#fireteam heartbreak | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

illumynare · 5 years

Text

Destiny Fic: we know by the moon (we are not too soon)

Summary: On the first night of the first Dawning after they survived the Mare Imbrium, Eris and her fireteam go wassailing in the City.

Pairings: slight Eris/Toland.

Notes: Also available on AO3.

Yuletide fic for @ir-anuk, who wanted a story with Eris being happy. Thanks to @titan-mom for the beta!

Wassailing is an actual English tradition dating back to the Middle Ages; it was practiced more or less as depicted here, though carrying a piece of toast is my own invention, inspired by the related practice of Apple Wassailing, where offerings of toast and wassail were given to the trees in the local orchard.

The lyrics that Eris & co. sing are adapted from the famous Gloucester Wassail; while writing this story, I listened a lot to this instrumental version. Title and epigraph are from Steeleye Span's rendition of the Gower Wassail.

It's we poor wassail boys so weary and cold Please drop some small silver into our bowl. And if we survive for another new year Perhaps we may call and see who does live here

We know by the moon that we are not too soon, And we know by the sky that we are not too high, And we know by the star that we are not too far, And we know by the ground that we are within sound.

—The Gower Wassail

"It's called Wassailing," says Omar, his eyes glinting with an enthusiasm only a little like the madness of those entranced by the Hive. "You'll love it."

Eris shakes her head to clear away the thought. Omar is the least Hive-addled Guardian that ever was, and they are none of them in danger now. It is the first night of the Dawning, and they are in Eriana's rooms, waiting for Wei Ning to finish baking Gjallardoodles.

Existence is a game that everything plays, but right now, none of them are keeping score. If the universe does, it is also keeping silence. And in that silence—

"You've never celebrated the Dawning in the Last City, have you?" Omar goes on. "Only the Tower or the Wild."

Lights flicker in Eriana's cheeks and her circuits hum and click. "Is that a relevant distinction?" she asks.

"Of course it is," Wei Ning calls out as she lifts from the oven her last sheet of Gjallardoodles. She lays the cookie-sheet on the countertop and smiles at them all, only a little crooked.

There's a smudge of flour on her cheek—the damaged one, where her brown skin is marbled with pale, ridged scars left by Crota's green flames. No matter how long she dwells beneath the Traveler's light, no matter how many times she dies and rises again, her Ghost will never be able to take away those scars.

Eriana's throat-lights flicker with an echo of old terror as she looks at those scars, and Eris feels an answering flutter in her heart. Neither of them will ever forget the sight of Wei spitted on Crota's blade, feet dangling in the empty air, green flames dancing around her writhing body in a mockery of the Traveler's Light.

They had so nearly lost her then. Eriana, late-come to the battlefield, had been too far away to do anything. Eris had stuck close to Wei for the whole day, and yet she had barely been fast enough. If she had lacked the strength for one final, desperate Bladedance—if she had dropped to her knees by Wei's broken body a minute later—if she had hesitated one instant to pour her own flickering Light into Wei's Ghost—

Then Wei's Ghost would have fallen dead into the Lunar dust, and Wei Ning of the Fire Victorious would be one more pile of ash and bones among a thousand others. Eriana would have been destroyed by her grief, and Eris—

It's best not to think of that, really.

None of them have been the same since the Mare Imbrium. But they are all alive. Eris always reminds herself of this when she wakes screaming from nightmares of what once happened, and what might have been.

Right now, in the stuffy but fragrant warmth of the kitchen, with a little prickle of sweat starting on her neck, she can truly feel the joy of it.

She's lost the thread of the conversation, absorbed in her own thoughts, but it doesn't matter because the door bangs open as Vell and Sai arrive together, him carrying a strange silver jug and her with a small cask of wine.

"Turns out my grandam had one," says Vell, meaning the current matriarch of his adopted family, descendants of a band of pilgrims that he once guided to the City. "Like it?" he asks, holding the jug out to Omar for inspection.

Omar takes the jug and turns it over, fingering the strange little holes and spouts that honeycomb its neck. "Well enough," he says, grinning as if no Thrall ever sank its teeth into his arm and ripped out tendons while Crota approached with steps that shook the ground.

Sai, who once carried him on her back out of the Mare Imbrium, rolls her eyes and says, "Can we drink now?"

"Right away," says Omar. "The question is, can you drink without spilling?"

"Geometrically impossible," says Eriana, studying the jug as Omar fills it with wine.

"I thought Warlocks redefined possible," says Wei Ning, smiling crookedly as she rests an elbow on Eriana's shoulder. "Give it to me, Omar, I'm not afraid."

Omar ignores Eriana's staticky indignation and hands the jug to Wei. She smacks her mouth to the neck of the jar and tilts her head back, cheerfully gulping wine as it pours over her face and neck. When she lowers the jug, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Who's next?"

"That was disgusting," says Eriana, though she does not pull away.

"I'll do it," says Eris, and takes the damp jar from Wei's hands. She examines it. Listens to the wine slosh against it walls, like the echo of Wizard-voices down the Hive tunnels beneath the surface of the moon.

Now as then, she moves without sight, lifting the jug and pressing its neck to her mouth. Her tongue skims the holes and spouts, tasting the air inside them. She finds the right spout; her fingers find and stop up the right holes.

She tilts her head back, and drinks without spilling.

When she lowers the jug, there's a moment of silence as they all stare at her, and she's at once proud of their scrutiny and a little frightened. She has always been the quietest of their fireteam, for all that she speaks more words than Sai, but now her victory with the jug echoes through the room. Perhaps they will wonder how she knew—

Wei laughs again, and lays her hand on Eris's forehead, smearing her with wine. "Nobody goes out dry tonight," she announces. "Don't tell them how it's done, Eris. Who's next?"

So together, damp with wine and carrying an empty jug that only Eris knows how to drink from, they go down into the City. They walk door to door, Eriana in the lead as she carries a piece of toast on a pointed stick carved from an apple tree. (Omar assures them that to be "toastmaster" of a wassailing-party is a great and ancient honor.) Whenever a door opens for them, they sing:

Wassail! wassail! all over the town, Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown; Our bowl it is made of spinmetal fine, And if thou but fill it, we'll toast thee and thine.

Eris had been skeptical, before they started. She had thought that Omar was overconfident. Surely there were not so many houses in the c\City that would pour out drinks to begging Guardians. Surely they would see the survivors of the Mare Imbrium and know what ill fate clung to them.

But the people of the City, kind fools that they are, do not. Instead they open their doors, and listen to them sing, and then fill their jar with the hot spiced wassail-wine. They laugh as Omar and Sai, Vell and Wei Ning take turns dousing themselves as they try to drink from the jar.

Perhaps that is why the people are so welcoming, Eris thinks. No matter how well Guardians defend the City, no matter how often they go to its bars and ramen shops, they are strange and terrible still. Perhaps it is a comfort for these people to see Guardians spilling wine on themselves as they sing ridiculous verses about the Vanguard.

Here's to Zavala, and to his right ear, The Traveler send him a happy new year: A happy new year as e'er he did see, With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

So here is to Andal and to his right cheek, The Traveler grant him what e'er drink he seek: To make him as drunk as a Hunter should be, With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

Here's to Ikora, and to her right eye, The Traveler send her a good Dawning pie: A good Dawning pie as e'er we did see, With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

As the night winds on they grow merrier, and so do the people welcoming them. Sometimes they are invited inside a house to eat Vanilla Blades and Traveler Donut Holes. Omar and Sai both flirt with drunken abandon (Sai wins more kisses than Omar does). Vell and Wei start challenging people to arm-wrestling matches, which invariably end with them wrestling each other, one of them standing as proxy for the poor civilian. Eriana laughs more lightly than she has since the Mare Imbrium.

Eris watches.

It's what she's best at. What she delights in most, these days. To rest her eyes on the people who have become so dear to her, who live against such odds.

She drinks, too. Not as much as the rest of them, but enough that when they arrive at the main house of Vell's adopted family, her body feels a quicksilver lightness almost like she's in a Bladedance.

Vell's family's house is loud and bright and crowded, and within five minutes it has given Eris a headache. She mutters an excuse and slips out into the dark alleyway behind. Here, with the roar of celebration muted, she leans against the cool strength of the wall and tilts her head up to look at the stars.

Look up at the sky, a subaudible voice whispers in her ear.

Eris is. She has. She did, and chose because of it.

This is the game of existence that she has played: to win this timeline where all her friends are alive, even at ferocious cost.

Most of those who [bargain] do not win.

So far, Eris thinks she is staying ahead.

Long ago [in a time yet to come] Eris had thought resentfully that she would like to see how well Cayde endured being stripped of friends and Light and laughter.

But when he returned from the Prison of Elders, his Ghost dead by a sniper's bullet, his "favorite Guardian" (Eris's friend) dead saving him from Uldren—

The sight was not so delicious as she had hoped.

It was pure chance that she learned the bitter taste of it at all. When Eris left the Tower, she had meant to devote herself entirely to fighting the Dark alongside Mara Sov. But in a moment of weakness, she returned to see Ikora and ask for news of Asher.

She found Ikora grieving a protégé, the Tower grieving a hero, and Cayde grieving the loss of his heroism.

No: not just that. It galled Eris to admit it, but Cayde did care about a few things besides his jokes and his roguish reputation. Else he would not have come to her and said, "Hey, weren't you part of the Great Ahamkara Hunt?"

