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Nyx could see the Queen out of the corner of his eyes, but his gaze was locked directly ahead. Past the baubles and artifacts. Past the Techeuns. Past the gates hanging ajar. The crystal prison (‘more like a chrysalis…’ he thought) stood unmoving. For all intents and purposes, it looked as static and non-lethal to them as the being within it claimed to be. The grand manipulator. The god of deception. He could feel her eyes gazing at him. She was appraising him. Observing. He could feel it in the subtle threads of light and darkness within the room, like the sixth sense of an animal, knowing a predator is nearby. Unfortunately for Nyx, there was more than one hungry lioness in the room.
Mara turned, her gaze shifting from whatever orb she was studying to Nyx’s eyes. The inner muscles of her brows raised a fraction of a sliver of an inch and her eyes, though still heavy lidded, opened ever so slightly. She was expecting something. Fealty, perhaps? For Nyx to bend the knee? He’d seen those looks before, those presumptuous expressions of expected compliance. Nyx didn’t bend a knee to the Warlords, either, though.
“Found Uldren’s gun,” said the Hunter, holding Ager’s Scepter in the air. “Packs a punch. Sorta glad you kept the carrot on the stick or your brother might’ve done more than just piss me off before.”
The space between Mara’s nostril and her lip twitched. She was displeased with Nyx’s banter. It amused the Hunter.
“You did as I commanded, Guardian,” said the Queen, as if Nyx hadn’t spoken. “As expected.”
“It's Lord,” corrected Nyx, keeping his gaze from shifting over Mara’s shoulder. "I'm an Iron Lord, not a Guardian. There is a difference, buuuuuut I'll let it slide this time."
Nyx smirked.
Mara didn't.
Returning his attention to the weapon in his hands, Nyx turned the trace rifle over in further inspection. “Not gonna lie, Osanna knew what she was doing. Now that I don’t have Xivu Arath’s B Team actively crawling up my ass I can appreciate the craftspersonship.”
“She had her uses,” said Mara, offhandedly. “But let us not wax nostalgic over irrelevant players in our current story.”
Nyx raised a brow. “ Ooooookay. Speaking of stories--”
“--you want to hear the rest of my brother’s.”
Dixie made the digital approximation of bridling a fit of laughter as she materalised out of Nyx’s pack. <Trivia: Nyx hates it when people interrupt him! Chaps his ass worse n’ a day in the saddle.>
Mara’s attention never left Nyx, as if Dixie wasn’t even in the room. A trend for today’s meeting, it seemed. Nyx gestured towards her, as if to suggest she was correct in her assumption--not that she needed his confirmation.
The Awoken Queen went on to deliver the final act of the story of Rega and Ager. Twins torn apart by a storm. Fleeing from the boughs of the hollow to the dark spaces between the stars. More analogous references to Mara and Uldren’s stories turned to prose. Mara reached for the scepter at one point, as if holding it was crucial to her telling of the story. Nyx obliged, but watched on with increasing scrutiny. The Queen’s expression shifted as she dictated the tale, though it felt...theatrical. Not in vividness but in its production. As a risen during the Dark Ages, Nyx had been...well, raised by the man most knew as The Drifter, so he was no stranger to facial journeys that were more for show than for transparency during stories.
When the story finished, Nyx moved to give the Queen a quiet applause, but her pointed look after the first clap was enough to make him quit.
Mara looked down at the weapon in her hands--one as ancient as she was, Nyx imagined, crafted by a woman she didn’t consider a mother for a brother she no longer had and never truly loved. There was something on her face Nyx couldn’t read. Something alien and ancient. She tenderly ran a hand over the shape of the weapon, and after an extended space of introspective silence, she spoke again. “I still feel Uldren’s heartbeat. Somewhere out there.”
Nyx’s brows pulled in. An oddly personal admission given their unfamiliarity, thought the Hunter. At least her unfamiliarity with this version of Nyx’s body. The Awoken man parted his lips to speak, but Mara was faster on the draw to continue.
