Fanfic / No stars in sight

All spoilers pertaining to Stargazer will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Cover art by Keltoi.

"There is still so much we have not yet explored."

— Eido

No stars in sight is a crossover fanfic between Destiny and Inheritance Cycle by Keltoi. It is the fourth entry in the Sagittarius series and is a rewrite of the fanfic Stargazer. This fic takes place after Season of the Haunted and heavily incorporates story elements introduced in Year 5 of Destiny 2. The first two chapters were posted on September 15, 2022.

Several years ago, the famous Warlock Ikharos Torstil was banished from the Last City after a member of his fireteam was permanently killed during an unsanctioned raid he led on the Dreaming City. However, in the wake of Rhulk's demise, the Locus of Communion escapes the Glykon Volatus at the behest of the Witness. To combat this threat, the Vanguard reinstates Ikharos as a Guardian and places him in command of an Imperial Cabal task force assigned to eliminate the Locus once and for all. Embarking on the Cabal frigate Rancis Olytus, Ikharos pursues his quarry outside the Sol System. Along the way, he is joined by the ever enigmatic Exo Stranger, a.k.a Elisabeth "Elsie" Bray, who seems to know a lot more about the situation than she's letting on.

Acting on a tip he received from the Stranger, Ikharos sets a course for the Kepler-186 star system in hopes of cutting the Locus off at his intended destination. Upon reaching Kepler, the crew of the Rancis Olytus discover that the exoplanet Kepler-186f has disappeared, and in its place is a gravitational anomaly of Darkness. In the anomaly's orbit, they find a derelict Exodus-class Colony Ship from humanity's Golden Age, which Ikharos takes a search team to investigate. Things quickly go wrong as the boarding party comes under attack by mysterious robots while the Rancis Olytus is ambushed by a Scorn fleet commanded by the Locus himself. In the ensuing chaos, Ikharos and the Stranger are left behind on the Exodus as both the colony ship and the Rancis Olytus are pushed into the anomaly.

Meanwhile, Formora Láerdhon, a former elven Dragon Rider and a surviving member of the Forsworn, has been living in a Self-Imposed Exile on the abandoned island of Vroengard for almost forty years — unwilling to return to Alagaësia in fear of being killed by her former master Galbatorix. Her only companions during her exile have been a fellow Forsworn deserter named Enduriel (whom she barely gets along with) and the Eldunarí of the dragon Agaravel (who was driven half-insane after Formora murdered her rider). One morning, her hermitic life is upended by the sight of strange, burning shapes falling from the sky. Though initially fearful, after some prodding by her more curious companions, she goes to investigate the crash site...

The story can be read on SpaceBattles.com, Archive of Our Own, and FanFiction.Net.

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No stars in sight contains examples of:

Tropes A to D

• Abandoned Area: Vroengard is filled with abandoned buildings and ruins from back when the island was home to the Dragon Riders. Formora and Enduriel have taken to using some of these empty buildings as shelter.
• Abandon Ship: The fifth chapter has Ikharos find what's left of the Rancis Olytus laying at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Vroengard. Upon reuniting with the surviving crew, he gives the order to abandon ship and take whatever supplies they can back to the island since their ship is damaged beyond repair and is sitting right next to a crashed Ketch that is swarming with Scorn.
• Acceptable Breaks from Canon: The author began writing this fic right at the same time that Season of Plunder was going on, which revealed details about the main villain Nezarec that contradict this story. Namely the fact that Nezarec was a Disciple of the Witness who was killed during the Collapse, and his remains being placed into relics by the Eliksni and becoming the focus of SoP. In this fic, Nezarec is still alive and seems to be fighting against the Witness's Disciples.
• Adaptation Deviation: From the very outset, this story deviates heavily from its parent fic Stargazer.
  • The Exo Stranger is one of the main characters in this story and accompanies Ikharos to Kepler-186f despite having nothing to do with the plot of the original fic.
  • Ikharos's jumpship is the Shadow Trespass when it was a modified Awoken Galliot in the original version.
  • In the original fanfic, Ikharos would have his dreams invaded by Dûl Incaru every three weeks as part of a curse he contracted during his time in the Dreaming City. Here, the curse instead causes Ikharos to be haunted by her Nightmare 24/7.
  • In the original version, Ikharos came to the Kepler-186 system alone using a modified jumpship in search of a long-lost Golden Age Colony Ship. Here, he comes to Kepler-186 aboard an Imperial Cabal warship as part of a Vanguard-Cabal coalition force sent by Caiatl to hunt down the Locus of Communion after it fled the Sol System.
  • When Ikharos first discovered Kepler-186f in Stargazer, the planet seemed fairly normal and Earth-like with the exception of its orbiting Warsat defense network. Here, Ikharos and his Cabal allies find the planet completely encased by Negative Space Wedgie.
  • The original fic had the colony ship Exodus Prime be located at the bottom of one of Alagaësia's oceans where it was used as an Underwater Base by a Warmind named Scipio. Here, Ikharos and the Cabal find the Exodus ship floating in orbit of Kepler-186f, totally derelict and missing its cargo pods. When they board the vessel to investigate, the only lifeforms they find are hostile Exos and Frames.
  • In the original version, Formora and Enduriel were the only ones found on Vroengard when Ikharos arrived there. Here, the duo share the island with a hostile Cuaroc that spends every night hunting them. There's also a Disciple named Zendolyn-Far who lives on the island.
  • Formora also has Agaravel's Eldunarí in her possession at the start of the story when she didn't have it in the original version. She also has somehow gotten her hands on a dragon egg, something that she definitely didn't have in Stargazer.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • Stargazer used a limited third-person perspective that regularly switched between Ikharos and an ever-growing Ensemble Cast, with single chapters sometimes sharing several different points-of-view. By contrast, No stars in sight is written solely from the perspectives of Ikharos and Formora, and uses a single POV throughout each chapter.
  • In the original fic, Ikharos crashed his jumpship into a forest on Alagaësia, then traveled around for a bit gathering information about the world he's on. Along the way, he helps some rebels fighting against the Broddring Empire and learns about the Dragon Riders from a library and a storyteller. It's only after all this that he buys a sailboat and heads to Vroengard hoping to find more information on Alagaësia's dragons. This rewrite skips all that by having his jumpship crash-land directly onto Vroengard.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Formora goes from being described as dark-haired in Stargazer to having silver-white hair with crimson tips in this fic.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • In Stargazer, Ikharos sent a message to Jaxson before he left for the Kepler-186 system, though the contents of the message are never shown. Here, the reader actually gets to find out what Ikharos wrote to Jaxson before departing the Sol System.
