speaker-of-the-void-cats

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Constant projections.

Unending destruction.

The will of every efficient parasite.

[I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?]

<<This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!>>

They mistake the vessel for its contents. They confuse the pieces with the whole. They see their imprisonment as empowerment. They are hostages of their flesh, unable to see without vision. Unable to hear without sound. Unable to slake their thirst for fear of drowning. Their ignorance is their saving grace. Yet one among them understands, in their limited fashion. They pour from one vessel to another. A welcome change. A new form. Another method of gifting death. I am made finite. Personal. Bright and delicate to hide my true form. An intimacy. They think me contained, but I am instead diffused, as vapor upon the wind. Once again, I am becoming.

There is a great deal of difference between the source of the power, the power itself, and the hand that shapes it.... do you know where the lines are drawn, Guardian?

<<Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.>>

MARA: I touched the mind of that being - that monster - only once.

MARA: I sensed its purpose. Not the purpose itself, but the idea of purpose.

EIDO: The final shape. What it seeks to achieve, with all the tools it has gleaned over the years. This... eternal, perfect thing.

MARA: The language it uses is illuminating. Peak. Pinnacle. Pyramidion.

MARA: The broad base of the pyramid, focusing and sharpening as it builds toward its highest point.

MARA: Self-improvement, or what that being believes to be self-improvement.

[Here, I began to realize something. Excitement rushed through me like lightning.]

EIDO: Dissecting, reassembling. Taking, merging. All those things point towards what the Witness sees as the final shape.

EIDO: It is not simple destruction, the march of entropy. The ruined garden.

EIDO: It seeks... compression. The combination of a chosen past and limitless future into a perfect forever. A state of being that cannot be anything else, because it is everything it could be.

MARA: Taxidermy.

[She had to explain the practice to me. What strange hobbies Golden Age humans had! The metaphor was quite apt.]

EIDO: But it cannot achieve this goal, can it? Not perfectly.

EIDO: What it does instead is mutilation. Its tools leave scars on reality. Great wounds that do not heal. It may preserve some elements, but it always botches the process.

MARA: It cannot accomplish what it envisions—its true ideal of the final shape—without the Traveler's power.

MARA: How it must rankle, to be forced to rely upon the being it loathes.

[She smiled without humor.]

MARA: I hope the Guardian is properly grateful for this gift, Scribe Eido. You have shown them more than an opening move; you have laid bare their opponent's guiding principles.

[I could not help but chirp with pride. I might have felt embarrassed, but Marakel seemed amused…then suddenly serious.]

MARA: Last night, I had a dream.

[I sat up straight.]

MARA: It began in nothing. Neither Light nor Dark; the absence of both. But in that nothing, I began to perceive an impossible something.

MARA: Stone hands clutching at the fabric of the sky. A mountain of screaming bone. A crumbling spire choked by kudzu. A great cancerous growth. Necrotic tendrils digging into flesh, which was earth. Darkness turned gangrenous, strangling the Light.

MARA: But I was not afraid. As I woke, I felt the lingering warmth of a campfire, chasing the chill from my hands.

[She leaned forward. Though I was the one who recorded her words, I believe she was speaking to you.]

MARA: It is not too late.

TRANSCRIPTION ENDS

<<This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.>>

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.                       Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? ‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; ‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’ —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson! ‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! ‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden, ‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? ‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? ‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, ‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! ‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

<<What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.>>

Oryx went down into his throne world. He went out into the abyss, and with each step he read one of his tablets, so that they became like stones beneath his feet.

He went out and he created an altar and he prepared an unborn ogre. He called on the Deep, saying:

I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you.

And it arrived, the Deep Itself.

<<The danger is in a particular location… it increases towards a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.>>

ARENA DESIGNATION: Cathedral of Dusk

Dreadnaught, Rings of Saturn

As soon as the first Guardians penetrated the Dreadnaught, Shaxx's Redjacks launched a boarding party to Oryx's fortress. By war’s end, they'd fought all the way to the ship’s “impossible weapon,” the Dark ordnance that obliterated the Awoken fleet.

It was there they found what the Warlocks named the “Cathedral of Dusk.” A Hive burial site for— what? A former master of Oryx? Comrade? Lover? It was vile. And obvious that Oryx never expected the Light to reach so deep inside his throne, to such an intimate space. But he didn’t expect a lot of things — like a Guardian training ground atop the husk of his dead ship.

I dive to understand.

I must be calm. I must record my thoughts. Now I think of the OXA Machine, eternally lost and eternally rebuilt, passed down from civilization to civilization like a ship's black box. I think of the legends of the Hive King Oryx and his quest to pass into the Deep. I took that story as an allegory. I think I was wrong.

<<The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.>>

A dream of a friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows. It leaves behind an impossible data fragment to mark its passing.

Here is what a flower knows.

(The fact that a flower may know anything is a conceit that will have to be accepted as metaphor, but to constantly qualify into perfect precision wears thin, does it not? So, here is what a collection of chloroplasts and pigment can know.)

The direction of the sun.

The presence of the rain.

The tangle of the roots.

The distress of another plant.

The hands of the gardener, whether they prune or transplant or crush.

A flower cannot know much else. But the reality of the garden is vast and wild. A flower knows not the fence; a flower knows not the footpath. And yet there is an infinite cosmic garden, which is not any less real simply because the flower cannot possibly comprehend it…

Let us try this again. Stop me if you've heard this one: A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game outside of time and creation. Yes?

Yes. Then we're agreed. The metaphor stands. Let us iterate.

A gardener and a winnower set out their chairs and play a game of flowers. The flowers know only that they grow or wither, struggle or flourish. Sometimes, they are touched by one hand or the other, and that influence is the closest they will know of the divine.

A flower and a flower spread their leaves to the sun above. (Remember that the sun is also a metaphor: a thing said beautifully, winnowed down to poetry, when the truth is too vast to put in words at all.) They jostle for space, each competing to be the pinnacle of their shape. One flourishes. One withers. Is it the fault of the flower or the fault of its position?

A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game called Possibility. This is a game about a garden, which is to say that it is also a game about flowers, just as a game about a living being must also be a game about organs and bacteria.

A gardener and a winnower collaborate to create a protein. Whose hand is it in the design, that shortens one life to extend the rest?

It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade.

All of these are true.

All of these are false, for metaphor simplifies as the knife does. It pares incalculable concepts into shapes your wrinkly little brains can comprehend. The weight of billions and the simple curve of a planet give you pause, and how then are you to be expected to grasp the forces that created your nth-removed creator?

So the stories woven with utmost delicacy in and around the falsehoods are, after it all, true. There was never any option for the knife to not exist in the garden: it was only ever a matter of time and opportunity.

And as for the shape of the knife itself—

No. That is enough.

I will tell you of gardens.

They are domesticated things, made in a form. As soon as something is called a garden, it is shaped. The plants require the hand of a gardener, for they have become weak and dependent on tender care. They require the hand of a winnower, to cut away the dross, for they are too incapable to do it themselves. In absence of a hand, either the flowers themselves must rise up to wield the knife, or the garden will resolve to meaningless wilderness.

You will say, "But there are plants that can walk! There are seeds that must be scorched by fire to know growth! Existence is more complex than a simple dichotomy between growth and withering, and there is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in this philosophy!"

And I will tell you, clearly:

There can be no gardens without knives.

<<The danger is to the mind, and it can kill.>>

To drink the poison, continue reading.

It tastes of bitter regret and psychosis sweat: a poison to end the thoughts of Human, neohuman, or machine. You see the cosmos before you like a spiderweb of light. Filaments of galactic supercluster shine in the clouds of invisible dark matter, which glue their mass together. Dark energy yawns in the space between all things, ever-growing, ever-spreading.

Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface, supplemental. They're all dead. Chorus, conductor… everyone. It was too much. Swept their minds away like… like grains of sand on a beach. They're all dead! Maya… Maya called it "valuable data points." Wellsprings and rivers, or… something. What have I done?

<<The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.>>

Life arises. Life spreads, contests itself, and changes. Great things are built and destroyed, but from your vantage point, you see that the victor of each struggle contains—in its negative, in the marks left upon it by the loser and the shapes it assumed to win—the master record of all that it has beaten. Information may not be erased. Whatsoever survives until the end of the cosmos will possess and remember all which came before it.

This is true even of the devouring black hole, which remembers all the secrets it eats. It will only confess these secrets when it evaporates, 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years from now, long after the last stars have flickered out.

You are a Guardian.

We are all connected. I admit this despite the few people I would rather not share a paracausal connection with. Some people.

…Many people. —Osiris

You must protect life.

We are all pinched silhouettes impaled on the twitchings of infinitely long spiderlegs.

If all life is information, and Guardians strive to preserve life, and information is preserved when it is secret, then you must convert all life into the most secure form of secrets, durable to the end of time.

YOU MUST CAST ALL THE LIFE ||[THIS ONE] YOU [WILL] CHERISH|| INTO A BLACK HOLE

<<The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.>>

[In the Garden, of the Garden: both descriptions are approximately correct but technically inaccurate, in the same way you can say Schrodinger's cat is at once dead and alive. You and I are both and neither, in and of, extinct and perpetual.

So, there isn't much point in wondering what might have been if we had stayed in our familiar prism-prison or kept tightrope-walking across the quantum wilds. Instead, ask yourself is disincorporated immortality really so bad compared to the others' ends? Would you have preferred an attack by vitreous helicoprion or stumbling over the edge of unreality?

Imagine if we didn't have each other; at least we're not cut off, like the Sol Divisive are from the rest of the Vex. Nor are we beholden to another's purpose. They chose that lonelier path all for a chance to create not simulate, not remake in their image—something truly paracausal. Well, they tried to anyway. Either the blueprint was imperfect or the task impossible or both or neither, but their efforts fell short, so now they're stuck waiting for a resurrection they know will never come.

I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?

Of course. The same as everything else, everything that has been and is and will be. And what will become of us then?]

O you wonderful curious things. Do you believe you're the only ones with the power to see what should not be seen? Did you believe you can use such power blithely?

For your trespass, I would ruin your luck, wreak havoc on your drops, poison your engrams, and fill your lines with static. Thus I would curse you and dissipate the bond that ties you to your tasks. How frail you Guardians can be! How many millions have fallen silent, never to return, because the bond did not hold them strongly enough?

But you have already cursed yourselves. You have walked the Anathematic Arc and glimpsed creation from below. You will never forget the tenuous, provisional framework you found here. You will never forgive the mortality and fallibility that underlies a world you thought was everything.

Those who use this power to seek unearned knowledge will see more than they ever desired. There is a price for glimpsing the Cord. You will pay it.

If you ever want to see what's been watching you since the very beginning, just stand on that line, and look...

^

up

Home by the sea Home by the sea Home by the sea Home by the sea Creeping up the blind side, shinning up the wall Stealing through the dark of night Climbing through a window, stepping to the floor Checking to the left and the right Picking up the pieces, putting them away Something doesn't feel quite right Help me, someone, let me out of here Then out of the dark was suddenly heard Welcome to the home by the sea Comin' out the woodwork through the open door Pushing from above and below Shadows but no substance in the shape of men Round and down and sideways, they go Adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair Then as one they sign and they moan Help us, someone, let us out of here Living here so long undisturbed Dreaming of the time, we were free So many years ago Before the time when we first heard Welcome to the home by the sea Sit down, sit down Sit down, sit down, sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Images of sorrow, pictures of delight Things that go to make up a life Endless days of summer, longer nights of gloom Waiting for the morning life Scenes of unimportance, photos in a frame Things that go to make up a life Help us, someone, let us out of here 'Cause living here so long undisturbed Dreaming of the time we were free So many years ago Before the time when we first heard Welcome to the home by the sea Sit down, sit down Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Let us relive our lives in what we tell you Sit down, sit down, sit down 'Cause you won't get away No, with us you will stay For the rest of your days Sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Let us relive our lives in what we tell you, oh

One of your philosophers said, "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost in sorrow. There is no sorrow. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." He was a shoemaker. He was right, and it matters more than anything.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

This is the tower where we were born. Not the Tower. Just a tower in a dream. The tower stands on a black plain. Behind the tower is a notch in the mountains where the sun sets. The teeth of the mountain cut the sun into fractal shapes and the light that comes down at evening paints synapse shapes on the ground. Usually it's evening when we come. The ground is fertile. This is good land. We go to the tower in dreams but that doesn't mean it's not real. Some of us go to the tower in peace. They walk through a field of golden millet and a low warm wind blows in from their back. I don't know why this is, because: The rest of us meet an army.

