Destiny 2 - Glory or Death

Author preface: Once again, my creative juices keep getting distracted by Destiny 2, with the new 'Season of the Chosen,' and the lore that came with it. In this short, a Cabal commander faces glory or death.

The battleground shook with the march of Cabal troops. The Guardians of Sol had opposed the Empress' attempt at negotiation, rejected her offer of alliance, and now by ancient custom, they sought to educate the inhabitants of this backwater system of the magnitude of their folly.

Phalanxes banged the butts of their weapons against their shields. Psions raised their minds in battle song. Centurions bellowed their Legionaries into formation as the Empress' sigil shone in the sky above them. Across the plain from them, three of the Guardians had arrived, regarding them with an almost indifferent air. One of them stepped forward, and held up-- Bac'tur squinted to be sure-- a Bell of Conquests. He growled to see it, and then his Psion advisor confirmed it, "The Bell had belonged to Dracus. The Guardians challenge you!"

Bac'tur growled louder, and then he saw the Guardian raise a hand and rap their knuckles off the side of the Bell, setting the clapper to swinging. The tolling rolled out across the battleground, and the Cabal all shouted their fury, brandishing their weapons. Bac'tur stomped and raised his voice, booming out across the plain. "Who dares to mock our ancient customs? Who dares to put themselves on the level of the noble Cabal Empire? Who dares to challenge our supremacy with our own relics?"

The Guardian lowered the Bell, stowing it away, then addressing the Cabal before them. "Who wants to know?"

Bac'tur thumped his fist against his chestplate. "I am Bracus Bac'tur! The Ragged Edge!" He snorted. "Who are you, who dares to--"

"They call me," the Guardian interrupted, "the Young Wolf."

The Ragged Edge growled. The ancient customs which the Empress had revived called for the practice of the boast. In such rituals of proving, the challenger and the champion were meant to declare themselves, and recite their accolades, to proclaim their worthiness, that the other would be aware of the weight of their legacy, of their conquests. In the time of Golden Calus, when the Empire's conquests had been reined in, and the gladiatorial arenas grew fat with spectacle, the boasts had been handled by heralds, and the greatest of these had been none other than Calus' favored Aedile himself, Moli Imoli.

But the Everjoy was dead. These Guardians knew nothing of the customs. Bac'tur sneered. Interrupting the boast was a social faux pas at best, and a deadly taboo at worst. All the more reason for him to cut these ones down.

"Know then, pup, that you face a champion of the arenas of Torobatl." Bac'tur drew his Severus and held it before him. "My blade has tasted the lives of multitudes. I have burned nebulae in the name of my people. Turned planets to glass and stars to ash. I have led campaigns against races beyond reckoning, their only memories being the notches in my blade, left their bones to burn green in the graveyards of the galaxy. Every challenge I have faced, I have eclipsed. For we are Cabal. We eat the mountains. We drink the seas."

He swung his Severus to one side before thrusting it toward the Guardian who had spoken. He had no expectation that the Lightbearer would understand his own part in the ritual of the boast. He had seen their kind ignore any attempt at taunting to either attack outright, or dance in mockery of the ritual.

And then the Guardian bested Bac'tur's boast with just five words:

"I slew the Taken King."

The Empress' soldiers rocked back in shock. Bac'tur and his legion had been there when the War God had destroyed their homeworld. They had seen how powerless their forces were against the Tithe Claimer. The Empress had marched away from Torobatl, to choose the field of battle where they might face the Majesty of War with more in their favor, rather than carelessly throw away lives against the Hive. The Taken King was brother to the War God, every bit as inexorable as his sister.

And this Guardian had slain him?

Bac'tur squared his shoulders. His path was clear. There was no other battleground that he could choose, now the ritual of proving had begun. If he wanted to claim a seat on the Empress' war council, he must face the challenge here. If he surrendered, then he would never again have command of a platoon, much less a legion. He would be consigned to the dungheap of history.

Glory or death. These were his futures. And of the latter... to fall to such a warrior as this, the Slayer of Oryx? It would be a worthy death.

The Cabal had no word for "retreat." 

So Bac'tur, the Ragged Edge, charged forth.