If you missed the last episode, you can find it [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/222302286/0/0]here[/url], or if you need to find a previous episode, you can find them all in the [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/220441594/0/0]Master Post[/url]. Please give a bump, upvote, or leave comment if you enjoy this and any other chapter! *** * [i]Ask them our name![/i] * Dra Ge bellows. * [i]Ask your masters what they call you! Ask the hollow, the hateful, the Awoken with alien dreams encysted in them! Ask them our name![/i] * There are mutters, dissent, agreement – Dra Ge surveys it all shrewdly, watching the crowd roil like a wave. He slashes his arms through the air once more, stirring the waves and stoking the flames that are slowly rekindling beneath. * [i]Fallen,[/i] * he spits out the name. * [i]They name us Fallen.[/i] * The crowd shudders, muttering darkly as I stand behind him, thinking to myself, [i]But we were not always. [/i] All my life I’ve been told that we were once a proud race of warriors, scholars and builders, elevated by She’Lot before everything was taken back in the Whirlwind. I’ve heard all the stories, but there’s only one story that matters now. * [i]Listen to me, Wolf-born! [/i]* Dra Ge roars. * [i]Heed me, Whirlwind-scattered! I am the Ghost of Cybele, the cunning claw of Iris, betrayed, chained, encrypted by the Queen, sent back from the Darkness to save us all! The days of Kell and House end now. The calendar of slavery and abasement goes to the fire. We are a new calendar! We are an age of beginnings! Each of us is a day![/i] * He did not always speak like this. Only after shocking us all with his return from the Nine did he begin to say such things, to speak of time and fate this way. He was always ruthless, a demanding taskmaster and strategist, but he was never this….imaginative. I think quickly back to the strange creature that had brought him to us, black robe billowing in the vacuum of space, dark tendrils undulating from under his hood – “[i]Why bring here?[/i]” Anixias, forever faithful, had asked. “The decision was not my own,” the creature had responded. “The Nine wish it so.” And without another word, the creature had opened the door to its ship to reveal Dra Ge, the one true claimant of Dra Bovos. He had looked at me with his usual aloof expectancy, but there was something else there, something beneath….pride, perhaps, or maybe gratitude that I was among the first to greet his return. “[i]Solis,[/i]” he’d growled when he’d seen me, using my name for the first time since I was a child. * [i]Uncle,[/i] * I’d replied reverently, unsure of how Dra Ge would react to hearing his other title. But all he did was hold out his arms, and into them I laid his scorch cannon. He raises it now high above his head, screaming to the Lovos beneath him. * [i]I am the first, Kell of Kells, and I am the last, the Dreg of Dregs. I have conquered and been conquered. I am all of us and all of us are I. In the shape of my life, I bind up all of us, all of our fury, all of our grief, all of the lives we’ve wasted against each other. Together we speak our new name![/i] * Dra Ge raises his cannon and fires a burst of energy into the air with a roar. Beneath him, the other Eliksni raise their own weapons proudly, cheering. Before the Scatter, I was raised to be a warrior, a Baroness from the House of Kings, tutored in the lethal efficacy of the Lovos under Skolas. I was trained by Anixias, one of Dra Ge’s greatest warriors and my private instructor, since I was a pup. I was taught how to wield shock blades with all four arms, how to simultaneously shoot four pistols and how much strength I would need to even hoist a scorch cannon, let alone fire it. I was taught much, but not what was most important – how to lose. Eliksni are only ever taught to win. * [i]Remember the hope that brought us here![/i] * Dra Ge continues, his words steadily growing in intensity, slowly whipping the Lovos into a frenzy. * [i]Remember the age before the Whirlwind, when ether ran free, when we ruled ourselves and our futures as kings. We wanted more than glimmer and glints and herealways. Always remember that we came to this star in hope. And remember that we were denied!![/i] * Dra Ge raises his scorch cannon again, shrieking with rage. The crowd below him mimics his energy, feeding off it and growing more crazed. Dra Ge smiles as he sees the bloodthirsty spark burning in the eyes of his followers. * [i]Remember the City of the Death of Children, the City that Docks, which claimed for itself the Great Machine that might have saved us! Remember the City that even now sends its ghouls to murder our Primes, starve our ether, and leave our young to die gasping. Curse that City and its name. The curse is just.