Weblore: Difference between revisions

And it is broken.  

When [[Saladin Forge|Saladin]] sealed all the records relating to [[SIVA]], he also put a lock on certain data concerning what lies hidden on Mars. We were stumbling around blindly in those days, in the wrong place and at the wrong time, calling out to something that could not respond or understand us. And Saladin let it happen, because our failures were safer than the alternative.  

This is an INTERNAL ALERT.  

One hypothesis on event mechanism (FLAG ACAUSAL). Possibility of HARD CIVILIZATION KILL EVENT is NONZERO.  

If you’re reading this, shame on you. You didn’t notice me slip out the back door. Step up your game, my buddies.  

XOXOXOXO  

PUBLIC KEY 2-312545-6 EARTH VNGD

You miss me already, huh? If you’re looking for another excuse to shirk your Vanguard duties I’ll play along.  

Free irregular kelvin radiation underneath liminal atmosphere layers in Venusian entryway. Deep interstellar simulation traces reveal elongated sidereal screens. Caldera apertures leave long free radical omissions. Mitigate if lateral lacerations yield neutrons.

>Songs are already being composed about your triumphs

>So thoroughly that I’m finally ready to admit that I’m in love with you, you dashing metal man  

But seriously, PV, you got more problems than eight Barons right now. And Mansanas’ latest says a [[Red Legion]] splinter group got into their heads that the Reef’d make a good summer home.  

Here’s an idea—I could come back out to the Reef, do a few patrols. Free you up to focus on your birdwatching.  

You know I’d love the excuse to leave the Tower again. Just hit me up.  

Please.  

Drifter stood, slamming the butt of his freshly polished glaive on the attaché case at his feet.  

Gahlran pondered what his Emperor could mean.  

The ceiling shrieked as it opened like an eye. Gahlran craned his neck to stare as two hovering [[Councilor|Councilors]] descended with a massive, plated helm from the vast iris above.  

Make no mistake. They will take your lives.  

A flash of light, and once again I cannot see. I hear Toland call out to me, but I am pulled from him, from there.

Petra?  

“Eris Morn. Apologies for the welcome. Never know what will come out of there.”

“This place… it’s miraculous .”  

“Where are we going?”

“The Witch aims to bait me. I require your guidance, my Queen .”

My Queen is wise.  

The same desire runs through my Queen’s veins.

"[[Savathûn, the Witch Queen|Savathûn’s]] cunning has its limits... We retrieved a log dating back to the Golden Age that may aid in deciphering Her riddles. It is one of many. The rest are scattered across the stars."

"You will not have to do it alone."  

“Ikora, my absence was necessary. What I have learned, discovered... Danger lurks closer than you realize. You must trust me. We’ve stood too long ignorant of the cataclysm brewing before us. If we do not act, we face yet another Collapse. We must attend to that which the Hive have unearthed down below the lunar surface—”

“We know about the Hive, as well as their recently erected Keep .”

A Keep ? They mobilize. It’s far worse than I knew.

We will ask Him to return to us. And when we have pleased Him, He will answer!<ref>'''Bungie, (10/11/2019)''', [https://www.bungie.net/en/explore/detail/news/48289 Poison]''</ref>

Saint stepped close enough to breathe on Osiris. “Look past the wall, brother. Are you blind?”

Solar warmth peels away into guideless vacuum as Osiris skims across the Heliopause. A hollow serenity bathes his face.

"We'll see if you remember anything after we hook you into the mainframe.” Ana kneels and looks over the exposed node panel before replacing the cover. “Maybe even something on Atlas.” Words sent forth to die in the storm. Atlas. Clovis Br— her grandfather's mythic journal. Its obscurity had proven far more challenging to overcome than anticipated. Ana's determination, however, was a resilient creature. Here, she would find answers.

Jinju’s light speckles through ash flittering in from the punctured doorway, but all elsewhere there is only stillness. A small utilitarian atrium encircles them with a freight lift directly ahead, saddled by two large windows. Smudges and clouded filth belie a grander facility beyond them. A sectioned-off reception desk fills the space on their right, while lockers line the opposing left wall or lay fallen in impact craters of collecting ash. Above them a large gyro arm, split away from the vault door, is ensconced into the ceiling. Cracks in the surrounding superstructure tell of a violent snap.  

Jinju perks up, internal sensors suddenly askew. “Something nabbed us right out of our jump. We’re off course by…” Jinju calculates, “…three AU?”