“When your Crow first stood in my halls, I saw an ember of my Uldren burning in his breast,” she said, looking once again at the weapon. “Curiosity...and a sibling fondness told me I could stoke that ember. I hope it’s not a lie.”
Nyx’s focus had shifted to the weapon as well, but both of his amber eyes shot to the Queen at that. Stoke that ember? What the hell did she mean by that ?
<Well...that ain’t troublin’ at all ,> said Dixie privately over their two-way comms.
Nyx nodded subtly, but schooled his expression. What was the Queen getting at here?
“I hope,” she continued, “he is more than the last ebb of hot ash from a long dead flame.”
Nyx’s vision briefly filled with an all-too familiar scene that he, try as he might, couldn’t seem to flush from his mind. The sound of Uldren Sov’s voice cutting short as Nyx pulled the trigger on Cayde’s gun, blowing open a hole in the Awoken man’s throat. The gasps for breath. Uldren’s hands clawing at his punctured neck. Nyx blinked hard to clear away the image and the fleeting, intrusive rush of completeness it made him feel.
Mara didn’t seem to notice Nyx’s bout with his own mind as she continued to speak at him. “Many of his faults were not of his own making. Uldren’s decisions were his own, of course, but driven by whips in the hands of others. Myself included.”
<Mighty self-aware of the Queen,> said Dixie to Nyx.
Nyx couldn’t agree more. While his feelings for Uldren hadn’t changed from seething hatred, he’d learned much about the late Prince’s life before Nyx had ended it. Mara was right, of course, like she usually was. While Uldren was ultimately the hand that pulled the trigger on more than a few occasions, there was always something behind him, whispering in his ear, goading him to aim and fire. Hell, on most occasions it was someone else putting the gun in his hand. Or at least tempting him by leaving it on the counter. He pitied Uldren for that, much as he hated the man.
The Queen turned, setting a hand against her chin in thought. “I will have to offer him more than an old story of an empty promise if I wish to see that ember burn again.”
Nyx briefly looked to meet Dixie’s gaze next to him. They were hearing this right, right?
“This is the path I led Uldren down. If certain actors had kept to their roles, I would have wielded Uldren Sov, Lightbearer.”
Nyx’s stomach churned unbidden. Her words felt like some cocktail of ice and poison slithering down his spine. It made his shoulders shudder and his jaw clench.
“But even Mara Sov cannot control everyone,” continued the Queen, nonchalantly. Matter of factly. As if she were talking about the puppy in the window she bought but wasn’t able to train to ride a unicycle or play the cymbals.“I celebrate his resurrection in the Light. But I detest seeing my brother rewritten--his greater self sloughed away and swept into the cellar. There--”
“God, shut up , Mara,” Nyx said out loud. The Hunter realised a beat later that it was , in fact, said out loud, and not a thought he’d just shouted in his head really loud. Dixie blinked audibly at his side and the Queen--for the first time since Nyx’s arrival seemed to react to his lack of deference. Well, Nyx thought. We’re in it now. May as well fire the rest of the shots. The Hunter stretched his neck from side to side as if he were about to jump into the ring. “Yeah...yeah no, shut up. I’m so tired of listening to you talk. Like I thought I liked the sound of my own voice, but hooooly shit, Mara, you love the sound of yours. You are a moustache twirl away from a monologuing villain in a spaghetti western novel at this point.”