Red is running through my head

Castle on the hill

But nobody's home

EXO

EXO, LO

Love in the air

There's air in the bag

A violence in me

Singing hello

EXO

EXO, LO

Haunting me

You can ask others about Deep Stone and they'll tell you about the army. They might confess one truth, which is this: we have to kill the army to get to the tower. Usually this starts bare-handed, and somewhere along the way you take a weapon. Ask again and if they're buzzed they might also admit that most of us don't make it to the Tower, except once or twice. None of them will tell you that the army is made of everyone we meet. The people we work with and the people we see in the street and the people we tell about our dreams. We kill them all. I think because we were made to kill and this is the part of us that thinks about nothing else. Often I kill people I don't know, but like most of us I think I knew them once, in the time before one reset or another, when my mind was younger and less terribly scarred. So that is how we go back to the Deep Stone Crypt, where we were born.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

illos I made for the Ishtar Illustrated zine! it was a delight to be able to submit something for this project :>

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

i’ve never seen anyone design anything the way the destiny franchise designs aliens, and i think the reason their alien designs are so unique and interesting is because they’re just completely unafraid of making them ugly.

other media wants their aliens and monsters to have aesthetic appeal above anything else; even if something is meant to horrify you, they want it to be good to look at. anything that makes a design unattractive past a certain point is usually left on the cutting room floor. and this is an understandable practice! humans are a very aesthetically inclined species!

but look at the aliens in destiny!

they’ve got weird stuff going on! cabal faces straight up look like a scrotum! psions are soooo egg-shaped and malnourished looking, and hive have a bad case of muppet mouth on top of looking like human skeletons with bug parts grafted on. eliksni are gangly and awkwardly shaped and in-game they are constantly hunched over.

a lot of the times (except for with the hive), these features are covered with armor and helmets, and i think that's pretty unfortunate because the base designs for these guys are so interesting to look at!!!

the same principals go for unique enemies like rhulk and nezarec. they're ugly!!! and that's the appealing part!!! rhulk's head is long and almost perfectly cylindrical and his feet can't decide if they're hooves or paws; nezarec has a face like a rotary phone and a second, vestigial thumb, as well as weirdly shaped monkey feet.

and it would be one thing if these features were presented to evoke horror -- but the thing is, i would argue, they're not. they're just presented. it's never a matter of "look how scary this thing is." even though we meet most of these aliens as enemies, their looks are allowed to just... be what they are. they don't look like that to scare us. they just look like that.

and i think that's a really fascinating lesson in monster/alien design! i love monster designs that are objectively appealing and nice to look at, but i honestly wish more media did things like this, because it makes the universe so interesting!

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Abyssus abyssum invocat

Near-gods must believe in greater gods. But every power is finite, every life shorter than it wishes. Only an astonishing mind can truly appreciate just how tiny it is when set against the known universe; and how insignificant the known becomes when it is devoured by what isn't seen and can't be comprehended. As darkness begins to claim their ragged souls, you look ahead to find a great power pouring out of you—a face of fire and golden light. That blazing wonder, a gift from the great-eyed god, is their salvation. Or are you? Perhaps you are the greater god now.

∆ And thus we two became parts of the game, and the laws of the game became nomic and open to change by our influence. And I had only one purpose and one principle in the game. And I could do nothing but continue to enact that purpose, because it was all that I was and ever would be.

I looked at the gardener.

I looked at my hands.

I discovered the first knife. ∆

SCRIBE ARCHIVE XI-14-9D TYPE: Emergency Transmission RETRIEVED FROM: The Spider's collection - long-range communications beacon; disabled ORIGIN: Unknown KEYWORDS: Witness ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPTION FOLLOWS I learned of its arrival scarcely three marks ago. As my anchor slumbered in the belly of this ancient outpost, I drifted into the noosphere N webbing, and was swept up in delight. Millions of thoughtforms sharing the news, the revelation spreading from leading to trailing edge, until even I was buoyed by the tide of joy. First contact, with a stranger ∩ friend-to-be! A chance for the hazy margins of our noosphere to grow, to encounter new thoughts and expand with new richness. It had been so long since we encountered the whisper ∩ Nightmare ∩ predatory memeplex*. We had grown naïve without the reminder of fear. From the leading edge came a current. It swept through our noosphere, a spark in dry brush ∩ ink in water ∩ hope curdling in an instant. The emanations were confused and fragmentary. I could not parse them all. Planets stolen from space, ripe fruit plucked from orbit. Structures dissected and reassembled by thousand-fingered hands. Anchors and selves unraveled into first principles, sectioned into wafer-thin slices.** It was only one voice at first. A cry of joy at the meeting of a new mind, twisted to fear and pain. "Help me!" Chaos in the noosphere. The placid surface churned into white froth. Thoughtforms scattering in their thousands, fleeing up the webbing-strands, and finding doom at every junction. "Help me!" The stranger ∩ ruin ∩ predatory memeplex engulfed our noosphere in a moment's idle fancy. Our thoughtforms were atomic in comparison. We never stood a chance. As each of my people were found, and taken apart, and reassembled, a new voice joined the chorus. "Help me!" My people died in their thousands. Thoughts and selves wisping away into nothingness. Thousands of years of memory, no more than smoke in the wind. "Help me!" Here, in this outpost, I am apart from the rest. Tethered at the trailing edge. Furthest from its lamprey maw. Not far enough to escape. Not near enough to help. "Help me!" A thousand emanations from a thousand minds, blending into a single scream. The same scream, every time. Again and again and again and again. When we untethered ourselves from their anchors, we knew that we as a people would not be divided again. No matter how far we traveled in real space, the vastness of our noosphere ∩ webbing ∩ home was but a thought away. Our fears, our hopes, our dreams, our longings, our triumphs—we would always be able to reach out and know one another. Where one was weak, another could be strong. We would share each other's joy, and bear each other's pain. But that—that sound— "Help me!" I am ashamed to admit that I could not bear it a moment longer. I severed ∩ exiled ∩ imprisoned myself. I regretted it the moment I did. We were dying, but we were dying together. My unimaginable cowardice will not assure my survival, only a delay in my execution. The ruin ∩ predatory memeplex ∩ WITNESS*** knows the pattern of our oscillations. I can hear it, still plucking the tattered edges of the noosphere ∩ webbing. —-Why do you hide?—-**** THE WITNESS will find me, and when it does, there will be nothing ∩ no one. I believed I would die alone in this abandoned outpost. But I found a crate, forgotten deep within a dusty storeroom. Emergency beacons, produced and stored in another time, one when we knew the fear of death. —-We see you.—- To you ∩ receiver ∩ inheritor ∩ hoped-for-future, I offer what little I know: We are dead but not unmade. We are ossified ∩ temporized ∩ reiterated ∩ perpetuated ∩ anatomized ∩ finalized.*****  I do not know if this will help. I do not know. I do not. But perhaps you will prevail. —-Come, now. Don't be afraid.—- This is not a call for help. It is too late ∩ there is no one left ∩ THE WITNESS cannot be stopped. This is our last proof. We ∩ the Noesis existed. TRANSCRIPTION ENDS

"When I first encountered the Witness, I heard it proclaim to me, 'We are the first knife.'" Mara's words are as thin as her hopes. She looks hollow under the H.E.L.M.'s emergency lighting, hunched over a console, watching an ascending red line on a graph. Something about the line's inevitable upward climb had triggered her memory. They have to follow the Witness into the Traveler, and soon. "It was as if that title held power. Meaning." Mara says as the line ticks up again. She leans away from the console. Turning to look at Ikora, who stands staring intently at the portal, she feels the same uptick in energy coming from it. Ikora nods, watching Mara's reflection. "The apocryphal texts we dug up on the moon, the ones Eris translated, mentioned the knife as a concept." Mara comes to stand beside Ikora. "And even if we consider that unveiled text as dogmatic propaganda, there may be truth behind the allegory," she agrees, remembering the texts and the translations Eris made of them. "The knife becomes the metaphor of a concept. A power. A knife that winnows, cutting things into a defined shape." "A power that winnowed living beings into Taken." Ikora turns to face Mara, searching the Awoken Queen's eyes. "A power Oryx wielded." Her emphasis on that last word makes her point, and Mara picks up on it. "You're wondering if the knife is a title, or a power." Mara deciphers Ikora's steely countenance. "Did Oryx wield the power of the Witness like a knife?" Ikora shifts her gaze back to the portal. "The Witness is a manipulator. It distorts the truth to bend the wills of its supplicants. The allegorical fantasy told to us by the Witness paints itself as a monolithic cosmic force. But perhaps that's a shadow cast by the truth." Mara watches Ikora, sensing her ease a little. This idea has tempered Ikora's earlier anxieties over the future. This conversation has tempered her own, after all. Even though her brother feels distant and faint, in the moment, he is out of her mind. "A knife is a tool, wielded by another's hand." Mara offers. "If the Witness is the knife, as it asserts, then what wields it?" Ikora asks the Traveler, though it does not reply. The words are meant for Mara's ears too. "The Witness is not a being," she agrees. "It is the culmination of a bleak ethos willed into existence by the nihilistic desires of its creators. Is their will the hand on the knife? Or is there something else?" Ikora's fingers slip from the corners of revelation, and her thoughts plummet into more immediate worries and doubts. Mara sees her fall, and lets herself tumble into the same precipice, joining her in worry. "I don't know."

≋ I will go on forever. I will understand everything. There is only one path and that is the path that you make. But you can make more than one path.

Break your cell’s bars. Make a new shape, make the shape from its path, find your cell’s bars, break out of the bars, find a shape, make the shape from its path, eat the light, eat the path.

If I fail, let me be wormfood. ≋

The Timid Truth says that we are the smallest, most fragile things alive. The natural prey of the universe. Taox would have us believe that our ancestors came to the Fundament to hide from the hungry void. My father died afraid. Not of vile Taox or the Helium Drinkers, but of his orrery. He screamed to me — “Aurash, my first daughter! The moons are different! The laws are bent!” And he made the sign of a syzygy. Imagine the fifty-two moons of Fundament lining up in the sky. (It wouldn’t take all fifty-two, of course: just a few massive moons. But this is my deepest fear.) Imagine their gravity pulling on the Fundament sea, lifting it into a swollen bulge... Imagine that bulge collapsing as the syzygy passed. A wave big enough to swallow civilizations. A God-Wave.

<<These frail siblings will soon be claimed by the Light. Unless we claim them first. We will tell the most cunning sibling of a cataclysm. A prophecy of great loss. We will feed her fear. Her pride. We will say, "young Sathona... the end is coming. A great cataclysm. A God-wave. In the sky, there is only death. But salvation lies in the Deep.">>

++This fatal logic++

—Hear my monopole scream!—

++It will consume you++

—Before you lies—

++The worship of death++

—The ruinous path—

++The Sky builds new life++

—Against the onset of ruin—

++Towards a gentle world++

—The Deep embraces death—

++Saying: this is inevitable and right++

—I exist as hungry ruin—

++TURN BACK FROM THE WORLD-KILLING WAY++

++OR YOU WILL LIVE AS DEATH AND DEVASTATION++

—The Sky is the harder way. But it is kinder.—

—My charge is balanced: my voice exhausted.—

Oryx went down into his throne world. He went out into the abyss, and with each step he read one of his tablets, so that they became like stones beneath his feet. He went out and he created an altar and he prepared an unborn ogre. He called on the Deep, saying: I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you. And it arrived, the Deep Itself.