  • The story also dives a lot deeper into Formora's relationship with Enduriel and what her Self-Imposed Exile on Vroengard was like before Ikharos arrived, both of which are quickly glossed over in Stargazer.
  • This fic really stretches out the time that Ikharos spends exploring Vroengard as opposed to the original version where the story treated Vroengard like a prolonged pit stop.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • At first, the Ikharos in Stargazer didn't even bother trying to negotiate with the Cabal army stranded on Kepler-186f and only reluctantly agreed to an Enemy Mine with them as a Godzilla Threshold. Here, he starts off way more open to the idea of working with the Cabal, though privately admits to slightly distrusting them. This can be chalked up to fic's Setting Update. Stargazer took place before Caiatl came to the Sol System, during a time when the idea of an alliance between the Guardians and Cabal would've been unthinkable. It didn't help that every Cabal Ikharos had encountered up to that point were either bloodthirsty Galactic Conquerors like Ghaul or exploitative Planet Looters like Calus. However, No stars in sight is set after Operation Elbrus, by which point the Guardians have met Empress Caiatl and fought alongside the Imperial Cabal against their common foes.
  • In Stargazer, Nezarec's underlings were enraged with Ikharos for killing Oryx before they could and denounced him as a thief for "stealing" their vengeance. Here, Nezarec is instead profoundly grateful towards Ikharos for slaying Oryx and Savathûn, showering him with praise for the deed in the message he leaves for him in Chapter 12.
• Adaptation Title Change: No stars in sight is a rewritten fanfic based on the author's previous fic Stargazer.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: In Stargazer, Ikharos was a Broken Ace wracked by his inner demons due to being fresh off from losing Lennox and being exiled from the Last City after the events of Forsaken. Part of the reason that he left the Sol System was because he couldn't handle the emotional pain of Lennox's death and wanted to run away from his problems. Since No stars in sight has a Setting Update which puts it around four years after Forsaken, Ikharos is shown to be more emotionally stable due to the time he's been given to properly grieve and having his exile lifted. He's also shown to be trying to patch things up with his former teammate Jaxson here, whereas no such thing occurs in Stargazer.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Unlike in Stargazer, Ikharos is able to use Stasis in addition to his already existing Warlock abilities since he was present for the events of Beyond Light in this fic's timeline. He is also revealed to have the ability to control Resonance (the Darkness element wielded by the Pyramid ships) which he gained from killing Rhulk.
  • The ExSec Exos in Stargazer were pretty much just normal Exominds with a Heart Drive hidden in the back of their skulls. Here, their bodies are filled with weaponized nanomachines that can self-repair and be deployed as a biological weapon by their hosts.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • In Stargazer, the Cabal and Fallen don't show up on Kepler-186f until after Ikharos has already crash-landed there. Here, the fic opens with Ikharos aiding the Imperial Cabal in tracking down the Scorn who fled the Sol System to Kepler-186f, so all three arrive at the planet at the same time.
  • In the original Stargazer, it took around fourteen chapters for Formora and Enduriel to be introduced to the story. Here, they make their first appearance in the fourth chapter, pretty much almost immediately after Ikharos's ship crash lands on their planet.
  • In the original fic, the ExSec Exos don't show up in the story until the end of Chapter 15, after Ikharos has crash landed his jumpship on Alagaësia. Here, Ikharos encounters them in the second chapter aboard a derelict colony ship before he has even entered Kepler-186f's atmosphere.
• Adaptational Villainy: In Stargazer, Scipio was basically an expy of Rasputin, being a Warmind of questionable morality who is programmed to ensure the survival of the human race at all costs. While he did come across as uncaring and aloof, he was ultimately on the heroes' side and fought against Nezarec's Strife Cult. Here, Scipio openly serves Nezarec and turned on the original human colonists. This gets downplayed since Chapter 12's interlude makes it clear that Nezarec's followers swayed Scipio to their side by singing some sort of Brown Note that altered his programming.
• Adaptational Weapon Swap:
  • In Stargazer, Ikharos's choice melee weapon was a sword. Here, he prefers using a glaive for close-quarters combat. Also, Ikharos's pistol is changed from a Lumina hand cannon to a Forerunner sidearm.
  • In the Inheritance Cycle books, Cuaroc wielded a one-handed Rider sword and a shield. Here, his weapon of choice is instead a massive, two-handed claymore.
• Adapted Out:
  • Warmind Scipio appears to have been ripped out of the story entirely, given the absence of its satellites orbiting Kepler-186f and the fact that the Colony Ship it used as a base in Stargazer is found to be a derelict Ghost Ship floating outside Kepler's atmosphere. Subverted when it's revealed that Scipio is still around (albeit on Nezarec's side instead of the heroes) with his satellites orbiting Kepler-186f from inside the anomaly.
  • The Worldbreakers and Soulrazers from the original version are adapted out and replaced with Saladin's Iron War Beasts as the Cabal faction featured in the story.
  • Kiphoris and the House of Scar are also gone with the Scorn replacing their role as the story's Fallen faction.
  • There's actually quite a few characters from Stargazer who are absent here, including Tellesa and her rebels, Kida 99-40, Taox, the talking dolphins, the Erdsson family, Kirrnaka-Hul, and the Teeth of Yul.
• Admiring the Abomination: Whereas Formora was horror-struck and fled in terror when she saw Cuaroc coming towards her while she was out in the open, Skuldu reacts to his appearance with awe and calls him the coolest Exo she's ever seen. This is understandable given how Skuldu is from a Science Fiction setting where Mechanical Lifeforms like Cuaroc are commonplace as opposed to Formora, who comes from a less advanced Standard Fantasy Setting. Also, Skuldu has never had to deal with Cuaroc trying to kill her every night like Formora has.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Elsie gently pats Ikharos on the cheek while they talk in Chapter 11. Ikharos is rather uncomfortable with it and has to restrain the urge to recoil.
• Affectionate Nickname: Granny Skuldu lovingly calls Agnisia by her pet name "kiddo".
• Alien Autopsy: In chapter 10, Ikharos finally gets around to performing an autopsy on the Nïdhwal he killed back in Chapter 5.
• Alien Sea: The Rogue Planet that Ikharos is investigating for signs of the Scorn at the start of the story has seas of acidic chemicals that he speculates is some sort of primordial soup after noticing how the only complex forms of life on the planet (alien slugs and lichen) live on the rocks closest to these seas.
• all lowercase letters: With the exception of the first chapter which acts as a prologue to the story, each of the chapter titles are written entirely in lowercase letters. The Archive of Our Own version has an all-lowercase title.