“Silence,” Mara’s voice cracked like a whip. Nyx noticed a shift in the posture of the Techeuns behind her. The kind of tense shuffling when the kids know Mom is pissed. The Queen’s eyes had widened in a flicker of impatient displeasure and almost seemed to crackle with a regal fury. “You will speak wh--”
“--when I fucking want, thanks,” Nyx cut her off this time, and boy did that feel good. “And I’m definitely gonna speak right now, because I am sick of how you talk about Uldren. Like...I fucking hate the guy. Enough that I killed him. But hooooly shit, like it was a mercy that I put him down when I did if this is what he would have come back to. Wielded him, Mara? Wielded ? You talk about him like he’s a thing . Like...like that gun or,” he snatched the nearest weathered tome off of the Queen’s desk, “this book,” he tossed it over his shoulder and swiped the next object, “or this...this rock thing--is this Riven’s heart??” Nyx balked at the familiar looking item, but shook his head thinking better of it.
“Put. That. Down.” Mara commanded, her tone biting.
Nyx obliged. By chucking it into the distance.
“Oh shit,” one of the Techeuns choked as they shuffled forward to catch the artifact before it shattered into a million pieces across the floor.
“That’s the thing about you, Mara. You don’t care what happens to other people as long as it’s part of your plan. Your own brother included.” Nyx slinked around the other side of Mara’s desk, feeling much like a cat looking for the next thing to knock off the table. “See when Petra and I were first able to make contact with you, she couldn’t even finish her sentence before you were telling her you knew Uldren was dead. You knew . And you did nothing .”
“The plans that I had set in motion--”
“--oh my god I can’t with your ‘plans’. Like literally, what are they? Care to elaborate? I mean you haven’t in years . Was it part of your ‘plans’ to let countless Awoken, your own people--no our people--die in a battle you sure as hell knew you couldn’t win? I mean no skin off your back, right? You have a Throne World so you’re tantamount to immortal.”
“You cannot even begin to fathom what I have sacrificed to keep humanity safe, Lightbearer.” Mara sounded so calm as she spoke, but it was as if her words carried with them some undercurrent of tangible static. Nyx could feel a roll of pins and needles wash over him as if she were willing him into discomfort simply with her words. “It has all been in the name of the greater battle against the Darkness. But I don’t owe you an explanation. I don’t owe anyone an explanation. You can simply be thankful that you’re still alive to whine at my heels for more while acting as if I haven’t already given you a feast.”
Nyx pursed his lips and raised his brows. A visual expression of touché, even if he didn’t quite buy it. He paused in his feline like pacing, though, feeling that, despite the tension between them, he wasn’t quite done with the Queen of the Reef. “Those sacrifices. That include your brother, too? Was it part of your ‘plans’ for Uldren to descend into madness chasing your approval? To become so consumed by grief after your ‘death’ that he’d unquestioningly listen to your pet dragon while it wore your face and told him to kill a member of our Vanguard? To let her out of her cage and ruin more of your Kingdom? I mean you couldn’t have popped down for a quick sec or sent a messenger to be like ‘hey, Uldren, still alive, don’t listen to the wish dragon’? Huh? And what about all of the shit you put Petra through? You abandoned her and left her to do your job in the worst possible scenario ever. I had to watch her stuck in a three week loop for years , Mara. Three years of trying to keep what’s left of our people together and alive while you fucked off to your happy place to work on your ‘plans’.” Nyx sneered. “And you acted like it was her fault he left the Reef. You blamed her for it. And she has spent every day since with this just...mantle of shame on her shoulders. You do this to everyone, Mara. You manipulate them to the point that they feel so grossly indebted to you that they’ll never stop trying to please you or earn your favour until it kills them. Literally in your brother’s case.” Bile roiled in Nyx’s stomach as he locked eyes with the Awoken Queen. He hadn’t realised just how angry it all made him. Even for Uldren. But especially for Petra.
“Some players need to be given their motivation to realise their full potential,” said Mara, matter of factly. “It is my purview to know the strengths of my followers and provide the whetstone with which they may sharpen them. Petra is a cunning warrior in her own right, but she is at her best when devoted to a person of power. When she can follow, even when she leads. I thought you of all people would recognise that.”
“You’re disgusting,” Nyx spat.
