who slew their brother Crota. Although the Dreadnaught was halted in the orbit of Saturn following a battle with the Awoken fleet, the two sisters traveled aboard another warship to Luna to conduct the death ceremony that would send what remained of Crota's soul to the next realm. However, the ceremony was interrupted by the Guardian who slew Crota, who now sought to steal remnants of his soul to pass as a Ascendant Hive. Outraged at the intrusion and seeking vengeance for their brother, Ir Halak and Ir Anûk attempted to slay the Guardian alongside the other Deathsingers and Hive warriors present. The Guardian escaped their grasp thanks to the intervention of Eris Morn, who teleported them away from the Hive.

The sisters later barred the way to their father by challenging the Guardians sent to kill him. As their father's last line of defense, they used their Deathsongs to fight and unwrite the Guardians. They were eliminated, and the way to Oryx, the Taken King was clear.

Trivia

 * Ir Halak's Grimoire card can only be obtained by killing her in the Last Rites mission on the Moon without revealing your presence. It does not unlock in the King's Fall Raid. Despite the player being able to kill both Deathsingers in Last Rites, they can still be found in King's Fall. An explanation may be that they both have Oversouls, as they were the ones to discover them.


 * The second part of Ir Halak's name has two possible translations. The first is "Halak" translates to the Arabian word هلاك, which means destruction. The second is that "Halak" is both the name of a mountain mentioned in the Bible (Joshua 11:17, 12:7) and related to the adjective חלק (halaq), meaning smooth, from the verb חלק (halaq II), meaning to be smooth or slippery. The majority of Biblical translations posits it as a proper name.

List of appearances

 * Destiny: The Taken King
 * Destiny 2: Forsaken