Chapter 23: Prison of Elders

Look upon the Kell of Pain.

Grown to his full size with his leader's ration of ether, he commands the space he occupies. Equally broad in both sets of shoulders, his silhouette stands out against the burning orange light that pours forth from the great forge. Swathed in blackened armor, his metal arms gleam brightly, burnished to shine, emblazoned with glyphs and markings, the dactyls sharpened and honed to lethal points. Around his neck, a ruff of blackened fur sways in the waves of heat from the forge, the banner of his house stirring from the same.

His ether-mask extends in a crest to either side of his head, asymmetrical with the spikes adorning either end. In the front, over his maw, the mask has been carved with lines into the glyph denoting pain. With the tubes of ether connecting to the stores on the back of his armor, this black-etched glyph resembles nothing so much as teeth, bared in a forbidding grimace. A mane drifts back from the mask, the standard noble's headdress of the Eliksni, but in contrast to his house's colors, it is bleached bone white.

As he watches the tech-priests and engineers beneath the great forge, one fist clutches the shaft of the maul that in part gave him his sobriquet. The glow of his eyes sears across the scene before him, and as those below in the forge see him looking, they redouble their efforts to work even faster, in defiance of the limitations of the equipment they happen to be using. Their Kell's reputation and his fearsome temper are well known. Many of those below had heard the agonized roars as he underwent the surgery that saved his life after his attack on the Gears Kell. Certainly, he had not suffered any delays in his plan to enact another Great Campaign against the City-That-Docks.

He has heard the whispers, as well. The worried talk among the dregs and wretches and even some vandals who wear his House's colors. That the Kell of Pain is mad, diseased in the brain, to think that his ragtag, fledgling House can accomplish what the Devils could not, what all the Houses could not at the Battle of Six Fronts, or in the Twilight Gap. That they should never have followed him, for he is an oath-breaker and a would-be Kell-Slayer. All these murmurs and more besides, all of the same flavor, the same mistrust, the same dissent.

He has heard these things, and it only further stokes the fires that rage in his heart. He understands now why his people are called Fallen. How deep the weakness has gripped them. To have followed weak leaders for so long, that a strong one frightens them. It does not matter to the Kell of Pain if they fear his supposed madness. They will come to understand that this is the only way forward. They will come to know glory even if he must drag them up a mountain of she'lot corpses.

He casts his mind back to the furious missive he had received after his broadcast to all Eliksni in this wretched system. His words had been meant to galvanize a despairing people, to draw them to his banner, to rally a new House from the remnants the sha'ir had left behind. Many a displaced or disenfranchised captain or baron had sent their oaths to him, and their ships soon followed. But one message had come from the Kell of Kings. The gold-bannered Kell had railed at him, enraged at the presumption that a betrayer like him could form his own House. The King Kell had demanded of him that he kneel to the ruling house, or take what true loyalists he had and join the Exiles on Luna.

In response, the Kell of Pain had taken his Scorch Hammer and smashed the messenger's head into nothingness, then had the body sent back to its master. If the House of Kings would not acknowledge his strength now, they would after he led his House into victory over the accursed She'lot City. And then they would see who knelt to whom.

Things were tense on the shuttle. A full squadron of Royal Guards surrounded the three figures in the middle of the space. Paladin Ikhlas Sard glowered at them from her position in front of her squad. Like many of her comrades, she did not like the Guardians being allowed access to the Reef in any way. Their people had survived out here by not inviting trouble from their neighbors. Between the inexorable Cabal scouting legions occupying Mars on one side, and the temperamental Jovians on the other, and the ever-present threat of Fallen ketches or Hive tomb-ships passing through, the Reef had enough problems. The Guardians had a habit of causing trouble, moreso in recent years.

Paladin Sard saved a particularly baleful glare for the wizened Variks, who pretended not to notice. For all that the scribe had never failed to express or demonstrate his loyalty to the Queen or the Reef, Sard also knew that Variks still had loyalty to his own people and was always looking for ways to pull them out of their desperate downward spiral. Variks had been one of the primary contacts for the bounty hunters that had come tracking Wolves and other escapees. In Sard's mind, Variks was the nucleus around which a lot of the present problems had concentrated.

Sard turned her attention to the Guardians in the shuttle. The first, the one styled the Eternal Warrior, was capable of slaughtering everyone on the shuttle. But she also knew that he was not the type to do so without cause. Still, Sard reflected, the scuttlebutt was that the Eternal Warrior's blood-brother had just been killed by a Fallen terrorist. So who knew what his mental state was now. As for the other, she had seen Shaman-9 on some of the Warlock's infrequent visits to the Reef. He had aided his comrades in their hunts and the culling of high-value prisoners, but left the regular trade and knowledge-seeking to his Awoken partners. While the guards, and Sard in particular glared at him, Shaman had simply pulled up a chair and sat down, resting his palms on his knees and leaning his head back. Beneath his visor, his eyes dimmed as he entered into some sort of sleep mode or meditation. Sard put him out of her mind. As a Guardian, he needed watching, but everything she knew of him suggested he would avoid making problems as best he could.

