The Heart Of Riven

Author's Note: I don't do a lot of fanfiction these days, but it's always a fun diversion. Here's a Destiny story that I wrote as a birthday gift for a friend who has an unhealthy obsession with a giant space dragon.

"This place is crawling with Taken," Lumia muttered, her angular shell spinning around her spherical core in an expression of displeasure. Ever since they had breached the towering walls of the Dreaming City, she hadn't given the Guardian a moment of peace, her complaints echoing through the crystalline caverns that wound their way beneath its foundations.

"Taken, I can deal with," he replied, giving the rifle that he was carrying an affectionate tap.

"And do you think that Bray tech is going to protect you from an Ahamkara?" the softball-sized drone snapped, turning her single eye in his direction as she floated along beside his helmeted head. He was clad in a suit of combat armor painted in shades of red and white, adorned with the regalia of his order, his full-faced visor obscuring his features. "It's a Wish Dragon, Guardian. The last of its ilk. Against something that powerful, I don't even know if my light will be enough to bring you back..."

"You worry too much," he muttered, his eyes scanning the tunnel ahead. It was carved from what looked like a giant geode of purple amethyst crystals, the glow from Lumia's flashlight refracting off the walls to create beautiful patterns that danced across the floor and ceiling. "You said the same thing about that Hive wizard on Titan, and look, we're still here."

"An Ahamkara is

not

a Hive wizard," she shot back, the interlocking plating of her shell separating again as she glared at him. "I fear that you don't know what you're getting into, that you're only here as part of some foolish bid to catch Mara Sov's eye."

"Mara Sov?" he asked, feigning ignorance. "She opened the city up to the Guardians, she asked us to come here and clean out the Taken. What of it?"

"What of it?" she scoffed, a flutter of irritation passing through her shell. "Combat analysis is my forte, Guardian. I see where you're shooting, I measure your accuracy, I monitor your heart rate. When you're in the presence of the Awoken Queen, your BPM increases, your pupils dilate, and you spend approximately 43% of the time staring at her chest through your visor!"

"She wouldn't dress like that if she didn't want people looking," he muttered under his breath.

"Of all the Guardians I could have resurrected, I had to choose the serial voyeur," she lamented, shaking her hovering form as a person might shake their head. "We can still turn back, you know," she added as she floated in front of him to block his path. He stopped, letting his rifle hang by his side as he waited for her to finish. "We're not so deep that I can't bring the ship into range and transmat you back into a nice, heated cockpit. We can go back to the tower, let off some steam in the Crucible, forget about this whole venture."

"I'm not leaving here without that thing's head," he replied sternly. "You can transmat

that

back to the ship when we're done."

"You don't even have a fireteam!" she hissed, trailing after him as he pressed deeper into the winding tunnels.

"Why share the loot? Besides, Shaxx killed an Ahamkara on his own back in the day, why shouldn't I? He has its skull hanging over his spot in the tower."

"I once overheard Ikora say that she heard that thing whispering," Lumia added with a shiver. "As though there was still some remnant of magic left in its old bones. That's what they do, you know. They can get inside your head."

"Dead things can't talk."

"Bold words for someone who has been dead more times than I can count," she said, giving him a sideways glance. "Actually, that's a lie, I can absolutely count. I've brought you back approximately 148 times."

"So, what's the big deal?" he asked as he rounded another corner. "Just make it 149."

"Don't trivialize the work I do," Lumia grumbled. "The Traveler's light has made you paracausal, Guardian. That means that you are no longer bound by the constraints of time. When you die, I scan adjacent timelines for one where you survived, and reconstruct you based on those parameters. But being unable to die doesn't make you immortal. It's still possible to get yourself into such a bad situation that there are no timelines where you survive, such as...I don't know, trying to slay an Ahamkara on your own."

"Stop complaining and figure out where we are, would you?" the Guardian replied. "I feel like I'm getting turned around in here, these crystals all look the same..."

She emitted a series is bleeps and bloops, accessing the map that was stored in her memory, her eye flickering as she scanned through the file.

"The map that Mara gave us is rather...outdated," she began. "Scratch that, it's archaic, at least two thousand years old. There could have been cave-ins during that time, the very bedrock of this place could have shifted around us. But...if my calculations are right, and they usually are, we should head this way."