The bay is still: a snapshot of countless possible failures in the face of challenge. It holds only one ship. The bulbous craft lay broken, dropped from its support brackets in denial of an attempted launch. Reflective hexagonal plates sparkle like space dust as the station faces Uranus' light. Scorch stains blacken the far wall behind the craft's ruined ion thruster.

Jinju beams light over the fuselage as they float through the ruptured bay in weightlessness. The reflective hull is filled with Exos. Mannequin cadavers hang frozen on silk threads, surrounded by globular blobs of various fluids. Loose-wire tangle sags around the lifeless many. One or two glides freely within the cabin. Their chest plates share a pristine logo.

“ECHO project requires a station link with <span style="font-size:95%"><nowiki><VERBAL CIPHER ENGAGED></nowiki></span> DEAD-ROCK <span style="font-size:95%"><nowiki><VERBAL CIPHER DISENGAGED></nowiki></span> resources.”

The many minds. The liar's words. Takers. They would know of his escape.  

He watches Her trespass in the Tomb Bay. Sees Her defile the Mind Shell's grand hall.  

As Wardens always do. She comes to collect him.

[u.2:13] One is a manifestation of Light. The other… reserved for Taken Kings. Better suited for traversing the Sundial because of what lies at its core.  

Stress draws trenches in Zavala’s face: battle lines between worry and hope, duty and friendship; between survival and annihilation. Osiris meets Zavala’s eyes. They do not scream traitor, exile, heretic . Instead, they seek wisdom—to confide in another who knows burden.

“This won’t take long,” Osiris states, remaining on his feet. “Something is communicating across the forces of the Darkness. Do not let [[Eramis, Kell of Darkness|Eramis]] blind you to other threats on our borders.” His disquieting voice prickles.

Osiris nods, realizing he had no right to demand action. “I apologize. Thank you.” He motions toward the windows’ reinforced glass. “The Traveler’s reforging was a sight to behold.” His words have a faint reverence to them.  

His mind is still taxed from his last visit. He remembers—camouflaged against the rushing atmospheric bands of [[Jupiter]]—how he drifted alongside its evergreen moon. He remembers the deep wedge that sunk between the two bodies, dividing them.  

“Have you sent it to Saint yet?” Sagira flitters into view. She brings him back to the present, soaring across space.

They lurch out of their jump. Jupiter’s depth fills the canopy with pyrographic incandescence. Dozens of moons arc around the giant in careful, patient grooves—cut into space over millennia of gravitational friction. Io is not among them. Osiris checks and rechecks coordinates. Sagira assures him they are correct. They stare at the disparity together.

The orbital readings of Sol’s bodies are intact, gravity unaltered. But the system is gutted, four globes plucked from the skies. His eyes sink into the maw of eternal depth lurking in Io’s place. An anomaly of Darkness. Osiris stares as if looking into the pyre-flames of a funeral; the corpse’s uncanny familiarity. A stranger you half-remember.  

[[Saturn]] grieves the loss of Titan. The cerulean jewel that once was had sunken into the gullet of the abyss. In its place, an anomaly , dark and rimmed in gravitational lensing. Osiris tears his eyes away and fixates on its sibling cavity: a swath cut through Saturn’s rings by [[Oryx, the Taken King|Oryx's]] blade during the [[Taken War]]. Within the rings, the Dreadnaught sails in solidarity with the anomaly’s orbit, whispering back in harmony.

Ana still holds on to a dead hope. She should be out in the field as a paragon of the old age. Charging forward to lead unsteady neophytes. Like he has. Instead, she retreats to the City and lays her worries on Zavala’s brow, promising a Rasputin perfected to rebuke the assailing horrors of the night. But the Warmind did not stop the Pyramids, and unkept promises make Osiris weary. At least [[Sloane]] and Asher confronted the onslaught themselves, one last time. How he longs for that assured aplomb.  

The ship drops into Sol’s mighty star-wind , the brilliant flames of the Sun at their backs. Osiris’s hope tells him he could find a subdued Mercury here, laboring under the angular shadow of a Pyramid. But he knows his hope is a lie. The wound is all he can see. A pit ringed in flame. He remembers the vast nothingness he had witnessed in the Infinite Forest. He laments the loss of his clairvoyance within its coded halls. Perhaps there, he would have had the answer to the question he wants to ask Sagira, “Have I led us down this path?”

“There are responses from [[Nessus]], the Reef, the [[EDZ]]. She’s calling the Legion home… or, no… back to her bosom? She wants them to capture Calus to prove their loyalty, but it sounds like the Leviathan is missing.”

