An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
But for one eternal second, Azra was the Arc. Everything was slow, dust hanging still in the air, electric arcs moving leisurely enough Azra could follow their motion with her eyes. She felt it all like an extension of herself- the sensors pinging reports, the hydraulic pumps frantically working, the endless resistors and amplifiers and convertors that made up the nervous system of the tank- the glowing heart of the onboard reactor, the tangles of thinking circuits processing and directing it all-
For one moment, it was all hers, as much as the flashes of her synapses and the electrochemical twitches of her muscle fibers. And she demanded from it brilliance, calling out of the memory of Arc: thundering torrents, the glowing living heart of a lighting strike- and the circuits responded. Every system lit up.
Then the moment broke, and Azra was just her body, and the Walker jerked violently, throwing her backwards. There was a series of pops she could feel in her chest but only barely make out over the ringing in her ears. Azra fought to her feet and watched the tank fall over, still twitching. It was beginning to show light under the hood where several important components were likely having a meltdown.
She wondered how a three-foot kite shield was going to save her from a reactor explosion.
Another year, another installment of DESTINYTOBER!
Check the prompts below and share your creations under #DESTINYTOBER25!
Don't have the time or energy to do a full 31 day challenge? Use this list and chose one prompt for each five-day period instead 🫶
GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CHALLENGE
What is the challenge about?
Destinytober is a challenge for all creatives to participate in. Do a Destiny themed piece (art, writing, 3D) a day taking a prompt from the list, in order
Can I combine prompts?
Yes, managing is pretty much up to you. If you can't keep up with making 1 piece a day, you can combine several (order is preferred so it keeps the purpose of the list) prompts if that would alliviate more stress (or just do the Lazy/Stress free mode we've attached!).
How strict do I have to be about the prompts?
Prompts serve as inspiration or starting point. Everything else is up to your interpretation. Some like "Vex" are pretty straightforward, but others like "Ensnare" are not!
I'm a writer, do we have to do an X amount of words for each day?No. This challenge is meant to be fun! Do as much you can or want in your spare time.
…with our bodies and not our voices // read on Ao3
The King returns from the Deep haggard, a shade of himself: worm-gnawed robes and claws broken from tearing out stones, tattered wings dragging behind him like the mockery of a train. He is shivering. He is also smiling, sun-bright and near delirious, as he tumbles out of the rift into another’s throne world—cold stone, tall pillars, the Oculus hung above like an inverse sun.
The Warpriest catches him, arm around the shoulders, and keeps him from falling. Oryx’s breath is hot on his face, like a puff of desert wind.
“Majestic,” the King gasps, both in pain and delight. Then he laughs. Then he coughs, thick black, viscous star-specked Taken ooze mixed with blood mixed with bile. Majestic. He wants to explain, so badly, but the words flee from him, and he only lets himself be lowered onto the floor and propped against a pillar. It is a strange angle to be viewing the world from, this skyward-facing perspective, two-years-old-again: chandeliers loom above like Tai ravens, the pillars seem to lean in towards each other, the space around the Oculus ripples and bends. He takes it all in in silent wonder.
The Warpriest watches him in turn, also silent and also in awe. Here is his King, bleeding on the floor of his throne world, gazing up like a star-struck Thrall; and here are his broken wings and ruined chitin, here is the weakness that oozes out of him and pools glistening-black. Here is the sword he does not raise against you. Here—and this is the murmur of the worm now, nectar-sweet in the ear, the echo of a deep hunger—is your sword and your sword-hand, here is the Kingship you could reach for, if only you will it, if only you Take it.
There are so many rules in the Sky, while the Deep only governs by one: exist, lest you cease to exist. Raise your sword, lest it be raised against you. The King has learned it; he has just heard it spoken to him in plain words, terrifying in their simplicity. The Warpriest does not know it yet. But he knows enough of this fearful majesty—he has fought enough wars and tithed enough love and caught enough lessons falling from his King's jagged mouth—to extrapolate it. This is a moment that could alter history. Here is the King, weak and pliant and wonderstruck; and here is the kingmaker, here is your sword-hand that will never betray you, here is the only rule of existence that makes existing worth anything at all.
Here is the world, holding its breath.
The Warpriest does not raise his sword. He sits down and listens, and the King talks and bleeds, and both of their worms howl in mirrored hunger. The world exhales. History runs its course.
Azra reached self-consciously to touch the Aegis on her back. The shield-point stuck up over her right shoulder, where she could grab it quick in an emergency. "I don't really know what will happen with this when it's all over," she admitted. "I don't think I have much control over how this is going to turn out."