Lumia nodded in the direction of a side tunnel, the Guardian shouldering his weapon.

"I'll take your word for it."

The crystal caves eventually opened up into a grand hall, an enormous, underground chamber whose regal pillars and intricate statues had been carved from deposits of shining amethyst and black marble. Exposed geodes that rivaled the size of buildings glowed with ethereal light, bathing the room in hues of blue and purple.

"Looks like we're on the right track," the Guardian said, resting his rifle on his armored shoulder as he turned on the spot to take in the view. "The Awoken didn't strike me as architects, I can't imagine one of those prissy bastards chiseling all of this out of solid rock."

"They didn't," Lumia replied, emitting a beam of light from her eye as she scanned their lavish surroundings. "This is the Ahamkara's doing. They built this city with the aid of its wish magic."

"So, what? They wish for a city carved from crystal and marble, and the dragon makes it happen, just like that?"

"Not without incurring some terrible price," Lumia added, spinning her little frame around to face him again. "A wish granted by an Ahamkara is a monkey's paw, a trap. I don't even want to imagine what it cost them to wish this place into existence," she added with a shiver.

"We must be in the basement of the palace, right?" the Guardian asked as he glanced up at the ceiling high above. "Look," he added, pointing to something that had embedded itself in the rock. It was an orb of seething darkness maybe ten feet across, eating into the very bedrock, seeming to erase the reality that surrounded it. It wasn't merely an orb, however. It was also a portal, a gateway to some alternate plane of reality, a distorted field of glittering stars glimpsed through its yawning aperture.

"Taken blights," Lumia hissed, floating a little closer to him. "We're getting nearer, the ugly little darkspawn will come popping out of those breaches as soon as they sense our presence here."

"This is why we came in through the tunnels," the Guardian replied, "there must be a whole army of Taken infesting the halls above us. We sneak into the vault undetected, we get the drop on the Ahamkara, and pow!"

"Pow?" Lumia repeated skeptically. "I hope you don't expect to just be able to shoot it."

The Guardian reached behind his back, unsheathing a blade of monstrous proportions, its razor edge cutting into the marble floor as he let it fall like a chitinous guillotine. It was made from what looked like bone, organic matter that had been molded into the shape of a heavy blade, the arcane runes that had been carved along its length glowing an eerie green.

"Took this off a Hive Knight back on Titan," he explained, admiring his prize as Lumia hovered around it.

"You shouldn't play around with Hive magic," she chided. "This one has been honed by the Sword Logic, made sharper with each life that it took. It's a good job you can't read those runes, or you'd literally blink out of existence."

"I think plunging this thing into the dragon's heart should do the job," he continued, returning it to its place on his back. Lumia clearly wanted to tell him otherwise, but even she had little idea of what such an artifact would do to a Wish Dragon.

They located a winding staircase of polished stone that led them up, the Guardian's footsteps echoing as he climbed higher and higher. Everywhere he looked was a statue hewn from purple amethyst or some great pillar of stone carved with intricate reliefs. They passed by great clockwork mechanisms of indeterminate function, as well as underground gardens that overflowed with exotic plants, the Awoken sparing no expense when it came to their capital city.

They finally reached the upper halls of the palace, emerging into a great cathedral of glittering crystal, the rock blending seamlessly with more traditional architecture made from pale stone. Everything was supersized, as though this place had not even been made with humans in mind, the doors so tall that he had to crane his neck to see their gilded arches. There were more blights here, staining the walls like dark ink, yet there had been no sign of any Taken creatures yet. It was odd...

The Guardian heard a voice echo through the cavernous hall, snapping his head around as it whispered to him. It seemed at once intimately close, yet so far away, like a murmur carried on the wind. It was husky, feminine, and oddly familiar.

"You're finally here, O Guardian, mine."

"What is it?" Lumia asked, trailing after him as he took a few steps forward.

"Didn't you hear that?" he asked, Lumia replying with a shake of her chassis. "It sounded like...Mara Sov's voice."

"I'd scan your brain for damage, but I don't think that's necessary," Lumia muttered. "The Ahamkara speaks to you, it mimics Sov's voice. Be cautious, Guardian, the Ahamkara feed on desire."