"What of it?" asked Eris, her hand still resting on the spines of Ikora's books that she had been browsing.

"Well," said Cayde, and his swagger was now a hollow, ragged thing, "I got a crazy idea. Ahamkara grant wishes, right? And didn't they mess with the timelines on Venus?"

Truly, his idea was madness. A year ago, Eris would have called it impossible too. But since then, she had learned more of the Ahamkara: what they were, what they could do, and how they might be bent to a clever enough will.

And perhaps Eris was not so cured of her youthful foolishness as she had thought. For she could not disdain Cayde's mad plan to set right the Guardian's death; and one she had begun to think of changing history, she could not help but wonder—how many more might be saved?

If Wei Ning never died, and Eriana-3 had no reason for vengeance, how much could be set right?

Nine nights Eris stayed up talking with Cayde, plotting their path to change the things that had most wounded them. On the tenth night, she summoned Toland, and together the three of them walked through the Void to the Dreaming City.

And then they began to pay their prices.

Cayde's price was most simple: he died killing Dûl Incaru. His last words were as brash and brave as he could have wished: "Hey, I got this. You go ahead. Keep our Guardian safe."

Eris had not explained to him how his death would open a throne world on the edge of the Distributary, how Dûl Incaru's passing would give them the power to lure and trap Riven. In their last moments together, she realized she did not need to. He had gone with her believing he would be fodder for whatever sorcery she worked.

Her own price was twofold: the subjectively eternal agony when Riven's searing tentacles of wish and will and causality wrapped around her limbs and tried to tear her apart, a torment that ended only when the last causal filaments binding her to that time frayed apart . . . and the doubt that has followed her ever since. From the moment Eris woke up in her body-that-was nine weeks before the Mare Imbrium, she has wondered if she really did survive Riven, or if her torment really ended. If it was her self that traveled back in time, or only her memories.

But if the Eris Morn that will be died in Riven's embrace, or if she suffers still in a dimension sundered from the flow of time—it is worth it. Because the Eris Morn that is, still exists, and knows what she must do in order to protect.

Her fireteam lives, because of it.

(Her Ghost believes that she is truly the Eris of the future. She swears to Eris that her Light has changed—not dimmed, but shifted in tonality—and says, "There are more knives in your Bladedance now." Eris cannot always believe her Ghost's reassurances, her Ghost who was always too trusting and too gentle, but it is comfort enough to hear that long-silent voice speaking to her, believing in her.)

Toland's price was not simple, but perhaps most easy. Dragged along with her into the past, his exalted self was too shattered and too transformed to synchronize with his past body; instead he overwrote himself, and became a wandering spirit who endlessly haunted her, complaining all the while about the current emptiness of the Sea of Screams. Eris rolled her eyes at him, but never bid him be gone.

(And there were nights where he summoned the strength for a semi-corporeal body, and he rested against her with nearly human weight, and he kissed every one of her fingers and ran his own, too-long and too-jointed pale fingers through her dark auburn hair as he whispered, My dear squanderer.)

So they have all made their [bargains], paid their prices. Eris knows there is more yet to be paid of hers. For when the Guardian rises again, she must take up the mantle of Crota's Bane. She will share what she knows, and keep her promise of vengeance even when the deaths she avenges are null and void. And then perhaps she will tell Ikora the truth—all of it—about Oryx and Gaul and Mara Sov, and what Eris herself has been and has become.

She will keep her promise to Cayde as well. When (if) Uldren starts down his path of ruin, she will do whatever it takes, go to the Prison of Elders with Cayde himself, to keep their Guardian safe.

And then—

One day, if she has the luck to survive that long, she will be free from her burden of knowledge. She will face the future as blindly as any other Guardian—and she will be a Guardian, will have all the lore she learned in the Dark yet still possess the Light as well.

The thought of that far-off day feels . . . almost like hope.

A strange, but welcome feeling.

"Wæs þu hæl," says a quiet, female voice.

Startled from her reverie, Eris turns. Beside her stands an Exo wearing a Hunter-like hood and cape, a pulse-rifle strapped at her back. Yet she's not a Guardian: no Ghost floats at her side, and Eris can sense no hum of Light from her presence, only—

A soft, sibilant whisper that is almost Darkness, but not quite.

Old Tower rumors and the Guardian's stories crash together in her head. Eris straightens.

"You're the Exo Stranger," she breathes.

"Yes," says the Exo, and then continues, half-turning as she speaks over comms to someone not present, "Yes, I just found them. Can't it wait?"

Insufferable rudeness, Toland mutters at Eris's shoulder. What conceit.

The Exo Stranger turns back to them, eyes picking out the spot where Toland hovers. "Unlike you, Shattered One?"

"You know what we are?" asks Eris, warily starting to reach for the Light. Her Ghost appears silently at her side. They both know she is not like those the Exo Stranger is said to help.

"What you did was abominable," says the Exo Stranger. "There are reasons the Ahamkara were hunted to extinction."

Eris meets her gaze steadily. "There are reasons for what we did."

Toland winks into sight, a little white ball of glowing light that floats imperiously toward the Exo Stranger. "Do not preach to us, causality-bound simpleton. Have you parsed the ascendant geometries? Have you watched the laws of reality rewrite themselves upon the Sea of Screams?"

"Yes," the Exo Stranger says bluntly.

Eris can't help feeling a flicker of amusement at the way Toland bobs back, surprised into silence.

"I'm not going to redact you," the Exo Stranger goes on. "This timeline is surprisingly stable. Some factors have even . . . improved. But if you're to interfere at this level, I need to know if you've chosen a side. And which one."

"A simple-minded question," Toland hisses, "fit for those bound by liminality, who do not understand the possibility of—"

"He stands with me," Eris interrupts.

A soft noise almost like a chuckle escapes the Exo Stranger's visor. "And you?"

"I choose the Light," say Eris, steadfast-sure. "I protect the Guardians and the Last City."

The Exo Stranger cocks her head. "Even at the cost of your own Light again?"

Eris hisses, Hive-sibilant, Darkness-soft, remembering the weight of three eyes and the agony of slow, poisonous tears.

"Yes," she says. "I have. I will. I do."

In every world, in every timeline, she will be a claw in the throat of the Dark. She will make any unholy bargain that she must, to accomplish it.

The Exo Stranger nods, strange and solemn. "Yes. You do. —What's that?" She turns away suddenly, speaking again to her distant companions. "Well, start charging the canons, then. Prepare to fire on my mark."

She looks back over her shoulder. "There's so much more out there in the Dark than even you know. But you're beginning to learn. We'll meet again, Erisia Pyatova-Hsien."

And she vanishes in a shimmering web of light.

Eris stares after her, ignoring Toland's muttered discontent. The name Erisia Pyatova-Hsien echoes strangely in her head, knocking at still-forgotten memories. A vertiginous thought strikes her: she knows her own origin as little as she does the Exo Stranger's.

More mysteries are in motion around her than she had guessed at.

That, too, feels like hope.

And Eris, who was once Crota's Bane and will be again, who has walked in and out of timelines and bent an Ahamkara to her will, who has been a creature both Light and Dark, and who once (perhaps) was Erisia Pyatova-Hsien—

Eris sets the mysteries of herself and the universe aside for the rest of the night, and goes back inside to drink with her fireteam.

#eris morn #destiny the game #destiny #destiny fic #fireteam heartbreak #my fic

18 notes · View notes

titan-mom · 7 years

Note

Your engram drawing has me thinking about Fireteam Heartbreak as a D&D group - Eriana organized it and tries to get everyone to work together, Vell put all his points into becoming invincibly strong but a bit slow, Toland is a brilliant storyteller but only attends half the sessions and occasionally tries to make everything about his character flirting with the villains

Ohhhhh man this is lovely.

Omar as the rouge with incredibly high charisma and dexterity, leading to excellent deception and sleight of hand, and is able to prank all other players without their characters knowing, which in turn frustrates the players with their copious amounts of meta-knowledge they can’t actually use for anything. Sai is a little miffed because she is also a rouge, and wanted to be one first, and so she constantly tries to one-up Omar. The ensuing prank war ends with a near tpk.

Eris is probably the only reasonable, well balanced character, and is constantly trying to keep this family from falling apart.

It just hasn’t been the same since Wei-Ning left for college and her computer broke, meaning she can no longer skype in. She was the party’s battle-cleric. They’re hurting without their secondary tank and reliable source of healing.

#thanks for asking!#dnd #fireteam heartbreak #ir-anuk

10 notes · View notes

synnthamonsugar · 2 years

Note

i want Toland & Eris to realize Omar is still "alive" and have like a way to communicate with him

Bungie let Omar & Toland & Eris have get togethers reminiscing about their fireteam

it gets sad as they realize are the only ones that properly remember Wei Nings laugh, Eriana's cooking or Sai Mota's paintings

as even them, have all been radically changed and shaped by the experiences and trauma they suffered

that nothing is the same again and and that, effectively everyone from from their fireteam and the ppl they used to be are dead

that in the end, all they have is each other as they are the only ones who truly understand what they lost

BIG SAME.