• Ammunition Conservation: While fighting a Nïdhwal underwater, Ikharos cites this trope as the reason he wants to fight the sea beast alone instead of just having Vindica'aur's soldiers shoot it.
• Arch-Enemy: Ikharos holds a special hatred in his heart for Dûl Incaru to the point where he demands for the Vanguard to let Caiatl nuke the Dreaming City just for the off-chance it might destroy her for good. It's very telling that out of all the foes Ikharos has faced in the past (including Crota, Skolas, Oryx, Ghaul, Uldren, and even Riven), Dûl Incaru is the Nightmare manifested by his curse to haunt him wherever he goes.
  Nightmare of Dûl Incaru: We'll dance our little waltz forever. Forever you and I. We may take new shapes and new lives, but you and I — forever and ever. You made it so, the moment you first killed me. Would that I could one day return the favour.
• Artificial Gravity: The Exodus colony ships that humanity built during the Golden Age have artificial gravity systems.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Defied. After Ikharos misidentifies the Nïdhwal as a mosasaur, he later tries to correct Xiān when she refers to the sea monster as a dinosaur, arguing that mosasaurs aren't dinosaurs and even explaining how they're more closely related to varanid lizards.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Like in Stargazer, Formora goes from being a minor Posthumous Character in canon to the Deuteragonist of the story.
  • The Scorn were barely in the original version of this fanfic, only briefly appearing at the start of Stargazer, where Ikharos watched a Guardian Fireteam kill Fikrul for the umpteenth time, and in a flashback where Fikrul is fought by Ikharos and Quantis. Here, the Scorn are featured as major antagonists with the Locus of Communion seemingly as their new leader.
  • Dûl Incaru had a rather minimal presence in the original Stargazer, only appearing once in the story proper where she talks with Ikharos through his dreams. Here, she (or to be more accurate, a Nightmare of her) takes a more active role as Ikharos's Enemy Within and regularly haunts him throughout the story.
  • Agaravel is only mentioned twice in the entire Inheritance Cycle series and had a brief cameo in Stargazer during Formora's flashback of the Dragon War. Here, she is a supporting character and introduced as an Eldunarí in Formora's possession.
  • Cuaroc was a minor character in canon and was only mentioned once in the original version of this fic. Here, he makes a full appearance as a major Hero Antagonist to Ikharos and Formora.
  • Savathûn's Right Hand was such a minor character in The Witch Queen that she's never even given a proper name and only appears once in the campaign as the boss of a story mission. Here, she's named Agnisia and has a far more prominent role as one of the fic's major villains.
• Attack Hello: The first thing the Exo Stranger does in Chapter 8 upon reuniting with Ikharos in Doru Araeba is to punch him in the face so hard that she would've shattered his jaw if he hadn't been wearing his helmet. This is followed by the Stranger furiously chewing him out for bringing a captive Hive Lightbearer with him to Kepler-186f.
• Attack on the Heart: The flashback in Chapter 7 shows that Ikharos killed Rhulk by stabbing him in the heart with his Enigma glaive.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Pirsis, a Wolf Baroness killed by Guardians as part of a bounty hunt during the House of Wolves expansion, appears in Chapter 11 as a revived Scorn Chieftain leading the attack on Formora's villa. Ikharos recognizes her and ensures that she is Killed Off for Real after besting her in a duel.
  • Skolas also returns as a resurrected Scorn Chieftain in Chapter 17.
• Battle in the Rain: Cuaroc's brawl with the Scorn in Chapter 4 starts outdoors during a rainstorm before they take the fight to inside the barn where Formora and Enduriel were hiding.
• The Battlestar: The Rancis Olytus is a large Imperial Cabal frigate that has cannons spread all over its hull and is designed with a hangar bay big enough to carry over a dozen gunships alongside Ikharos's jumpship.
• Berserk Button:
  • Like in Stargazer, Ikharos gets really pissed if someone touches his knife, which is a Tragic Keepsake from his dead partner. When he accidentally leaves the knife lodged in a Nïdhwal's eye during their underwater battle, the mere thought of the creature swimming away with it is enough to send him into a homicidal frenzy.
  • Enduriel hates being called a fool and comes close to attacking Formora when she does just that. Formora is well aware of this and did it specifically to tick him off.
• BFS: Cuaroc wields a large claymore described as being "fit for slaying giants" with such a heavy blade that he almost always Sword Drags it around.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The role of main antagonist is split between the competing villainous factions of Nezarec and the Disciples of the Witness. Nezarec is responsible for the Nightmares haunting the Lunar Pyramid, subverting Warmind Scipio to his cause, and creating the anomaly which has engulfed planet Kepler-186f. He is opposed by the Big Bad Triumvirate of Zendolyn-Far, Xhafi, and Shelbth, a trio of the Witness's Co-Dragons who became trapped on Kepler-186f by Nezarec's anomaly and seek to escape so they can rejoin the Black Fleet for their eventual assault on Earth.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • In Chapter 2, when Ikharos makes it clear that he's uncomfortable with the Stranger having his former teammate Jaxson substitute for her as a mentor for Guardians learning to wield Stasis because he thinks that Jaxson is overworked as it is, she says something in French in response to hearing Ikharos say "Touché."
    Exo Stranger: Ce n'est pas un argument. Je ne veux pas me battre.^translation This is not an argument. I don't want to fight.
  • In Chapter 9, Elsie tells Formora that she's sorry in French before leaving through the front door after Formora snapped at her to Get Out! for daring to compare her to Galbatorix.
  • The two ExSec Exos that ambush Ikharos in Chapter 10 speak in Latin.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Skuldu speaks to her partner Agnisia in English while Agnisia mostly speaks in the Hive language. Both are able to converse with each other and understand what the other is saying without any problems.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Granny Skuldu, the Hive Ghost that Ikharos was keeping prisoner aboard his jumpship, initially comes across as an eccentric Cool Old Lady with the demeanor of a Doting Grandparent. After Formora frees her, she helps save Formora's life and compliments her on her appearance as an elf. She also endlessly dotes on her Lightbearer Agnisia and seems to act as her Morality Pet, having convinced Agnisia to spare Formora's life in a show of gratitude. However, it doesn't take long for Skuldu to reveal her true nature as an unhinged control freak who doesn't hesitate to threaten Formora's life the moment she becomes uncooperative.
• Bling of War:
  • Formora describes the outfit that Ikharos wears as "armoured finery" with gold and colorful jewels adorning his armor and robes.