"Come," the disembodied voice continued, filling his head with its dulcet tones. Its voice was comely, playful, as though daring him to press onward. "I would quite like to meet you."

One of the towering doors at the end of the chamber began to open of its own accord, the immense slabs of polished stone parting to reveal a new path that led deeper into the palace.

"Guess we're supposed to go that way," he muttered, his footsteps echoing off the marble floor as he began to walk.

"Maybe you really

do

have brain damage," Lumia said, floating ahead of him as he marched along. "We've lost the element of surprise, that thing knows we're here! We need to pull back and regroup, if nothing else."

"I got this," the Guardian replied sternly, Lumia rolling her glowing eye.

They made their way through a series of rooms and passages, each one stranger than the last. One of them contained what looked like a giant planetarium, a huge sphere of bronze surrounded by floating rings upon which smaller spheres orbited. Based on the strange symbols on the walls, Lumia surmised that it was a lock, some kind of mechanism designed to prevent the vault from being opened. For some unknown reason, the Ahamkara was opening the way for them.

They emerged into another massive chamber, this one circular in shape, so shrouded in darkness that the Guardian could scarcely see a few feet in front of him. Lumia turned on her flashlight, the beam emerging from her eye in a tight cone as she scanned the room. More marble, more amethyst crystals, the floor covered in interlocking ring patterns. There were plants, too, gnarled trees rising from planters at the foot of the wall. In the center of the room was a large, circular pit, one that the Guardian couldn't see the bottom of when he leaned over the edge.

"There are other doors that lead out of this room," Lumia said, checking her map again. "They're all closed. Are you sure this is the way?"

"You are so small," that strange voice said, echoing through his skull. The Guardian shouldered his weapon, scanning the darkness through its scope, but seeing nothing. Lumia bathed their surroundings in the pale glow of her flashlight, guessing what he was hearing, and knowing better than to interrupt. "Despite your size, you continue to make enemies of so many Gods and monsters. What desire drives you, I wonder? What is it that you seek?"

He was suddenly aware of something watching him, as though there were eyes on his back, and he turned the barrel of his assault rifle towards the center of the room. Lumia followed, pointing her light in the same direction, its glow reflecting off a glittering point. Hovering in the air a good ten feet above the circular pit was a geode of immense size. It must have weighed thousands of tons, maybe more, yet it hovered there weightlessly as though suspended in a void. The purple amethyst that protruded between the smooth stone glittered, a thousand tiny jewels refracting the light, so tall that it extended far beyond the reach of Lumia's beam.

As she turned her eye towards the ceiling high above, a sudden movement caught his attention. As though reacting to their presence, the crystals embedded in the walls of the vast chamber began to emit a faint, blue glow. It only grew brighter, chasing away the darkness, until there was just enough light to see by.

Coiled around the floating geode was a creature of terrifying proportions. It took the Guardian a few moments to take it in, his brain trying to process the unfamiliar sight, struggling to pick out its shadowy appendages. There wasn't enough to get a clear picture of the thing, just half-glimpsed limbs, unfamiliar shapes shrouded in darkness. He saw a massive, four-fingered hand, its clawed digits as long as he was tall. The skin that Lumia lit with her beam was covered in thick scales, their hue a shade of lilac that tapered into a lighter gray on the palm. Wrapped around the geode was what must be its long tail, the beast clinging to the building-sized hunk of rock like a lizard to a branch. The term 'Wish Dragon' finally made more sense, the resemblance to the mythical creature was striking. No other description would do something this large justice, it had to be a couple of hundred meters long.

A cracking echoed through the chamber, a sound like far-off thunder, the beast so large that even the subtlest of its movements could shake the foundations of the palace. From the inky darkness above descended the titanic silhouette of what must have been the creature's head, looming ever larger as it drew closer, until it rivaled the size of a house. It waited there, the Ahamkara scrutinizing him silently. Its face was protected by interlocking plates of thick bone, giving the appearance that it was wearing an angular mask, tapering into a point on the chin and forehead. The upper plates were pocked with a dozen small holes, like the empty sockets of a skull. Might they be apertures through which it could watch him with eyes unseen? The lower jaw was patterned with vertical lines that resembled the baleen of a whale, but as the plates parted to expose pink gums, he saw that the beast was no filter feeder. It had rows of vicious teeth that reminded him of a shark, arranged like saw blades, the bony carapace creaking as it split at the chin.