"Not like that," Tallulah said. "Like… you're going through something rough. Anyone could see it. And you're alone. Are you gonna be alright?"
The wind picked up, pushing at Azra's cloak. The Light around them sang of spring in the mountains- meltwater and new green things growing in the weak sun. Unavoidable was the stench of Darkness- Fallen hatred and death- but it couldn't override the sweet feeling of renewal. Beside her, Tallulah glowed, warm as a campfire. The stone under her feet was ever-patient. The air whispered potential and anticipation.
Azra reached self-consciously to touch the Aegis on her back. The shield-point stuck up over her right shoulder, where she could grab it quick in an emergency. "I don't really know what will happen with this when it's all over," she admitted. "I don't think I have much control over how this is going to turn out."
"Not like that," Tallulah said. "Like… you're going through something rough. Anyone could see it. And you're alone. Are you gonna be alright?"
The wind picked up, pushing at Azra's cloak. The Light around them sang of spring in the mountains- meltwater and new green things growing in the weak sun. Unavoidable was the stench of Darkness- Fallen hatred and death- but it couldn't override the sweet feeling of renewal. Beside her, Tallulah glowed, warm as a campfire. The stone under her feet was ever-patient. The air whispered potential and anticipation.
Guarantees, Then Obligations - Brand Your Guardian
Huzzah for @d2artevents! Go check out the full zine on their Tumblr/Twitter, or peruse the #brandyourguardian tag for more entries.
Read my entry on AO3 here or beneath the cut!
It had been a long day at work for Cayde. It had been a boring day. Those were rare, after the Red War. Ghaul's death had sent the Red Legion scattering like coals kicked from a bonfire, and a good portion of Guardiandom was still running around frantically trying to stamp them out. Keeping that operation coordinated was a job and a half, especially on top of the Vanguard's attempts to re-establish the old patrol schedules. It had all been chaos for a bit there. But, six weeks after retaking the City, things were finally starting to slow down. Cayde was looking forward to some time off. Takeout for dinner and a few Crucible recaps, maybe. Or a rom-com. Or he could scrub down his apartment one more time. The burning-rubble smoke scent had pervaded since he'd moved back in, despite all of his scrubbing so far.
Lady Luck had a different plan for him. Cayde stomped up the stairs and opened his front door, ready to put on a trashy audiobook and spend the evening cleaning, only to find his apartment was occupied. The Hunter inside looked up and flashed him a smile as he took off his boots.
It was a surprise, to be sure. Azra Jax had a strong aversion to the City, and besides, she'd been even busier than Cayde was. Every time he'd checked up on her she'd been in a different corner of the System, running rescue missions or causing trouble for the Red Legion. But if she was home for the night, maybe he could wheedle her into going out to a bar or something. She deserved a night off, too. It seemed her field work had dried up enough to ease her conscience about it.
Or perhaps she'd just buried herself in a different kind of work. She had the coffee table covered with an assortment of what looked like legal documents.
Cayde decided to tease her. "Didn't expect you to be in town." He sidled up beside her and cast a critical eye down at the papers. "Wait, let me guess. You pissed off Zavala somehow and he's making you fill out hard copies of all your scouting reports?"
Azra grinned up at him wryly. "I was finally convinced to take a look at all of these." She flapped some of the sheets in her hands for dramatic effect. She didn't appear to be enjoying herself all that much, whatever it was.
Azra's Ghost spoke up before Cayde could ask more questions. "It's sponsorship contracts. Modeling deals. Promotions. Stuff like that. We've been pretty much ignoring them the past month, but…"
Yeah, that would explain Azra's general air of frustration. If there was one thing she hated more than spending time in the City, it was all of the attention the fame brought. She'd been a bit of a celebrity before the Red War, and things were much, much worse these days. They were talking about making statues, Traveler forbid.
"I just don't get why this is all so important," Azra complained. "It's baffling. There's people who model and stuff for a living. Why are they bothering me so much about it? What's even the point?"
"Well," Cayde said, "You know. It's advertising. A celebrity face gets the people buyin'. So I heard."
"I don't know a Hunter in their right mind who would take this deal." Azra slapped the contracts down on the table. "Sitting around for hours, days, getting prodded and posed. Or having to kiss up to some company founder. Seems mortifying. Why even bother?"
"Fame and fortune seem like pretty good motivators?" Cayde ventured.
Azra just shot him an unimpressed look.
Cayde shrugged and flopped down on the futon next to her, sending the Ghosts chasing after flying papers. "It's not a bad way to make money, if you've got the offer. A few days of light work and you leave with full pockets? No getting shot or blown up? Better than mucking around Fallen nests for peanuts."