  • Vindica'aur is a Val (Cabal military rank equivalent to captain) who has her tusks capped in gold and wears ornaments on them while on active duty aboard her warship.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior:
  • After killing the Nïdhwal, Ikharos gets covered from head to toe in the creature's blood and mucus.
  • When Cuaroc reappears in Chapter 6, his hide is described as being streaked with dark blood from the Scorn he Killed Offscreen.
• Boarding Party: When the Rancis Olytus was rammed by a Ketch and pushed through the anomaly, the Scorn from the Ketch boarded the Cabal frigate. Fortunately, the Cabal crew easily dealt with them since the Scorn only sent small boarding teams rather than Zerg Rush it all at once like they normally would.
• Broken Pedestal: Discussed in Chapter 7. Even though his legendary feat of slaying a Nïdhwal made him a Rebuilt Pedestal among his Cabal troops, Ikharos knows that they would permanently lose faith in his leadership if they ever learned that he was responsible for bringing a Lucent Hive Witch to Kepler. Indilic convinces him to defy this trope by covering up the truth.
  Ikharos: I don't care about being seen.
  Indilic: [The Cabal] do. You are legend. Is that not what you Guardians always say? It is true enough of you. Don't break that image.
  Ikharos: They'll learn eventually.
  Indilic: No. Not if we erase the evidence.
• Brown Note: The enchantments protecting the Rock of Kuthian are a form of cognito-hazard that erase all memories of the spire from anyone exposed to it. The effects also get stronger the closer you get to it. The Cabal are unable to see the Rock of Kuthian through broadcasted footage because the enchantment causes them to instantly forget they ever saw it. Due to his paracausal nature and wearing a helmet with built-in memetic blocks, Ikharos is somewhat resistant to its effects but not completely immune. While fighting Cuaroc near the spire, the enchantment breaks through his helmet's protection, causing his memory to blank out mid-battle. When he kills himself and gets revived by Xiān a little later, Ikharos realizes that he can't remember anything that happened in the last 45 minutes.
• Came from the Sky: In Chapter 4, we're shown Formora's perspective as she witnesses Ikharos's jumpship, a Cabal frigate, two Scornships, and pieces of the Exodus colony ship all fall from the sky after being spit out by the anomaly. She initially mistakes them for shooting stars but quickly realizes that they're something entirely new. The Rancis Olytus and one of the Scornships crash into the ocean, creating a Giant Wall of Watery Doom that floods the entire southeast coast of Vroengard and destroys a couple of the shelters that Formora and Enduriel had been using. She and Enduriel then watch as Ikharos's jumpship is chased near their island by the remaining Scornship and shot down.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Formora doesn't believe Ikharos when he claims to have bested Cuaroc in combat until Elsie confirms it by speaking the ancient language.
  • Also, Formora flatly refuses to believe Elsie's story about being a time traveler, especially after Elsie claims to have experienced alternate futures where the two of them became close friends. Unlike the previous example, Formora remains unconvinced even after Elsie repeats her claims through the ancient language.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: Being a former galactic empire, the Cabal naturally have starships capable of advanced Faster-Than-Light Travel. It only takes a single day for the Rancis Olytus, a typical Imperial Cabal frigate, to warp from a Rogue Planet described as being "not far from Sol" to the Kepler-186 system hundreds of light years away.
• Catch a Falling Star: At the end of chapter 3, Ikharos is outside on the hull of the Exodus ship when it enters Kepler-186f's planetary atmosphere. The sudden pull of gravity causes him to slip off the ship as he and the Exodus plummet to the ocean below. Xiān is piloting a jumpship when this happens and dives in after him, managing to catch him mid-air by gently sloping the spacecraft underneath him as they fell.
• Clarke's Third Law: While investigating the crashed Shadow Trespass, Formora mistakes a lot of the advanced technology on jumpship for some form of magic.
• Collector of the Strange: Ikharos has taken up a hobby of collecting alien critters that he's found on other planets, which are kept in terrariums inside the Shadow Trespass's Trophy Room. These include an Amalthian tarantula, a Venusian quill-boa, a nest of Plutonian red whip scorpions, and a slug from the Rogue Planet that he explored in Chapter 2.
• Coming in Hot: While Ikharos is clinging to the outside of the Shadow Trespass, Xiān is forced to suddenly bring in the jumpship for a crash landing on Vroengard after getting shot down by the Locus's Ketch. It's a good thing for Ikharos that Immortal Life Is Cheap.
• Composite Character:
  • This version of Nezarec is an amalgamation of his depictions in canon and his O.C. Stand-in in Stargazer. Like in Stargazer, Nezarec is the one responsible for trapping Kepler-186f in an anomaly, is Spared by the Adaptation, and has an ancient feud with the Hive. However, this version is also the master of the Nightmares like his canonical depiction.
  • In canon, Savathûn's Right Hand is a different character from Dûl Incaru. Here, she's revealed to be Dûl Incaru after she was revived by a Hive Ghost post-death.
• Continuity Nod: Zendolyn-Far is an Eimin-Tin, an alien race that was first encountered by Lennox-2/Hawkmoon in Seeker (Keltoi).
• Cool Starship: Ikharos's jumpship in this story is the Shadow Trespass, a stealth ship designed and built by the Exo Stranger when she was still a human scientist during the Golden Age. The interior comes equipped with a living space, kitchenette, laboratory, and an armory containing several Exotic and Legendary weapons.
• Cool Versus Awesome: Chapter 4 has Cuaroc fighting an unnamed Scorn inside an abandoned barn that Formora was using as shelter. Cuaroc is a mechanical Draconic Humanoid wielding an epic BFS while the Scorn is a four-armed alien zombie with Resurrective Immortality.
• Cuckoosnarker: Despite clearly having more than a few screws loose, Granny Skuldu can be rather snide when she wants to be.
  Skuldu: We're in his ship. We're in his damn ship. Who are you?
  Formora: I don't know what you're talking about.
  Skuldu: Oh, you don't know who you are?! [laughs] That's outrageous!
• Curse Cut Short: Skuldu says "Oh shi-" right before teleporting away when she sees Formora get paralyzed by Zendolyn-Far.
• Cryptic Conversation: Much to his annoyance, Ikharos often finds himself on the receiving end of these from the Exo Stranger, which he is quick to lampshade.
  Ikharos: Ah, I can't beat around the bush but you can play cryptic all you want?
• Decapitation Presentation: When Formora is found by Cuaroc in Chapter 6, she sees that he's holding the crushed head of the Scorn that attacked him earlier in the barn.