“And my brother--”
“--your brother what ? Like wow, your guidance worked out so well for him. Like you say you gave him a star to follow and helped shape him because he needed it, but in the same breath you talk about his ‘pathetic recklessness’. For all of your god like wisdom, Mara, you sure are dumb. You conditioned him and then somehow expected him to act counter to his conditioning. And then you talk about how Crow--who is literally, bar none, the best of all of us--is somehow lesser than Uldren. That Uldren’s ‘greater self’ was washed away in exchange for the man he is today. Like...oh my cotton socks, make up your mind. Was he co-dependent and undeserving of the weapon your Mom made for him? Was he full of ‘pathetic recklessness’? Or was he the superior version between Uldren and Crow? Crow, who has protected innocent people at the cost of his own life numerous times. Crow, who, despite all of the shit he’s been through in his considerably short life, has never given up the good fight. And now, in front of me, you talk disturbingly casually about your plans to kill him to get your ‘pathetically reckless’ brother back. Like what did people see in you as a leader, you absolute sociopath? What did anyone ever see in you? What did Sjur see in you?”
Nyx had died countless times over his many centuries of life. Sometimes he could feel it in the air just moments before it happened. Now was one of those moments. Mara’s presence burned like the surface of a thousand Suns with all the fury and wrath of a killing blow.
The Techeuns shifted, stepping backwards a pace as if afraid to stand too near to a blast zone.
Mara looked like a scorned god.
Savathun vibrated in amusement in the distance.
“I will overlook your lack of deference for my love of Sjur Eido this once. However, never speak her name again, Lightbearer. Not in my presence. Not even in the recesses of your most absent thoughts. Because if you do, and I will know, you will wish for final death. And perhaps, after a few millennia, I may grant it.”
Nyx was not above admitting when he crossed a line. Most of the time, anyway. And he wasn’t above admitting when he felt fear. The strange mixture of taking Mara’s late lover’s name ‘in vain’ so to speak, and the climate of their conversation thus far had him half wondering if he shouldn’t just cut his losses. Let Ikora deal with Mara in the future. Light forbid he be the one to sabotage their alliance with the Reef.
However, Nyx was also nothing if not a man that gambled with his life. And he doubted Mara would let the universe burn out of spite. Probably. "Ohh yeah no Mara, message received. I am well aware that, no matter how old I am or how long I've been wielding the light, all you've gotta do is snap your fingers and my skull will burst. Or you’ll wave a hand and erase me from ever having existed.” He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Buuuuuut you won't. I mean...you can't, really. See...you need me. You all do. Always have. If I'm not running your errands I'm cleaning up your messes or doing what literally no one else can do. So while you might make me wanna pee a little when you wiggle your fingers and do your space magic, I'm not afraid of the consequences of letting you know just how shitty of a person you are. And I know you're gonna do whatever you want in the end, because you're Mara Sov and fuck what anyone else thinks. But I want you to know who you're pissing off when you come for Crow,” Nyx paused, considering. “ And when you toy with Petra. I want you to think real long and hard about which one between you and me killed Oryx. About which Lightbearer the Traveller picked to be the only Lightbearer against the Red Legion. Or which one of us can exist within and manipulate the Vex network. I want you to think about which person in this room Savathun is actually afraid of." Nyx was feeling bold. He paced forward towards the posturing Queen and leaned forward on the ornate table separating them. "Petra has given you everything . She runs herself ragged for you. When you say her name, she comes running. She hasn’t once, not once , been allowed to consider herself for as long as I’ve known her. How long until she has nothing left? And your brother? Uldren? News flash, Queenie, he's dead. Long dead. And I may have been the one who pulled the trigger on him for killing Cayde, but you're the one that put him in the ground. Crow? He isn't yours. He isn't anyone's . He's his own man and, right now, he's one of my best friends. And unless you haven't been paying attention, you know what happened to the last person that hurt one of my best friends.” Nyx leaned back off of the desk and folded his arms over his chest. “You’re fucking with the people I care about most, Mara. So be very, very careful who you mess with. Or you'll end up being my next gun."