Thank you for this morning's pain and suffering over fictional characters thinking that Eris, Omar and Toland are the only ones who remember their lost teammates. On one hand it's good that half of the team "survived" in some measure. On the other, what happened to Omar is particularly cruel compared to Eris and Toland, who had agency over what occurred to them (even if that choice was "change or die in the hellmouth") and have maintained quite a lot of agency to this day.

Frankly, Omar's fate is the one that fucks me up the most of anyone on the First Crota Fireteam, and the person I would most like to see come back in some form that gives him the ability to move around and converse with others, even if it's as an orb of ascendant energy or a disembodied voice. The opportunities for talking with Eris and Toland are both heartening and heartbreaking.

Until then I will carry him everywhere in Xenophage. 😭

#great ask tysm #destiny #first crota fireteam #omar agah #eris morn #toland the shattered

30 notes · View notes

theoriginalladya · 3 years

Text

MER Week 2021 - Day #2 - Long Time No See

(commissioned artwork by @xla-hainex)

Chapter 2: Long Time No See (On AO3 here)

Snippet:

It’s heartbreaking returning to London. To see the extent of the devastation and destruction the reapers have brought in a year. To know that just weeks before their arrival, he’d stayed at a hotel a few blocks away from here where his life had literally changed overnight. To wonder where the hell his husband is right now, or even if he was still alive. Kaidan’s chest aches, his mind races, he is desperately trying to not think the worst as Cortez flies them in over the city, and he is angrier than he’s ever been before in his life, and that includes when he faced off against Vyrnnus at BAaT.

Ben, where the hell are you?

There is little time to think about it, though. From the moment Cortez drops Shepard, Vega, and him off, it’s fight or be killed; and the reapers come at them in swarms. Wave after wave in some of the worst in terms of numbers they’ve seen since leaving Vancouver. Between the three of them, they manage to fight their way up from the banks of the Thames, obliterating and eviscerating whatever reaper forces get in their way. There’s a near miss when a Shepard’s shields fail and a Marauder nearly hits them in the head with a shot, and Vega goes down hard when a Brute barrels down on top of him. But the three of them have been working together as a fireteam since Kaidan returned to the Normandy, and together they clear the way and make their way towards the Hades cannon...

Read Full Chapter 2 here

Read From the Beginning here

Read Alenkoats series here

#merweek2021 #ladya writes #Alenkoats #Kaidan Alenko #(Benjamin) Coats #snippet #Long Time No See #Day 2

16 notes · View notes

fernsplaysthings · 3 years

Text

It’s been a long damn time since I’ve written anything. Apologies for the rust.

A little bit of a tester piece to get a feel for writing Fireteam Mayhem before I dive into the good stuff.

Daring to hope that the Warlock-in-residence would be home on time was perhaps pushing their luck a little. She’d never been on time in the past after finishing a mission off-world so Kestral wasn’t completely sure why they’d expected such a thing now.

There was a saying about that, right? Repeating an action and expecting a different outcome - something something - madness. That’d be the one.

“Sorry, I got held up…”

“For three days, Lola?”

The Warlock shrugged and set her carry-all down on the coffee table, immediately throwing herself back into the sofa and landing her ankles, crossed daintily, beside her bag. Once again she looked dishevelled, hair untied and flyaways untamed, dark lipstick faded.

Mentally (definitely not out loud) Kestrel noted that ‘smudged’ was also a way she might describe their companion’s signature make up piece...but that could be assessed at a later date if any semblance of peace was to be kept in their shared apartment that evening.

“I was staying with a friend,” she retorts cooly.

Across the room the soft whir of machinery was the only indication that Artemis had tuned into their conversation and was now actively paying attention, the Titan having peeked above her datapad to see what was happening.

Ok, fine. Peace be fucked for a moment.

“And how is the Drifter?”

“Ok, first of all-”

“Lola! You really shouldn’t be hanging around with him,” Artemis scolded.

“Thank you for your input mother.”

Kestrel’s silence and little smug grin only turned two frowns on them and they settled back into their cushions with a roll of their eyes, smugness remaining, which ended the back and forth between the Exo and Awoken. With the datapad raised back in front of the Exo’s face, Salome seemed to sink down into herself and relax with a sigh. Around her fireteam she wasn’t a shy one about...anything. Even Kestrel wished she’d be a little more reserved around them sometimes - please - but Lola knew she could trust them with anything which was...nice.

“I missed you too by the way, Arti,” she called over her shoulder to the Exo, blowing a black stained kiss in her direction and grinning at the fluorescent slow blink and soft multilayered hum of laughter she gained in return.

Finally feeling the comforting sense of normality set its roots back into the apartment, all residents home and safe, Kestrel threw their legs up onto the sofa and grabbed their headphones ready to resume some good quiet time.

“What’ve you been up to anyway, Kes?”

They were not quite sure why they’d not expected that question. Innocuous enough and more polite than Salome was usually in current company, there was a certain chance she knew something and Kestral…

Kestral needed to keep their cool and not act like a total weirdo.

“Nothing much. Some training with Shaxx and the Crucible regulars,” they set their headphones back down again and tried to find purchase in the sofa, suddenly feeling uncomfortable, like they had too many limbs, too many nerves, like the cushions were too plush and trying to reject them, “Cleaning up the fallout from the situation with Osiris and...Sagira.”

Salome made a low noise of thoughtfulness, “How is the old man?”

“Not talking to anyone about it. Bottling up his feelings,” the Hunter pauses, “If he’d just go fucking speak to Saint…” Another pause, squeezing their eyes shut with a deep breath through their nose, a hand reaching to sweep their hair out of their face, “...You know how Osiris is.”

Salome had been nodding along the whole time, her head bobbing slowly in a very good mimicry of someone paying attention and not waiting to ask a question to send the Hunter spiralling into a miniature panic.

“Who’s the New Light Zavala said you’re working with?”

They’d known each other long enough to know when Kestral was trying to avoid an answer even when the Hunter made a valiant attempt to recover from the startled look that had reflexively crossed their face. Hunters were supposed to be the sneaky ones, the ones that could charm themselves out of any situation, the silver tongued -

“He’s Spider’s lackey.”

Lola sucked in air through her teeth, “Ooh, tough break for him. Spider’s a dick.”

“You have no idea.”

To Kestral’s irritation and unease the silence hung heavy as Lola’s expectant glowing gaze continued in their direction, begging for some elaboration. She would’ve been a Hunter in a different timeline. She’d have been a damn good Hunter but instead she...she was a damn good Warlock and a good friend. A good confidant.

“Right, you don’t want to share,” she laughed, “Human, Exo, Awoken?” They hadn’t actually paused for all that long this time but it had been long enough to let the Awoken’s mind run excitedly into a field of conspiracy, “Are you not allowed to share because they’re not a humanoid race? Shit, are they an Eliksni?”

Kestral let out a soft sigh, slightly relieved, “Awoken.”

“Ah, your type then, “ Salome punctuated her jab with a wink and a smirk, “I’ve been gone maybe three weeks and you’ve already replaced me. You Hunters are such heartbreakers.”

It was much too late to try and ignore the colour that was long since visible on Kestral’s face and although they briefly considered covering it with hands, hair, a cushion, they decided just to avert their eyes and grasp their headphones with a clatter, slapping them immediately onto their head. Whatever Lola said after that was between her and the Light because Kestral had had enough for one day.

#destiny 2 #d2 #kestral //#salome //#artemis-11 //

8 notes · View notes

youngster-monster · 3 years

Text

After me comes the flood

christmas gift for my dear friend @baronetcoins. love you bud, and merry christmas ✨

[set in an AU where their Awoken Hunter, Ayin, came in time to save Cayde during Forsaken, but not his Ghost.]

Ayin paces outside the hangar like a cabal warhound waiting for its beastmaster to cry havoc. The City has been long emptied by the late hour. She’s thankful for it. There is no one here but the Traveler to witness her agitation, the way Light bleeds out of her in fiery sparks trailing down her fingers. She hasn’t had such a weak grasp on her Light for years — not since she was a kinderguardian — but tonight she doesn’t care to control it.

She’s not supposed to be here. In fairness no one’s supposed to be anywhere but in bed at this hour, but she in particular was meant to be out of the City two hours ago, bound for Europa on a mission with her team.

Something came up.

Something is yet another group of Guardians in the Crucible encasing their opponents in ice coffins. Something is the Kinderguardian she met earlier, who turned to stasis out of curiosity. Something is the complete silence from the Vanguard while the protectors of the City collude with the Darkness.

If they won’t do anything about this, then it’s her duty to convince them… before she does it herself.

Resolution renewed, she strides into the hangar.

It’s empty as expected, mechanics and engineers gone to catch some shut-eye as ship traffic slows for the night. The only source of movement left is the flicker of an old camping light propped up on Holliday’s workbench. Cayde is bent over it, grumbling over some piece of intel or other. Every so often he’ll shift and obscure the feeble light, casting his long shadow over the floor.

She clears her throat lest she catches a knife in the throat. He gets jumpy without Sundance warning him of approaching people.

Cayde whirls around, lifts a hand to his chest as if to still a beating heart he doesn’t, technically, have. “Oh,” he says, relaxing. “It’s you. Hi!”

“Waiting for someone else?”

“Kind of expecting Ikora to come drag me to bed, actually.” He turns to fully face her and folds his arms with a tired sigh. “Lemme tell you, if you’d told me during her Crucible days that she’d be such a mother hen I’d have called you mad.”