"I think I'd prefer getting blown up," Azra said. "I mean, look at this." She yanked the top sheet from her stack. "Three days of photo shooting, three whole days as a human dress-up doll, and I'm still half-considering it cause it's forty thousand Glimmer."
"Sounds like a migraine," her Ghost commented, redepositing the stray files back onto the table. "And what would we even buy?"
"You could use your own room," Cayde said. It was a joke of a suggestion- he saw so little of her already, he was glad she came over when she was in town. But it was fun to propose the idea to her and watch her contemplate the horror of rental agreements and insurance. "Or an office, or something. You could get an address for all the adoring City people to send you fan mail…"
Azra called his bluff immediately, snorting and rolling her eyes. "I could also use a set of sniper rifles color coded for the days of the week, but that doesn't mean it's worth it."
"How about a nice racing Sparrow?" Cayde suggested, in earnest this time. "You know Marcus is itching to get the racing league started back up."
That did give Azra a pause, and Cayde allowed himself a mental pat on the back. Then he played his other card: "Or you could always donate it to the Kinderguardian fund, if you wanted to be all selfless about it. The Vanguard's not exactly flush with Glimmer at the moment. How's that really different than taking another scout mission, morally?" Besides, it might get her to slow down for a couple of days. She made a good act, but he knew her moods as well as his own. She was running on fumes. Look at her, frowning distractedly at her papers, not even trying to annoy Cayde back.
"I still don't think it's a good idea," she muttered to herself. "Why all this payout for an untrained amateur? Smells fishy."
"Well," Cayde said, "You're pretty famous already. People pay attention to what you have to say. Someone can put your seal of approval on things, it'll sure get people interested."
"So I'm selling my reputation for Glimmer," Azra said. She'd never sounded less impressed with a concept.
"Think of it as helping them, then," Cayde suggested. "And helping people looking for whatever they're selling. You've been around the block a few times, you know what's good and what's not. You say, hey, the product works, then the company gets to sell more, and you get Glimmer, and everyone knows where to go to get the good stuff. It's a win-win-win."
"That's all dependent on me having prior knowledge," Azra complained. "Or doing the research, I guess. I've never bought anything from most of these companies."
"Most of them?" Cayde asked. "So you do know some of these? That's a good a place to start as any."
Azra grumbled, so Cayde elbowed her in the side. "Come on. If you don't at least respond to a few, it's gonna look like you're getting airs. You can dodge the reporters all day, but you keep this up and the City folk are gonna think you think you're above them."
"Fine," Azra relented. "You're a bad man, Cayde. Sure know how to sweet-talk a girl."
Cayde stood up, stretching his back. "I'll make some tea. How about you pick out a few of those and I'll take a peak at 'em?"
Azra sighed and started leafing through the stack again. Cayde made quick work with the electric kettle, but she'd already pulled out four offers by the time he'd gotten the leaves in the water. Cayde exchanged one mug for the contracts sipped from the other as he read.
First up: Cobblestone Leatherworks. A shoe company. Made sense- Azra did like their boots, especially for exploration work. A no-brainer.
Second, an independent armor smithy run by one Abd ar-Rashed. They mostly did work for Titans, but Cayde himself had commissioned a few pieces from them over the years. They made good raid gear.
Third-
Cayde spit out his tea and nearly dropped his mug. "Omolon?" he shrieked.
Azra shushed him.
"Omolon?" Cayde repeated, quieter but no less intense. "One of the major foundries offered a personal sponsorship and you were going to say no?"
Azra shrugged. "I hardly use their signature stuff. The whole liquid tech thing is too finicky. Hard to repair in the field. I dunno. But…" Her hand drifted to the holster on her hip, to the sidearm Cayde knew was there.
"I always thought it was weird," he mused, bringing the mug back to his lips. "They do all of this crazy tech, and a basic Vanguard commission design is the one still getting used today. Your baby's made it through more battles than I can count, at this point."
Azra tilted her head, considering that. "Maybe working with the weird stuff means they have to be that much more precise? Can't ever say I had an Omolon jam on me, liquid ammo or no. My sidearm did get damaged real bad at the start of the Red War, but Banshee fixed it right back up. It was with me on the assault on the Almighty, and the fight with Ghaul. Besides the Hellmouth, and the Dreadnaught, and…" she left the tail hanging. And the Vault of Glass. And hey, anything that helped Azra drag herself back from that pit was aces in Cayde's book.
"Then tell that story," he said. "That's the kind of stuff they want to hear. They can have Crucible junkies go on all day about their tech."
