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Savathûn and Queen Mara didn’t really “talk” anymore.
Mara had first cast her in crystal to keep her from hurting anyone, but forgot that a sword in her hand [dripping with Awoken blood] was far from the Witch Queen’s only weapon.
It was a mistake that cost Mara nearly everything she had left. It wasn’t Savathûn’s most impressive work. She had leveled civilizations given fewer words and less time than it took to give Crow what he really wanted [which was; finally, a worthy reason to be punished].
And indeed, in the silence that followed, Savathûn wondered why she did it. Didn’t you want to help? She asked herself. Didn’t you come here to sacrifice?
No one came to visit her. As Mara had promised.
The Light burns. It always has.
For a time, as she contemplated this axiom, the truth which bound that which unmade truth, she could not even muster the ability to cast her mind’s voice far away from herself.
What is a liar with no one to lie to?
It was a well-made prison, she would give that to the Awoken Queen. It made her [miserable] more motivated than ever.
She started small. When a guard would patrol outside of her chamber, she would drop something light and diverting into their mind. She made them watch as the ground disappeared before them, and sensed it as they stopped, heart pounding, staring at the ground, waiting before they tried to move again. She made them hear the voice of someone they had loved from behind them, and heard them as they wept.
Quickly enough her attempts became more bold. The crystal seemed to tighten around her as she strained to think and be heard. [She screamed until her voice went hoarse.] She exhausted herself trying to reach the one mind she wanted to reach, through walls that felt a million miles thick.
And Queen Mara’s dreams were troubled.
As time passed, and the alignment approached, she spoke to the Queen. About little things, mostly. She sent images of teeth gnashing on Vex thought-connectors [couldn’t you break them if you tried? Also, are you hungry?], the sanguine feeling of being dissolved by the poison seas of Fundament [when was the last time you had a vacation?], unending warmth and uninterrupted life [I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU].
Mara never answered. Not in any way that Savathûn could detect. She began to think she never would. Not until the fateful day came to exorcize her Worm, and then what? They’d simply have no time to talk about the things that really mattered.
No time, no time. When was the last time she had no time?
Her messages changed. The fiery afterimage in the rings of Saturn that was the last thing Mara’s third pair of eyes ever saw. Memories of the civilizations the Hive had brought to ruin [including their own]. Oryx and Xivu Arath in their moments of glory and triumph.
When she sent the memory of Crow, standing shoulder to shoulder with his sister, Glint hovering above in a place that made it unclear which of the siblings was his Guardian, she expected nothing to come of it. At this point, she was talking just to talk.
There was only one plan to prepare for now, after all. [It was terrifying.]
But, for the first time in months, she heard footsteps outside of her chamber.
Mara strode in with thunder in her eyes. She raised her arms, and Savathûn felt the crystal around her weaken. Just enough.
“What is the meaning of this, witch?” the Awoken Queen snarled. Her voice was rough and unmanicured. Savathûn got the distinct impression she hadn’t slept in some time.
“Why, hello, secret-sister,” Savathûn replied. She didn’t need to manufacture the surprise in her voice. “What brings you to my humble abode at this hour?”
“You know why.”
“How are the Techeuns? Are they recovering well?”
Mara brushed her hair back. “Enough!” she barked. “I know you have been speaking in my dreams. I have ignored it until now, for your sake and mine. Now, though, you have crossed a line.”
“And what is to be my punishment?” Savathûn drawled. “Are you going to put me in prison?”
Mara was quiet with barely restrained fury. Savathûn had hit a nerve, apparently.
In the meantime, Savathûn probed the connection that lay between them. Mara’s thoughts were full of her brother… unsurprisingly.
But also of the Traveler, and of Guardians. For the briefest moment, Savathûn’s breath caught in her throat. Had she been discovered? [If anyone could do such a thing, it was Mara.]
Perhaps she had pushed too far. Perhaps she had given the game away.
When she spoke, Mara’s voice was calmer. Her emotions had been quickly smoothed away in the way that Savathûn so admired her for. “If you seek to trouble me with images of my brother, it won’t work,” she said.
“It won’t? Well, if you say so.”
“Do not bother me again,” Mara said. She raised her hands in a sigil of power, ready to call upon the power within the crystal.
The Witch Queen raised her voice before she could. “But haven’t you thought about it?” she asked. “Even a little bit?”
Mara faltered. She glared up at Savathûn, her eyes daring her to continue.
“What would it be like, to be Chosen, like he was?” she asked wistfully. She allowed her voice to grow quiet and tremorous. “First you’d have to die, of course, which wouldn’t be much fun. But if you did… imagine what could happen. All of this, all of your kingdom, all your long life, shrugged off of your mighty shoulders. Free at last, Atlas. Perhaps even your brother could forgive you.”
Mara chuckled. An odd sound. “Is this your way of asking me to kill myself?” she asked. “Who then would save you, Witch?”
“Believe me; Salvation often comes at a harsher price than we are willing to pay.”
What a thing it was, to tell the truth. It was exhilarating. She felt as though she was two years old again, on a boat, the seas of Fundament cresting just underneath her hand, while she and her sisters spent their short years together.
Mara raised her hands, and Savathûn braced herself for the tiny gap of fresh air in the roof of her cell to be shut again.
Instead, the room began to change around them. The walls faded away, darkened, grew consumed by shadows. The architecture of the Dreaming City became ruined. Above them, no sun shone; only the endless dark and mist of the Ascendant Plane.
“Do you recognize this place, Savathûn?” Mara asked. There was a subtle fire in her words.
“Of course I do,” she said. “How fares Eleusinia, anyway? I don’t suppose my daughter has given you any reprieve just because you have me held captive.”
