Lore:The Once-Shipstealer: Difference between revisions

'''The Once-Shipstealer''' is a [[Lore]] book introduced in [[Beyond Light]].

In the arena, where [[Eliksni]] runts and leaderless [[Cabal]] challenge her, she rules with a broken Arc spear for a scepter. It's the strongest weapon they'll give her, and she bends it to her will.

She ignores him at first. He's too greedy for her acknowledgement. Sometimes, he reminds her of the needy [[Dreg|Dregs]] that followed her old Kell like carrion birds, squawking for attention and squabbling over his kills.

Eventually, the Wolf learns to intrigue her. He calls himself [[Praksis, the Technocrat|Praksis]], and he has ideas. But he's young. He thinks every idea he conceives of is the first and best of its kind. She suspects he's never had to report directly to a Kell.

She has failed to acquire the [[SIVA]] weapon, failed to shame the [[Guardians]], failed to reignite the fires of the House of Devils. Her failure haunts her.

"No," she says. [[Clarity]] has descended on her like a Riis rain shower. "The Devils are nothing."

She lunges, driving a sword into the belly of a Guardian-soldier, grunting as they yell and crumple forward. Another Guardian rushes at her head-on before she has time to yank the Sword free. But she hears the sound of a Shock Rifle firing behind her… and leans abruptly to the right as the shot flies by and hits the Guardian before her with full force.

She looks back to see Kridis, shimmering with the purple glow of the Void as her Servitor shields her. Kridis tips her head in acknowledgement of Eramis and turns to fire the rifle into another cluster of Guardians.

Eramis rips her Sword free and forges ahead. They are closing in on the city now. Guardians are falling all around her.

Fast, heavy footfalls come up behind her—Phylaks, ferocious and bloodthirsty, shouts to Eramis as she attacks a towering, broad-shouldered Guardian. Eramis ducks and slides out of the way. As Phylaks makes contact with the Guardian's head, Eramis slashes the beast across his side with her Sword. He loses his balance, and she kicks his hip, tipping him toward Phylaks.

A ferocious laugh erupts to her right, and then the thundering blast of a Scorch Cannon. Taniks, a blur of whirring machinery, creates explosions of earth and flesh and blood all around them. He keeps laughing.

The dreams persist. They are old memories, but twisted: battling a Guardian in the Prison of Elders and falling before their Light; Athrys banging on the walls of her sleeping pod, calling for the Great Machine.

She can't sleep. Something in the dreams tells her to travel to Earth's Moon, and she follows the sign.

On the Moon, she fights through corpse-stinking Hive like swarms of flies. Their fetid stench is unbearable, worse than the carcass piles at the prison, worse than the battlefield of Twilight Gap. They eat and breathe death, and she resents their breath upon her, so she cuts through them like so much tall grass.

A Knight stalks her deep into the catacombs, staying on the edge of her hearing, matching her footsteps. She lets it make the first strike, and when it does, she cracks its exoskeleton armor with her Sword. The thrill of the fight—hearing the Knight howl as it meets death—is almost comforting. A reprieve from her unsettling dreams.

She's painted with Hive blood as she continues her advance, and when she finally comes upon the ship, a familiar sight causes her to freeze in her tracks.

She remembers seeing them in the sky like black arrows. She remembers the space where the Great Machine was, and then the blank space where it wasn't.

This time, the black arrow speaks to her. She knows it's not Eliksni. It's not one of the clumsy tongues of Earth, nor the lilting speech of the Reef. It is something else: a whisper. But one that is so loud and somehow understood so perfectly.

She feels something in all four of her hands, a tingle, a buzz. It reminds her of the broken Arc spear. She clenches and unclenches her fists, staring at the sleek surface of the ship. There's power here. Power that she can grasp.

Eramis and Variks stand in the shadow of a half-constructed city. Her people have salvaged bits and pieces from the Eliksni hideouts across the system and lashed them to the ruins of a Golden Age facility, building something new from something old. It's Eliksni flesh on the bones of humanity's failure, nestled in the icy tundra of Europa.

Eramis laughs, easy and familiar. It's as if nothing has changed. She's transported back to her House Devils days. The days of assignments in the darkest, grimmest parts of her old stomping grounds: the Cosmodrome, with no one but these two for company. They laid waste to members of encroaching houses, razed human settlements to the ground, dreamed about the day they could challenge and strike down their own Kell to take up the mantle for themselves.

"His crimes are undeniable," Eramis says, dismissive. She doesn't look at Variks but hears his tortured breathing as he scrambles back, away from Phylaks. "But he's all that remains of House Judgment."

 

When the obsidian ship descends on Europa, Eramis is prepared. Her council by her side—Variks, Phylaks, Kridis, Praksis, and Atraks—she greets its arrival with bated breath.

It is in this moment, as she holds this cold and ancient power in her hands, that House Salvation is born.  

Chelchis, Skolas, Aksis—resurrect them all and watch her reduce them to Dregs. Her new-claimed power is beyond any they wielded. Beyond any our people ever knew.

At this late stage, however, when Eramiskel succeeds where all others failed… Alas, I might find it hard to believe if I could not see the empty spaces in our half-filled capitol. Or heard the whispers of doubt sown by the weakling of House Light.

For who withstood the Whirlwind? Who pieced together Ketches and armories out of ruins and scraps? Who roamed the vast expanses for generations, subsisting on drips of Ether and facing endless battle? Who survived?!

This, I believed as well. I mourned the death of our collective potential in our rituals and rites. Felt the acid-burn of despair in my body as I received succor from our Prime Servitor. Dreamt of the day I turned my weeping eyes up to the sky and found it empty of salvation.

Ha! So, the Kell of Winter seeks the aid of Taniks, the Scarred. How formal! Wasn't long ago you called me self-serving scum and spat at my banner-less armor. I might've ripped each and every one of your arms from you then. And torn off your legs for good measure.

But I sensed one day, you'd come begging for my services. Lucky I am such a vulgar mercenary after all, eh? It works in your favor now, that I hold payment above pride. Payment not just in Glimmer. In blood and battle too. No one Kell, no one house has been able to slake my thirst. No one job, either.

But for Aksor? You ask me to pass over far-greater warriors for that impotent Archon? You think he will serve you better than Peekis, the Disavowed? Than Pirsis, Pallas-Bane? Than Calzar, than Drekthas?

And still you wonder why I refuse my house-pledge. You could conquer the system, but you'd rather adhere to these arbitrary customs. Aksor belongs to Winter, and Eramis does not.