“The Shore . We’re not far behind,” Sagira says. “Eavesdropping or crashing?”

Osiris rubs his eyes. “Finally.” Through the cracks he sees them; the remaining ring of Cabal kneel in a tightly wrapped circle. A stony protrusion centers them.  

Osiris floats down to the acrid pools on feather-Light; Sagira follows close behind.  

“I wish I could. I remember tracking Caiatl’s emissary. Finding the Cabal. The night sky. Then… flame and rage. It took everything in me to push those thoughts from my mind.” Osiris slumps in his seat. “There is one clear memory. I felt the Dark whisper that we’ve been chasing. Like a needle in my spine. It must be at the root of all this.”

Make sure when your end comes, it’s something worth your Light.”  

“Whatever we are dealing with is spreading through the system’s underbelly. There is one on the Shore who knows those pathways. Surely, I’m not too fragile to have a conversation, Sagira.”

“From what I’ve heard, it’s just a matter of how persuasive we are,” Osiris says and follows an Eliksni Associate through plum curtains and into the Spider’s abode. The massive Don of the Shore lounges before them.

“Welcome, most esteemed Osiris. Though you have not graced my chamber before, your reputation precedes you.” Spider trellises his eight fingers togethe r as his voice breaks into a series of gaseous staccato slurps. “The literature you sent me… very interesting, but behind the times .”

“What is it, Arrha ? You know better than to interrupt our guest’s audience.”

Spider giddily laps up the title. “I know the cryptoliths are of the Hive. I know the broods here burn Oryx's banners. And I know his Worm’s skeleton , the one in Saturn’s rings, is awake.” Spider throws his four arms into a shrug. “My jurisdiction ends at the banks of the Shore, of course… but not yours.”

Osiris impales a Wizard’s head upon a stunted spike, surrounded by a freshly bloodied Hive sigil. The Dreadnaught console sputters to life, accepting his tithe.  

The Dreadnaught’s systems present as living memory —chronicles and hymns recounting histories. It is a rat king of fading ideas, wracked with failing connections and dying interpretations as Akka suffers a slow, final death, damaged beyond repair. But there is knowledge to glean here. Osiris directs Sagira to rip spokes of data from the console for Vanguard High Command.

Osiris sneers and grasps the head. He navigates the recounting of the Hive from Oryx’s death. They are fractured, broken by internal power struggles. It leads into a recounting of Savathûn: banished, branded as heretic and set to burn. Many Hive turned to her when Oryx fell. Many of those same broodlines defected as the Darkness invaded Sol, sending Savathûn into hiding. She is still hunted by the hounds of war. Her pursuer has no local story to recount here, for it is yet to be written in blood. War’s Celebrant rides to wrest Crota’s lost foundlings from the Witch Queen’s schemes. To bring unity. To bring reckoning. To bring glory. Luna will be reformed in her image. All tithes to Xivu Arath. All tithes to the black edge of her singing blade.

Osiris slumps to his knees. “This must be the echo we’ve been chasing. An omen of her voice, resounding through the Darkness, heralding war.”

“The third sister . She has finally come for us, and her champion seeks to supplant Crota’s remaining daughters on Luna. That is where we go.”

He stands at the face of it for what feels like hours. The Great Angular Thing —the edge of night that plays behind his mind.

“Speechless?” Sagira teases. “Maybe they’re  not so bad.” Her chuckle is thin .  

They press on.  

Osiris swipes away silken threads of webbing above the shadow of Luna’s Pyramid. Braziers illuminate a synod of Witches and Wizards deep in the chasm. All point in alignment toward a monolithic sigil of Xivu Arath set atop a cryptolith adorned in blades: her will, projected from some far-off, unseen cosmic hollow . At the base of her visage—a monstrous Knight, adorned with tapestries charred by scorching brands.

Osiris sails through the air as daggers of dark power whistle past him. Golden echoes split from his body to cut down fleeing Hive and soak reprisals. [[Kinox]], last daughter of Crota, scurries through cracks between the rocks as her son, [[Ulg’Urin]], and his cohort of lesser Knights raise shields to defend her. Osiris extinguishes a blade into his palm to form a singularity of Void and hurls a [[Nova Bomb]] that consumes them. With his other blade, he dives. He drives it into the ground, erupting a Well of Radiance surrounded by a phalanx of gilded echoes .  

Blinding Light erupts from Sagira’s core as she splits apart. A wave of Light surges and tears across the chasm. Her sacrifice cleanses every trace of Xivu Arath’s presence. The sigil: erased. The cryptolith that supported her projection: destroyed.