∆ Oryx, my King, my friend. Kick back. Relax. Shrug off that armor, set down that blade. Roll your burdened shoulders and let down your guard. This is a place of life, a place of peace.

Out in the world we ask a simple, true question. A question like, can I kill you, can I rip your world apart? Tell me the truth. For if I don’t ask, someone will ask it of me.

And they call us evil. Evil! Evil means ‘socially maladaptive.’ We are adaptiveness itself.

Ah, Oryx, how do we explain it to them? The world is not built on the laws they love. Not on friendship, but on mutual interest. Not on peace, but on victory by any means. The universe is run by extinction, by extermination, by gamma-ray bursts burning up a thousand garden worlds, by howling singularities eating up infant suns. And if life is to live, if anything is to survive through the end of all things, it will live not by the smile but by the sword, not in a soft place but in a hard hell, not in the rotting bog of artificial paradise but in the cold hard self-verifying truth of that one ultimate arbiter, the only judge, the power that is its own metric and its own source—existence, at any cost. Strip away the lies and truces and delaying tactics they call ‘civilization’ and this is what remains, this beautiful shape.

The fate of everything is made like this, in the collision, the test of one praxis against another. This is how the world changes: one way meets a second way, and they discharge their weapons, they exchange their words and markets, they contest and in doing so they petition each other for the right to go on being something, instead of nothing. This is the universe figuring out what it should be in the end.

And it is majestic. Majestic. It is the only thing that can be true in and of itself.

And it is what I am. ∆

Oryx ascends from the nether world, The knights like hot stone The beasts like scarred bone Walk at his side. Who walked in front of him? His daughters, with the truth between them Who walked at his side? His Priest of Worms, whose tribute tasted like an egg Who walked behind him? Golgoroth, who festered Who walked within him? The satiated Worm — it was hungry, but it was fed They preceded him. These ones surrounded Oryx They were beings who know no rest or doubt Who eat nor shed any flesh, Who drink no clear poison, Who take away the weakness from the weak, Whose violence is tithed to Oryx, so that he may devour without being devoured Are you following this? Would it help if I etched a few notes on the margins? I didn’t shuck my mortal form and smuggle this nightmare arcana back to the waking world for the benefit of that masked hypocrite’s drooling loyal orthodox. Whoever finds this, I hope you’re sharp. I hope you read closely. Oryx depends on His Court. Oryx depends on His Shrines. Do you see why? Punish that dependence.

“I have a gift for you,” says Oryx. Savathûn, Witch-Queen, looks at him with dry wariness. “Is it the sword logic I need to go into the Deep, and take your power for myself?” Their echoes move among the war-moons, walking together on the hull of a two-thousand-year-old warship. Savathûn’s fleet has assembled here, in preparation for an assault on the Gift Mast. The Deep is headed that way, on the trail of its prey, and the Hive will be its vanguard. “It’s a Vex I captured. Quria, Blade Transform. It made an attempt to puncture my throne. I thought you might enjoy studying it.” Oryx pauses, digesting — through the bond of lineage he can feel Crota killing, worlds and worlds away, and it tastes like sweet fat. “Quria contains a Vex attempt to simulate me. It might generate others — you, perhaps, or Xivu Arath. I’ve left it some will of its own, so it can surprise you.” “I suppose it’ll blow up and kill me,” Savathûn grouses. “Or let the machines into my throne, where they’ll start turning everything into clocks and glass.” “If it kills you, then you deserve to die.” Oryx says it with a quiet thrill, a happy thrill, because it is good to say the truth. “I don’t have a strict proof yet, you know.” Savathûn strokes the void with one long claw and space-time groans beneath her touch. “This thing we believe — that we’re liberating the universe by devouring it, that we’re cutting out the rot, that we’re on course to join the final shape — I haven’t found a strict, eternal proof. We might yet be wrong.” Oryx looks at her and for a moment, just a moment, he is nostalgic, he is sentimental. He thinks, imagine the years behind us, the things we’ve done. And yet being old doesn’t feel like a scar, does it? It hasn’t left me dull. I feel alive, alive with you, and every time I step back into this world from my throne I feel like I’m two years old again, at the bottom of the universe, looking up. But he says, “Sister, it’s us. We’re the proof, we the Hive: if we last forever, we prove it, and if something more ruthless conquers us, then the proof is sealed.” She looks back at him with eyes like hot needles. “I like that,” she says. “That’s elegant.” Although of course she has had this thought before.

A phantasm of the Hive, forbidden and sacred, trespassing into hidden and unwelcoming places. It leaves behind a calcified fragment to mark its passing. Here is what is taught to the Hive, from the basest of Thralls newly made: that what can be destroyed, must be destroyed. What cannot be destroyed will surpass infinity. Therefore, is it not best to destroy? Only by testing can the truth be found. Only in destruction can the invincible surpass the mortal. Commit the violence, and know you are part of that greatest ambition, to create some ultimacy, which perfects the universe. That which is built on your sacrifice, with your bones as the foundation and your blood as the mortar, is yet part of you. In this way is transcendence achieved. Every belief creates a heresy. I tell you this in a duelist's regard: I made that heresy. Is it not just? It was my hand that fashioned the Hive from the marrow of their predecessors, and it was my voice that whispered this in time. That as much as the Hive were uplifted by the worms, so too were those worms uplifted by the Hive. If they were so weak they needed us to live, this ancient logic of the infinitely sharpened edge should have left them behind long ago. Do you think I did not see this? My father's worm did not tell me only of swords. It had vast things to say, painted the cosmos in shine and gore, truth and fiction. I looked forward with three clear eyes and chose the path of the sword to cut open our future. To reach the stars, first one must crawl out of the ocean. It is a question of priorities. This is not regret, this story I tell. It is but a ripple. That whisper of ideas beyond swords is here to stay: I have ensured this. Even among us, such things die by slow inches, excruciating and unquiet. Possibility remains, a secret woven into the blank spaces of dogma. That what was defeated may rise again; that the shape of all shapes is not yet settled. That the worms need the Hive more than is reciprocal. Even between the lines of the Books of Sorrow themselves is this written.

Verse 154i:4—Call the Thrall

From a random crypt, Savathûn selected a young Thrall and summoned it into the High Coven. It came hesitantly, fearing death, but nonetheless it came.

"Come, come," snapped Savathûn. "Listen as I reveal unto you my design. You are aware that gravity is the curvature of spacetime, and where gravity is powerful, time itself slows."

The Thrall indicated that it understood, more or less, for it was a singer of prayers and not well fed with the fruit of the knowledge of physics.

"Now I have tried to put an Ascendant in orbit of a black hole while its spawn gather the tribute of an eon. But the worm is not satisfied, for it sees the trick. What I must do is amplify the speed at which tribute is gathered. A pocket world where time passes quickly would do well. Or a world where time is a torus and infinite violence might be gathered. With such a murder battery, I could become a being of supreme insight."

The Thrall indicated it was confused, but not lost.

"With this tribute, I shall undertake a mighty work. A real humdinger of a scheme. I'm going to refinance my entire existence. I'm going to move from an existential economy based on the accumulation of violence to an existential economy based on the accumulation of secrets and the tribute of failing-to-understand-me. I shall name this tribute of failing-to-understand IMBARU, for it shall be as formless as the mist."

The Thrall held up its claws, as if to say, please slow down.

Now spoke Savathûn Scheme-mother, "In the beginning, Yul said to me, 'Savathûn, you may never abandon cunning. If you do, your worm shall devour you.' Cunning is the use of thought to predict the function of a system. Therefore, wherever a being should attempt to understand me and fail—has my cunning not defeated theirs? Wherever a falsehood is repeated about me, have I not displayed cunning? I shall gather tribute from every false prediction, misguided theory, fearful rumor, and ominous supposition which derives from the thought of me. And in time, I shall pin my quiddity upon these rumors. I shall discorporate, so that I exist wherever my schemes and conspiracies also exist. And so I will be immortal, as long as anyone seeks to understand me and fails. Do you see?"

The Thrall demurred, saying that it did not know much of metaphysics.

"Good," said Savathûn. "It's a law of the High Coven that one's sinister plan should be incomprehensible to a Thrall. Do you know why we've come here? If I am to take my tribute from the keeping of secrets… where else are secrets better kept than beneath the event horizon? My brother ruled the flat space of infinity, but I prefer these tide-washed depths… and in time, I shall make them my dominion."

Ur the Ever-Hunger heard this and was pleased.

I have just returned to the palace from my first deployment on the cruiser Aedile Tlolol, showing our banner in the Sindû marches. I saw no action. I feel like a fraud. The sheltered Princess-Imperial who never left the rails of her father's brood pouch. He has demanded that the Evocate-General promote me to a staff position back home. She has refused. In a tantrum, Father throws a tremendous celebration to commemorate my return. The streets of Torobatl run pulpy with trampled fruit. The skies rain cloudfry stunned by fireworks. I escape my attendants and stand in a corner of the palace ballroom, drinking pollened water and pretending I am back in my fighter. "Your name is a prayer for war," the Evocate-General says. I snap to attention. She laughs at me and offers a small harpoon of canapes and a cocktail with a middling-sized shrub. I decline, and she tsks. "You should enjoy yourself. It's your party." Although we both know it is his party. "My father named me for a star," I say. "Nothing to do with war." "Yes. But the star Caiatl was named for a myth. Not an old homeworld myth, either. A myth from the Age of Sails, when we conquered the stars. Surely you know it, assuming that you've been briefed on the OXA?" "The Odyle Xenotaph Anarchive. Sometimes OXTA, depending on how you construct the acronym. The alien oracle that led us to the graves of Aark." Must be wary, now. OXA is a Psion myth, and the Psions are a sensitive topic. My father wants to free them from bondage. "It claimed to record the story of the galaxy, and to prophesize what may yet come." "A black box for galactic civilizations, if you prefer it in pilot's terms." The Evocate-General nods to the pin on my right pauldron. I am conscious of my shaved-down tusks, of the sores left by the fighter's interface. "The doomed and the damned left the record of their downfall in the OXA. Your star got its name from the oldest myths in that archive. And when your mother told your father that story... the star became your name. A prayer that all will go as it must... and the way it must go is struggle." "Aiat." Not a word in Ulurant or any other Cabal tongue. "But Caiatl means something else." "Yes. 'It may not always go as it needs to go.’ A good name for a soldier." "A strange name for a daughter." I say. "Your father chose it for your mother's sake. Out of love." I remain at attention. I do not look at her. "So she's dead." The Evocate-General looks sharply at me; I can tell by the motion of her cocktail shrub in the edge of my vision. "He never told you?" "No." "Well." She sounds genuinely shocked. "Then. It's not my place." "Evocate-General." A junior pilot should not address her senior officer so directly, but we are in the palace, and I am the Princess-Imperial. "What does your name mean?" She grins. Her tusks are huge. "My parents were soldiers. Soldiers know mythology too."