• Dem Bones: One of the Eldritch Abominations inside the anomaly that Ikharos encounters in Chapter 3 is a six-eyed, mouthless skull with horns.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: The ExSec Exos on Kepler-186f have access to Valkyrie spears modified with suppressor charges specifically designed for injuring and killing paracausal beings by canceling out their abilities. These make them highly effective weapons against servants of the Light and Darkness.
• Determinator: When you think about it, not only have Formora and Enduriel managed to survive alone for nearly forty years on an abandoned island filled with radioactive fallout and mutated animals, but they also spent every night being terrorized by an implacable Draconic Humanoid. Throughout all this, neither of them have lost the will to live and are determined to remain alive.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Subverted in Chapter 6. Elsie shoots Zendolyn-Far (one of the Witness's Disciples) with her rifle to keep her from eating Formora, seemingly forcing Zendolyn to retreat. However, it's explained shortly afterwards that the bullets from Elsie's gun didn't actually harm Zendolyn, who Elsie has to go personally apologize to when everything's said and done. Ikharos's reaction to learning this sums it up quite nicely.
  Ikharos: [stunned] You... shot a Disciple of the Witness? A harbinger of extinction, a prophet of the end?
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • In the original version, Ikharos kills the Nïdhwal with a Nova Bomb. Here, the Nïdhwal is Killed Offscreen by Ikharos charging into its jaws with a glaive.
  • Enduriel was killed in Stargazer by Ikharos, who forced him to slit his own throat using the knife Enduriel had stolen from him. In this fic, Enduriel dies from a sudden Neck Snap inflicted onto him by a Scorn Raider.
  • In canon, Glaerun was killed by Thuviel's explosion at the end of the Battle at Doru Araeba. Here, Ikharks learns via Deepsight that Glaerun was killed by his master Galbatorix, who bashed in his skull during a fit of madness.
• Dimensional Cutter: While inside the anomaly, Ikharos is saved from a skull-like Eldritch Abomination by an unseen entity who uses a golden scythe to cut open a portal that transports all the ships consumed by the anomaly to Vroengard.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Elsie had a very close relationship with multiple versions of Ikharos from her previous timelines which she projects onto the current Ikharos. This is shown through how she acts very familiar with him, awkwardly addresses him by his first name, offers advice for his personal problems, and eventually insists that he calls her Elsie instead of Elisabeth. For his part, Ikharos is slightly mistrustful of her since he's barely gotten to know her and this is the first time that they've ever worked closely together from his perspective.
• Draconic Humanoid: Cuaroc, the beast that's stalked Formora and Enduriel on Vroengard for decades, is described as looking like a walking steel sculpture of a man with the head of a snarling dragon.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Granny Skuldu (a Hive Ghost) is this to her Hive Lightbearer Agnisia. While most Ghosts act as supporters and sidekicks to their Lightbearers, Skuldu instead appears to be the one calling the shots while Agnisia mostly just goes along with whatever her Hive Ghost tells her to do.

Tropes E to L

• Easing into the Adventure: The chapter that introduces Formora starts by going through what a typical day on Vroengard is like for her before the plot finally catches up and her morning routine gets interrupted by the sight of spaceships crashing down from the sky.
• Eat Me: It's implied that Ikharos killed the Nïdhwal in Chapter 5 by charging into its mouth and attacking it from the inside with his glaive. The experience leaves him slightly traumatized as he can't bear dissecting the beast "while the memory's still fresh" and has to suppress a shudder while thinking about what he went through.
• Effortless Amazonian Lift: After saving Formora from being eaten by Zendolyn in Doru Araeba, Elsie effortlessly picks up Formora's paralyzed body and carries her back to the crashed Shadow Trespass without showing any sign of physical exertion. This is justified by Elsie being an Exo with a heavily customized body.
• Eldritch Abomination: While the Exodus Prime is making the transit through the anomaly in Chapter 3, there is a scene where Ikharos has to leave the relative safety of the ship and go outside in a spacesuit with a flare to signal his Ghost, who was piloting his jumpship when it had gotten lost in the anomaly. While floating in the empty void, Ikharos encounters several powerful and ancient entities native to the realm. It's eventually explained in Chapter 8 that all of these entities are also prisoners of the anomaly and have spent millennia trying to escape.
  • The first is a Faceless Eye the size of Jupiter. Upon sensing the Light within Ikharos, the eye shrinks to the size of a continent and teleports closer to the Exodus ship, then subjects Ike to a quick Mind Rape before vanishing.
  • The next one is a mouthless, six-eyed skull made of molten rock with crystal plated horns. The skull-thing is a lot more hostile and tries to destroy the Exodus ship outright.
  • Finally, there is a third unseen entity that repels the skull with a silver spear before it can attack the Exodus ship. This being then manifests a golden scythe that it uses to tear open a portal to Kepler-186f, allowing every ship that got trapped in the anomaly to return to realspace.
• Eldritch Location: The anomaly surrounding Kepler-186f fits this to a T. Just read this description of what Ikharos sees when he exits the Exodus ship while it is inside the anomaly.
  Distant orange lightning flashed through the gloom, revealing a kaleidoscope of shifting colours and incomprehensible shapes; there were streaks of red and blue, great animated growths of decaying grey, pools of resonant fire. These all appeared in split second glimpses — alongside the visages of colossal flower petals unfolding, chunks of drifting worlds, a great unblinking eye with a distorted pupil. One flash, they were there. The next, they were gone or changed. It was a grand display of brutal chaos, the anarchy of a paracausal power manifesting in the absence of a planet.
• Enemy Mine: Elsie has been spending most of her time on Vroengard trying to forge an alliance with Zendolyn-Far against Nezarec by offering to help free Zendolyn and her fellow Disciples from the anomaly that has kept them trapped on Kepler-186f. Her reasoning behind this is that Zendolyn is A Lighter Shade of Black when compared to her peers and Ikharos cannot afford to have her as an enemy. Despite Zendolyn expressing her interest at the idea, Ikharos is vehemently opposed to it because she is still one of the Witness's Disciples (the very people the Guardians are currently at war with), and it will be a cold day in hell before he ever aligns himself with the Black Fleet.
• Enemy Within: Ikharos is being tormented by the Nightmare of Dûl Incaru, who appears before him as a hallucination to taunt him with his failures in life whenever he's alone and starts to lose control of his emotions.
• Entitled to Have You: A platonic variation in the way that Granny Skuldu acts towards Formora. She thinks that since she saved Formora from being killed by the Scorn, this automatically gives her ownership over Formora's "pitiful mortal life" to do with as she pleases. When Formora runs away from her and demands to be left alone, Skuldu gets angry and sics her Hive Wizard on her.