Not like the other Fallen in the shuttle. Baroness Feniks stalked back and forth in what little space there was in the shuttle. She had her weapons as well, which went against every rule the Reef had about outsiders this far into their territory, and especially against every rule concerning the Fallen. Variks and Regent Petra had vouched for a few of the tamed Wolves that had knelt again to the Reef's authority, but the Baroness was certainly not one of them. Sard shifted her attention to Feniks, who barely acknowledged her, and then to the rust-red Ghost that hovered nervously nearby.

"If it were up to me," Paladin Sard finally broke the silence with her sharp tone, "I'd throw every last one of you Fallen into the Prison and be done with you." She glared at Shaman-9. "Maybe find a cell for the Guardians, too."

Shaman did not rise to the bait, though Baez paused, turning his grizzled face to her, while Feniks whirled on Sard with fury blazing in her amber eyes. Variks thumped his staff against the deckplate with a resounding clang. "But it is not up to you, yes?" Variks held no fear in his stance as he shuffled forward to address the Paladin. "Prison of Elders is my responsibility. I do not answer to you. I answer to Petra, to House Sov."

Paladin Sard glared back at him. Petra Venj had been the one to allow the Fallen Kell access to their medical facility, which brought the recent terror attack down on them to begin with. She didn't much care for the Regent either, right now.

The shuttle came to a stop, and the Reef Guard filed out before their "guests" followed suit. Paladin Sard brought up the rear. The group continued on through the main prison gate and then through a set of meandering corridors, which force-field gates at corners and with armed turrets tracking their movement. At a junction, Variks led them to a control center, from which the Guardians could look over a bank of monitors and screens, showing the cryo-cells which housed the inmates of the infamous Prison of Elders.

Every cryo-cell had a holo-tag, denoting in Reef-sign which race the cells contained. Variks ran his eyes over these, pointing. "Hive. Vex. Cabal. And here, Fallen." He tapped a few commands into the console, and the Guardians saw one cell being moved from its holding rack. He tapped a dactyl against the screen. "Scourge of Aulus, Nemak, the Archon of Pain, awaits you."

One moment Nemak had been suspended in a stasis field as the hosh'ir guards and the Los-vo ko brought her before a stern hosh'ir female. The Archon had glared at her, her invective locked in her jaws as the stasis field rendered her incapable of speech. The hosh'ir female had raised her solitary eye to meet her glare with one of her own, then made a chopping motion in the air. "Throw her in the Prison, Variks. Once we've put out the fires she started, we can decide what to do with her." A wry smirk twisted her lips. "Besides, I just bet we've got someone who wants to talk to her coming soon." She turned dismissively. "Get her out of my sight!"

Then there had been nothing. The stasis field had clamped down on her, such that Nemak's awareness had been taken from her. There had been cold, a deathly chill that had wrapped around her. And then there was light again, paltry as it was, and gravity snatched her down as she dropped from a cylindrical cell and into a somewhat expansive chamber. The Archon rose from her landing crouch and took in her surroundings.

There were signs that her Eliksni brethren had been in this place before. The usual cobbled-together hodgepodge of machinery and metalwork. Scratched into panels here and there were the sigils of various Houses, painted over and re-scratched with a different House, over and over. Satchels of stolen tech hung in netting from the ceiling. Nemak scowled beneath her ether-mask. She recognized these things from footage the She'lot shared among themselves. The Prison of Elders, where so many Eliksni had been incarcerated.

Taking stock of herself, Nemak realized she still had her staff of office. She checked her gauntlet, but her override controls were disabled. There were no shanks or servitors here. No sign of any of her House- No, wait. More cryo-cells were disgorging their contents into the chamber. Dregs and vandals mostly. None of her Infiltrators, however. As they recovered from the cryostasis, the members of the House of Pain recognized her and bowed in recognition.

A hatch in the side of the chamber opened, but as the House of Pain moved toward it, a huge mechanical eye, wreathed in energy, stared them down. It slowly withdrew through a port in the ceiling of the connecting tunnel, and the House of Pain drew back as two figures strode forward. The first's robes twitched aside as he drew forth a sword with one hand, Void Light glimmering along its edge, a hand cannon in his spare hand. The Sunsinger's fires glimmered beneath his helmet as he backed the Fallen away.