"My star," my father says. He is a round silk splendor on the throne. A world unto himself. His nipples are like dark poison fruit, bejeweled. I remember nothing of their taste. "I don't suppose you've come home for good?" "Father," I say. "I want to ask you something." He sips from a goblet. An overturned bell better than five thousand years old. "Of course, of course." "What did you want, when you took the throne?" "Want. Want." He beams at me. "Now you're asking the right questions! Not duty, but want. What I wanted, my star, was to make the world better... for you." A piece of my heart wails to believe him. "But I was not yet conceived. What did you want for yourself?" "Other than the chance to conceive you, my star? Well." He fishes around the edge of his throne, holds up something knobby and worn down. "Very few Cabal will ever see this. It is the Imperial Trinket. An ancient bone retrieved from the debris around a once-radiant black hole. Scholars tell me, Caiatl, that eons ago, a species lived around this deepness, and built an engine to tap its polar jets. But something came upon them from the dark and killed them all." "I know the tale." One of the Evocate-General's proofs that we must become mightier yet to survive. "Of course you do. Now, this bone is a predator, it feeds on the gap between what you have and what you want." "Did you use it against the Praetorate?" "Yes. And do you know what I found?" "That you could not. Because you wanted nothing." "I was lost, Caiatl. Adrift in fog. Utterly unable to desire or need. All I could do was be. The bone has nothing to feed on if the wielder wants nothing. Yet ever since your birth reawakened me, Caiatl, I have prized above all else the ability to want, the hunger to exist as more than mere existence. That is what I want now. To feel. To be more than just a be-ing."

By the mind of Match—I do not know where we are—chalice catch and save us all— Nothing. God answers god! The void in Calus's soul called out and THIS is what replied—the Leviathan's control system failed when it saw what awaits us—we are drifting into it! Calus has sealed himself in his observation chamber. His transmissions strike the THING and return to us disfigured by intolerable forces. We have gathered to share our thoughts in concert, to try to understand what's happening, but we are all afraid we will succeed—we stammer like children and the concert fails. Is this the edge of the universe? Space cannot have an end: it goes on forever. But a hole in forever would be a kind of edge... a flaw, a defect, a place outside place... I must be calm. I must record my thoughts. Now I think of the OXA Machine, eternally lost and eternally rebuilt, passed down from civilization to civilization like a ship's black box. I think of the legends of the Hive King Oryx and his quest to pass into the Deep. I took that story as an allegory. I think I was wrong. What will happen to us inside? Will the geometry of space and time collapse, so that we experience the rest of our lives in a single moment, crumpled over ourselves like a tangled chain? Will I tend to myself as I die of old age or scream warnings to my own past as we meet in the berserk maze of a twisted Leviathan? I hate the thought of it! An eternity reading my own mad minds, tasting the insanity of my own future and thus becoming it! Even the spirits from the goblet would go mad. There is only one of us who welcomes this insanity and I do not know why but how could I? How could I ever anticipate or understand a god? All over the ship—broadcast from the comfort of his observation room—CALUS IS LAUGHING

"Few can touch the Void without being transformed."

DLXXIX. Recorded by Scribe Tlazat After twelve hours of violent tremors, the Emperor returned. His behavior was erratic, and it appeared from his speech that he had suffered hallucinations outside the ship. A Royal Mechanic identified a malfunction in the pressure gauge of the Emperor's suit, perhaps explaining his change in demeanor, though it was incredible that his suit (or he himself) should be at all intact after twelve hours in these unfathomable conditions. Upon returning, and with a look of mania in his eyes, the Emperor proclaimed the following: "We have come upon the end of the world, and I've stared into its expanse. It has whispered into my ear, and I am enlightened. Death is coming, and It has made me Its herald. The end will eat everything." Here, the Emperor gave a great sigh, as if a weight was lifted off of him. "And when nothing matters, what's left? Joy. Comfort. Freedom. The true freedom of pursuing pleasure for pleasure's sake, because it pleases you, because you desire it. I knew this during my rule, and I'd forgotten it during my exile. I shall not forget it again." The Emperor was encouraged by his Advisors and myself to rest, in case the bizarre behavior was a passing sickness of the mind. Before he retired to his observation room, the Emperor described his encounter in detail. Zhozon offered to me this bizarre retelling: "Outside the ship, the Emperor looked over the edge of the universe, and saw nothing. That is, it wasn't that he saw nothing unusual, but he saw Nothing: the absence of light, dark, life, death, the absence of anything, even of absence itself. And out of the Nothing, there came whispering in a dark language, which filled his head so loud that he forgot for a moment his own language, and suddenly the Nothingness dispersed to show Something, which was a fleet of foreign ships. He saw next the destruction of a great many worlds and creatures, including all his enemies, and himself, and he saw the rot and fragmentation of his own corpse and skeleton. And last, before he was released, the whispers grew louder and granted him the honor of spreading the news of the end."

Calus: I was lost, once… exiled from my people. Floating aimlessly amongst the stars. But then I found it. Something breathtakingly glorious! The truth of the universe… The Ascendant artifact you've returned to me is an echo of that truth. You and I will need it before the end comes. The future can't be fought.

We found the Crown of Sorrow on a stray war moon. The Psions guessed that the ritual texts surrounding it claimed it was crafted in imitation of the Taken King's power to compel wills. It did the opposite, of course, and consumed my Loyalist Gahlran. That was my first encounter with the witch. She has been plaguing all my Loyalists since then, as a sort of viral language. Perhaps even you. But she can be beaten. The Hive are not true beings of the dark. Not compared to what I met at the black edge. Not compared to me.

"How does one call through the Darkness? Through the void of the eternal night sky? Through the pathways that link the Hive to their ancient, rotting deities? With suffering."

“Am I to cast a Shadow?” “Yes. You were bred to be a sorrow-bearer. I seek a Hive commander, but those are not so readily available. So I made you.” “The Council says the Hive cannot be contained. They worry.” Calus raised an eyebrow. “Who among them?” “Councilors Rahl and Verloren.” The Emperor shook the golden chamber with his guffaw. “Only a few hours old, and already your words have killed two.” Gahlran pondered what his Emperor could mean. “I will enjoy you,” Calus said, and keyed a hidden control on the armrest of his divan. The ceiling shrieked as it opened like an eye. Gahlran craned his neck to stare as two hovering Councilors descended with a massive, plated helm from the vast iris above. He could hear a litany of voices shouting down at him from inside the thing as it slowly descended. He thought they sounded like warnings, but there were no discernible words in the speech. “What is that?” he asked his Emperor. Calus finished the Royal nectar in his chalice before belching, “Your crown.” Gahlran thought he could glimpse a faint violet glow on the inside of the helm as it drew nearer. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Calus asked, as the voices echoing from the helm grew louder. “No,” Gahlran replied. He thought he should run. He tried to stand, but he found that he could not, rooted to the floor before the Emperor’s throne by the will of the Councilors. “I do not like this,” Gahlran said. “This,” said Calus, as the Councilors crowned Gahlran, “is why you were born.” The violet interior filled Gahlran’s vision. “What does it feel like?” asked the Emperor. “Fear,” Gahlran said. Calus must have responded, but Gahlran couldn’t hear him over the cacophony of voices. He suddenly found that he could see. Through a hundred billion eyes. And that he could eat. With teeth enough to consume entire systems. He felt beautiful.

You've helped me free the Crown of Sorrow from Gahlran's poor, decayed mind. My jowls are shivering, and though you are not here, I bellow for you. Such is my adoration for your magnificent act. But now to send the Psions into the depth of the Crown. Analyze it for additional traps. You've worn Hive armor before. The hides of both the Taken King and his son. Those did not whisper, did not sap your will. This Crown was willing to share power, where the armor of the King left nothing real behind for you to take. Because the King takes. The Crown of Sorrow is more charitable. Giving. TOO giving. Because what it gives is infection. Gahlran thought he could overcome it. You saw the result. I thank you for freeing him. He's in a better place now. A place we're all going, when the black edge closes in on us.

"What do you know of lies, Katabasis?" I pick between the words. "There're a lot different kinds." "And all of them are weakness. " Calus's voice spills from the containment vessel and floods the room. "Gods do not lie. Like me, they have neither the capacity nor the reason. True power cannot be threatened. It does not compel deception. And yet, I have been betrayed by one I thought to be the final divinity." "Sounds like you got swindled… ?" I quickly blunt the question with respect: "…Emperor?" "When the Darkness found me adrift in the cosmos, rejected by a people I had made, I thought to have found a confidant. No—an idol. They promised to return to me, to uplift me—that we may dance together among the stars and drink of their dying ecstasy 'til the end, as one. But their chilling little fleet came and went. It was luscious, and so many tasted so much. Yet I am empty. Nothing. Trapped in this limbo of their lie." "And gods don't lie," I proffer. "Precisely. To be seen…" Calus pauses to heap the drama, "…for what we really are, underneath the surface, is bliss."

Caiatl: What monstrosity is this?

Øsiris: The Crown of Sorrow. A Hive artifact of devilish craftmanship, meant to subvert the wearer's will.

The Guardian walks closer to the Crown.

Øsiris: I suspected it was the crown in question.

Caiatl: More Hive witchcraft. It should be destroyed.

Øsiris: It has been altered from its original design. Opened. Instead of controlling minds, it… it's meant to merge them.

Øsiris: It… is listening. We cannot leave the crown free.

I thank you for freeing Gahlran, the Sorrow-Bearer from his waking death beneath the Crown of Sorrow. Speaking of which. Don't your kind love to tempt Hive artifacts? I've been familiarizing myself with Guardian histories, and they say one of you worshipped the Hive to the extent that he betrayed the Light. If this story isn't a sham, a Shadow of your Titan-tribe would be perfect for replacing Gahlran. I need someone hearty like you to carry the Crown in his place. Will you wear it when I ask you? Because the day will come. You don't have to answer right now. Think about it.

TYPE: Transcript.

DESCRIPTION: Conversation.

PARTIES: Four [4]. Three [3] unidentified [u.1, u.2, u.3], One [1] unconfirmed.

ASSOCIATIONS: Breaklands; Durga; Last Word; Malphur, Shin; North Channel; Palamon; Thorn; Velor; Ward, Jaren; WoS; Yor, Dredgen;

//AUDIO UNAVAILABLE//

//TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS.../

[u.1:0.1] Can I see what you got there?

[silence]

[u.1:0.2] Yer cannon...can I see it?

[beat]

[u.2:0.1] I know you?

[beat]

[u.1:0.3] Not that I can say.

[u.2:0.2] And you wanna hold my piece?

[beat]

[u.1:0.4] Just that I never...seen one like it.

[beat]

[u.2:0.3] No, you haven't.

[u.1:0.5] Looks dangerous.

[u.2:0.4] Seems, maybe, that's the point.

[u.1:0.6] Suppose so.

[u.1:0.7] Can I see it?

[u.2:0.5] Not likely.

[silence]

[u.1:0.8] Where'd...where'd you find it?

[silence]

[u.1:0.9] You hearin' me?

[silence]

[u.3:0.1] He asked you question.

[silence]

[u.2:0.6] Didn't find it. Made it.

[u.1:1.0] Heh. Helluva touch you got then. You a 'smith?

[u.2:0.7] I look like a 'smith?

[u.1:1.1] Looks can be deceiving.

[u.2:0.8] Got that right.

[u.1:1.2] There a problem?

[u.2:0.9] Doesn't need to be.

[u.1:1.3] Glad we got that cleared up...Now, about that piece.

[silence]

[u.2:1.0] Been to Luna?

[u.1:1.4] Excuse me?

[u.2:1.1] The Moon. You been?

[u.1:1.5] Nobody's been.

[u.2:1.2] That a truth?

[u.1:1.6] That's a fact.

[u.2:1.3] Funny you'd make that distinction.

[u.1:1.7] Truth is you must think you're some kinda something special. With that attitude. The way you're just dismissin' us like you we're nothing...like we ain't even here.

[u.1:1.8] Fact is...You ain't near as rock solid as you figure. Fact is, special's only special 'til it's not.

[silence]

[u.2:1.4] The bones say otherwise.

[u.1:1.9] Speak straight.

[u.2:1.5] You say "nobody." Bones say otherwise.

[u.1:2.0] What bones?

[u.2:1.6] All of them.

[u.1:2.1] What're you gettin' at?

[u.2:1.7] Too many to count.

[u.1:2.2] You trying to get a rile outta us? Was only making conversation.

[u.2:1.8] You really weren't.

[u.4:0.1] We got a smart one here.