• Evil Old Folks: Played with Skuldu, who doesn't age due to her nature as a robotic drone. However, she has the voice and demeanor of an kindly old woman, and refers to herself as "Granny Skuldu". She's also a Faux Affably Evil Hive Ghost loyal to Savathûn.
• Evil Power Vacuum: It's revealed in the Hidden reports at the start of the story that Rhulk's death left the Scorn in Savathûn's Throne World fractured and leaderless with various minor Chieftains just barely maintaining cohesion within the ranks. Ikharos suspects that the Witness intends to have the Locus of Communion fill in the power vacuum, hence why he's pushing so hard to have him eliminated.
• Evil Smells Bad: The first time that Formora encounters a Scorn, she finds that the creature stinks of rotting flesh. This is hardly surprising given how Scorn are undead Eliksni who have been killed and reanimated numerous times through the use of Dark Ether.
• Evil Versus Evil: Elsie reveals to Ikharos that Kepler-186f is the center of a paracausal turf war between the Disciples of the Witness and the entity responsible for creating the anomaly (later revealed to be Nezarec).
• Exhausted Eye Bags: When Ikharos and Elsie find Formora at an old villa in Chapter 8, they notice that her eyes are shadowed over from not sleeping.
• The Exile: Averted. Unlike in Stargazer, Ikharos's exile has already been rescinded by the Vanguard at the start of the story. It probably helps that the people who originally voted to exile Ikharos were the three Faction leaders. Given this story takes place in a post-Season of the Splicer setting, that would mean Lakshmi-2 had been killed by the Vex during her attempt to overthrow the Vanguard while Jalaal and Hideo fled the Last City to escape facing justice for siding with her failed coup. After this, there was probably no one left in the Consensus who was willing to stop the Vanguard from lifting Ikharos's banishment and welcoming him back as a Guardian.
• Explosive Leash: According to Ikharos, the Psions from the Mars scout legions (specifically the Blind Legion) had bombs implanted in their skulls to ensure obedience. Indilic is surprised when he's told about this since he had assumed this was just a vile myth given how this doesn't happen to any of the Psions from the Cabal Empire's core systems.
• Extra Eyes: In chapter 3, one of the Eldritch Abominations that Ikharos encounters inside the anomaly is a floating skull with six eyes.
• Eye Colour Change: Being an älfa, Formora has the ability to change her appearance at will through magic. She changes the color of her eyes from green to gold in between Chapters 7 and 8, something that draws Ikharos's attention when he meets back up with her.
• Eye Scream: Near the end of his underwater battle with the Nïdhwal, Ikharos stabs the sea serpent in the eye with his knife after teleporting onto its forehead.
• Faceless Eye: A planet-sized floating eyeball is one of the Eldritch Abominations that Ikharos encounters upon exiting the Exodus ship while it was inside the anomaly.
• Facial Markings: Formora has tattoos on her face which Skuldu initially mistook for facepaint.
• Fantastic Racism: Like in Stargazer, Ikharos really, really hates the Ahamkara as well as anything that reminds him of them. Since Ahamkara are known as wish-dragons, this includes all dragons in general. Elsie explains to Formora in Chapter 9 that Ikharos's hatred of Scorn is just an extension of his hatred for Ahamkara since it was an Ahamkara (Riven) that created the Scorn in the first place. Even the sight of Cuaroc, a dragon-headed automaton, fills him with enough rage to fuel his use of Stasis during their battle at the base of Moraeta's Spire.
  • Ikharos is not alone in this as the Cabal under his command also share a similar instinctive hostility towards Ahamkara. When Ikharos informs his troops that he's found evidence the island they've crash landed on used to be home to dragons (not yet understanding the difference between regular dragons and Ahamkara), there's an instant uproar with various Cabal soldiers immediately volunteering to scour the island and slay any they find.
• Faux Affably Evil: Skuldu almost never stops talking like a sweet and loving grandmother, even when she coerces Formora into obeying her with an Implied Death Threat.
• Feather Boa Constrictor: In Chapter 7, Ikharos wears a live feathered serpent around his neck while analyzing the neurotoxin that Formora gave him in his lab.
• Fictional Document: The first chapter consists entirely of in-universe intelligence reports by the Hidden and Cabal that serve as a source of exposition and worldbuilding for the reader. The chapter also ends by showing the contents of a message that Ikharos sent to Jaxson just before he left on his mission.
• Fire Keeps It Dead: Since Scorn have Resurrective Immortality, the Cabal have a policy of cremating any Scorn corpses they find after an engagement. In chapter 5, Indilic informs Ikharos that this was one of the measures that the surviving soldiers aboard the Rancis Olytus carried out in order to clear out any Scorn boarders remaining on the ship after they crashed.
  • Subverted when Formora tries this with a fire spell in Chapter 6 while fighting a Scorn Raider that keeps resurrecting itself. The flames from her spell fail to kill the Raider due to not being hot enough to incinerate its body, leading to a case of Infernal Retaliation.
• First-Name Basis: At the start of the story, Ikharos is on a first-name basis with the Exo Stranger, addressing her as Elisabeth during their private conversations.
• Flashback: Chapter 7 opens with a flashback to the final moments of Ikharos's battle with Rhulk in the Sunken Pyramid where he ultimately triumphs over the First Disciple.
• Flesh Versus Steel: Chapter 4 has the battle between Cuaroc and an unidentified Scorn. Cuaroc is described as a Draconic Humanoid made of steel while the Scorn is a zombified Insectoid Alien with all sorts of Body Horror going on for it.
• Forgot He Was a Robot: Exploited by Ikharos early in the story to subdue a hostile ExSec Exo he encounters while exploring the Exodus Ghost Ship. Right before he was attacked, he heard the Exo make breathing noises and deduced that it was still stuck in the mindset of an organic. During their fight, he takes advantage of this by putting the Exo into a stranglehold and slitting its throat. Just as he predicted, the Exo instinctively panics and clutches its artificial throat while hacking for air, forgetting that it doesn't need oxygen to live.
• Fossil Revival: While dissecting a Nïdhwal in Chapter 10, Ikharos (still under the assumption the creature is a mosasaur) is reminded of a philanthropic movement from the Golden Age that tried to bring back extinct species and succeeded in reviving the dodo, passenger pigeon, and wooly mammoth.
• Friendly Address Privileges: Ikharos gets very particular about who is allowed to call him "Ike", only granting permission to those he considers his closest friends. The Exo Stranger specifically warns Formora not to call him by that nickname unless she wants to test his patience. When the Stranger herself addresses Ikharos as "Ike" during a You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious moment, she gets chastised for not having "earned" that privilege yet.