Ayin is hardly prone to mothering anyone, let alone Cayde, but even she can’t deny the spark of concern igniting inside her at the sight of him. His eyes are dim with exhaustion, whatever machinery that keeps him alive running on a third of the power it needs. But more than that he looks weary. Havy. There’s something weighing him down that wasn’t there before.

(Its name is grief, the same one that hounds his footsteps since the Prison of Elders, taking the space Sundance used to fill. He’s better than he used to be — better at hiding it in the daylight at least. But here, with only her as a witness, he lets the full brunt of it show plain on his face.)

“You look terrible,” she says, because it’s easier than I’m worried about you.

“Thanks,” he replies, only half sarcastic, because it’s easier than putting into words the anger-grief-bittersweetness that comes with pity or concern (both interchangeable). Like so many things, Ayin only knows to notice it because she’s done it herself, learned it from him. “So, what can I do for you, Crusader?”

The nickname is affectionate, an in-joke. It’s also a reminder, though he never means it that way.

“I have…” She pauses, unsure how to bring it up. “Concerns.”

“Concerns?”

“About Guardians using stasis.”

“Aah, that’s what I thought.”

Cayde chuckles, but his whole demeanor changes as he steels himself for a serious conversation. She’s more familiar than most with the seriousness he hides under his jokey behavior, but it’s always a relief to see him take this so seriously. Even if everyone stopped listening to her, she knows Cayde would always let her say her piece.

“Do you know what I saw in the Crucible today?”

“No?”

“Ice bursting through armor. Tornadoes of hail. Stasis, everywhere. And all Shaxx had to say about it was that it’s a tool. ‘A weapon like any other’. He let it happen, like it’s not the very thing we’ve been fighting against all our lives.” Again she starts to pace, almost against her will. Tension runs through her limbs, fingers curling around the hilt of an imaginary knife. She hates this game of politics, of begging the Vanguard to take action when it would only take a word from them to unleash her on this new enemy. “This can’t go on, Cayde. You — the Vanguard — can’t turn a blind eye this time. The Darkness has already taken Io, Titan, Mercury- and now it’s taking Guardians? It’s not going to stop. Not unless we stop it. And this? This ain’t it.”

Out the corner of her eyes she sees him shift, tilt his head in consideration.

“So, what are you suggesting? That we should ban stasis?”

His sceptical tone makes the spark of righteousness flare. He doesn’t get it— be he will, soon. He has to understand she’s right on this. “Yes, exactly!”

Calmly, almost placating, he replies, “People are gonna try their hands at it whether we allow it or not.”

“But if you forbid it, I can hunt them down for it. Bring them to justice.”

Her voice rings in the heavy silence. For a moment, nothing breaks the silence but her breathing and the soft whirring emitting from Cayde. Then,

“Ayin...”

He sounds nearly pleading, but she can’t allow him to interrupt her. Not yet. She can still convince him, she knows it. He has to see her point. He must.

Breathing deeply, she tries to leash her enthusiasm lest he mistakes it for fanaticism.

Without his support, she can’t reach the Vanguard, and without the Vanguard, there’s nothing she can do. She learned that from the new Dredgens, and the Renegade who runs after them. It takes more than a single man to take such widespread evil down. Aying doesn’t have that much time. She needs resources, the space and power to lock up her targets, keep them off the streets. She needs the system on her side.

“It’s our job to keep the people of the City safe. Our duty. How can civilians trust us to do that when any Guardian could be another Dredgen Yor in disguise? How can they trust us, when nothing is done to keep them safe from ourselves? We can’t bother with compromise with so much on the line-”

“Ayin.”

She stops her pacing, turns around, ready to beg for a moment more of his attention—

His eyes stop her in her tracks.

Why does he look so sad?

Cayde holds her stare for a second. His shoulders are tense, betraying his seemingly-relaxed position. He looks just like when he has to announce the loss of one of his Hunters, or when he has to send a fireteam on a mission they’re unlikely to come back from unscathed, if at all. Like the words are stuck in his throat, tangled in the wires.

Eventually he gives up on words altogether — she can see it in the working of his jaw, the way the light behind his teeth dims as his vocal processor goes idle again.

Slowly (like he doesn’t want to do it. Like he’s afraid he’ll spook her) he offers her his hand, palm up. Under her watchful gaze, he shifts his fingers minutely—

And frost blooms over the leather of his glove.

Ayin’s breath freezes in her lungs.

Silence settles over them like the second before thunder. Both stare at the ice crystal suspended over his hand. Ayin with mounting horror, and Cayde as an excuse to avoid her eyes. Then, a flick of his wrist shatters it. The shards turn to fine glittering dust on their way down, and then to nothing, never touching the ground.

For a moment Ayin is overwhelmed by feelings — shock, betrayal, sadness, fear, burning anger. They tangle together, blades interlocked into a sharp ball of hurt, until all she can feel is an odd sort of numbness. Like she’s been cut open and sedated.

“Why?” She whispers.

His sigh turns into fog, briefly leaving his face as nothing but two burning eyes staring at her through the faint cloud.

“You know why I hate being Vanguard so much?”

Ayin snarls at the non sequitur.

She’s not usually so prone to losing her temper, but the betrayal lit a fire inside her she doesn’t feel like quenching.

“Is this really about hating your job?”

She hates the way her voice cracks at the end, but Cayde, mercifully, doesn’t react in any way to it. He just shakes his head, faceplate shifting minutely in frustration like he’s trying to explain something and can’t find the words that will make her listen.

“I wouldn’t- It’s about doing the damn job.” He rubs his head like he has a headache, pushes his hood back as his hand trails down to the back of his neck, resting there for a moment. “You said it was your duty- you know what’s a Hunter's duty? It’s being out there, charting unknown places, going where no one’s gone before, all that jazz. Not being stuck in the City. Being a Vanguard, it means sucking at being a Hunter, and- I’m good at being a Hunter, right?”

He’s got the stereotypical recklessness in spades, that’s for sure.

Not, that’s unfair. Cayde has a core of steel that won’t let him back down in the face of insurmountable odds. That’s what makes him a good Hunter. Reckless as it may seems, it’s a true quality, one she admires and has always tried to emulate. It only makes her angrier at the powder ice still caught in the folds of his clothes. He should have known better.

Unphased by her lack of response, he continues.

“Turns out that might not even be true, huh? Told them spending that much time in the Tower would make me go soft.” He does that heartbreaking thing, where he tilts his head slightly like he’s expecting Sundance to appear just over his shoulder with something witty to say. “But- it made me think about it. The whole duty thing. I spent all of my time as a Vanguard doing everything I could to go back in the field like I’d do my job better there- and when it went wrong, I had to reflect on like- my mistakes and stuff. And I thought- maybe I approached the issue the wrong way, you know?”

“You’re not answering my question.”

She’s proud to hear her voice stay level despite her frustration. She wants to trust Cayde, trust that he’ll eventually get to the point and explain to her… What? That it all makes sense? That it’s going to be fine? At this point Ayin’s not sure whether she’d rather hear reassurances or apologies.

Actually she might punch him if he apologies. He’s made a terrible choice: the only thing worse than this would be that he’s unsure about it himself. And as little as she’s willing to be convinced— she wants to be. She wants, for once, to be proven wrong, to see that stasis isn’t as evil as she assumed.

Anything that will make Cayde’s use of it more bearable.

“I’m gettin’ to it! What I mean is- Hunters are s’posed to scout ahead. First ones in the field, to gather intel and make sure everyone’s got the info they need to do their job and come back safe. We’re the literal vanguard. And with the Darkness moving into the system- we need that kind of assurance. We need someone to jump into the unknown and tell us how far the bottom is.”

“Somebody always needs to go first,” Ayin says softly, like muscle memory.

Cayde doesn’t bother finishing the saying. She knows it as well as he does. “I can’t do much without a Ghost, but I can do this. I can be there when Guardians need someone to turn to when their new powers go awry. And… yeah, I can be here when one of them needs to be stopped. That’s good enough for me.”

Ayin crushes the hint of pity that rises in her. It wouldn’t go appreciated: Hunters, as a rule, would sooner die than be pitied. And if she lets herself feel pity then she’ll start to think about it.

She’ll think about the fact that her best friend, her family, is running out of time.

It’s already a miracle he survived the Prison of Elders. Most ghostless don’t make it an hour past their Ghost’s death. But she was there, and she couldn’t save Sundance, but she could save him, and she did. When the night is dark and she finds herself regretting not being fast enough, she always turns to that thought for comfort: she got him out alive. He won’t be there forever, but at least she has a few decades left with him before he ends up like Banshee and starts forgetting her face.

(If she told him about that fear, she knows the first words out of Cayde’s mouth would be “I’d never forget you”. But he doesn’t get to choose. She’s long given up on hoping for the best.)

And now— now he looks her in the eyes, and he tells her he made the one choice that’s sure to shorten these years they have left. She’s seen what happened to Eramis. She can’t bear to imagine it. The dark ice crawling over his limbs, choking what’s left of his light.

It breaks her heart.

Not only because she loves him, and she doesn’t want him to be hurt. But because he made the one choice that could drive her away from him.

