That Cloud and Its Auxiliaries Are Forever
Heulog-12 drops herself onto the shaded bench, slouched shoulders heavy with inelegant worry. She had just returned from Titan by means of that disorienting portal installed aboard the HELM, and the nausea caused by whatever esoteric technologies that power that thing had yet to wear off. She wearily sets her helmet next to her, and when its clumsy placement sends it clattering to the paving stones she cannot bring herself to reach down and retrieve it. The helmet’s metallic ringing fades, giving way to the familiar silence of this darkened back alley behind the Tower Bazaar where she and Kysurax like to meet.
A nearby wall tears open with a green scream, and from between the bricks emerges the Risen Wizard herself. Gliding closer, she wordlessly picks up the helmet and lowers herself awkwardly on the undersized bench. At first she says nothing, looking down at the helmet in her lap as if it were Heulog herself, then asks, “Is it true?”
The Exo sighs, leaning back until the metal of her head pings against the brick. “It is.”
Kysurax fitfully runs her claws down through the grooves of the helmet’s shell, tracing its history through the etches, marks, and gouges found along its weathered surfaces. “When is it to take place—will it even work?”
“Soon, and I have no idea if it will work. There’s a small angry wound somewhere inside me that hopes that maybe it won’t.”
In response, Kysurax finally looks at Heulog, her eyes green-hot with some inscrutable emotion. “Why wo—”
“BECAUSE SHE HURT ME, KY.” She hadn’t meant to raise her voice, pulling herself from the wall to meet the Wizard’s gaze. She quickly realized that she had never actually said those words aloud before, and they simply had needed to get out. “She led me to believe that she wanted to change, that just maybe she saw ahead of her a possible path born by the fruits of honesty, reparations, and,” she struggles with the word, “...forgiveness. That there was space in the world for the likes of us, and that it was worth searching for.” She turns away, facing forward as the heat of her indignance gutters out. “That she was my friend. And I believed it.”
After a moment she looks up at Kysurax, all anger given way to sadness. “I used to read to her. Off-duty, I would bring whatever I could from the libraries that week and just…read to her: novels, textbooks, old newspapers, poetry. She told me how happy it made her, how fascinating it was just how much she could learn about me merely by what I chose to bring down with me each time, how nice of a change it was to have a fulfilling relationship with someone after all those countless gray eons. A Cloud withdrew from the Sky. Pre-Golden Age poem. She told me it was her favorite of everything I ever brought to her.”
Heulog sighs, shaking her head. “And then she was Risen. A new start. Memories wiped clean. It broke my heart, finding out that that had been her plan all along: that every moment she spent with me was knowingly going to be tossed away like a shed skin.” Her voice catches in her throat. “But that wasn’t the plan, was it? She left a trail of clues for this desperate, heartbroken and guileless Warlock to follow, and got her memories back—some, but not all. Just the useful ones. Not the time we spent together, or the things she said to me, or all those supposed insights gleaned from my behavior. She just…she did not want it.” Heulog felt the modulation of her voice, the microtremors cascading through the tiny actuators that clicked and whirred beneath the plates of her face, the gentle flickering of the lamps behind her eyes: she was crying.
“She could have, I don’t know, she could have made something else so she could remember, some—something different, for us, a new, different thing for us, for the altar, to remember with the altar, before she ran away. Before she ran away to die and forget—to forget about me. But she didn’t want it. She didn’t want it and she forgot about me. She didn’t—why didn’t she want me?” Her shoulders heaving with sobs, Heulog throws herself around Kysurax’s midsection as best she can, clumsy and awkward as her metal fingers tangle and catch on the chitinaceous cage of ribs and spines. Kysurax carefully extracts the Exo’s hands and gently lifts her upright into a more comfortable position and wraps her arms around her, pulling her in close while stroking a shimmering cheek with one claw.
“I am sorry. I did not know all of that,” says the Wizard as tenderly as her flayed throat will allow.
“That’s because I’ve never told anyone—I’ve never talked about this with anyone before; I suppose I never felt like I could. I am,” Heulog sniffles with a newfound sense of self-consciousness, “very sorry for throwing all that at your feet, all at once.”
“It was something you clearly needed to do, and it sharpens my bones that you trust me enough to have let it out.”