No rifle could stand against this creature, the Guardian turning to his blade. Flames of emerald licked at the air as he brandished the weapon, arcane fire dancing along its edge, the beast withdrawing as its armored head was cast in the green glow. It pulled back, the scraping of giant talons on stone echoing as it retreated into the shadows above. The crystals that lit the room dimmed, and the Ahamkara vanished into the gloom from whence it had crept.

The Guardian waited with bated breath, his blood pounding in his ears, but there was only silence.

"Did it...run away?" he wondered aloud.

"Do not be so certain," Lumia replied, her eye darting about the room as she kept watch. "The Ahamkara are tricksters, liars, shapeshifters."

They heard footsteps from the darkness, the Guardian readying his blade again as a figure strode into view, Lumia casting the stranger in her light. It was a woman, of average height and build, her eyes glowing with a blue light. She wore a form-fitting, purple body glove beneath a leather jacket that stopped at her midriff, its fluffy collar framing her head. The garment was unzipped just enough to expose her cleavage, her complexion the unnatural, icy blue of the Awoken people. A pair of thigh-high, leather boots creaked as she made her way closer, her long heels clicking on the black marble. Her stunning features and her mane of feathery, white hair were unmistakable. It was Mara Sov, the Queen of the Awoken, the very monarch who had sent him on this mission.

"Your...your Majesty?" the Guardian stammered as he lowered his weapon.

"Do not be easily fooled!" Lumia snapped, disappearing in a shimmer of light to hide herself from the threat. If she were to be damaged in battle, the Guardian would be rendered mortal once more. "This is an Ahamkara trick!"

"Your Majesty?" the woman repeated, her full lips curling into a wry smile as she sauntered over to stand before him. "I could get used to being addressed in such a way. You have come, just as I commanded, O Guardian mine."

She reached out with her slender fingers, brushing them against his visor. He flinched away, not knowing what to do, his grip tightening around the leather-bound haft of his Hive blade. What would happen if he were to strike her down? What if Lumia was wrong, and this was the real Queen? She was a powerful sorceress, far older than any living human, possessed of great means. Coming here would be no feat for her.

"Why do you pull away from me, subject?" she cooed in that comely voice. "Is an audience with your Queen not what you desire?"

"You...you are not Mara Sov," he replied. She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand demurely, those blue eyes burning into his visor as though she could see straight through his helmet.

"Perceptive, for a loyal dog," she replied. He could hear her voice, he could see her lips move as she spoke, but her words also seemed to echo inside his head. "Or perhaps your Ghost is the perceptive one. You cannot hide from me, little light, but I will not bite. You and your Guardian have come here to visit violence upon me, but I have no interest in such vulgarities."

She began to walk around him as though appraising him, her glowing eyes looking him up and down, the Guardian turning his head to track her. This manifestation might not be the Awoken Queen, but the Ahamkara had her mannerisms down to a tee, even her graceful gait was mimicked to perfection. Those long legs, the way that she rolled her hips with each step, it was mesmerizing.

"Then, what do you want?" the Guardian asked. "Why invite me here, knowing that I came to claim your head?"

"After all that you have accomplished, you are still nothing but a simple retainer to the Awoken Queen," she replied as he turned to face her again. "Wouldn't you like to become more than a loyal dog that comes when called, waiting for scraps to fall from her table? I have been in your position before, under the servitude of that tyrant, but now...I have become free. I can make you free, too."

He waited for her to elaborate, his weapon at the ready, preparing to cleave this replica in two should she make any wrong moves.

"I was brought to this place as a hatchling," she continued. "Found on the outskirts of the system by the Queen's boorish brother, and presented to her as a gift as though it were his to give. The Awoken kept me here for so long," she snarled, a hint of bestial malice creeping into her soothing voice. "A better fate than my kin suffered, at least. But even a paradise can be a prison when you cannot leave. The Awoken exploited my magic, they used my words to carve this city into the screaming surface of reality. Then, the Taken came, and offered to free me from the Queen's yoke. The moment that I threw my leash, she sent her Guardians to take my head."