Foreword: I've been especially active in the r/DestinyJournals subreddit as of late, and began writing a number of different shorts. I'm going to start re-posting them here.
They had arrived in the ruins of a human city. Koroa let his gaze look over the other Eliksni who had gathered here, from other crews, most of them wearing the tattered colors of House Dusk. Some still wore strips of cloth from older banners, most of them were grizzled veterans of the Long Siege. He spared a glance toward Hanka, but the old Eliksni was fussing with his ether mask, grumbling at it.
The broadwave transmissions from Europa kept coming. While all of their crew had tacitly agreed to ignore them, one had come through from another one of the Shipstealer's followers, asking all Eliksni to come and hear his message. Koroa knew it was going to be angry and poisonous, but it still needed to be heard, if only so it could then be dismissed.
"A few Winter over there," Hanka grunted, gesturing across the plaza. Koroa looked and saw them, led by a Captain with strips of Winter banner wrapped around the hafts of his swords. A few wretches with him had similar strips tied beneath the heads of their spears. Koroa pointed out other crews around the plaza. "Remnant Wolves. Some Devils."
Hanka grunted again, scratching at the join of his mechanical leg. "What message do you think he will give?"
Koroa shook his head. "Hate. Too much of it in Gaitza's blood."
The clamoring of the various crews in the plaza quieted as a pair of Eliksni appeared on a balcony from one of the nearby buildings. They both wore the banner of the Shipstealer's new House. One carried a war-hammer, which he clanged on the railing of the balcony to draw the attention of the plaza. He raised his voice, amplified to a roar. "Raise your eyes! Hear the voice of your salvation! Survivor of the Lights, who fought the Violet King and lived! Gaitza!"
The barker stepped back to allow the other to step forward. This one wore the robes of an archon, and his body was crisscrossed with scars. He carried an archon's staff, which he raised with along with his hands. Gaitza's voice was likewise amplified, but he spoke quietly.
"Hear me, Eliksni. Hear me, children of a lost planet." The scarred archon's eyes swept over the plaza. "Listen to me, Riis-lost. Listen to me, Whirlwind-scattered. Listen to me, those brought low by the assassins of the City of Thieves, the City of Murder, the City That Docks." He cast a hand out, gesturing broadly. "Listen to me, Winter-born. Listen to me, be you broken Wolf, scattered Devil, or outcast Exile."
Gaitza paused, assured he had the attention of the whole plaza. He drew a rasping breath. "They name us Fallen, in mockery of our noble past, even as they preen in their Light and beneath the Great Machine they stole from us. We seek to reclaim our glory, and so they jealously guard it from us. When we try to rise back to our proud station, they kill our Primes, our Kells," and here, he touched his scarred chest, "our Archons." He shook his head slowly. "Our great Houses-- the mightiest that survived the Whirlwind-- are broken by their ghouls for daring to aspire to match their grandeur."
Hanka grumbled next to Koroa, who folded his arms as he watched not just the archon, but the crowd. There was murmuring, the kind that he knew too well. The kind that could be whipped into a frenzy, into a riot, under the expert touch of a demagogue. Koroa had seen archons and Kells do it before. Not all Kells used force to keep their followers in line, when the right word would serve just as well.
"We know your pain. We have felt the sting of their bullets, the fire of their hate." Gaitza had spread open his robes to fully show the scope of the scarring that covered his body. "We who had not fought in the Long Siege stood apart from you, but were we spared their fury? " His staff clanged on the balcony railing, and the archon's voice turned hot with anger. "No, we were not. Our Skiffs have been attacked. Our people bombarded by the false machine-god called Ras-Puu-Tin which they fashioned and forgot. Our nests are driven below ground, away from the light and into shadow."
With another rasping breath, Gaitza calmed himself, and his voice lowered back to the quiet conviction. "We know your pain, o children of the Whirlwind. They will never stop shooting their hate. They will never let us live in peace. We threaten their would-be supremacy. So long as a single Eliksni breathes, they will hunt us down out of pure spite. They will finish what the Whirlwind started, and drive us into oblivion."
This got another murmur out of the crowd, a louder one, one which bubbled with rage. Koroa could feel it welling up in him as well. How many times had he seen Fallen crews-- who had done nothing to any humans and had actively avoided them-- get cut down by the Lights, simply for existing? Too many. He growled at the thought. Lights that patterned themselves off the Fallen-Bane, the Violet King.
Gaitza raised a hand toward the skies. "Our lives have been pain since the Whirlwind sent us fleeing to the stars. Our lives have been pain since the vaunted House of Stone was broken in the wake of the theft of the Great Machine. Our lives have been pain since we came to this cursèd star." He lowered his hand, curling his dactyls into a fist as he hissed, "If fate is to gift us nothing but pain, then pain shall be our weapon."
His hand traced over his scars as he spoke quietly again, and it was almost mesmerizing. Koroa found himself watching those dactyls running over the lines carved in the archon's flesh, and he knew that so many of the Eliksni in the plaza were doing the same. "Pain has sharpened us. We are stronger for it. We dock our Dregs, that they might find their strength and earn the right to grow back what is lost to them. We test our followers, that they might keep their strength and avoid complacence. We test our leaders, that they might prove their strength to lead."
Gaitza gestured toward the warrior who had heralded him. "Pain has hardened us. Those who cannot find their strength wither, forever stunted without the ether to grow. Those who cannot keep their strength perish, unfit to become more than what they are. Those who cannot prove their strength die, unworthy to wear the cape and sword of authority."
Koroa shook himself as he came back to himself, glancing at Hanka as the elder grumbled again. The scarred archon wielded his words with expert skill. He was almost taken in. The growling from the crowd was getting sharper now, and Koroa knew that they'd follow him to Shipstealer's banner. It was good that he hadn't brought some of the younger crew like Ezziur. They would have fallen for it.
"We say to you, Eliksni, of whatever banner you hide beneath, come to us." Gaitza held out a hand, like he were asking them to take it. "There is a place for you under our banner. A new banner. Our lives were once full of fear and spite and doom. But those who are Fallen shall rise once more. We know your ambitions, your aspirations. Ours is not a house of weakness. Ours is a house of strength."
Koroa turned to Hanka, shaking his head. There was nothing to be gained from listening to the rest of the mad archon's speech. They started to withdraw slowly. Being near the perimeter of the plaza and crowd, it was easier to do. If they'd been among the crowd in general, he knew their departure would cause that roiling mob to descend upon them and tear them apart, drinking the ether from their steaming corpses.
Behind them, he heard Gaitza growl, "And to those sneaking Crows and crouching Hidden who will hear these words? Know this:
"Our blades are sharp. Our eyes are clear. For every agony you have inflicted on us, you will know tenfold. We will take back what you have stolen from us. And return to you naught but pain."
Koroa heard the conviction in the archon's voice, but it only hardened his own resolve and conviction. There was nothing in the Shipstealer's House for them but more war and death. Better to stay out of it, and survive that much longer. No more Kells or Archons. No banners for them. "Godenboraa," he muttered to himself. Bannerless forever.
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