Fireteam Pinion On Anti-Shadow Legion Sweep, Abandoned Golden Age Settlement, 22 Klicks South Of The

Fireteam Pinion on anti-Shadow Legion Sweep, abandoned Golden Age Settlement, 22 klicks south of the Sulis Minerva Exclusion Zone.

Destiny: Three Messages

(I ran a couple polls a while back and the results were "Caiatl/Zavala" and "wedding/ritual.") Torobatl finery: gold and purple, wide metal bands around necks and wrists. Even the antechamber evoked Caiatl’s prized tank, Zavala thought, with the ship’s life support conduits exposed and gilded. Maybe decorating the ship that way had been Calus’ command, an era ago. The gilding did not seem to suit the woman who, when they stepped out of that small antechamber, would soon take him as her husband. 

Caiatl turned to him from her own, perhaps similar contemplation of the ship’s wall. When she put her hands on his arms, the digits stretched from shoulder to elbow. “Are you ready?” She asked it firmly but serenely, neither pressuring nor withdrawing. A warrior’s cry to an ally — it was as little or as much as that. The same tone had been with him when she had negotiated for her people, when he and she had walked haunted halls. It was an anchor rope now, stretching from the darkest corridors to the buttery golden light in the anteroom.

He looked her up and down with a tactician’s eye: her pebbled skin, her good boots, the large bronze-and-gold-and-steel knife in her cloth belt. He looked at her with a husband’s eye: her etched and jeweled tusks, her muscled, stanced limbs. 

The knife, though.

Zavala folded his arms. “It doesn’t have to be bloody.”

“But the memory sticks if it is.” Caiatl said. She had told him what would happen in the ritual, where the cut was usually made on a Cabal and where it would be made on an Awoken to reduce injury. 

“I am concerned about the precedent it sets,” Zavala said. “It is in Guardians’ natures to be easily influenced. I do not wish us to start a cult as well as a dynasty.” They were easily persuaded, his people, if they felt they would benefit. Younger Guardians and older alike became Dredgens or even Shadows because in part of the appeal of a ritual with a reward. 

“It will be clear to them the ritual is part of our ways, not theirs. If it is not … you will make it so, commander. Is that not in your nature?”

Yes. The majority would listen to him. The extremists — the ones who would protest the alliance or had already joined the Shadows — would have done so already.

Caiatl stepped back. Her hands fell away. She had looked at him as a tactician about to speak her piece. 

Truth was, he could try to predict Guardians all he wanted, but perhaps he was nervous about his own reaction. Once married, holding the memory of Safiyah as beloved and resolved, would he lose his perspective about the Tower when he married Caiatl? He was as afraid of change, afraid of an uncertain future, as anyone.

He shuffled forward. Held her around the waist for a moment, his face in the dry-scaled crook of her elbow. She smelled dusty, but not unpleasantly so, and like the bitter polish on her armor. He let his shoulders relax, molding himself against her. 

She lifted his chin with one finger. Cabal held no such taboo as keeping spouses from each other before the wedding. The glint in her eyes and the scrape of her nail against his throat made him consider whether they should.

Whatever happened next, the Guardians would stand by him. Those who scattered were pieces gone from the board. He commanded what was left. He was making the right decision. Walls would not fall on his watch.

He took Caiatl’s hand in both of his as he stepped away from her. The gentle touch and gracious acceptance were all diplomatic, all messages from the tactician. The soft look he gave the crimson jewels dangling from her tusk rings, the pass of his tongue over his lips — all messages from the husband. The uncharacteristic hesitation in her eyes was a message from some third place – from friendship, proven and curious to see what would happen to them both next. She waited to see what he would tell her of his people, and himself through them. 

“I look forward to uniting two great domains that share such stubborn natures,” he said, and laughed low when she did. 

fanart of a scene from death dream by @allteacher, one of my favorite wei/eriana fics

So, my dndestiny character recently got a huge visual upgrade thanks to some plot that happened. Right now, they are hiding from the Praxic order and the Vanguard after making a pack with a Hive Worm. So anyways, now they are in semi hiding and under an alias. Also the red numbers are the stats that took a hit do to mechanics that mean I can live, but I take a stat hit.

A stylized full body commission for @Tsutako on twitter of her hunter Noah!

cosmic horror (god loves you too much and keeps resurrecting you)