He shook his head at the oddity of it- an Omolon contract, and Azra was going to decline- and flipped to the last offering.
Axon Outerwear. A street clothes brand. That was weird. Boots, okay. Armor. Guns. Those were very much Azra Jax things. But normal human clothes were not. (She was lounging on the futon in her strike gear, for the Traveler's sake).
"Clothes?" Cayde asked skeptically.
"Most of mine got destroyed when they hit the Tower," Azra said.
"You've never been very gung-ho about buying more," Caye said. "I remember Andal always had to drag you out shopping. Literally, sometimes."
Azra shifted in her seat. "I think I see Andal's point of view on that more and more these days. I think… it's important to be able to change out of the armor, you know? Take a break from being just a Guardian. Put on something else."
Cayde raised an eyebrow at her, and she made a face at him. "I get the irony of it, thanks. I'll take off the armor when I have something other than base layers to wear."
Cayde tapped the papers against his arm, thinking. The name was still ringing a bell for him. Axon, Axon... "Hey, isn't this the company that does those subclass hoodies?" That was right, they had been quite the rage the past few years.
"They actually… they reached out to me a few months ago," Azra explained. "Before the Red War. Offered to make a custom one. 'Cause, you know. They had Bladedancer ones, but back then I was the only Arcstrider…"
"But you didn't want to draw more attention to that," Cayde said empathetically. "I understand." If the fame was a little annoying, the curiosity had been extremely so. Especially in her early days, when being The Arcstrider was the only public acclaim she had.
"But now there's thousands of Arcstriders," Spark said. "Maybe we deserve to be a little more loud about it."
"I thought you deserved to be loud about it before," Cayde said. "But I get wanting a break from it all."
"Maybe we could make a deal," Azra said. "Give 'em out for bounties or something. I mean, if I hadn't had Andal take me shopping, how long would I have gone through life with only armor to wear? And now, with all this chaos, you think the Kinderguardians are going to have any time to think about this stuff?"
"We might be able to make that work," Cayde said. It would be up the air whether they'd accept it, (giving a bunch of their product out as unofficial Vanguard merch ran the risk of losing them the favor of the Fashion Gods,) but it couldn't hurt to ask.
"Boots and armor and guns and a hoodie," Cayde commented. "What more could you need?"
Azra's stomach elected that moment to growl. The Arcstrider laughed. "Food, apparently."
"Dinner?" Cayde said hopefully. "Ramen?"
Azra grinned at that. "Well, that's partly up to Shiro, isn't it?"
"Shiro's in town?"
"Who'd you think got me to sit down and start taking this stuff seriously?" Azra asked. She held out a hand and Cayde helped pull her to her feet. "He headed off to meet with some foundry rep himself, but that was a few hours ago. He's probably done by now."
Fantastic. Cayde slapped the sheaf of papers down on the table. "Leave all the mailing and negotiating for tomorrow," Cayde said. "Tonight, let's celebrate."
"Celebrate what?"
"Things are starting to get back to normal," Cayde said. "The patrol schedules are set. The VanNet is up and steady. There's nothing going on."
"You want to celebrate… having nothing to celebrate?" Azra asked skeptically.
It was also weird to not be sprinting about- Azra had to keep reminding herself this was a battle, not a skirmish. There were too many enemies to be moving recklessly here, and Guardian endurance would only keep up so long. Slow and steady was the pace they'd have to keep, even if it made Azra's skin itch. It was hard to stay in the present moment when somewhere, at that moment, people were fighting and dying for the City.
"Hold up," Spark interjected. "I think I have something?"
Azra and Tallulah both froze. The comms frequencies had been silent since the net had gone down. If they were reading someone, they had to be within ping range. With the mountains blocking signals, that would be close.
There was something in the audio feed. It sounded like plain interference, but as Spark tweaked the radio frequency and compressed the audio, a voice emerged from the static. It was too fragmented to work out a complete sentence, but Azra caught "party" and "Wolves" and "mayday".
"I can't triangulate an exact location," Spark reported, "but they're west of us. Probably further up the pass."
Tallulah dropped onto the stone ridge next to Azra. "Is Saint-14 there?"
"I don't know," Spark said. "That's not his voice, but it sounds like there are more Guardians there."
Azra slid on her helmet and double-checked her sidearm.
I ask cuz I've always had it as Junior but I just listened to the "I Have a Dream" speech and they introduce Martin Luther King JR as Dr Martin Luther King "jay-ar" and it caught me off guard
In the context of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it should be pronounced 'junior'. There are some circumstances where JR is a kind of nickname (like if your name is John Russel people might call you JR instead). Maybe the guy introducing King got nervous or something and misspoke.