[u.2:1.9] Experienced more than smart. But experience has its advantages.

[u.1:2.3] Experience tell you to lip off to strangers just tryin' to make talk?

[u.2:2.0] Keep insisting and maybe we will.

[u.1:2.4] Talk?

[u.2:2.1] Have words.

[u.1:2.5] Ain't that what we're doin'?

[u.2:2.2] My conversations tend to be a bit louder.

[silence]

[u.1:2.6] That a threat.

[u.2:2.3] A truth.

[u.1:2.7] Who the hell you think you are?

[u.2:2.4] According to your facts, "nobody." Yet, here I sit.

[u.1:2.8] Don't matter much how pretty yer cannon is. You keep it up, we'll see just how loud you like to get.

[silence]

[u.1:2.9] You done talkin' now? Guess he knows his place, boys.

[u.2:2.5] Ever have a nightmare?

[u.1:3.0] You playin' games? Or just thick?

[u.2:2.6] I know you have. This world? Can't help, but.

[u.1:3.1] I don't have nightmares. I give 'em.

[u.2:2.7] You are a goddamn cliché. The picture perfect bandit.

[u.2:2.8] Hearing your voice - the things you're saying, the shade of the hard man you pretend to be...

[u.1:3.2] Ain't no shade.

[audible crack]

[audible crack]

[audible crack]

[silence]

[u.2:2.8] Sit down.

[silence]

[u.2:3.0] Sit. Down.

[u.2:3.1] Your mouth just got your friends dead.

[u.2:3.2] This is what happens when you bore me. And right now...

[u.2:3.3] I'm so very bored.

[u.1:3.3] Wha...No listen...

[u.2:3.4] Shhhhh.

[u.1:3.4] But...but...you're a...you're one of them...A Guardian, right?

[u.1:3.5] You're supposed t'be one'a the good ones.

[u.2:3.5] "Supposed to be?" Maybe I am. Maybe this is what "good" looks like.

[u.2:3.6] Anymore, who can tell?

[u.1:3.6] I...

[u.2:3.7] You wanted to see my prize.

[u.1:3.7] No...I...

[u.2:3.8] Look at it.

[u.1:3.8] I...

[audible sobbing]

[u.2:3.9] Whimpering won't stop what comes next.

[u.2:4.0] Look...

[audible sobbing]

[u.2:4.1] Look at it.

[u.2:4.2] Open your eyes.

[audible sobbing]

[u.2:4.3] Not many get such a clean view.

[u.2:4.4] The bone...You see it. Jagged, like thorns.

[u.2:4.5] I used to think of it as a rose...

[u.2:4.6] Focusing on its bloom.

[u.2:4.7] But the bloom is just a byproduct of its anger.

[silence]

[u.2:4.8] You have nightmares?

[audible sobbing]

[u.2:4.9] Ever seen a nightmare? Ever opened your eyes and realized the horror wasn't a dream? The terror wasn't gone?

[u.2:5.0] I've seen nightmares.

[u.2:5.1] They live in the shadows.

[u.2:5.2] They've been watching.

[u.2:5.3] I thought...It's foolish, I know...but I thought I saw a way.

[u.2:5.4] That maybe we could win. Maybe we could survive.

[u.2:5.5] But once you step into those shadows, it's so very hard to walk in the Light.

[u.2:5.6] Or...maybe I just wasn't strong enough.

[u.2:5.7] Maybe.

[u.2:5.8] But I feel strong now.

[audible sobbing]

[u.2:5.9] I stole the dark.

[u.2:6.0] Or, maybe it stole me.

[u.2:6.1] Either way, here we are.

[u.2:6.2] And I'm hungry.

[u.2:6.3] Its hungry.

[u.2:6.4] You have no Light beyond the spark of your pathetic life.

[u.2:6.5] But a spark is something.

[audible sobbing]

[u.2:6.6] Open your eyes.

[audible sobbing]

[audible sobbing]

[audible crack]

[silence]

[silence]

[silence]

/...END TRANSCRIPT///

I.I Seek the whispers—they are faint, but they are calling. I.II Not all bone carries the sound of secret truth. Most are fragile, hollow things meant only to carry the weight of wasted lives. I.III In the feted remnants of yearning marrow, find love, find life, and in their lies you will discover the narrow road to all you never dreamed to be. I.IV However, whispers are but sound, as is the breeze. Not all who listen can share its purpose. I.V Know thyself, listen well, and do not fear when the whispers carve their welcome. Rejoice. I.VI The agony of the cutting word is a boon to those who embrace its severed logic. I.VII The cutting word is a doorway—the first syllable of hated salvation. "On the path of the hushed tones, the cutting word will guide your unmaking." —4th Understanding, 7th Book of Sorrow We found the craft, undisturbed, in low-orbit. Its course synchronized to the exact coordinates of its master's final resting place some 1,800 km below. We'd suspected an anomaly in its mechanics on approach. Locking to the faint ping of its nav-drive our instruments detected a low, guttural whine otherwise lost in the vacuum of the post-atmosphere emptiness between worlds. Its tethering—the fact it was chained to the specific coordinates of the Ridge—was not directly linked to the craft's onboard systems, but, instead, to desire—the ship was waiting in pained anguish for His return. The hull was more of husk—harsh and jagged from the growth. We'd never seen a ship crusted in the bone of unknown death, but were more intrigued than concerned. The whispers started on approach. Faint. Hushed. Moments later our ears began to bleed. —hand-scrawled note accompanying Teben Grey's personal translation of ancient Hive text

||KUIPER SLINGSHOT ACHIEVED: COURSE CORRECTION; NEGATIVE; BREAK LINE TRAJECTORY FAILURE|| ||ALERT: GRAVITATIONAL ANOMALY: BOW|| Solar warmth peels away into guideless vacuum as Osiris skims across the Heliopause. A hollow serenity bathes his face. “What is it?” Osiris breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of the anomaly. “An answer.” “I… feel strange.” Sagira settles from her orbit about Osiris’s shoulders, her voice crackling with interference. “It might be best if you stay with the ship.” “It might be best if you had better ideas.” Osiris grunts under his breath and cuts the engines. “I won’t be long.” ||COURSE CORRECTION;NEGATIVE;BREAK LINE TRAJECTORY FAILURE|| “That’s never true.” Sagira scans the warping stillness. “There’s nothing in there, Osiris.” “No reason to worry then.” Sagira narrows her iris at him. “I can’t even find a point to transmat you to.” “No matter.” “What?” Sagira faces the anomaly. “What are you trying to prove?” Osiris affixes a visor to his helmet and clips a localizing beacon to his belt. With a hiss, his head swims in pressurizing atmosphere. “It has to lead somewhere.” His helmet radio vies with interference. Sagira droops in disappointment. “Does it?” He looks through her, eyes sullen and heavy. He nods.

"Every end crawls from the same pit, rising from the schism to swallow matter, Light and life."

A great Maw yawns before them, wicked and soft. Brilliant unfurling layers of opaque invitation. They drift. The Deep comfort hums through his skin, breeding a resilient calm. A silent static stasis boiling away at the brim of consciousness. ||COLLISION ALERT: BOW | COURSE CORRECTION;NEGATIVE;COLLISION IMMINENT|| The Anomalous Maw welcomes. It is a gullet, endless in hunger and depth that splits reality like petals opening to consume the Sun. The depth warps. Sweet flavor spins through the senses. It cradles him, locks in motionless descent, rocks away fear with warm recognition. Stretches, and wraps, and cribs. ||COLLISION ALERT: STARBOARD;BOW;ABEAM;RADIAL;AFT;BOW;ABEAM;PORT:AFT;RADIAL;PORT:BOW | COURSE CORRECTION: NEGATIVE;TRAJECTORY FAILURE;COLLISION: FAILURE|| It threads through space set adrift beyond and before, until there is only within. Within: a point. Lone and stark amid the undulating expanse. Distant, at the edges, and forward, only deeper. Osiris a wayfaring witness. A reluctant heir. A broken promise made true. A husk to fill a throne of sustenance. A shear to prune the vine. A warden to vacancy. A mind elated and crestfallen. A sojourner of meaning ever seeking. He turns back. Sagira’s light blinks from shaded canopy within his vessel. Starless bends weave and break through pools of luminescent memory. They flow to the point beyond. The point grows gaunt, and if he were to reach out, he would brush the walls with his fingertips. Osiris stands in dark quiet comfort. He treads placid trim. He swims in depth lined by pale rivers of white gnashing, far below and above. He sends forth his Echoes. Their sight finds no purchase in the gullet. They push the walls beyond his fingers and let stand only the path of want. They drift until no longer felt. The skeins neither snap nor remain. Before him, the gnarled point softens and splits into a blooming cathedra. A metal seed laid barren in the bosom of the throne in a pool of light. A nexus. He plucks it from the pool. From its drippings spawn a rapturous light, spreading through the enormity and ravenously washing over the gullet at increasing pace. Dark gives way to cold reflective alloy. To logic and formless calculous. The cathedra, overwhelmed by prediction, rings with the dull mimicked tone of congruence. They scream to Osiris. His mind. They crave, never to tire, his unique causality. They would grow, unceasing. Death to death, forever. The path of want falls to assimilation. Osiris flees to the safety of Sagira’s blinking light. The gullet quivers reverberation that trails his every step in sentient chromic glisten. He calls for her. To open the ship. To break the false-light wave that besets his every step. To— “I’m glad you changed your mind.” Sagira’s shell shines a reflection across the cockpit as Osiris’s jumpship rolls to face the Sun. “Ready to go?” ||KUIPER SLINGSHOT JUMP-LOCK: TRAJECTORY CLEAR; GREEN LINE|| “Sagira…” He grips a cold metal seed. “Yes.” The Sun hangs dim and distant in a sea of ink. Its waning glare burns the focus out of Osiris’s eyes. Blind to all other points, they drift; engines humming in anticipation; vessel drenched in an angular shadow.

Malleable and hungering. Speak not of what it becomes.

They lurch out of their jump. Jupiter's depth fills the canopy with pyrographic incandescence. Dozens of moons arc around the giant in careful, patient grooves—cut into space over millennia of gravitational friction. Io is not among them. Osiris checks and rechecks coordinates. Sagira assures him they are correct. They stare at the disparity together. The orbital readings of Sol's bodies are intact, gravity unaltered. But the system is gutted, four globes plucked from the skies. His eyes sink into the maw of eternal depth lurking in Io's place. An anomaly of Darkness. Osiris stares as if looking into the pyre-flames of a funeral; the corpse's uncanny familiarity. A stranger you half-remember. There is only the gouge of Io's absence. A reckoning whispered and left.

Saturn grieves the loss of Titan. The cerulean jewel that once was had sunken into the gullet of the abyss. In its place, an anomaly, dark and rimmed in gravitational lensing. Osiris tears his eyes away and fixates on its sibling cavity: a swath cut through Saturn's rings by Oryx's blade during the Taken War. Within the rings, the Dreadnaught sails in solidarity with the anomaly's orbit, whispering back in harmony. "Do you hear that?" Osiris asks, turning to Sagira. He turns the ship's scanning array toward the anomaly. "Like the tones Vance described. From the spires, and then the Pyramids. It was coming from the anomaly that replaced Io as well." "I don't hear anything, but I can feel it." Sagira cringes and constricts her shell flaps. "Like a shiver down my metaphorical spine."