• From Bad to Worse: As if being stranded on the same planet as a Disciple wasn't bad enough, Ikharos learns from Elsie in Chapter 8 that there are actually several Disciples on Kepler-186f.
• Frontline General: In chapter 2, Ikharos sends some Cabal soldiers to board the Ghost Ship they found floating in Kepler-186f's orbit. When asked by Vindica'aur if he will be overseeing the operation from the bridge, he responds that he will join the boarding teams and oversee the operation in-person.
• Full-Frontal Assault: The Exos that attack Ikharos and Elsie on the Exodus ship are described as wearing absolutely nothing.
• Get Out!: Formora says this to Elsie in Chapter 9 after the latter makes a tactless remark comparing her to Galbatorix (the Evil Overlord who brainwashed Formora into betraying the Dragon Riders and caused the deaths of everyone she loved). To be fair, Elsie immediately regrets her words and acknowledges that what she said crossed a line, but Formora is too angry to care and snaps at her to leave her villa.
• Ghost Ship: In the second chapter, Ikharos and his Cabal allies find a seemingly abandoned Colony Ship from humanity's Golden Age in orbit of a strange anomaly surrounding the planet Kepler-186f. Naturally, Ikharos decides to investigate and encounters numerous hostile Exos and military-grade Frames aboard the vessel. He's forced to cut his visit short when a pair of Scornships are detected at the edge of the star system.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: When the Rancis Olytus and a Scornship crashed into the ocean off the coast of Vroengard, the impact created a tidal wave headed straight for the island — much to Formora's horror as she had been sheltering in a tower located along the coast. She and Enduriel manage to outrun the wave and watch from uphill as their tower is destroyed by the flood.
• Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: The skull entity that tries to attack Ikharos inside the anomaly has all six of its eyes burning with cold fire.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: According to the Exo Stranger, this is what would happen to any of the Psions under Ikharos's command if they saw his memories of the Eldritch Abominations he encountered inside the anomaly.
• A God Am I: The two ExSec Exos that ambush Ikharos in Chapter 10 claim to be humanity's gods while speaking in Latin.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Witness plays this role as it is the one who kicks off the plot by sending the Locus to Kepler-186 and the main threat in the story comes from three of its Disciples who are trapped on Kepler-186f.
• Hangover Sensitivity: After spending the entire day drinking away her stress and confusion, Formora wakes up in Chapter 9 "full of morning regrets" with a splitting headache and an increased sensitivity to light in her eyes. The hangover she gets is especially nasty since this was her first time tasting alcohol after decades of abstinence.
• Harmless Freezing: Justified. When Ikharos freezes others with Stasis, he is not actually encasing them in ice, but is putting them in a state outside the passage of time until he decides to thaw them out.
• Hell Is That Noise: Shortly before Ikharos is attacked while investigating the navigation deck of the Exodus ship, he and Xiān heard his assailant, an Exo, make unsettling sounds as it imitated breathing.
• Hero Antagonist: Cuaroc has been ruthlessly hunting Formora across Vroengard for decades, but only because he is under the mistaken impression that she still works for Galbatorix. Likewise, he is hostile to Ikharos during their first encounter because the latter had been found investigating the entrance to the Vault of Souls, which Cuaroc is supposed to defend with his life from any trespassers.
• Hulk Speak: Agaravel is a dragon who telepathically communicates this way after having her mental capacity reduced to that of a talkative toddler as a result of her Eldunarí being broken to Formora's will, something that Formora feels no small amount of guilt for.
  Agaravel: SEE-LOOK-SEE-KNOW!
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: Granny Skuldu finds the idea of having a tongue like a human to be more than a little strange.
  Skuldu: Wonder what that's like: having a tongue. Big fat muscle in the middle of your mouth... weird.
• Humanity Is Insane: Indilic is a Psion who concludes that humans are "woefully short of reason" after seeing Ikharos kill a Nïdhwal by charging into its mouth using nothing but his glaive.
• Hyperspeed Ambush: During the Space Battle early in the story, just as the Rancis Olytus is about to ram the Locus's Ketch, another Scorn Ketch comes out of warp right next to the frigate's stern without warning and rams into it, critically damaging the warship before it can reach the Locus's Ketch.
• I Believe That You Believe It: How a skeptical Formora dismisses Elsie's story about being a time traveler despite the latter having spoken in the ancient language to prove she wasn't lying.
  Formora: You truly believe that.
  Exo Stranger: I do.
  Formora: But nothing you do or say will make me believe you.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • Ikharos decides he definitely needs a drink when he finds the Exo Stranger aboard his jumpship and has no idea how she was able to teleport aboard.
  • In chapter 8, Formora turns out to have been spending the entire day drinking wine in an abandoned villa to cope with all the reality-shattering stuff that's been going on around her ever since Ikharos came to Vroengard.
• I Never Told You My Name:
  • Elsie refers to Xiān by name while asking Ikharos if Xiān is able hack the turrets in one of the Exodus ship's hangars. This leaves him momentarily stunned since he had never told her what his Ghost's name was. This hints towards Elsie having closely known Ikharos in an alternate timeline.
  • During their first meeting, Formora is on the brink of the Despair Event Horizon when she is given a pep talk by Elsie, who addresses her by name. Formora lampshades that she should probably question how Elsie knows her name, but is too tired of surprises to even care.
• If I Do Not Return: Ikharos in the second chapter to his Cabal boarding team on the Exodus upon receiving word that the Scorn have arrived in the system.
  Ikharos: Get to the Harvesters, get out. If I'm not with you in five minutes, go on without me. Don't engage the Skiffs; that's the Threshers' jobs. Just bog that second Ketch down. I should be with you shortly. Should be. Just don't count on it.
• Imagine Spot: While staring at the ocean waves in Chapter 4, Formora fantasizes about leaving Vroengard forever on a silver-prowed ship with velvet sails and going wherever the wind took her.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Cuaroc stabs Ikharos through his chest and sternum with his BFS during their battle in Chapter 8.
• Implacable Man: Cuaroc is relentless in his nightly hunts for Formora and Enduriel on Vroengard. There is nothing either of them can do to hurt him, and any of the island's predators stupid enough to attack Cuaroc get effortlessly slain. No place on the island is truly safe from his reach as he always somehow tracks Formora to her hiding spot each night. Running or staying out of sight are really the only options that Formora has whenever she finds herself being stalked by this thing.
• Implied Death Threat:
  • Granny Skuldu to Formora in Chapter 6.