Heulog turns to look up at Kysurax, ducking under the claw caressing her cheek in order to readjust her positioning to rest her head affectionately in the Wizard’s leathery palm. “But this news clearly weighs upon you too, and it is unfair of me to dominate our conversation with my clearly-biased reactionary nonsense.”
Kysurax’s three eyes flash. “It is NOT nonsense. As the shape of the Sword defines the shape of the cut, so too does the cut in turn redefine the ever-wearing edge of the Sword. What we call a life is a collected series of impressions left upon us by those we touch and those who touch us. Your hurt is as real as the blade that gave it to you: the threat of Savathûn’s return manifests that hurt in ways you have not had to deal with in over a year.”
Kysurax haunts the alley with a soft sigh. “To clarify my own feelings: I also find myself wondering if it would be best if the ritual failed.”
“That she’ll come back and simply return to her pernicious bullshit?”
Kysurax laughs, or makes a sound that Heulog has come to recognize as laughter: gravel being sifted through with a rusty shovel. It’s one of Heulog’s favorite sounds, and she has made it a lifelong goal to hear it as often as she can.
The Wizard composes herself, returning to her usual, more serious affect. “No, I am afraid,” she takes a deep breath. “I am afraid that she will not. Afraid that the person you thought she was will finally arrive. Seeking redemption, forgiveness. What sort of future, then, would we have to look forward to? What does such a world look like? Is one even possible? What if she comes back to us seeking change and is denied it, held down and chained by a vengeful cosmos unwilling to move beyond the countless millennia of aggregate harm she has inflicted upon it, irrespective of any alleged motivations she may or may not have had at the time? What kind of world makes allowances for the existence of Savathûn the Witch Queen, Repentant? What are you or I in the face of such uncertain tomorrows? What would become of us? Would you still love me as you do now?”
With each enumerated concern, Kysurax’s words become increasingly pressured and frantic; Heulog has never seen her like this before. She sits up straight and reaches one arm behind the Wizard’s back to cradle her thorax, while carefully slipping her free hand between the ribbed lattice of her bony exoskeleton. She reaches around, searching for the dense nerve bundle deep within and finds it, recognizable by its faint, rhythmic thrumming. She places her palm on its tough surface, and begins to hum a softly-dissonant melody: a lesser invocation calling on the strength of the listener, normally sung to newborn Hive just as they are being administered their worm larvae—a lullaby, once used by Kysurax to calm Heulog after a particularly harrowing encounter down in the depths of the recently-returned Titan.
Heulog holds herself as close as she can and continues to hum. She couldn’t yet form the vocalizations, and maybe would never be able to do so, but she hoped that for now the acrid notes alone would suffice. That through the burgeoning haze of unchecked anxiety Kysurax would be able to recall the invoking words and hear the earnest appeal to her inner strength, the words that define that strength as extant and obligate it to come forth, to inhabit her bones and manifest as the truest form of her will. The words that assert that she, as a single unified force of will and body—in defiance of all existence—shall persist.
Heulog feels the thrumming slow, its rhythmic cadence aligning with her own deep breaths. She gently removes her hand from Kysurax’s torso and feels the Wizard’s arms close around her, pulling her into a tight embrace.
“I am afraid,” Kysurax finally says, calm returned to her voice. “But I temper that fear with the certainty that I will be alright, because you are with me.” She looks down at the Exo in her arms, into the starblue flames that are her eyes, and smiles. “I do not doubt, for I have seen your heart. As you have seen mine. That is the power intrinsic to the Yielding Inquisition: there is no obfuscating act of misdirection, no factor of deceit that can withstand the abrading blade of trust conjured by the ritual. Truly, I have known you, and that secret knowledge is a weapon with which I joyfully flense and cast aside any and all flesh given over to the rot of doubt.”
At the ritual’s mention, a sense memory comes rushing unbidden to Heulog: the sour burn of the soulfire clinging to her lips, the infracitrus sting pooling on her tongue. She nestles close, her face half-buried in chitin; a non-verbal reciprocation of Kysurax’s expressed sentiments. It had been quite some time since that night, and the memory of it was a constant companion in Heulog’s thoughts. Maybe she would finally allow herself to ask Kysurax if she wanted to perform the ritual again. Maybe tonight, Heulog thought to herself as she listened to the rise and fall of the Wizard’s calm breath, watching the clouds over the City recede one by one into the horizon.