If looks could kill there would have been a bloodbath in that room. Nyx was lucky he could pull out the ‘you need me’ card, or he was sure his every atom would have been blasted across the room. It hadn’t really occurred to him until just then, as Mara’s eyes radiated with pure, unadulterated rage, that their discussion (or, really, his rant) had an audience. Nyx’s eyes immediately shot to the space between the doors to the silent, enscocned figure. He felt her eyes on them, no doubt thinking of all the ways she could use what just happened to her advantage. And while he might have been the one to save the Techeuns, he was sure they had no loyalty to him. They were Mara’s people and they just watched the roast of the century happen from the front row. Needless to say...while Nyx might continue to be the one to navigate the leylines, it was likely going to be someone with a bit more restraint that handled communications with the Awoken Queen going forward. For everyone’s sake. And safety.
Or...at least that’s what Nyx thought. The Hunter liked to read people. It was one of the first skills Germaine had taught him. Granted, that was to help him win at cards, but now? He could see the subtle slacking of tension in her brow, the loosening of her lids, revealing more of her glowing irises, the filling of her lips as they retreated from their hard line ever so slightly. There was a laze to her attention now. Her eyes were still trained forward, but it was as if they were looking somewhere else. Past Nyx? Through him? It was foreign to see that look on Mara’s face. She never betrayed any kind of emotion that might give off the perception of weakness, but in that moment, he saw it. That fraction of a second. That realisation that, at least some of what Nyx had said to her, was true. The compounding emotions of regret and sadness and fear and loneliness and anger and frustration. Nyx looked away. Out of respect, surprisingly. If she could at least find the loose threads that would lead to those thoughts becoming fully realised then maybe things could be different.
Nyx wasn’t gonna count his chickens before they hatched, though. “Welp. I said all I wanted to say and, would you look at the time, happy hour’s almost over. I’m gonna go grab a handful of beers and try to forget about all the shit you just said to me about Crow.” Nyx turned and began to march towards the gate, but paused just outside of it. “And for what it’s worth, legitimately, I’m sorry for bringing Sjur up like that--I know, I know, you told me to not even think of her name, but I--look it was shitty of me and I’m sorry.” The Hunter shook his head and pinched his nose bridge, wondering if these few words were worth missing the last call for Happy Hour at Freebird’s. “You know Petra...she thinks the world of you. She looks up to you like you’re a deity. And while yeah, you’re to blame for some of that worship, I know Petra. She’s not an idiot. She sees something in you that’s worth following and believing in. Sjur must’ve seen it, too. Whatever that part is--maybe stop hiding it from the rest of us.”
“When I want your council, I will ask for it, Lightbearer,” said Mara, quick to cut off Nyx before he could say more. There was some hint of acknowledgement in her tone, but the conversation, if it could be called that, was definitively ended.
Nyx once again turned to leave, though it was Mara this time that stopped him.
“Nyxian,” she said, using his name for a change.
The Hunter turned over his shoulder, eyebrow raised in reply.
Mara crossed the space between them with purposeful steps until she was within arm’s reach. She looked down at the trace rifle in her hands. Her soft thumb ran over the gunmetal coils, the look on her face now making her look as though she were saying goodbye to a piece of her. Maybe, in some ways, she was. “Use this weapon to clear your path forward,” she said, imperiously. “It will serve you, as it could have once served my brother. Be its caretaker going forward. Wield it wisely. Maybe your path will be one worthy of the adoration he has for you. I hope it is. For his sake.”
Mara extended her arms and Nyx reached out to lift the gun from them. He barely had time to use it before, but the weight somehow felt familiar now. Looking up from the weapon, he nodded to the Queen. Nyx slung the rifle into the sling over his shoulder and turned for the last time, leaving the Queen behind in her chambers with her thoughts.