So, I had been batting around some ideas in my head since the DLC dropped and oddly enough it took going to a candlelight service this evening to finally get some of them on paper. If you hate fanfiction, my bad. If you hate Christmas, don't worry, its not really about Christmas. I hope you all enjoy it and let me know what you think. Thanks! The smell of rust flitted across the City like the snow so many had hoped for. With it came the Russian chill that could freeze an exposed man within hours. Of course, there had been a time where such extremes were unheard of, when all of Old Russia never dropped below ten degrees Celsius. Those were days when the Traveler still spoke, still turned, and still graced the community known as humanity with unyielding and miraculous power. That smell, the smell of the Moth Yards and the Forgotten Shore, always seemed the most gentle of breezes away to remind all of what had been lost. And yet, the demeanor was different that night, only four days from the longest night of the year. A small section of the City glowed with reds, greens, blues, yellows, and whites as if trying to fight back against the Darkness itself. The buildings, like the entirety of the City, would have looked like little more than shacks to the Golden Age humans. They had power, water, sewer access, and four exterior walls; there was enough to survive, but on that night ten blocks of humanity had decided to expend what little electricity they had to power strings of colored lights decorating their box-like homes. More extravagantly, the group had somehow ventured far enough out of the city to cute pine trees down, an excursion dangerous enough to warrant Vanguard response had the Vanguard time to notice. They erected one tree in the center of the neighborhood, decorating it with sparse bulbs and pictures of loved ones alive and gone. Underneath, they had placed baskets of bread, fruit, and the very occasional sweet with the intention of sharing it all as a community in the morning. In the same courtyard, they had stripped two pine logs of any branches and crafted a large cross by lashing them together. The tree remnants were used to create a large bonfire for the small community to stand around. Initially, there had only been chatter among the humans, diversified by an incredibly small showing of Exo and Awoken. Their voices had melted into the same white noise that was the City’s life churning and struggling all hours of the day and night. Then, seemingly without cue, their voices began to unite and rise above the murmur of their surroundings, loud enough to reach the ears of even those in the lofts of the Tower. [i] “O come, O come. Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel…” [/i] None in the Tower took notice of the spectacle; there was too much to worry about without concern towards a strange sect of humans. Fallen were at the gates of the City. Vex gates were being discovered daily on all the system’s planets, Cabal were amassing more and more arms, and rumors were the Hive had awoken Crota, son of Oryx, to destroy Earth once and for all. None listened save one solitary figure. Her ship hovered just off the edge of the Tower and she sat precariously on its hull. Cross-legged, she didn’t move, didn’t seem to breathe. Her cloak whipped gently in the wind as her three shielded, yet all-seeing, yet unblinking eyes stared down at the distant display.[i] “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to three, O Israel…” [/i] Eris let the words wash over her, let the meaning behind the encyclopedic meaning show true. Underneath tonal quality, trapped within diatonic triads, and existing parallel and paradoxical to dissonance there was more than the singers could ever comprehend, more than few could ever come to even fathom. She tightened her grip around the arcane nullification she had at all times. Within, there was a piece, a verse, a couplet of what words fail to describe. A song called to her from that fragment and from her memory, clear as if it were right next to her… “An odd group, are they not?” [i] “From depths of Hell They people save And give them victory o’er the grave…” [/i] She knew Ikora Rey’s voice; then again, she could see the bald woman standing on the nearby platform. She could see that Ikora needed no extra protection from the cold, so warmed was she by the Light inside of her. Eris could see without seeing and could see more than a passing fancy of curiosity splayed on the woman’s face. Without turning, Eris replied, “Odd? They are a relic of heritage, an evolutionary fossil of the biological wonder of faith.” Ikora couldn’t help but smile. True, there was no Light in the lone survivor anymore. True, there was only the very Darkness the Vanguard hoped to stomp out of existence. Yet, every conversation was so enthralling, providing a thousand new questions for the Warlock to mull over in sleepless nights. “Many of them would claim faith and evolution can have no place together. The Cryptarchs say there were entire wars fought over songs like that before the Golden Age.” “They may deny it, but that does not remove the true of it. Our ancestors huddled in caves and sang to heavens that any deities might not smite them. Their descendants sang to gods for redemption from the evil they perceived. Their children sang to science for salvation from the trials nature wrought. Then the Traveler. Then almost all sang to the Traveler for Light and still here we are with such precious little of it to speak of. Faith is in the make-up of humanity and its children; it simply adapts.” [i] “O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer Our spirits by Thine advent here…” [/i] The Warlock leaned forward to place her arms against the Tower’s railing. She was close enough to feel the heat of Eris’s ship’s engines. “Fair enough; though, I doubt they’ll accept that their faith is wrong because it is outdated.” Eris cocked her head to the side, but still faced out towards the city. “You misunderstand. They are not wrong because of what they have faith in; they are wrong because of faith.” “That sounds overly cynical, even coming from you. Then again, after all of those years…” Ikora trailed off momentarily, feeling the weight of responsibility suppress her thoughts. “I can understand how losing those so close would create such an outlook; I’ve experienced that result from loss as well.” As if ignoring the attempt at empathy or possibly not even recognizing it, the three-eyed woman continued, “Faith is the inherent flaw in the human condition. It is the lack of knowledge and hope for the inexplicable. Complete control of spacetime is inexplicable; yet, the Vex know the control and therefore they have it. They do not have a moment of doubt as to if they can be anywhere and anytime, so they can. Humans doubt they can defeat the Darkness, so we still battle. Humans question an existence of a god, so there is none.” [i] “Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery…”[/i] Subjectivity, a truth in and of itself within the world. It was an idea that Ikora worked with constantly as a Warlock; still, the allure of a consistency to the universe was a constant distraction from her more vivid machinations. “Then what do the Hive know? You were with them long enough.” Eris finally turned to face the Vanguard. Those green eyes bore into the Light buried underneath Ikora’s skin. “They know Death. They know Death without life, without the dependency of another’s culmination. Death that is prior to life; Death that begets life to honor Itself.” “If the Hive desire demise, then why don’t they simply destroy themselves?” “Did the Traveler not spread Its Light? Do the humans down there not evangelize their beliefs? Death does not suffice with the presence of Life just as the old tales of Good not coexisting with Evil. And yet, you are not wrong. There are those in the Hive beyond reason in their devotion to the Death from which they sprang. Thrall sing to Death to greet them quickly as do Acolytes with more restraint. The others though? Knights? Wizards? They sacrifice the expediency of their own demise to become missionaries of Death, studying Life and Light to better destroy it. They all still sing the same song though, the tonal vibrations of Death’s essence, a song only perfected by Ir’Yut.” Questions flew through Ikora’s mind, tearing at preconceived notions and strengthening other outlying theories. Was Oryx the essence of Death? Could Death actually exist without the reliance of Life? How much of this song had Eris learned? Ready to drill the woman with inquiries, she looked up and into those eyes. There was something unspoken there; the arcane nether told the Warlock that such an explanation should be sufficient, if the Vanguard didn’t want to stare further into the abyss with Eris. Instead, Ikora asked, “If knowledge is so important, then what do you know, Eris?” [i]“Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, Israel!” [/i] The Darkness-tainted woman turned back to face towards the City and let the final chords of the song wash over her. There was such a hope in those words, a hope that sounded like desperation to her. “I know the humans down there sing and hope for a son of a god to come and save them while the Hive know their son of a god is come and is here to destroy us.” Thanks again for reading!