If they backed away from the Warlock, the sight of the imposing Titan with his helmet's stern visage glaring at them certainly did, aided in no small way by the appearance of the Singing Thunder in his hands. The Fallen had learned to respect and fear the powerful machine gun, knowing that it had walked out of Mare Imbrium and countless other battles, its legend only growing.

Nemak strode forward, planting her staff on a deck as she stood above the ranks of her fellow imprisoned Fallen. Like a few others of her race, she had learned to speak the She'lot tongue, if only for intel purposes. "Two Guardians, against me and mine?" The Archon spat. "Even without weapons, we would bury you beneath our numbers."

The Warlock nodded. "You would kill us?"

The Titan grunted. "We would kill you back."

Nemak drummed her dactyls on her staff. "So the coward can't kill me himself, so he sends Sha'ir to do it instead." She raised her staff. Reverting to Fallen-speak, she declared, "Variks is weak! But we are not weak!"

The Fallen with her shouted in unison, "Ours is a house of strength!"

"Your House?!" The House of Pain were brought up short not just by the voice's interruption, but by the fact that it, too, was in Fallen-speak. Four amber eyes glared in the gloom of the corridor behind the Guardians. The dregs and vandals withdrew further as the Eliksni that approached was wearing the colors of what had been, for many of them, their former House. More than that, as she stalked into the light, they saw the Sawtooth Swordbow in her hands, a weapon which only belonged to one Eliksni.

Nemak was agog. "Feniks? Our Kell swore he killed you when we broke from your House." She clanged her staff against the deck. "Smashed you with his mighty Hammer and left you impaled on a wall!"

"I live, I die, I live again," the Baroness replied. "You think that I would die while such treachery as you and Morsik have committed goes unanswered? That I would die without seeing that the jumped-up wretch who murdered my Kell meets the Hand of Justice?" She tilted her head and ran her eyes along the ranks of dregs and vandals in front of the Archon. "That I would die before making it clear what happens to oath-breakers?"

But the Archon of Pain swept her head from side to side, a snide expression beneath her mask. "Still, you persist in following Semakis. His weakness would have been the end of us. It was only right that someone cut that weakness from the world."

Feniks howled in rage and stalked forward. A pair of vandals lunged toward her, but she slammed one to the ground with one arm and buried the shrieking Sawtooth into the chest of the other. The one on the ground thrashed, but Feniks drew forth her swords and plunged them into his chest. As she rose from dispatching him, she looked up to see Nemak before her, thrusting her staff's stiletto through her chest.

"Join your Kell, if you'll defend him so fiercely," the Archon hissed, wrenching the spike free with a gush of ichor and a wisp of ether. She watched as Feniks collapsed, then looked up at the Guardians, letting out a laugh. "Di kas kir," she promised them.

"I wouldn't be so confident," the Warlock told her. He gestured with his sword behind her.

Nemak turned just in time to see one of the Blessed Machines, rust-red in color, snapping closed, and Feniks rising back to her feet. The Baroness made a show of brushing off her now unblemished and undamaged chest, and then intoned, "I live, I die, I live again. The Great Machine chose to give me the Blessing." She nodded to her Ghost, who bobbed in the air in return. "I told you, wretch, that I would not die before seeing your treachery is answered."

The Archon thrust her spear again, but this time Feniks caught the shaft and deflected it, grabbing it firmly in one fist. Sunfire blossomed, scorching the burnished metal of Nemak's staff. Feniks glared at her, then focused, causing the Solar fire to suddenly engulf the entire staff. With a shriek of alarm and pain, the Archon released it, staggering back. The Eliksni Guardian hurled the burning spear in her direction, causing Nemak to have to flash away from it.

Feniks was already there waiting for her. One fist crunched into her ether mask, denting it, fracturing the lenses over one set of eyes. Nemak swung a pair of fists of her own, but Feniks blocked them with her own arms, then pounded her in the mask again, the force of the blow driving the Archon to her knees, howling in pain. As she clutched at her shattered ether mask, from which the precious vapor was already leaking, the Baroness stepped behind her and grabbed both of her metal arms, bending them backward. Feniks drew her swords, and the sound of their unsheathing told Nemak what awaited her. The Archon gibbered pleas, but the Baroness mercilessly thrust her blades forward, then slashed them down, severing the metal limbs from Nemak's body.

"Docking is the least you deserve," Feniks spat. Nemak lay on the ground, doubled over in agony, and the Eliksni Guardian sneered. "What is wrong with you, wretch? Did your traitorous Kell not speak of how pain would make you strong?!" She gave her a kick, sending her rolling toward the ranks of her new House. The dregs and vandals shied back, looking from their fallen Archon to the Risen Baroness with drawn blades and righteous fury. "My Kell said that seeking peace is not weakness, and that seeking war is not strength, but make no mistake, wretch, if war comes, it will find my House ready!"