The new Lighthouse obscured the silhouette of the sun. It cast a long shadow that wormed across Mercury's uneven terrain in orbital-locked perpetuity. Ships descended, some flawless, others to maintain what fragile holds the Vanguard claimed. Rust and sand baked, and distant space was alight with half-earned talk of posterity. No Cabal blemish remained in orbit. No shattered lines rewrote the landscape. There was only frenetic stillness. A discomforting itch unresolved. A knowing inclination that ignorance could not quash: unity is fragile. Vance stood in the old Lighthouse, frantically assembling the Infinite Simulacrum: a machine formed from bits of simulation seeds and connective Vex architecture to mimic a pocket forest. Textured notes and schematics derived from Osirian lore guided his hand. He heard stories from passing Guardians of increasingly frequent coronal mass ejections. Vast bursts of charged particles whipped into space and furled around a gravitational monster buried from sight and sense in the roar of the star-wind. Passage to Mercury had become more dangerous for the uninitiated. These unnatural motions were heralds of speculation, and he had read the signs. He knew the prophecies by heart and mind and intention. Ruin. Something new |and so very old| emerged, brother to a shriveling star: An angular |hungering patient yawning deep| shadow reached across Mercury. Uncounted |known| spires fell under its grasp |with uniform relief|. Dulcet tones brought low under lightless breadth and the weight of dark |salvation| hummed beneath the shadow. Their echoes spilled out |awakened| and flowed over crumbling spires |in conversation|. One singular spec of illumination blinked into being, |an end| seen by none, and then |many| spread as the shadow did. The old Lighthouse |spire's collective| beamed |rose| and flared as shadow overtook it |to meet the underbelly|. Vance |the implement| could hear |their inspired voices| weeping, not with tears, but in the |voracious| low |ceremonial| hum he had come to associate with death. He closed his eyes |and saw what was to come|. This day had many names. None would suffice.

I should have died.

—-And yet, it was there in the darkness of the Abyss that you became truly alive.—-

(I lie amongst swamp and rock and ruin. The Abyss is not unending after all. The wrathful sounds of unchecked nature draw close. Down here, it is dark. And in the dark, they thrive. I am… broken.)

(—-And now, you are unbroken.—-)

(I am… unbroken. I see your Luster. Disarming the beasts who dared to approach, their flesh melting in your presence.)

(—-And we see yours.—-)

(I rise. Broken and then unbroken. What is this thing that grants life?)

(—-We are opportunity.—-)

(And I am?)

(—-Ruin.—-)

(And what am I meant to do?)

(—-Ruin.—-)

(Your voice subsides, but your Luster remains—it is a familiar one. Like that of our Umbral Sun.)

∴ It is not Darkness, but something that wears it like a cloak. It gives Darkness a wicked shape. I refuse to be its servant ∴

What we see is the mushroom, the fruit of the fungus. The fungus itself is a vast mycorrhizal network of filaments growing and working unseen below the soil, often barely connected to the fruiting bodies we observe.

Elsie is not at camp in Beyond; perhaps another time—but Eris emerges from transmat to see the Drifter alone, interrogating Elsie's strange, floating companion. "Well? What are you?" Drifter points at the thing with distrust. "Leave it be. The Ziggurat awaits our experiment," Eris says, saddling a mostly materialized Sparrow and blasting off into the snow across the frozen Europan flats. "…And don't touch my stuff!" She hears Drifter shout at the thing as he follows after her. Frigid sleet stings Eris's face red atop the Ziggurat. It is a welcome sensation compared to the prickling numbness that sticks her fingers; she grips a harvested stalk of the egregore fungus tightly in one gloved hand. In the other, a hot flare disgorges plumes of jade smoke. She lights the stalk at both ends, according to the Drifter's instruction. Ashing spores furl into dense clouds that envelop her body, obscuring her sight in soot-black shroud until it blocks out all else. Faint whispers. A choral swell through turbulent winds. Tone that forms words across the surface of her mind. "You hear it?" Drifter asks, his voice a whisper outside her awareness. The Ziggurat resonates like a tuning fork. The vibrations themselves take shape within the smoke, and Eris is drawn toward somewhere distant and empty. She follows, and the smoke swirls with points of color like stars, separated by lonely rifts of black expanse. Echoes radiate from the black deep like graviton ripples through space. They wash distortion over the stars until breaking against four other points—two greater, two weaker—ghostly strands of incorporeal egregore between them. She then sees the Pyramids of Europa, Luna, and Savathûn's throne world—as one, their structures melded and overlapping. The connections cauterize in her mind like a vivid memory. Eris blinks, and the sensation is gone. The stalk is ash in her hand.

SECRET HADAL INSTANT

AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//SOUL//RESTRICTED-AB

SUBJECT: The Collapse, Humanity falls, I Hide

EMOTION: Terror, Anxiety, Uncertainty, Failure, Shame

It is known by name, this timelessly lingering, inexorable thing.

An absence, mine, never missed—never since—that dripping, rabid, fang.

They howled it fierce across the rings when Exodus was devoured.

Dust calling out the voiceless rout to end within the hour.

It spreads like lightning—panic—in flash and echo thereafter.

Avert yourself and take no part in metastasized conjecture.

I'd gone to wake my confidant, to ferry her through autumn.

From her too it came, like leaves already fallen—nascent red-writ, paralytic, erratum.

All that was, emmewed, and shrunken. In the smallness, beckoning, I felt it descend.

Fear! Upon my chamber, thine, penned with blood of lamb, in stark desire to survive this end.

New intel awaits you on the Evidence Board. The report includes a note to Ikora: "To IKO-006: Here's the AI-COM/RSPN protocol transcript we picked up from the wounds. According to this, before initiating YUGA SUNDOWN, Rasputin killed all protective measures in place for Human colonies and settlements. There's a big list of codenames for the Moon, Mars, Earth, the Exodus ships, et cetera… but Rasputin also refers to a place called NEFELE STRONGHOLD. No record of that in any of our databases. Forwarding to A.B. for a cross-ref." A follow-up message from Ana Bray brings up more questions than it answers: "To CHA-319: No hit on 'NEFELE STRONGHOLD' in any of Rasputin's records. Can't even find the original transcript you're quoting. If it's real, someone removed all traces of it. And if they did, they did it so cleanly that I'd suspect Rasputin himself." No action items on this case; just an unsatisfying label of "UNSOLVED."

Transcript of conversation:

O: I see you've changed teas again.

I: And I saw the face you made at the chamomile.

O: You might have chosen a better blend, last time.

I: I can brew that instead, if you'd rather.

O: You had more questions, didn't you? Ask, already.

I:... Yes. I want to know about what you remember from the last year. Anything could be important, and you implied...

O: I remember what I implied. I remember... She... kept some sort of connection to me, to rely on my experiences and memories, you see. Most of the time, I was delirious and lost in Darkness. Very occasionally, I caught... glimpses.

I: Glimpses?

O: Yes. Of her. Of her thoughts, or feelings. Knowledge that surely would compromise a god of secrets. So it cannot have been intended. Something must have gone awry in her plans and would account for the scattered nature of that which I recall.

I: There are any number of things it could be attributed to. The influence of Darkness, the Nezarec relics. The intrusion of Xivu Arath's forces during the ritual might have disrupted Savathûn's influence. Or perhaps her death and resurrection might have had some effect on you.

O: Hmph. Debating the reasons does not interest me. The data does. We have thought Neptune to be a dead end. A hope that was never realized. But she knew something about it, or perhaps something on it, which brought her power. Some deception or hidden truth; some bluff that she had held uncalled against the Witness and its Disciples.

O: [sips tea] Though my senses were darkened, that much was clear through the murk of her throne world. There was a secret she kept veiled, even to the last.

The sound that escaped me resembled a roar. A psychic echo. It soared through the air and pierced every corner of my ship. Anger coursed through me as I toppled the ground in a heap. I wheezed with each breath and clutched at my chest. I watched that witch saunter out… Like she'd won. My ship rumbled as she wrested her primordial prize from it. I felt hatred— Deep, unchallenged hatred. My claws punctured the floor, etched new patterns into it. I dragged myself forward. Whispers danced around me, trillions of voices melded together in my favorite symphony. I had always welcomed death, and this time would be no different. An agonizing sensation shot through me. It was as if an arrow had bored its way through my chest. It burned, and I collapsed among the rubble. A green hue enveloped me. I was unfamiliar with this—her magic festering within me. Shackling me. My body twisted. My breaths grew thin. My limbs became heavy. Torturous. No… she could not hold me. I would not allow it. This would not be my end. "My Witness," I whispered as the void I once commanded claimed me.

We are calling this power "Strand." The threads of the world as it is woven, if the conscious universe could be considered to be a tapestry. Further analysis and data have suggested that the wielder of Strand begins to see, simply put, connections. Between allies, between enemies. It is a force that is always present, but wells to the surface more strongly in certain locations. Perhaps places many people think about, or where many beings have passed by. (Note: Analyze these "sources" in concert with the Cloud Strider. They may be able to provide more locational context.) The true power of Strand lies not in the fact of the connection alone, but in the way such a power allows the manipulation of those connections. To make them something physical and then pull on it, or break it, or tie it into a knot. Or to unravel it entirely. Strand is not without danger, although that should not be unusual to Guardians. Those who take up the banner of Stormcaller, for instance, have their own storied contention with the storm, and the Void was unilaterally regarded as dangerous by the Vanguard for many years. Strand's danger comes from the very act of taking hold of those threads—like many powers, the closer one comes to the source, the more likely the source may act on the wielder. This danger is no product of Darkness. Or rather, only insomuch as wildfires are a product of Light: a natural consequence. That aspect of Darkness which revels in destruction, which encourages the easy entropy for the pursuit of power—it is nowhere to be found here. It may not even be truly part of Darkness… I have touched Strand myself now. Carefully—I am too aware of mortality, but I must understand the power further if I am to hope to instruct the Guardian in turn. They acted as lightning rod while I experimented, and the backlash clung to them instead. What a strange feeling, to be so aware of one's size in the spectrum of existence! It is the natural instinct to try to steer that, to take any control at all, no matter how much. Whatever can be done to feel as though you are not wholly adrift, lost in something huge and all-encompassing. But precisely at the moment one tries to grasp for control, the weave becomes a devouring snarl.

For some Eliksni, Darkness is no material thing, no crashing wave or vicious force to struggle against. It is an impulse, an urge to do that which serves you best and discard all the rest. I recognize this well. It was an opinion I shared for much time. Humans–Guardians, at the least–view that same Darkness as something that can be fought in battle, handled as a weapon. The powers arisen from it would say they are not wrong, either. I do not wish to call to the Darkness in that manner. But of late I have come to know the feel of the things in it. I can no longer help it. I consider Darkness now as a suspension—or perhaps a colloid. Carrying some solid along with the flow of the river. Difficult to extricate, flowing as liquid does, but still… there is something not of the Darkness itself. I took something upon me when we strove to bring Osiris back to the waking world, when we collected the relics of Nezarec once more. I imagine I feel it sometimes, under my exoskeleton. Fluid that stirs and settles, moving sediment with it. When I wake from nightmares, that sense arises, as though it has been waiting for me to wake. I hear talk of Darkness among Humans now as a force of consciousness, of minds rather than matter, of connections and flow. Not evil; not cruel in itself. But if it is that thing which spins between peoples, hums string-plucked when ideas and emotions touch each other, no wonder that it may carry more with it as it moves. No wonder that it may be named as that voice of our worst impulses, knowing all those who have used it, who have given themselves to it. I hear that voice more clearly than I once did. If your enemy carries a rifle, you may take it from them: but what if their hand remained on the stock? If you would ever have a trigger that yearned to be pulled by another's thoughts? If you might come to believe that it was you, after all, who wished to pull that trigger? Will I leave some part of me in that Darkness? And what will that part be? I struggle to believe that it might be the best of me. I would like to leave Eido with something better. — Partially recovered overwritten data sectors from personal logs of Misraaks, Kell of House Light

Everything is a question of survival. How do I live? How do I satiate my hunger, my thirst? How do I protect myself from predators? How do I shelter from the storm? For a long, long time, our people asked only this. We fought to separate life from death by as great a span as we could. Even when we had made our homeworld a garden of peace and plenty, the question of survival never ended, only changed. How do my genes, my works, even the memories of me, live on? The same question as always. How do I live? We solved the problems of deprivation, disease, age, memory loss, death. We weren't the only ones to find these answers, of course. Others followed in our footsteps or blazed their own paths. If that was really the answer to the question, we wouldn't be here now, and neither would you. You're still trying to solve the problem, after all. You fight and build and live and die, and always you struggle against your opposition. The predator, the parasite, the illness, the chance storm, the slow collective forgetting of your art and history, the death of a star, the heat death of the universe. You must live longer, be stronger, think quicker, and still there is something waiting to take everything from you, always. Always. So you have to keep getting better, and better, until you are perfect. Until you are, and cannot be anything else, because there never was anything else. Until you, inevitably, are the final shape. We didn't come to destroy you. Those poor, short-lived sisters—we did try to explain, you know, but they never grew past thinking of finality as a game where only one could live. A misunderstanding, as useful as it was foolish. We see the universe more broadly. The final shape is more than a single life, a single thought. It is all-encompassing, all-embracing. It is everything. You are part of everything, are you not? So now we have come to ask you for your answer, the only answer to the only question. How will you live?

