Chapter Text
The hedge labyrinths east of the Palace were one of Dornuk’s favourite places. Though perpetually drowned in shadow—the surrounding architecture of the Alluring Curtain looming tall blocked the sun at all times of the day—there was still splendid beauty to them, the winding pathways and insect-song, the marble fountains and towering statues encircled by flower patches. Many Apothecary workers came there, tending to the curious plants in their special fenced-off gardens or testing some particularly volatile inventions for the fear of setting fire to the indoor laboratories. Dornuk liked watching them, curled up on the brink of a fountain or under a hedge. There was always some noise here: be it falling water and buzzing of insects, shouted conversations of scientists arguing during a walk, or faint roars, clatter and explosions coming from the side of the Apothecary’s open windows. He had privacy here; but at the same time he did not feel alone, stranded in an alien place and panickedly turning his head left and right on the lookout for predators. It was a new and reassuring experience. He’d recently got his hands on a pile of blank tables disposed behind one of the court scriptoria, and figured it would be a better medium for practicing his writing than the palace walls.
He had found his favourite spot two days prior—a crook of the labyrinth-path near a small, ivy-wrapped statue of a Knight, where a butterfly nest hung inside the hedge bush, tucked among the branches. He sat there now, in the lazy hours before his afternoon shift, watching the freshly popped chrysalises curl back as the imagos climbed out of them and gingerly unfurled their shimmering-damp wings.
“Hello,” a voice rang out suddenly from the general direction of over his right earhole. Dornuk snapped his head around, startled.
A Ghost was hovering in the air at an arm’s reach, peering back at him with its emerald green eye. Its standard chitin shell was a bit charred at the spikes.
“Uh,” he said. “Hello?”
“What are you doing?”
He indicated the bush with a gesture, his eyes fixed on the intruder warily.
“Watching the butterflies.”
The shell clicked, flaps twirling and rearranging in a dizzying pattern.
“I didn’t take Hive for being particularly interested in nature.”
Dornuk narrowed his middle eye at it incredulously. “Who do you think tends to this whole garden?”
“Hm, fair point.”
“Aren’t Ghosts usually busy with looking for their Lightbearers, or something?”
The Ghost went quiet for a second, something about its cheery demeanour shifting.
“My Lightbearer is dead,” it said stiffly.
Dornuk frowned. “I thought all of them were?…”
“No, it’s…” Its shell bristled, chitin clicking against chitin. “Guardians did something to her. I couldn’t… couldn’t bring her back.”
“Oh, so she was the Lightbearer from a few days ago—“
“Yes,” the Ghost snapped.
Dornuk shut up after that. He kept his eyes fixed on the butterflies, but he was aware the Ghost hadn’t left, still hovering in that same spot a little to the right of his left shoulder. In the background, water murmured and wind whispered in the bushes. Somewhere north of the Apothecary one Wizard killed another with a laugh and a burst of Arc.
“What’s your name?” He asked after several minutes, just as the pulse of Light announced the second Wizard’s resurrection.
The Ghost perked up, ever so slightly.
“Mandy.” Her shell tilted counter-clockwise. “And yours?”
“Dornuk.”
They sat in companionable silence for a long moment after, listening to insects frolick in the hedges and watching the butterflies dry their damp wings in the sun.
When the Ring Sun was in zenith over the place tower, Dornuk stood up.
“I’m heading out for patrol soon, but…” He dug in the garden-soil with his foot. “Forum Luminatum assembles later in the evening.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Er…” By someone acquainted with Human history and culture, Forum Luminatum could have been described as something between a Master’s thesis defence and a corrida. “Bar-Zel calls it ‘philosophy wrangling’.”
“Hive philosophy,” Mandy sounded equal parts incredulous and impressed. “Hm… do you know if… if they would have anything against a Ghost showing up as well? Y’know, to… familiarise myself with the culture.”
Dornuk’s eyes flickered in a tiny smile.
“I don’t think they’d mind.”
[uneven scratches in code on a dried clay tablet]
Post-Lumination Day 011
Mandy said she liked Forum Luminatum. She’d almost been hit by a phigue someone in the opposite rows had thrown too hard and it’d flown right over Iskar-Mat’s head and into the crowd on the other side, but she had not seemed to mind. She’d insisted we stayed until the end, which had been very underwhelming all things considered. El Hirash, Grey-Speaker had only stopped gushing blood from the stump of the neck when First Ghost Immaru showed up and yelled at us to disperse and stop killing our own soldiers.
Mandy said it was unfair he could have such a pretty shell if he was such a [clay scratched over and re-plastered] unkind character. I think he can wear anything if he is the Queen’s Ghost, but I did not tell her that. On our way back to the bunkrooms we stopped at the Scarlet Bridge to look at the stars.
She let me hold her. I had never held a Ghost before. She is small, and very light, and warm, but not in the same way that soulfire is. I told her that, and she said she didn’t really know what soulfire was. I said that was weird because Ghosts look like they’re made of soulfire, and Xavol has a whole theory about that and all, but she didn’t seem convinced. She said that as far as she knew, Ghosts are made of Light. Other Ghosts, those that have stayed with Humans, are not so green, their cores are metal and have blue optics. Mandy told me she used to look like that as well, but when she came to Savathûn’s throne world she became the way she is now. She believes the Traveler changed her to mirror the species she was supposed to give the Light to.
That would conflict with what Kol Vu had said on the Forum earlier, that Ghosts have always known their Chosen since the beginning of time. Mandy says some Human scholars believe that as well. But if she changed into her new form only after she’d come here, that would mean she had not had a Hive as her Chosen until then.
Urukthalyn has a brochure he says he got from Elūnash Templekeeper herself; he let me read it when he was a good mood. It said the Light affects Time in both ways, so that before the Queen was raised in the Light, the Hive had not been Chosen, but after she was raised, we had always been chosen. I didn’t quite understand that, and when I asked him, Urukthalyn did not either.
I woke Xavol up to talk to her about it, but she only hit me over the head with my tablet and said it was the middle of the Yul-forsaken night. I must ask her again in the morning.
TYPE: DECRYPTED HIVE SURVEILLANCE RECORD [ID:15//75480]
PARTIES: One [1] Lucent Hive, Wizard-type, designate Ei Irulac [AKA Ei Irulac, Last of Her Coven] [ei]. One [1] Ghost-type, designate Harmonia [h]
ASSOCIATIONS: Apothecary [Savathûn’s T.W.]; Hive; Hive [Shrieker]; Immaru [AKA First Ghost Immaru]; Krill [Ghost]; Lucent Hive
//AUDIO UNAVAILABLE//
//TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS//
[h:01] You’re still working?
[ei:01] First Ghost requested these reports archived before tomorrow’s manoeuvres.
[h:02] There’s like seventy of them.
[ei:02] Argue with Immaru about it.
[ei:03] Can you believe those idiots from the Apothecary blew up half of the western wing because they were testing a “self-igniting Shrieker”?
[h:03] Holy shit?
[ei:04] You should’ve seen the place.
[h:04] And all of these reports are about that?
[ei:05] Krill likes his word vomit.
[h:05] Oh no.
[h:06] I can take over, if you want.
[ei:06] I’ll manage.
[h:07] Between the two of us, it’s me who doesn’t need to sleep.
[silence]
[ei:07] Oh, alright.
[ei:08] But don’t waste more time than it’s worth on this.
[h:08] Bold of you to assume I was gonna. Sleep tight.
[ei:09] Thanks. I love you.
[h:09] Love you too.