Taking in the Darkness, supporting the Guardian who made the same terrible decision, accepting help from the very enemy you seek to destroy. This— this isn’t a mystery that needs to be solved. This isn’t terra incognita that needs to be charted. At least not by them. if anyone should do it it’s one of the Awoken Techeuns, or the Warlocks already banished from the City because of their heretical research. Hell, even Eris could do it. Someone who’s already dipped into the dark and is eager to learn more.

Someone who’s already lost.

Not the one person Ayin can’t bear to lose.

She swallows past the lump in her throat. She closes her shaking hands into fists. Her heart beats unevenly with anger and grief. She pushes all those useless signals aside, tries to find her way to the rational mindset that earned her the nickname of Crusader.

Don’t think about the implications. About the pain and the loss. Set it all aside. Just like in battle.

A great calm settles in her.

“How… could you.”

Her voice is nearly as cold as the power she came here to plead against.

“I’m sorry, Ayin, but-”

“Don’t. Apologize,” She grits out through clenched teeth. “You’ve seen what happens to those who use stasis! How could you be so- so stupid?”

His eyes narrow, light dimming ever so slightly. “I’m not an idiot, Ayin. I know what I’m doing.”

There’s an edge to Cayde’s voice this time. A note of warning.

But Ayin is far past listening to the sirens. She is the warning. The receding of the water before a tidal wave; the purple skies before a hurricane.

“Do you? What is this, then, an overly complicated suicide attempt? I didn’t save your ass in the Prison of Elders so you could throw it away-”

“Throwing it away? There’s more to fighting a war than killing the enemy faster than it can kill you. At least I’m helping people.”

The anger simmering in her guts flares, shattering her artificial calm. Her whole body tenses like it’s getting ready to go for the kill.

“Are you saying I’m not?”

He takes a step forward, gestures toward the Hangar — the damage from the Red War that they never got to repairing, the pictures of Guardians swallowed by the encroaching Darkness they pinned to a wall as a memorial. Proofs of past catastrophes.

“Nothing we’ve done so far managed to stop the Darkness. Maybe stasis will help, maybe it won’t, but we have to try.”

“And risk playing right into their hands?”

“If that’s what it takes to survive, yes!”

“We’re supposed to fight the Darkness, not join-”

“World’s changing, kiddo. We do what we have to do to survive-”

“Don’t. Call me. Kid.”

Cayde is reckless, impulsive, and he doesn’t know when to quit. Dogged determination has gotten him out of problems more often than he can count.

But sometimes, it also means he doesn’t think before he talks, and he says things such as,

“Why should I, when you’re just as naive?”

The silence that follows is a living thing. It stretches until it fills every inch of the space and curls around Ayin, swallowing her as well. It’s like she’s trapped inside of her own body, deaf to anything but the hammering of her heart and the roaring of the fire inside her chest. Her mind is stuck in a loop—

(how dare you how dare you how dare you)

(why would you cut me off like that why why why)

(betrayer)

When she comes back to herself there are sparks slowly dying on her fingers, and Cayde’s pinned against the pillar he was leaning against.

They make an odd tableau, the two of them. Her, hand outstretched, still as a marble statue, and Cayde, stopped mid-movement, his own hand reaching for her as if to apologize again, a knife sticking out of the hood of his cape, inches from his neck.

“Ayin, I didn’t mean-”

Then why did you say it?

She doesn’t voice the thought — doesn’t trust herself to stay calm, to miss the next time a knife slips from her fingers. She flexes her fingers, forces herself to relax, slows her breathing.

He lets his hand drop.

When she leaves, she doesn’t look back, and he doesn’t call for her.

#writing #destiny 2 #cayde-6 #ayin seeks

6 notes · View notes

eri-223 · 3 months

Note

Sai/Omar 🤔

I’m so neutral on this I don’t know what to say! I like the idea of them being contrasting in that Sai is high-energy and Omar is calm and steady. Of course, there’s the Tragedy, especially if any of Omar’s consciousness ends up sticking around. They both have fun voices and I’m not opposed to this idea! I just probably wouldn’t seek it out.

#destiny #ask game #fireteam heartbreak

4 notes · View notes

flowers-of-io · 2 years

Note

25 for eris/toland? 👀

intimate moments prompts

A/N: For some reason I was haunted by the idea of this taking place in a Everybody Lives AU, so I followed the call and there we go, now it's Fireteam Less Heartbreak! I fixed it!

Eriana's ship circles the Tower twice before she finally decides on approaching it from the side of the Courtyard. The Hangar is closed—they have to dock here, in full view of everyone, a small crowd already gathering along the railing and looking up towards the sky. Eris can already discern Asher's hunched figure if she squints.

She doesn't even bother wondering how it is that they all know; gossip has its way of slipping through the thickest walls, and somehow even from deep in the Pit some stray gust of wind picked up Eriana's bloodcurling scream as she pushed a blade between Crota's ribs, and carried it to the Tower. And so here they are, godkillers, returning victorious from a place that had claimed thousands. She watches the Tower grow larger in the window just like she had watched it shrink away before.

“The Speaker won't like it.”

“It would be quite ungrateful on his part, don't you think?” Toland raises his head from the book he is reading, sprawled in his seat like a cat. “We have just eliminated the nearest biggest threat to humanity's survival.”

“And broken an exclusion order punished by exile. And, you know...” Her eyes linger on him for a little too long, to which he answer with a bark of laughter.

“Ah yes, you're ferrying me along.”

He did ponder aloud whether the Speaker would let him into the Tower, back when they were crawling out of the Pit—he pondered many things, weak and dizzy from blood loss, word slurring into an incoherent mumble that faded into song which then faded into silence as he collapsed unconscious into the mud. She and Vell hauled him up the tunnel, almost dragging across the ground, and everything reeked of blood and dirt and sweat and Hive.

But now he is reclined in his seat with a book in hand, just as he would recline on Eriana’s couch or the armchair in his study; limbs unfurled comfortably and hair falling down into his eyes. As if nothing has changed since the day they banged on the door of his crumbling hut asking how to destroy Crota. As the ship lowers, Eris allows her gaze to wander across the faces of her other teammates—all pale and scratched, wounds only just beginning to scar over, eyes filled with both pride and heaviness of having seen things she knows will forever haunt them. Sai is resting her head on Omar's shoulder and looking at nothing in particular; Vell fiddles with the edge of his chainmail mark, flinching when he moves his bandaged hand a little too fiercely. Eriana only looks out through the windshield, towards home.

She’s never wondered what they would be when—if—they came back, how the Hellmouth would weight on them and the bond she tentatively supposed they had formed. If she concentrated enough, she could still smell the blood and mud in Toland’s hair. An ugly burn glistens on the hand he pushed her away from a Wizard with.

But maybe truly nothing has changed. Maybe when they step out of that ship they will be strangers again, and he will flee to his crumbling hut to go on looking for paths to Ascension. He did not hear his Song, after all; maybe he is still hoping to learn it, somewhere, far beyond her reach. Eris did not think anything in the world would scare her after Crota, but as the hum of the engines dies down, she suddenly finds herself shuddering at the thought.

The crowd outside is large and loud, and Sai has tears in her eyes, and Eris stands up like in a trance and stares at the airlock hissing as it depressurises. She wants to go home so badly, to see Asher’s face and Ikora’s easy smile, to curl up in their embrace and forget about dark hallways reeking of death. She wants to stay in this tiny cockpit forever, with the only people who know her nightmares and Toland’s face monochrome against the City’s colours.

Eriana tries to say something; hitches, shakes her head, and pushes the airlock. Light floods in and for a moment everything is blinding-white.

As her feet meet the metal plank, Eris feels Toland’s forearm brush against hers. For the briefest moment their fingers hook, just to curl and retreat when she looks at him—but he returns her glance, and there is a softness in his eyes she would only ever see in those rare times he laid his head in her lap, scared or insomniac or dizzy with wonder. The crowd swallows them and she is being pulled away by dozens of hands, losing sight of him between the cheers and cries and the velvet of Ikora’s robes as she squeezes her in an embrace.

They will find themselves later, on the way to the Speaker’s chambers, or facing the earbashing from the half-proud, half-furious Osiris. Maybe nothing has changed. Maybe they will meet under the archway behind Eriana’s apartment block again, and the sun will gild his scars as he leans in, and she will run her hand along them and smile.

#thank you for the feels!!!#brushing against your partner reassuringly my beloved #my fics #example no. 7265 of 'i did not beta this'#reply #eri-223 #eris/toland #ships #eris morning #toland the sarky #fireteam sad #destiny 2 #sai mota #omar agah #eriana-3 #vell tarlowe

19 notes · View notes

evilroachindustrial · 5 years

Text

One of the most heartbreaking things in the entire Destiny franchise has to be at the end of the D1 Paradox mission when, as the Vex are trapping him again within the Vault of Glass, Praedyth just absolutely pleads to the Guardian to remember that he lived, that he was part of the fireteam lost to the Vault of Glass.

#Destiny #Destiny 2 #Vault of Glass

63 notes · View notes

thesevenseraphs · 4 years

Text

Bungie Weekly Update - 3/5/20

This Week at Bungie, we prepare for the worthy. We’re just five short sleeps from Season of the Worthy. Last week, you completed the Empyrean Foundation event, lighting a beacon for Guardians to follow back to the Lighthouse and Trials of Osiris. On Tuesday, we unveiled Season of the Worthy all up. If you haven’t seen the trailer, there is a new threat for you to confront.

youtube

Bungie.net also has a dedicated page for the new Season, jam-packed with information to get you up to speed before next Tuesday’s launch.