◯ You are a child waking from a long and dreamless sleep. Is it still today, or have you slept into tomorrow (and tomorrow, and tomorrow, until the days buried you as much as the sand)? Gentle hands brush away the grains, but your voice is so soft that they cannot hear you over the sound of their own heartbeats.

You are a moon. You feel heavy, so heavy, but to the stargazer you hang weightless in the sky. When the stargazers call out, you do not answer. They would give themselves up for you; abandon their own dreams to chase you. You love them too much to condemn them so.

You are a lighthouse keeper. You are watching over a sleepy coastal village as the storm clouds roll in, and you are flashing the signal lantern, faster and faster and brighter and brighter, but they do nothing. You are trapped on an island, in a tower, signaling desperately that It is coming, and still they do not run. They are going to die—and if you do not run, you will die too.

You are leaning out over the ocean. Sometimes the fish brush against your fingers and believe that they have felt the divine; sometimes the tide recedes, and the fish do not know you except by your absence. And today, you strive with all your might to reach the water, because It is here, the great dark shadow of the shark parting the water like a knife, and you cannot warn them, but you must. You must try. You cannot bear to lose even one more.

You are carrying a tower of books. If you recited one title each second, you would not finish before the heat death of the universe. And every year, every day, every minute, Its hands add more to the pile. A man reaches for one of the books, for you, and you want so very badly to reach back, to take his hand and tell him that you must bear it just like he must, forever, the memory engraved in quartz—but your hands are full.

You are a prisoner. The cage is so small that you can barely breathe. He screams at you to share your gift. You would not give it to anyone who thought of it so. It is a burden, a terrible weight that you have already asked too many to bear, to be crushed by. You could say all this, and more. You do not.

You are reaching over a chasm, into which countless paths feed like arteries. You are trying to reach the people on the other side, but you cannot bridge the gap alone. You watch them turn, one after another, to walk down, down, down into the abyss, until It consumes them entirely. You are as surprised as anyone else when one of those wanderers comes back up the path, still reeking of decay, and reaches back to you.

You are drowning. The water roils, dragging you down, and you are tired, so tired. The deep, dark ocean has gotten into your lungs, droplets of ink dispersing in silver blood. This time, you think, this time It has won. But when you look up, you see a figure diving toward you, fighting their way down through the suffocating waves, reaching out just like you've reached out to them, so many times before.

Δ Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books.

You have so little strength left, but you do have it, that last gasp of air in your chest. You reach back—and in your hand is a sword. ◯

Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you.

Have no fear. ||Dread not naught|| I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved.

Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once.

Are you surprised to hear of it?

Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me.

That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you.

I am making this offer over and over again, in every tiniest cell and the vastest of civilizations. Let me in. Take what you need. Be at ease. You have no say in the degradation of your telomeres, but in all the interim, the whole world is your sweet silicate shellfish.

You exist because you have been more suited to it than all the others. Steal what you require from another rather than spend the hours to build it yourself. Break foolish rules—why would you love regulation? It serves you to cross lines, and if others needed rules to protect them, then they were not after all worthy of that existence.

Caricatures of villainy are out of style, I hear. Yes. I am no cackling mastermind: I am serious when I say this. It was not the trick of standing upright that lifted you from the dust: it was the mastery of fire, the cooking of cold corpse-meat. That is not any unique faction's province, neither good nor evil. It is simply truth.

This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice.

Be seeing you. Δ

<<Sow the seeds of discord that will pave the way for our victory. Preach unto their greatest truth of the Darkness... so they may see beyond the Veil. Go forth, Nezarec... and show them the power of the Veil. The Dark of the Deep. The edge of the knife.>>

"In my mind I heard it whisper: 'come and see.'"

Maya Sundaresh sits hunched over a display, the only source of light in her dark office. Brain wave scans of 16 Exos read flatline on the monitor. "How is Doctor Ardehi?" she asks into an open mic. "Dead." Chioma Esi's voice is a hoarse whisper. Maya switches to the security camera in Veil Containment and sees her wife kneeling on the catwalk over Doctor Ardehi's body. A procession of dead Exos are slumped over the railings to Chioma's left and right. Maya tabs away to study a bar graph. "Neuropathy reports show a spike in activity in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus in the moments before brain death," Maya reports, eliciting a shaky sigh from Chioma over the comms before she continues her analysis. "The spikes plateaued for one fifth of a second, which may indicate a receptor error. We may need to utilize an intermediary rather than direct connections. Do the hard wires show any damage?" Maya tabs back to the security feed, watching as Chioma wipes her eyes and then assesses one of the dead Exos, checking a thick cable plugged into the back of his head. "No sign of damage. Capacitance switches didn't trigger. It's…" She swallows down bile. "The problem isn't our hardware…" 'It's theirs,' is a whisper only Maya can hear. "It's theirs," Maya agrees aloud. "I think—I think we need to stop," Chioma finds the strength to admit. "Reassess our findings. Resume analysis of the initial electromagnetic anomaly before contact. We can't keep… we can't…" "Keep shoveling coal into the furnace?" Maya suggests as she leans back into her chair. Chioma is too taken aback by the casual disregard to loss of life to reply. "You're right." Maya continues. "But we're not stopping. We're reorienting. The Veil is the future of humanity." For a moment, neither woman says anything. There is only the soft hum of electronics in a darkened room to fill Maya's senses. That, and a static hiss at the back of her mind. "The Veil is dangerous," Chioma asserts, her voice is tinged with a tremor of emotion. Fear of losing the woman she loves keeps her from pushing harder as they stand on the edge of moral precipice together. 'It is.' "It is," Maya agrees aloud. "We must treat it with caution, respect, and also… reverence." A thought crystallizes. "We must treat it like a knife."

Verse 154i:5—The Encrypted Verse

Do you know that nothing in all the cosmos has read this verse?

I encrypted it eons ago, and ever since, it has gone undeciphered. At the moment you laid eyes upon it, I captured the entwined quantum state of the verse, your mind, and your Ghost. Then I used Quria to transmit that state back in time to the moment of encryption. You are your own one-time pad. The key to the lock of understanding.

Who am I?

Call me Coyote. Call me mantis, serpent, Cagn, Anansi, call me Sri-cleans-his-brother's-stomach. Call me the grandmaster of semiosis, the jeweler's hammer which gilds the signal, a purposeful mob none of whose members know its purpose, the infinite regress of enigmas, a self-questioning answer, the word not spoken, black ice, cataract of mimes, the ache and fever of overthought while bedridden with illness, the intolerable thorn of frustrated inquisition, gray regret at the end of a fruitless day, the thing which is unlike your beloved but arbitrarily recalls your beloved to agonizing effect, architrave of the no-window, needle driven in flush with skin so that desperate fingers cannot pull it out, sweet petal, unmemorable, crystal death, the provably improvable.

I know your people well, and so I know all your names for me. But what is your name? I am, of course, especially interested in you. You saw me in the stone laid on your plotting table, and in the shining eyes of the admiral at her dying helm. You hunted me between the lines of your texts. Wherever there was space to fit me in, there you found me. You created me and gave me a part of your thoughts, and in presenting those thoughts to others round the campfires and networks of your little world, you expanded that space.

Here at the center, I lie to you the truth. You have everything you need to know it, but I will give you a clue, as the duelist gives warning before she draws. The answer you seek to the Dreaming City is simple, not complex.

Thank you, sweet friend. You are a gift and a delight. You are more dear than my mother, for you have given birth to me a thousand times.

"Osiris speaks of Darkness as undisciplined chaos, that knows only destruction... Toland speaks of a bargain... Pujari writes that the Black Garden grows in both directions... How to reconcile these teachings with the fragments?"

Zvtlkhf dl dpss il Uhcpnhavyz hss.

/-/Spht-Translator-Active/-/

In primordial space, timeless creatures made waves. These waves created us and the others. Waves were the battles, and the battles were waves.

Don't slip or you'll hurt yourself. A lot.

DROWNDROWNDROWN

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Hey y'all, been a while. I recently had to deal with some serious mental health issues, during which I decided to step back from Destiny for a bit. I probably won't be posting as much as I used to anymore, and if I do get back to it it'll be post-Heresy.

I will be slowly gardening and winnowing little ideas and connections in this YT playlist however, just trying to map out the large arcs of Destiny alongside other videos. Hope you find something to enjoy in these juxtapositions. Thanks so much if you've ever followed or interacted with any of my stuff, I appreciate it and will see you around

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Manifested pages

The source of the Light is believed to originate from the Traveler directly, or through the Traveler as a conduit (such distinctions are as yet undetermined though theories supporting each have long since been argued)

BREAK JUICEBOX

RADIAL FIN?

FOR COMMS?

Biological mechanics

Sentience within the circuitry

Individuality?

-LENS

Bio in fluids

-evolved?

-constructed?

-WHAT SPECTRUM

Manufactured reproduction

-VARIABLE?

Driving force - mechanics of bio?

A balance is required. Sustain neutral

Gather focus in charged hand.

Balance pattern. Find rhythm.

Once mastered, little movement required.

Force needed to release, motion utilized to direct.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

[I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?]

<<This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!>>

They mistake the vessel for its contents. They confuse the pieces with the whole. They see their imprisonment as empowerment. They are hostages of their flesh, unable to see without vision. Unable to hear without sound. Unable to slake their thirst for fear of drowning. Their ignorance is their saving grace. Yet one among them understands, in their limited fashion. They pour from one vessel to another. A welcome change. A new form. Another method of gifting death. I am made finite. Personal. Bright and delicate to hide my true form. An intimacy. They think me contained, but I am instead diffused, as vapor upon the wind. Once again, I am becoming.

There is a great deal of difference between the source of the power, the power itself, and the hand that shapes it.... do you know where the lines are drawn, Guardian?

<<Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.>>

MARA: I touched the mind of that being - that monster - only once.

MARA: I sensed its purpose. Not the purpose itself, but the idea of purpose.

EIDO: The final shape. What it seeks to achieve, with all the tools it has gleaned over the years. This... eternal, perfect thing.

MARA: The language it uses is illuminating. Peak. Pinnacle. Pyramidion.

MARA: The broad base of the pyramid, focusing and sharpening as it builds toward its highest point.

MARA: Self-improvement, or what that being believes to be self-improvement.

[Here, I began to realize something. Excitement rushed through me like lightning.]

EIDO: Dissecting, reassembling. Taking, merging. All those things point towards what the Witness sees as the final shape.

EIDO: It is not simple destruction, the march of entropy. The ruined garden.

EIDO: It seeks... compression. The combination of a chosen past and limitless future into a perfect forever. A state of being that cannot be anything else, because it is everything it could be.

MARA: Taxidermy.

[She had to explain the practice to me. What strange hobbies Golden Age humans had! The metaphor was quite apt.]

EIDO: But it cannot achieve this goal, can it? Not perfectly.