Feniks lowered her blades and tapped her gauntlet. The cryo-cell lowered from the ceiling, and opened again. Nemak lifted her head to see this, and started thrashing on the ground, trying to scramble away. The Baroness snatched her up and held her up by the neck with one arm. "Death would make you a martyr for those fools that will persist in following your mad Kell. Even though I have more than the right to execute you for your betrayal, the most fitting fate for you is to languish here, in Prison of Elders." She threw Nemak back into the cell, slamming the panel shut. "Once your House has been destroyed, I'll come back for you, wretch, and maybe then I'll grant you an ending."

The Archon's last howl was left frozen in her throat as the cell's panel glazed over, leaving her an insert shape behind fog and frost.

Feniks turned now to the dregs and vandals. She turned her eyes along their ranks, but then addressed the two Guardians, who had closed up behind them. "Start record," she told them, speaking the human tongue. Shaman-9 nodded and turned to his Ghost, which began recording.

The Baroness stood in the Prison of Elders. Behind her, just visible frozen in her cryo-cell, was the Archon of Pain. The Baroness raised her swords, so that the sigil of House Gears could be seen, as presentation of her bona fides, as if the sight of her trademark weapon in her other hands was no indication. Her amber eyes stared down the viewer before she spoke.

"Hear me, Eliksni. Hear me, O lost and benighted brethren. Listen to me, be you Gears-born, Winter-born, humbled Wolf, remnant Devil, or Exiled."

She put the Sawtooth Swordbow away, beneath her banner on her back, still speaking clearly.

"House Gears was not always strongest House of our people. But our Kells were renowned for their cunning. Our House was known for our craftwork. While other Houses bashed their heads against the She'lot City's walls, we built our weapons and fortifications, readying ourselves, and waiting."

She turned to cast her gaze back at the frozen Archon, then turned back to the viewer.

"Some thought our House weak. Some even within our House. But Semakis, Kell of Gears, believed that seeking war was not strength, but neither did he think that seeking peace was weakness. He retained strong relations with House Winter. He extended hand to Exiles, offering another chance, but only one. And when he saw that continuing to fight a war that had lasted more than a hundred orbits- a war that had cost our people leadership, ether, resources, and countless, countless Eliksni- when he saw that continuing to fight that war would only cause us to dwindle away to nothing.

"So my Kell reached out to the She'lot City and called for a cease-fire between them and our House. And for this, Eliksni who swore oaths to him betrayed his House. Left him mortally wounded. And left me... dead.

"But I live, I die, I live again."

With a gesture, her rust-red Ghost appeared beside her. Solar fire glimmered along her dactyls, fashioning itself into a wedge-shaped claw. Outside the viewer's eye, a sussurration of astonished whispers of dregs and vandals could be heard.

"The Great Machine has at last seen fit to bestow upon the Eliksni the Blessing. Not because we sought to take it from the She'lot-"

She paused thoughtfully, before continuing.

"-from the humans, but because we sought to find a place where peace could grow. This is the higher wisdom our people have failed to see for generations. The higher wisdom my Kell long believed to be true, now vindicated at last by the Blessing of the Great Machine. Seeking peace is not weakness."

With a clench of her fist, the flames grew brighter, and her eyes shifted back to the viewer.

"Make no mistake, if the so-called House of Pain wants war, then it shall find that House Gears will give it one. All those who wear the black banner will face the Hand of Justice. I speak now not as Baroness-"

She drew herself up to her full height, and seemed to grow taller still.

"-I speak to you as Feniks, E Lot Mi, Gar Ge. The First Blessed and Kell of Gears. All Eliksni who want a future in the Light, be you true in your faith, you are welcome beneath my banner! But if you are false, if you seek to betray the Gears banner again, there will be no mercy."

She had to pause as the Fallen before her cried out in supplication, kowtowing and asking forgiveness. The viewer drew back, showing the dregs and vandals before her casting off their black colors, claws raised to her. She inclined her head to them, and then regarded the viewer once more.

"But to those who call themselves Barons of this upstart House, and to he that styles himself Kell... your betrayal will not be forgiven. There is no escape from the Hand of Justice for you. Call me Adresiks Reborn. I am coming for you, Morsik."

Afterword: Apologies, Guardians, for the long delay for this chapter! Between moving house, the holidays, and then a variety of distractions, I found myself struggling on how to approach this confrontation. However, joining up with a small writing community on the Facebooks and the recent revelations about Destiny 2 Forsaken has reinvigorated my creative juices again. I can't promise that the rest of this story will plug along at a decent rate, but I think the end is in sight. I've got the end more or less mapped out from here, and yes, there will be a follow-up story following that which will deal with the Red War, and especially with the Scorn after Forsaken comes out. Until then, stay strong, constant readers!