Before we get started with the rest of the TWAB, I wanted to take a quick moment to highlight another blog post that went live earlier today. In response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, our teams have been working hard to build out an infrastructure that would enable Bungie employees to support Destiny 2, and the impending Season 10 release, safely from remote locations. Season of the Worthy is still planned to release on March 10, followed by the return of Trials of Osiris on March 13. While there is a possibility that this change could affect our patching cadence in the short term, we will be sure to keep players informed about those schedules as much as possible. Stay tuned to @Bungie and @BungieHelp for any future updates.

Now, we have some housekeeping to do before we arm an ancient Warmind. Let’s get to it.

#TRIALSRETURNS

Moments after the announcement that Trials of Osiris would return with Season of the Worthy, we witnessed numerous Guardians sharing their favorite memories from this beloved corner of the PvP endgame. Moments of spectacle, joy, heartbreak, insanity, and everything in between. Trials of Osiris was the source of some awesome community highlights—a thing that some of our newer Guardians may have yet to experience. We’d love to see more of your stories and bring them into the scene.

Using the hashtag #TrialsReturns, share your favorite clips from Destiny 1’s Trials of Osiris. You can post them to Twitter, upload them to YouTube, and even post them to our Community Creations page. We’ll round up our favorites to be featured in next week’s TWAB.

If your video is selected, you and your fireteam will take home a Movie of the Week emblem. Make sure to include links to the Bungie.net profiles of every team member.

POWER GAINS

With each new Season, you’re faced with new challenges that require a bit of Power acquisition to take on. In Season of Worthy, you’ll be challenged in not only Trials of Osiris, but in Legendary Lost Sectors and Grandmaster Nightfalls. Here’s a quick update from the Dev team on what’s changing on day-one, and what our plans are for a mid-season update:

Dev team: We’re raising the ‘cap’ for gear drops 40 points—powerful gear will now drop up to 1000, with pinnacle drops going up to 1010. The soft cap has also been effectively raised 50 points. Gear drops from nearly all sources will continue to be upgrades until 950 Power, and powerful reward sources will not be required to progress to 950. We’re looking to present an element of gear progression available each Season, as well as prepare underlying systems for future updates like the forthcoming one for Legendary weapons mentioned by Luke Smith in the Director’s Cut ‘Weapons Forever’ section.

We’re also looking to make some quality of life updates in the pinnacle band. Starting in 2.8.1. (coming mid-Season), we’ll be upgrading some existing powerful rewards to pinnacle rewards. These are the weekly Crucible, Strike, and Gambit challenges, as well as the weekly clan engram. With this change, we want to increase the total number of pinnacle power sources in the game, broaden pinnacle drop access, as well as increase the pools of items that can drop in the pinnacle band.

Slot imbalances can also affect pinnacle progression. When we say slot imbalance, this could be explained as those times you have a chest piece drop from pinnacle sources a few times in a row. We’ve been looking at player feedback for some time, and are investigating a few approaches to the problem space. We’re looking to have an update on that at a later date. Until then, we hope the additional sources will help you on your climb.

While we have the Dev team here, they also wanted to give an update on Artifact Power for Trials of Osiris.

Dev team: With Trials just around the corner, we wanted to address the “Artifact Power problem” as quickly as we could. As Luke said last week, our short-term fix is to disable the Artifact's Power bonus while in Trials and Iron Banner. Unfortunately, Season of the Worthy has already been released for certification, so we won't be able to disable the Artifact's Power for the first Trials weekend. We have the fix in-house to disable it and are testing it this week, and hope to deploy it on Tuesday, March 17. We really wish we could have gotten it in for the launch weekend, but we also expect the first Trials weekend to be the one impacted by the Artifact the least. Players will have much less time to increase their Artifact Power, so the majority will be close to each other outside of Pinnacle drops. Our long-term plan is to enable a Power cap for Trials and Iron Banner and we're investigating the work required for this. This will roll out no earlier than midway through Season of the Worthy, but we don't have a firm date yet—we'll make sure to communicate it when we do! We also plan to look at the damage curves for Power-enabled PvP modes to determine what, if any, adjustments should be made. Assuming we discover it’s necessary, the timeline for a change is still TBD. With both changes, we plan to provide more detailed write-ups before they go live, explaining the details of the change and the design philosophy behind why we are making those decisions.

Just for clarity, I'll echo Luke's statement from last week: we're going to disable the Artifact Power bonus in Trials and Iron Banner until we can implement a new Power cap system for those playlists. I hope you all enjoy Season of the Worthy, and may your run to the Lighthouse be swift and merciless.

SEASON OF THE WORTHY: EVERVERSE UPDATE

With the turn of each Season, we hope to keep players up to date on how the Eververse Store is evolving. This Season, we have a few changes concerning Bright Engrams, and a new path to directly purchasing some previously featured Eververse items.

Bright Engrams

In Season of the Worthy, Bright Engrams will no longer be available for purchase from the Eververse Store. As said in the February 2020 Director’s Cut:

“We want players to know what something costs before they buy it. Bright Engrams don’t live up to that principle so we will no longer be selling them on the Eververse Store, though they will still appear on the Free Track of the Season Pass.”

This Season, we are continuing to focusing our efforts on direct purchasing through the Eververse Store.

Daily Rotation of Returning Items

In the place of Bright Engrams, a new module will become available on the Eververse Store starting in Season of the Worthy. This daily-rotating module will feature one item from a small selection of ships, Sparrows, Ghosts, and finishers that were offered in previous Seasons. These items will be available to purchase directly for Silver at a discount from the original price.

Aside from these changes, there aren’t any other major shifts coming for Eververse. We’ll be monitoring the conversation through launch and beyond, and will be sure to update you before any large changes come. Here’s a quick preview of some upcoming items coming with Season of the Worthy:

THE FINAL PREVIEW (OF PATCH NOTES)

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been giving some previews how your sandbox will be evolving in Season of the Worthy. Not just weapon tuning, but the ability to change the Elemental Affinity on your armor pieces. This week, we’ll be taking a wider look at Destiny 2 Update 2.8.0. Exotic armor tuning for PvE and PvP, UI updates, bug fixes, and more…

Exotic Armor

Hunter

Assassin's Cowl

The invisibility and healing effect now triggers on powered melee (both against combatants and Guardians) and finishers.

The duration of the invisibility granted by this Exotic increases based on the tier of the enemy defeated.

Arc Staff kills no longer activate this perk.

FROST-EE5

Changed the ability regeneration so that it no longer stacks multiplicatively with other class ability energy-generating perks.

Khepri's Sting

All smoke bombs deal 150% damage while wearing this Exotic.

Orpheus Rig

The maximum amount of Super you can regain from this Exotic with a single use of Shadowshot is 50%.

Young Ahamkara's Spine

Increases the explosion radius for Tripmines by 14%.

Titan

Ashen Wake

Killing an enemy with a Fusion Grenade while wearing this Exotic now refunds grenade energy. The amount of grenade energy refunded scales based on the tier of enemy killed.

Anteus Wards

The shield created during a slide no longer allows chip damage through.

Doomfang Pauldrons

Fixed a bug where Doomfang Pauldrons would sometimes grant Super energy from melee kills while in your Super.

Dunemarchers

Increase the radius of the static charge to 20 meters, up from 12.

Mk. 44 Stand Asides

Reduced the delay from the start of sprinting until the overshield comes in to 0.5 seconds, down from 1.25.

One-Eyed Mask

The target marking from this Exotic has been replaced with target highlighting, eliminating the ability to detect targets through walls.

No longer provides a damage bonus when defeating your marked target.

Restored the previous overshield granted by defeating your marked target, which now has a duration of 6 seconds, down from 8.

Severance Enclosure

The explosion now triggers on powered melee (both against combatants and Guardians) and finishers.

The radius and damage of the explosion created by this Exotic increases based on the tier of the enemy defeated.

Warlock

Apotheosis Veil

This Exotic is now guaranteed to drop with a minimum +16 to Intellect.

Contraverse Hold

Reduced the damage reduction granted by this Exotic to 20%, down from 40%.

Sanguine Alchemy

Sanguine Alchemy has received a complete redesign. Its new perk, Blood Magic, allows the wearer to pause the countdown timer of any Rift they are standing in by getting weapon kills, extending the Rift's duration.

Ophidian Aspects

Now increases the lunge range of all Warlock melee attacks, even if the ability is on cooldown.

Verity's Brow

The buff provided by this Exotic now increases your grenade damage by 10% per stack.

The buff to allies' grenade recharge rates now kicks in when you cast your grenade.

This Exotic now provides a buff text notification indicating how many allies are currently benefiting from your increased grenade recharge.

Investment

Legendary Engrams

Increased the number of armor sets available from world drops to 11 sets, up from 3.

This will include Faction Rally armor. Players who own previous Faction Rally Ornaments may apply them to these sets.

Several sets that were previously unavailable or extremely difficult to acquire are now available as world drops.

Armor Stats

Prime Engrams will now more reliably drop armor with higher overall stat rolls and spikier distributions.

Exotic armor will now more reliably drop with higher overall stat rolls.

Legendary armor now has an improved chance of receiving higher overall stat rolls, though low rolls will still be present.