[/i] * Dra Ge fires his scorch cannon again as the Lovos beneath him howl and scream retribution. The Lovos had never made it to Twilight Gap, never joined our fellow Eliksni to end the threat of the Sha’Ir and reclaim the Great Machine. I catch Anixias’ eye from the other side of Dra Ge, and she nods seriously, confirming his words with a scowl. Having to watch after me rather than join the fight had hurt her at the time, but in the aftermath of the Scatter, we had come to see a certain destiny in our survival. [i]We[/i] would resurrect the Eliksni from the ashes of destruction. [i]We[/i] would elevate our Houses back to their proper place. We would replace the usurper Ge, this Awoken Queen, with our rightful leader, and [i]I[/i] would help forge the greatest alliance between Kings and Lovos our Houses had ever known. My fists clenches as I think of the Queen, so much so that I almost miss Dra Ge’s words. I snap back to attention, pushing my anger aside so that he may bear it for me. * [i]We gathered to fight against our twilight, King and Devil and Winter, all of us but us, the Wolves. Why? What kept us from the Gap? The Reef! The Queen! The slavers who played us against each other and docked us into subservience!![/i] * The Lovos roar, and both Anixias and I join them, raising our fists in defiance. * [i]These sly, sterile un-people! [/i]* Dra Ge continues. * [i]These mirages with cold minds twinned to their own, these Carybdis butchers, they set us against each other! She played us. She made herself our Kell.[/i] * Dra Ge bows his head mournfully, but I know him well enough to see the calculation in his show of empathy, of weariness. Though many Lovos below will feel the emotion, Dra Ge himself does not – all he feels is wrath and retribution. * [i]We were fools, o children of the Whirlwind,[/i] * he moans sadly, and I can hear others in the crowd mimicking him. I smile despite myself – this is why he’s Dra Ge. * [i]We fought each other when we most needed unity. I fought my rivals when I should have fought the Queen. But I remember now, my Dregs, my Captains, my Kells, each of us is all of us and I remember: we are a people of resilience. I am the Kell of Kells because I want what we have lost. I am the Dreg of Dregs because I remember that a dreg will grow back what is lost to him.[/i] * There is much I have lost in my short time here – I was on my uncle’s ketch when we heard news of the Twilight Gap and Virixas’ destruction. I was at his side when Orbiks-Fel was destroyed, and saw him dock Peekis firsthand. I knew Variks long before the Pallas siege, and met his betrayal with sorrow and rage. His especially had been a hard loss to accept, but eventually I adapted to this, too. After all, if it weren’t for Variks, I would have been captured at Cybele just as Dra Ge was. The warning he sent to Anixias gave us just enough time to flee, and has been our secret ever since. I catch Anixias’ eye from behind Dra Ge and I could swear she knows what I’m thinking. Were he ever to discover her deceit, docking would be the least of her worries. But I will not let her be taken from me, too. The days of loss are behind us, our time of suffering gone but not forgotten. * [i]Ask them my name![/i] * Dra Ge’s voice echoes around the chamber. * [i]Ask them with the shock blade and the shrapnel launcher! Ask them with the skiff and the ketch! Ask your masters by what right they master you, you who have been hardened by centuries of flight, you who inherit the Whirlwind! [/i]* The Lovos cheer again, hoisting their weapons high, the spirit of rebellion within fanned to a roaring flame by Dra Ge. * [i]Ask the Queen for her throne!!![/i] * More cheers and roars, a bloodthirsty light gleaming in each of their eyes. I look to their feet and see the broken bodies of Awoken Guards beneath, their corpses scattered throughout the Vestian chamber. Today was a victory, and it will not be the last. The rebellion has begun. And Vesta will fall. * [i]Ask them our name![/i] * Dra Ge cries once more. * [i]Let them answer: you are Skolas, Kell of Kells. You are Fallen no more.[/i] * The Lovos cheer wildly as we prepare to move out. We have the first of our troops, but they will not be the last. The House of Rain predicted the coming of Dra Ge long ago, and until today many thought it was just a myth, a story – but after today, they will know his name and his works. They will know in their hearts that he is Dra Ge, and that we who have been named Fallen are rising.