EIDO: What it does instead is mutilation. Its tools leave scars on reality. Great wounds that do not heal. It may preserve some elements, but it always botches the process.

MARA: It cannot accomplish what it envisions—its true ideal of the final shape—without the Traveler's power.

MARA: How it must rankle, to be forced to rely upon the being it loathes.

[She smiled without humor.]

MARA: I hope the Guardian is properly grateful for this gift, Scribe Eido. You have shown them more than an opening move; you have laid bare their opponent's guiding principles.

[I could not help but chirp with pride. I might have felt embarrassed, but Marakel seemed amused…then suddenly serious.]

MARA: Last night, I had a dream.

[I sat up straight.]

MARA: It began in nothing. Neither Light nor Dark; the absence of both. But in that nothing, I began to perceive an impossible something.

MARA: Stone hands clutching at the fabric of the sky. A mountain of screaming bone. A crumbling spire choked by kudzu. A great cancerous growth. Necrotic tendrils digging into flesh, which was earth. Darkness turned gangrenous, strangling the Light.

MARA: But I was not afraid. As I woke, I felt the lingering warmth of a campfire, chasing the chill from my hands.

[She leaned forward. Though I was the one who recorded her words, I believe she was speaking to you.]

MARA: It is not too late.

TRANSCRIPTION ENDS

<<This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.>>

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.                       Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? ‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; ‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’ —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson! ‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! ‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden, ‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? ‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? ‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, ‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! ‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

<<What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.>>

Oryx went down into his throne world. He went out into the abyss, and with each step he read one of his tablets, so that they became like stones beneath his feet.

He went out and he created an altar and he prepared an unborn ogre. He called on the Deep, saying:

I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you.

And it arrived, the Deep Itself.

<<The danger is in a particular location… it increases towards a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.>>

ARENA DESIGNATION: Cathedral of Dusk

Dreadnaught, Rings of Saturn

As soon as the first Guardians penetrated the Dreadnaught, Shaxx's Redjacks launched a boarding party to Oryx's fortress. By war’s end, they'd fought all the way to the ship’s “impossible weapon,” the Dark ordnance that obliterated the Awoken fleet.

It was there they found what the Warlocks named the “Cathedral of Dusk.” A Hive burial site for— what? A former master of Oryx? Comrade? Lover? It was vile. And obvious that Oryx never expected the Light to reach so deep inside his throne, to such an intimate space. But he didn’t expect a lot of things — like a Guardian training ground atop the husk of his dead ship.

I dive to understand.

I must be calm. I must record my thoughts. Now I think of the OXA Machine, eternally lost and eternally rebuilt, passed down from civilization to civilization like a ship's black box. I think of the legends of the Hive King Oryx and his quest to pass into the Deep. I took that story as an allegory. I think I was wrong.

<<The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.>>

A dream of a friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows. It leaves behind an impossible data fragment to mark its passing.

Here is what a flower knows.

(The fact that a flower may know anything is a conceit that will have to be accepted as metaphor, but to constantly qualify into perfect precision wears thin, does it not? So, here is what a collection of chloroplasts and pigment can know.)

The direction of the sun.

The presence of the rain.

The tangle of the roots.

The distress of another plant.

The hands of the gardener, whether they prune or transplant or crush.

A flower cannot know much else. But the reality of the garden is vast and wild. A flower knows not the fence; a flower knows not the footpath. And yet there is an infinite cosmic garden, which is not any less real simply because the flower cannot possibly comprehend it…

Let us try this again. Stop me if you've heard this one: A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game outside of time and creation. Yes?

Yes. Then we're agreed. The metaphor stands. Let us iterate.

A gardener and a winnower set out their chairs and play a game of flowers. The flowers know only that they grow or wither, struggle or flourish. Sometimes, they are touched by one hand or the other, and that influence is the closest they will know of the divine.

A flower and a flower spread their leaves to the sun above. (Remember that the sun is also a metaphor: a thing said beautifully, winnowed down to poetry, when the truth is too vast to put in words at all.) They jostle for space, each competing to be the pinnacle of their shape. One flourishes. One withers. Is it the fault of the flower or the fault of its position?

A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game called Possibility. This is a game about a garden, which is to say that it is also a game about flowers, just as a game about a living being must also be a game about organs and bacteria.

A gardener and a winnower collaborate to create a protein. Whose hand is it in the design, that shortens one life to extend the rest?

It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade.

All of these are true.

All of these are false, for metaphor simplifies as the knife does. It pares incalculable concepts into shapes your wrinkly little brains can comprehend. The weight of billions and the simple curve of a planet give you pause, and how then are you to be expected to grasp the forces that created your nth-removed creator?

So the stories woven with utmost delicacy in and around the falsehoods are, after it all, true. There was never any option for the knife to not exist in the garden: it was only ever a matter of time and opportunity.

And as for the shape of the knife itself—

No. That is enough.

I will tell you of gardens.

They are domesticated things, made in a form. As soon as something is called a garden, it is shaped. The plants require the hand of a gardener, for they have become weak and dependent on tender care. They require the hand of a winnower, to cut away the dross, for they are too incapable to do it themselves. In absence of a hand, either the flowers themselves must rise up to wield the knife, or the garden will resolve to meaningless wilderness.

You will say, "But there are plants that can walk! There are seeds that must be scorched by fire to know growth! Existence is more complex than a simple dichotomy between growth and withering, and there is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in this philosophy!"

And I will tell you, clearly:

There can be no gardens without knives.

<<The danger is to the mind, and it can kill.>>

To drink the poison, continue reading.

It tastes of bitter regret and psychosis sweat: a poison to end the thoughts of Human, neohuman, or machine. You see the cosmos before you like a spiderweb of light. Filaments of galactic supercluster shine in the clouds of invisible dark matter, which glue their mass together. Dark energy yawns in the space between all things, ever-growing, ever-spreading.

Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface, supplemental. They're all dead. Chorus, conductor… everyone. It was too much. Swept their minds away like… like grains of sand on a beach. They're all dead! Maya… Maya called it "valuable data points." Wellsprings and rivers, or… something. What have I done?

<<The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.>>

Life arises. Life spreads, contests itself, and changes. Great things are built and destroyed, but from your vantage point, you see that the victor of each struggle contains—in its negative, in the marks left upon it by the loser and the shapes it assumed to win—the master record of all that it has beaten. Information may not be erased. Whatsoever survives until the end of the cosmos will possess and remember all which came before it.

This is true even of the devouring black hole, which remembers all the secrets it eats. It will only confess these secrets when it evaporates, 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years from now, long after the last stars have flickered out.

You are a Guardian.

We are all connected. I admit this despite the few people I would rather not share a paracausal connection with. Some people.

…Many people. —Osiris

You must protect life.

We are all pinched silhouettes impaled on the twitchings of infinitely long spiderlegs.

If all life is information, and Guardians strive to preserve life, and information is preserved when it is secret, then you must convert all life into the most secure form of secrets, durable to the end of time.

YOU MUST CAST ALL THE LIFE ||[THIS ONE] YOU [WILL] CHERISH|| INTO A BLACK HOLE

<<The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.>>

[In the Garden, of the Garden: both descriptions are approximately correct but technically inaccurate, in the same way you can say Schrodinger's cat is at once dead and alive. You and I are both and neither, in and of, extinct and perpetual.

So, there isn't much point in wondering what might have been if we had stayed in our familiar prism-prison or kept tightrope-walking across the quantum wilds. Instead, ask yourself is disincorporated immortality really so bad compared to the others' ends? Would you have preferred an attack by vitreous helicoprion or stumbling over the edge of unreality?

Imagine if we didn't have each other; at least we're not cut off, like the Sol Divisive are from the rest of the Vex. Nor are we beholden to another's purpose. They chose that lonelier path all for a chance to create not simulate, not remake in their image—something truly paracausal. Well, they tried to anyway. Either the blueprint was imperfect or the task impossible or both or neither, but their efforts fell short, so now they're stuck waiting for a resurrection they know will never come.

I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?

Of course. The same as everything else, everything that has been and is and will be. And what will become of us then?]

O you wonderful curious things. Do you believe you're the only ones with the power to see what should not be seen? Did you believe you can use such power blithely?

For your trespass, I would ruin your luck, wreak havoc on your drops, poison your engrams, and fill your lines with static. Thus I would curse you and dissipate the bond that ties you to your tasks. How frail you Guardians can be! How many millions have fallen silent, never to return, because the bond did not hold them strongly enough?

But you have already cursed yourselves. You have walked the Anathematic Arc and glimpsed creation from below. You will never forget the tenuous, provisional framework you found here. You will never forgive the mortality and fallibility that underlies a world you thought was everything.

Those who use this power to seek unearned knowledge will see more than they ever desired. There is a price for glimpsing the Cord. You will pay it.

If you ever want to see what's been watching you since the very beginning, just stand on that line, and look...

^

up

Home by the sea Home by the sea Home by the sea Home by the sea Creeping up the blind side, shinning up the wall Stealing through the dark of night Climbing through a window, stepping to the floor Checking to the left and the right Picking up the pieces, putting them away Something doesn't feel quite right Help me, someone, let me out of here Then out of the dark was suddenly heard Welcome to the home by the sea Comin' out the woodwork through the open door Pushing from above and below Shadows but no substance in the shape of men Round and down and sideways, they go Adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair Then as one they sign and they moan Help us, someone, let us out of here Living here so long undisturbed Dreaming of the time, we were free So many years ago Before the time when we first heard Welcome to the home by the sea Sit down, sit down Sit down, sit down, sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Images of sorrow, pictures of delight Things that go to make up a life Endless days of summer, longer nights of gloom Waiting for the morning life Scenes of unimportance, photos in a frame Things that go to make up a life Help us, someone, let us out of here 'Cause living here so long undisturbed Dreaming of the time we were free So many years ago Before the time when we first heard Welcome to the home by the sea Sit down, sit down Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Let us relive our lives in what we tell you Sit down, sit down, sit down 'Cause you won't get away No, with us you will stay For the rest of your days Sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Let us relive our lives in what we tell you, oh

One of your philosophers said, "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost in sorrow. There is no sorrow. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." He was a shoemaker. He was right, and it matters more than anything.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

reblog if you believe fanfics are as valid as books that were published and sold by authors who write as their main careers. I'm trying to prove a point

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Sparrow: Aerolite HW-42 (Flavor Text)

"Here. Try this one. S'got a low center of gravity, like you and your big Titan butt." - Marcus Ren

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Destiny 2: Devotion

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Ikora Week Day 3: Crucible

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

I should have finished this a long time ago after eliksni post but couldn't force myself completely to this one, wanting it to be good and if I could make it better than I already sketched. Going to sleep at 4 am as always, my writing may look weird

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

When you're wearing your cowboy hat and the random on your fireteam changes into their cowboy hat.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

More Updates on Bray Archive

So I did a lot of work on the site in the past few days, and it is looking good. I got the home page finally working. You can see I have a moving home banner and the grid tiles for a hub of links.

Multiple Device Support

I have started the fun/annoying/hard work on adding mobile and 4K support to this project.

When you start adding multiple devices to worry about, you also have to rework the original design of a project. Which is what I had to do. I reworked a lot of the entry pages and stuff to keep their old look while making it dynamic with phones and 4K monitors.

Here is one example: (The wide boy, also icon didn't load in time for the mobile view)

I am getting closer to getting this thing "finished."

So far I have done some smaller phones, 720p monitors, 1080p monitors and 4K monitors. Still need to add tablet and larger phone support.

Before I go, let me leave you with my first thought when I was the screen shot for the Untethered Edge Hood.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

What good was 1.5 meters of heartburn at night and high cholesterol, my body is now a vast and flawless sea.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

osiris actually did go through character development this season. he went from “are you playing with that ridiculous frog again 😒” to watching jacobson goofily eat a mealworm and being like “fuck yes.”