User Interface

The Settings screen UI layout on consoles has changed to match the experience on PC, allowing for future updates.

Added the ability to change the color of the reticle on consoles.

Players can choose from seven different colors, matching PC.

Added hint text during loading screens.

Added comma separators to the Glimmer count in the loot stream.

No longer keeps me awake at night.

Added categories to the Quests screen.

Quest items will now be automatically filtered to any of the seven categories:

New Light

Note: This category will hide if there are no active New Light quests in the character's inventory.

All Quests

Shadowkeep

Seasonal

Playlists

Exotics

The Past

Performance

Fixed UI stuttering and framerate drops when loading or applying mods.

Improved framerate in Gambit and Gambit Prime.

Fixed framerate issues during the Sanctified Mind encounter of the Garden of Salvation raid.

Fixed framerate issues in the Pit of Heresy dungeon, specifically in tunnel encounters.

Fixed stutter at high framerate on PC.

General improvements to performance on PC when a lot of debris is on the ground.

While this list is pretty lengthy, we’ll have more patch notes to share with you next Tuesday around 9 AM PDT, an hour before Season of the Worthy begins.

Some of you may be asking, “Wait, 10 AM? Don’t patches usually ship at 9 AM?” Daylight Saving Time begins on Sunday, March 8. If your region takes part in jumping forward, your weekly reset time will be an hour later than you’re used to. More information from the Player Support team below.

Before we dive headfirst into Season of the Worthy, we have a patch to ship. Destiny Player Support has your itinerary in hand, and a quick list of some resolved issues.

A NEW SEASON

Next week, Season of Dawn ends and Season of the Worthy kicks off with the release of Destiny 2 Update 2.8.0. Please see below for the rollout timeline.

8 AM PDT (1500 UTC): Destiny service maintenance begins.

8:45 AM PDT (1545 UTC): Destiny 2 is taken offline on all platforms.

9 AM PDT (1600 UTC): Destiny 2 Update 2.8.0 begins rolling out across all platforms and regions. Players will be able to log back into Destiny 2 at 10:01 AM PDT.

10:01 AM PDT (1701 UTC): Destiny 2 is back online on all platforms; Season of The Worthy begins.

12 PM PDT (1900 UTC): Destiny service maintenance concludes

For future release timelines when they are available, players should visit our Destiny Server and Update Status help article. For live updates as this maintenance occurs, players should follow @BungieHelp on Twitter or monitor our support feed at help.bungie.net. UPCOMING RESOLVED ISSUES, PT. 2Below is a continuation of a list of issues that will be resolved when Season of the Worthy and Update 2.8.0 become available on March 10:

Hunter’s Tempest Strike melee ability can now be performed when using PC controls where Sprint is set to "Hold."

Character subclasses with ranged melee abilities will now count towards Melee Kill bounties and Triumphs. These include Titan Hammer Throw, Hunter Throwing Knives and Corrosive Smoke Bomb, and Warlock Celestial Fire and Ball Lightning.

The Fastidious Miser Triumph will now correctly progress and complete for players who've found all 30 Ascendant Chests across the three Curse Weeks in the Dreaming City, and have claimed those corresponding Triumphs.

Weekly Strike bounties for Hive and Vex boss kills will now award progress to players for killing Savathûn's Song, Xol, and Dendron the Root Mind.

While Update 2.8.0 is released to the world, Destiny Player Support will be on standby in the #Help forum, ready to assist anyone who is experiencing issues.

#Destiny #Destiny 2 #Destiny 2: Forsaken #Bungie Weekly Update #long post

10 notes · View notes

illumynare · 6 years

Text

Destiny Fic: Three Queens Rising

Summary: Six of them went down into the Pit. All six returned triumphant. But not unchanged.

(The AU where Eriana's fireteam managed to kill Crota and go home, and things still went terribly, terribly wrong.)

Pairings: Eris/Toland.

Notes: Also available on AO3.

Story/section titles (plus a bunch of quotes) are from the Grimoire card Ghost Fragment: Darkness 3, which you should totally read because it's the BEST. GRIMOIRE. EVER. Saint-14's vision is mentioned in the Lore for the Destiny 2 Helm of Saint-14.

(Yes, I know the timeline is kinda handwaved. My excuse is that Destiny's timeline isn't that clear to begin with.)

Thanks to @ir-anuk and @jencforcarolina, who read the first draft and gave suggestions.

1. the queen who builds a high tower

This is the last thing Eris Morn ever saw: Eriana's hands gripping the Praxic Fire, as wholly luminescent as the sun.

Six of them went down into the Pit.

So many times, they nearly did not return.

When Vell Tarlowe charged Alak-Hul, his courage and his strength were not enough—

But Eris's hands were steady on her sniper rifle, and Eriana's grenades lit the darkness, and Sai danced invisibly. When Vell died in his final Fist of Havoc, Alak-Hul died too, and Toland raised Vell before the waves of Thrall could devour his Light.

When Omar was dragged away into the tunnels, his luck failed him, and they gave him up for dead—

But Toland heard his screams, echoing through ascendant spaces that the rest of them could barely sense. Eris demanded that they follow Toland's lead. And they found Omar, broke the rack of bones that held him, shattered the Heart of Crota before she could feed him to the Hive. He lost an eye and an arm, but not his Light.

When they faced Omnigul, Sai's cleverness was not enough, and a wave of Thralls crushed her as she bladedanced with the jagged bones of Acolytes—

But Vell raised her and fought back-to-back with her, punching a Thrall for every one she knifed. Toland chanted the words that lowered Omnigul's shields. And Omar's Golden Gun rang three times, every shot landing between Omnigul's eyes.

Together they felled the Swordbearers, stole their powers, and crossed the bridge. Together they faced Ir Yût and fed the Deathsinger her own death.

Together they faced Crota.

It was Eriana who struck the final blow: Eriana, alight with the Praxic Fire as she gripped a sword that sang with Darkness. All of them firing together brought Crota to his knees, but it was Eriana alone who cleaved him apart and broke the Oversoul Throne.

For the rest of her days, Eris would remember how brightly Eriana gleamed in that moment.

Years later, she would remember how easily Eriana held the blade.

The first years after they killed Crota were golden.

Vell returned to the Pilgrim Guard. Sai vanished into the wilds. Omar clapped Eris on the shoulder, told her to mind her aim with grenades—and forever laughed, even though his Ghost never could restore his eye and arm. (The Heart of Crota had rent too deeply at his Light.)

Toland received a very reluctant, conditional pardon. Eris was made his guard and guarantor, and the duty sat lightly on her shoulders. There were long, lazy afternoon squabbles over the nature of the sword-logic and the universe; there were nights of whispering invocations as they echoed and mastered each syllable they had learned from the Deathsinger. They were confined to the Tower, but they read the reports of Guardians who delved the the tunnels of the Hive on the Moon, and when the Guardians delved too deeply, they chanted the spells to raise them out again.

Eriana became the Warlock Vanguard.

Eris saw her stand in the Hall of Guardians, glittering and tall and sure, and she felt that a missing piece of her heart had slotted into place. Eriana-3, disciple of the Praxic Warlocks, marked by the Cormorant Seal, was at last a light to all Guardians as she had been a light to Eris, when Eris was newly risen and afraid.

The first years were golden.

The years after, burned.

To be a Guardian was to be dead, and live, and called to die again and again. Eris had known this since she opened her eyes to a room full of skeletons. There was no Guardian who did not know it.

Eriana, perhaps, was coming to know it too well.

The Warlock Vanguard remained unbowed. Her voice, as she questioned Guardians returned from disastrous missions, remained as stately and as calm as ever. Eris thought she might be the only one who could see grief in the flickering of Eriana's lights. She was certainly the only one sat with Eriana late at night as she studied in the Vanguard archives, hunting for a way to improve their defenses.

Wei Ning had been avenged. But new Guardians died the final death every day, and Eriana could not avenge or save them.

Eris worried about this. She said as much to Toland, one night as they sat watching the stars.

"These equations take their time," said Toland. "She'll balance herself in the end. Or die."

"She won't speak of it," said Eris. That was what disturbed her most: the two of them had talked endlessly about Crota, how and why he must die. She had known each heartbeat of Eriana's grief for Wei Ning. But now that Eriana was mourning again—was always mourning, for every Guardian—she would not speak of it.

"Hm," said Toland, and pressed his lips to her neck, and that that night Eris thought no more of Eriana.

But when Omar returned from patrol, grinning and triumphant—he was still a dead shot, despite missing an eye—she told him of her worries.

"I'll talk to her," he said. "We were all in hell together, yeah?"

Eris nodded.

She would would regret that ever, ever after.

2. the queen who raises an army

This is the most important thing that Eriana ever saw: the Light peeling up from Omar's chest in writhing, glowing threads as the Heart of Crota sang to him.

She had known for a long time that the Light would not protect those who served it. Else Wei Ning (most valiant, most pure) would not have died. But in that moment, Eriana finally understood that the Light was a thing, a substance that could be robbed and defiled—

Or gathered and used.

She became Vanguard to a shaken Tower. The treachery of Osiris still echoed in its halls. Barely months after she was raised to her position, Andal Brask died, and his protégé Cayde-6 took his place.