Beware, you have awakened the materials nerd within me.
"Rock" is a poorly defined term. Geology-wise, it's just "lump of solid thing in the ground". So granite is a rock. Ice is a rock. By this definition, glass is a rock, where it's naturally occurring.
What glass is not is a "crystal". A crystal is something with a repeating molecular structure. You get a bunch of marbles in a jar and they all line up nicely? A bunch of colored pencils in a box? Honeycombs? That's kind of like what a crystal is. There are plenty of things that are made up of the same stuff as glass (Silicon and Oxygen) that are crystals, and thus behave much differently than glass. Think Quartz or Micah (a good portion of rocks are crystalline silicates like this, made from Silicon and Oxygen, with a repeating molecular structure). Crystals really like where they're at, all happy and balanced, so they (usually) have higher melting points and (usually) are stronger and harder. (Note: Ice is also a crystal. Metals are crystals in that they have that nice repeating pattern, but their bonds act differently 'cause they're metals. There is no universal classification for anything and the states of matter are a lie.)
Common soda-lime glass is "amorphous". It has no crystal structure. All the atoms are random in there. This means they aren't locked in, and glass is very easily melted down and shaped (why we make so much stuff out of it). Glass is not classified as a "mineral", because it does not have a crystal structure. It's just kind of. There. It's "mineraloid" as in "kind of like a mineral but not really".
If you start getting into the weeds of 'what is a solid and what is a liquid', you will find nothing but bullshit. A solid is something that holds it shape. A liquid is something that takes the shape of whatever container it's placed in. (Over what timescale? Under what pressure? How much does it have to re-shape to count? Asphalt will drip at room temperature over decades- is this a solid or a liquid? How is that definition helpful?). And then you get the process by which things deform over time, while still being solid from a molecular standpoint, by a process known as "creep". The most common forms of creep happen more at higher temperatures, which is why hot metal gets soft. Honestly creep makes me angrier and more confused than about half of the quantum mechanics I had to learn.
tl;dr: Glass is a rock, by virtue of being "solid thing we find in the ground". Glass is not a nice orderly crystal like most rock are, its molecules are just kind of all over the place, which makes it act different. The states of matter are a lie.
Spotify Wrapped. Numbers. Song numbers from Spotify Wrapped. You give me numbers, I give you (hopefully) pleasing arrangements of words based on the vibes and/or lyrics of that song. Throw in a character or characters too if you want.
This has been the public service announcement. Thank you. Goodnight.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
And there was no time to think, to consider this- there was the familiar distant crack-BOOM of an anti-air gun and a Skiff screamed by, too close and far too low, and Azra didn't have time to do anything but act on instinct. Spark summoned her Sparrow from his storage and Azra threw herself on it, gunning the thrusters before she even got her feet in the pedals. Muscle memory ruled her- she saw a small stone ridge of sorts from the corner of her eye and she acted. She skewed the right hand grip all the way back and managed to get her left toe in the stirrup in time to jerk the control outwards. Despite the stabilizers (she didn't have the time to toggle them off), the bike skidded and turned at a crazy angle. Azra twisted both grips to maximum and the bike shot off behind the upturned slab.
There was no space to brake- Spark dematerialized the bike and Azra turned to take the slide on the Aegis. Not a millisecond too soon. The Skiff crashed, sending up quite a nice fireball. The trees around them were shredded by the shrapnel. Wood splinters and leaf bits rained down like confetti. Azra, unhurt, lay there looking up at the tattered foliage as her brain slowly began working again.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
And there was no time to think, to consider this- there was the familiar distant crack-BOOM of an anti-air gun and a Skiff screamed by, too close and far too low, and Azra didn't have time to do anything but act on instinct. Spark summoned her Sparrow from his storage and Azra threw herself on it, gunning the thrusters before she even got her feet in the pedals. Muscle memory ruled her- she saw a small stone ridge of sorts from the corner of her eye and she acted. She skewed the right hand grip all the way back and managed to get her left toe in the stirrup in time to jerk the control outwards. Despite the stabilizers (she didn't have the time to toggle them off), the bike skidded and turned at a crazy angle. Azra twisted both grips to maximum and the bike shot off behind the upturned slab.
There was no space to brake- Spark dematerialized the bike and Azra turned to take the slide on the Aegis. Not a millisecond too soon. The Skiff crashed, sending up quite a nice fireball. The trees around them were shredded by the shrapnel. Wood splinters and leaf bits rained down like confetti. Azra, unhurt, lay there looking up at the tattered foliage as her brain slowly began working again.
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