The Awoken Queen smiled wanly. “It fares, still,” she said. “Held in stasis at the edge of destruction. But it holds.”
The two of them were perched atop a cliff face, the lip of a deep valley fair and enchanted. Below them, the many halls and bridges of Eleusinia spread out, filled with writhing glowing spots. Her daughter’s Taken ravaged this place. [I am sorry, Dûl Incaru.]
“That is your downfall, Savathûn,” Mara said. “You know how to preserve, yes, but not to restore. Our victory here is eternally prevented — yet so is yours.”
“Restoration requires destruction,” Savathûn sighed.
“No! That is the perennial assumption of the Hive. That the only way to grow something strong is to destroy that which is weak. But the Awoken know otherwise. That which cannot stand on its own can still contribute to something greater, if given the chance.”
“You misunderstand me, Mara,” Savathûn said. “The hope of restoration as it exists in the minds of humans is a lie. Even if I were to withdraw from the Dreaming City, surrender Eleusinia without a fight, you could never remake it as it was. Too much has been lost. We the Hive cannot very well go home to Fundament and beat our Swords into plowshares, either.”
Mara was quiet for a time. Savathûn was fine with that — she could let the silence linger as she watched the fruits of her endless life rot before her.
“Even so,” she said quietly. “There is only so much a soul can lose. Without the Dreaming City, the heart of our people would crumble.”
“Maybe to crumble is the only way to move forward.”
Mara snapped her gaze back to Savathûn. With an uncharacteristically pained look on her face, she raised her arms and began to manipulate the heavens once again.
In the darkness, there was suddenly light. Multiple suns burned overhead, and around them green things flourished. Mighty plants in strange aspects extended their hands towards the two of them.
The entire space was closed away in rock and garden. No stars shone here, save the ones sequestered inside its dizzying vastness.
“What is this place?” Mara asked, confirming what Savathûn suspected; she was drawing these images from her mind, not her own.
“The Final Shape, as it exists in the mind of its many petitioners,” Savathûn replied.
“It is beautiful and terrible,” Mara said.
“Well, this isn’t exactly it. It’s an abstraction, more than anything. Whatever it is, it will look like whoever wins.”
“Where are the people?” Mara scanned the horizon. “Who would presume to occupy this empty grave?”
“Who knows?” Savathûn asked. “That hasn’t been decided yet. Someday, those who have proven their right to exist will rest here. The Darkness wants life, and here there will be life in abundance.”
“So beyond these walls…”
“Is nothing. Yes, you have that true.”
The lakes and rivers of the valley before them were full of light. This, here, was all that remained of everything.
“Then what happens when this, too, comes to ruin?” Mara asked. “WIll that be the end?”
“The Final Shape will be eternal, because it will be perfect.”
Above them, the endless mist faded away. Stars appeared in her field of vision. Dancing with them were achingly familiar shapes.
The sea lapped at her crystal prison. Mara Sov stood at the unsteady edge of the Osmium continent, far from the Court, far from Taox and the King and the deceitful Worm.
“Well done,” Savathûn whispered. [All of this, gone, like a dream.] “You’ve recreated it skillfully.” [Without me, there will be only one still living who remembers home.]
“You speak to me of surrendering to loss,” Mara said. “Yet if you had done the same, Fundament would have survived. The cities of the Ammonites would have lived their full day in the Light. Countless others would not have lost as you did. Is that a sacrifice you were willing to make, knowing what you know now?”
“There are wolves among the stars beyond just the Hive,” Savathûn replied.
Yet.
Something within her, older than memory, older than thought, twisted painfully. [Maybe if we had only—]
No. No. She could not think like that. Everything she had ever done was to live. Even now, though she hoped to change the rules of the game, she still hoped.
Was there any hope on Fundament? Surely not. Surely there was nothing…
[Not without the Traveler.]
“Witch?” Mara asked.
Savathûn was returned from her reverie.
While she looked upon Fundament, it felt like there was no crystal at all around her. Now, back in Mara’s prison, she was painfully reminded of the pressure on her wings to fly, the immobility of her hands to draw incantations, and the smallness of her voice to speak.
“Have I… upset you?” Mara asked. For the briefest second, Savathûn could almost pretend there was concern in her voice.
“Not at all,” Savathûn said. “You make a fair point. Yet you forget one thing; we were destroyed. Almost utterly. Down to the hard slick hearts of our souls. And we were reborn. We claimed a shape that allowed us to begin again. And we the Hive took it upon ourselves to offer that chance to the whole Universe. It isn’t our fault so many weren’t strong enough to take it.”
[I speak, but the words are hollow and weightless.]
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Aiat,” she said, grimly, bitterly.
“Aiat,” Savathûn agreed, feeling the same. It is this way because it can be no other way.
The Queen turned away. The last vestiges of Awoken magic faded from the room, and Savathûn was left with a cold and hollow emotion.
“It was a mistake to come here,” Mara murmured. “I let you speak too freely. Foolish.”
“I enjoy our chats, monarch.” [I will miss them when I am gone.]
Mara paused, hands raised again. A sheen of sweat on her brow told Savathûn that the effort today had exhausted her… physically, or emotionally, she could not say.
“In the end, it doesn’t matter,” Mara said. “You know that I will never give up. Not until I am dust. And I know the same is true for you. All this talk of surrender… it is but another distraction.”
[Oh, Mara. You don’t know me at all.]
Her crystal prison grew stronger. Not even Savathûn’s thoughts would escape this time, and her senses, so keenly attuned she could feel the movement of her captors all around the chamber, began to dull. She felt the world begin to fade.
It felt like [death][life]. “Be brave,” she whispered to herself.