Eriana could not like either of her fellow Vanguards. Zavala was as brave as Wei Ning, but without her beautiful fury. Cayde had all of Wei’s brashness and cheer, but none of her nobility.

Every time that Zavala listened to a report of a dead Guardian and nodded in solemn acceptance, saying, “That was bravely done”—every time that Cayde cracked a joke, said, “Am I right or am I right?”—fire kindled in the hinges of Eriana’s jaws and ached at her fingertips.

They were not worthy. They were not right. Not when Wei Ning was Lightless and dead, when Guardians followed her into the final darkness every day.

Eriana had killed Wei’s killer, had slain the dark god of the Hive who was thought to be unslayable. And yet she felt, more and more, that she had done nothing. Changed nothing.

More and more, she found that Toland was the only one in the Tower she cared to speak with.

Toland the Shattered: a large name for a very small man. He was lean, pale, often stooping; when he did stand straight, he barely came to Eriana’s shoulder. His Ghost hovered close to his neck and never spoke. Granted the Light of the Traveler, he had squandered nearly all of it in forbidden research and wretched experiments.

Long ago, Eriana had despised him. When she had needed his wisdom to defeat Crota, she had used him. But when she had become Warlock Vanguard—

Then, she finally began to respect him.

For Toland alone understood what Eriana had learned when she slew Crota, when she saw the Light peeled away from Omar, when Wei Ning fell and never rose again.

And in his turn, Toland began to respect Eriana. For while she might not grasp Hive lore so easily as Eris did—Eriana had grasped Crota’s sword. She had pared the world into line with her will, and there was a light of reverence in Toland’s eyes now when he spoke to her.

Existence is a game that everything plays, Toland whispered in the gray hours of the morning as they stood on the Tower walls together. Staring up at the pale, lifeless hulk of the Traveler, Eriana agreed.

For all its miracles, the Traveler could only sustain. Revive. Delay.

Everything is becoming more ruthless and in the end only the most ruthless will remain.

Against the hungry Dark, what use was the gentle Light? It was only Crota’s own sword that had felled him.

This is the shape of victory: to rule the universe so absolutely that nothing will ever exist except by your consent.

Late one night, after another conference with Toland, Eriana went to stand on the Tower walls alone. She gazed out over the glowing expanse of the City. She listened to the soft laughter and chatter of the Guardians around them.

She thought: I will defend them against this universe of spears.

To do that, she needed a knife.

Toland was prolific in his theories. Eriana was willing in her experiments.

But they made no real progress until the day that Omar came to speak with Eriana. Until the moment when Eriana ignored his words and stared at him with newly hungry eyes.

He was not the same, Omar Agah, and not only because he lacked an eye and arm. The Light was still a fountain within him, but it was . . . Looser. Unbound. Hanging off of him in ragged, invisible strands.

Available.

And in a moment, Eriana understood what she could do with him, and therefore had to. What was the only way to make the Tower and the Guardians strong enough, when all the universe around them was made of swords and spears.

“Omar,” she said, “Toland has a theory.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, that means he’ll never shut up. Listen, this is why you need to leave the Tower for a bit.”

“It’s a way to keep the Guardians safer,” said Eriana. “We could use your help in the experiment. If you’re not afraid.”

And Omar smiled at her. “You lead, I’ll follow. Can’t be worse than the Hellmouth, right?”

Briefly, Eriana hated him: Omar Agah, whose luck saved him when Wei Ning’s did not.

But it had not been luck. It had been Toland’s knowledge and Eriana’s fusion grenades. They had saved him, and so now they had a right to him.

She told herself this, later, once he began to scream.

She did not expect Eris to rebel.

Zavala: of course he would resist her vision. Eriana was not at all surprised when she had to kill him. Cayde-6: of course he would deny her authority. Eriana did not blink when she leaned he had fled.

But Eris?

Loyal, gentle Eris, who had followed her into the Pit? Who had gazed at her, always, as if Eriana were the Traveler itself?

She did not expect that betrayal.

She had known that Eris would have questions. Eriana had studied Crota only to defeat him, but Eris had wanted to understand him. Of course Eris would want to know whence came the vats of Light that Eriana offered to the Guardians, and why the Ghosts fell silent once their Guardians had tasted that Light.

Of course Eris would want to know why Omar, and other Guardians after him, had vanished.

But Eriana had truly thought—she and Toland had both thought—that Eris would understand their logic. Their need.

There was only one way for the Guardians to survive, to be safe, and that was to conquer. To hone themselves into a knife. To abandon the gentle dreams of the Traveler and seize the sword.

If the price was that a few Guardians died screaming, the Light peeled out of their bodies and used to seed the great vats where it boiled and fermented and grew into a new elixir . . .

That was still better than the Tower ruined, the City sacked, humanity destroyed.

It was infinitely better than Wei Ning crushed beneath Crota’s sword.

Eris did not agree.

Eriana knew that she must punish her. But when she stood in the Tower’s central court, Eris bound before her, the assembled Guardians watching—

She remembered the days after the Mare Imbrium, when she had been nearly blind with grief, and Eris alone had stayed with her, sworn vengeance with her.

Eriana could not bring herself to kill her. Not after that.

But queens must enforce their authority somehow. So she summoned the Praxic Fire into her palms.

“Eris Morn,” she said, “for your help in slaying Crota, I will spare your life. But you are forever banished from the Tower.”

And then she struck Eris across the face.

Eris made no sound as her eyes turned to ash, but her Ghost screamed as it frantically tried to heal her—until Eriana caught it, twisted it, and incinerated its core.

“Go from here,” she said, letting the charred bits of the dead Ghost’s shell clatter to the ground, “and never return.”

3. this is the shape of victory

There's a silence in the Tower.

It's a beautiful place, drenched with sunlight in the day, gleaming with lamps in the night. Ghosts fly in obedient, graceful lines. Guardians clasp hands and clap shoulders as they wait to speak with the Gunsmith, with Master Rahool, with the Vanguard Queen.

The wind sings in the trees. But the Ghosts are forever silent. The Guardians speak only in hushed, reverent tones. And the Vanguard Queen speaks as she wills—

But when she speaks, silence follows.

There’s a whispering in the Wild.

Fewer Guardians roam there now. The Vanguard Queen does not like to risk her Guardians’ lives with mere patrols; if she does not send them forth in a host to conquer, she wishes them to stay within the City walls.

But sometimes, Guardians are allowed a short mission. Sometimes, Guardians find a way to slip out. And when they do, sometimes they dare to whisper to each other, to trade in treasonous rumors:

There is a rebellion. There are Guardians whose Ghosts still speak to them. There is a blind Oracle, her eyes burnt out by the Vanguard Queen, and with the ashes of her eyes she sees the truth.

And not sometimes, but only once in a very long while, a Guardian dares to go look.

There’s a celebration in the caves.

Cayde is back, and with him three new Guardians to join their band, two of them stolen out of the Tower prisons just before their execution. It’s an amazing feat, and—little though Eris likes him—few but Cayde could have pulled it off.

Eris will speak to the newcomers later. For now, she sits in the little stone chamber she has claimed as her room, and listens to the muted din of the celebration. She thinks wistfully of the last night before they departed for the Moon—even close-lipped Sai laughing and toasting—

Her neck prickles with a sudden awareness, and Eris turns, knowing what is about to happen. The Light is no longer hers to sense, but her time on the Moon and her studies have left her still attuned to Hive magic.

The air before her shifts and ripples.

“Eriana is wroth at you tonight,” says Toland, who has never yet managed to appear behind her.

“Is she ever not angry?” asks Eris.

She hears the soft rustle of Toland’s robes as he sits; she reaches out her hand, and feels his fingers wrap around hers.

For one moment, they are back in the tunnels beneath the Lunar surface together, and nothing matters but the darkness and their breathing.

This time, Toland is the one to break their unity. “Deliver Cayde into her hands, and she might forgive you.”

Eris laughs softly. “Tempting, that. But I think I will suffer him a little longer.”

“Oh, Eris,” says Toland, sadly fond. “You could have learned so much if you had stayed. My research—”

It was refreshing to be pitied for something besides her lost eyes and Light, but Eris had no intention of listening to his speech again.

“I’ve spoken to Osiris,” she interrupts, and doesn’t need eyes to know that Toland has gone rigid with jealousy. “He thinks that Saint-14 might have truly seen the future.”

Toland snorts. “A Guardian savior who will drive back the Darkness? A childish fancy.”

He sounds again like the man she remembers from their first days in the Tower, before he pitied her, before he reverenced Eriana.

“Maybe,” Eris allows.

“And if there were such a one, surely it is Crota’s Bane,” says Toland, remembering his allegiance.

Eris thinks of Eriana, how steady her hands had been on Crota’s sword, on Omar’s chest as she peeled the Light away from him.

How gloriously she had shone in the moment before she made Eris’s eyes forever dark.

With infinite grief, Eris thinks, She could have been.

4. the queen at the end of time

This is the first thing you ever see: your empty hands, grasping at the air.

"Guardian! Eyes up, Guardian!"

You look, and floating before you is—you don't know what: a little floating thing, shaped like a starburst made solid.

"I'm a Ghost,” it says to you. “There aren't many of us left. And I've been looking for you a very, very long time.”

#eris morn #eriana 3 #toland the shattered #destiny #destiny the game #my fic #fireteam heartbreak

37 notes · View notes