    Skuldu: Look, dearie, if you want me to lay out the ground rules proper, you just have to say. We're asking, you answer, everyone comes out with a smile on their pretty little faces. Even you. You'll be breathing, you'll be alive, and you'll be grinning like you're smelling daisies because you get to live for good behaviour. Get it?
  • When Ikharos tells Formora (who is feeling pretty reckless from drinking wine all day) that he's immortal, she presses a blade against his neck and offers to "test that theory."
• In-Series Nickname: The Imperial Cabal designate Formora as "local subject Viridae-α1" after her meeting with Ikharos and Elsie in Chapter 9.
• Infernal Retaliation: While trapped aboard the wreck of the Shadow Trespass, Formora tries to kill a Scorn Raider with a spell that sets it on fire after remembering Skuldu's advice that Fire Keeps It Dead. However, the flames aren't hot enough to incinerate the Raider's body, so it continues trying to attack her as its body burns.
• Insistent Terminology: Ikharos and Xiān argue about the correct term to call the Nïdhwal.
  Xiān: It's... I think it's a dinosaur.
  Ikharos: It's not. It's a mosasaur. It's a mosasaur.
  Xiān: Yeah, they're dino-
  Ikharos: No, they're not dinosaurs. They're far closer to varanid lizards than any archosaur.
  Xiān: No idea what that means. Don't need to. It's a dinosaur.
  Ikharos: It's not a damn dinosaur. Stop it.
• Inter-Service Rivalry: Part of the backstory for how Ikharos acquired the Exotic bow Ticuu's Divination. Between the events of Forsaken and Shadowkeep, there was a Psion Flayer from the Blind Legion who had a feud with a Cabal Colossus from the Dust Giants. This culminated in the Flayer hiring Ikharos to assassinate the Colossus by offering the bow as a reward.
• Internal Retcon: In Chapter 7, Ikharos, Indilic, and two other Psions conspire to enact this trope upon learning of Agnisia's escape from the Shadow Trespass. Since the remaining Cabal under Ikharos's command might mutiny if they ever found out he had been keeping Savathûn's Number Two as a prisoner without their knowledge, Ikharos is convinced by Indilic to explain away Agnisia's presence on Kepler-186f by lying to his troops that she had followed him to Kepler seeking revenge for Savathûn's death.
• Internal Reveal: In Chapter 10, Ikharos and Indilic find out that Formora used to be a Dragon Rider and was partly responsible for Vroengard's ruined state after Ikharos uses Deepsight to view a memory of Vroengard's past.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Zig-Zagged. Cabal warships like the Rancis Olytus are equipped with cannons that fire heavy kinetic slugs, but they also use plasma cannons as well.
• Last-Name Basis: Despite living on Vroengard for nearly forty years with Formora as the only person he's had any form of social contact with, Enduriel continues to address her by her family name, Láerdhon. This is meant to demonstrate the adversarial relationship that exists between them.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In Chapter 10, Ikharos views a memory of the past where Galbatorix murdered Glaerun in a fit of madness after putting on a strange mask he found in one of Vreongard's temples. Upon regaining his senses, Galbatorix warned Formora (the only other person present for this event) to never speak of what just occurred to anyone.
• Lightspeed Leapfrog: When the crew of the Rancis Olytus began hunting the Locus of Communion through uncharted space, they were always one step behind their quarry due to having no knowledge of where their target was headed, so the best that they could do was blindly follow the trail of breadcrumbs the Locus left behind. However, once Ikharos learns which star system the Locus was heading towards (thanks to coordinates provided by Elsie), the Rancis Olytus performs an FTL jump and reaches their destination ahead of the Locus's ships that they had originally been chasing.
• Liquid Courage: By the time Ikharos and the Exo Stranger catch up to Formora in Chapter 8, she has already helped herself to some wine and is full of what Ikharos identifies as "liquid courage". Formora demonstrates this by not caring that they can see her partially nude, and acting noticeably haughtier (and snarkier) than before. Also, when Ikharos explains that he's immortal, she reacts by holding a knife to his throat and offering to test his claim, something that she would never even think of doing while sober.
• Living Is More than Surviving: While aboard the crashed Shadow Trespass, Enduriel asks Formora why she is so insistent on protecting Agaravel's Eldunarí if she is never going to use it. When she replies that doing so would be akin to gambling away her entire future, he has this to say.
  Enduriel: What future? What future, Láerdhon? What have we achieved in all the time we've spent here?
  Formora: Survival. We are alive. Is that not reward enough?
  Enduriel: No. It no more satisfies you than I.
  Formora: Perhaps not, but I will not complain.
• Living Lie Detector: Granny Skuldu can tell if someone is lying by scanning their heart rate. She uses this to instantly figure out that Formora is lying when she tries to hide her true identity behind the alias Ferriel.
• Locked Out of the Loop: It's established early on that the Exo Stranger had already experienced a version of this story in an Alternate Timeline, so she possesses foreknowledge of future events which she deliberately withholds from Ikharos and later Formora. When Ikharos asks her why she doesn't just tell him what future mistakes to avoid, she explains that she's worried about causing him to develop tunnel vision and implies that she already attempted to do that with other versions of Ikharos, all of whom died anyway.
  • An example of this is in chapter 3, as the derelict colony ship that Ikharos and Elsie were investigating is pushed into the Negative Space Wedgie by a Scorn Ketch. As the ship passes through the anomaly, Ikharos notices Elsie tensing up as though she's expecting trouble with an exhausted look on her face. From this, he quickly deduces that she had already gone through these same events before in another timeline. When he tries to pry for more information about what's at the other end of the anomaly, Elsie gives the vague response of "Paradise."
  • Also, in this same scene, it's revealed Elsie already knew that there was a Disciple of the Witness waiting on Kepler-186f and that this being was the reason why the Locus of Communion came to that planet in the first place.
  • Elsie knows that Ikharos's all-encompassing Fantastic Racism towards dragons will initially drive him to destroy anything dragon-related he comes across, so she warns Formora to keep Agaravel's Eldunarí and the dragon egg in her bag hidden from him for as long as possible.
• Losing Your Head:
  • The first time Formora fights a Scorn, she tries to kill it by chopping off its head, only to be horrified when its headless corpse gets back up seconds later for round 2.
  • While fighting Cuaroc in Chapter 8, Ikharos slices off his head and assumes he's dead. Since Cuaroc isn't a full Exomind, this does nothing to him and he gets back up while Ikharos has his back turned, then stabs him through the chest before literally tearing him apart.
• Love Goddess: According to the Nightmare of Dûl Incaru, the Hive worship Xivu Arath not only as their War God but also as their "God of Love" because in their Bizarre Alien Psychology, those two concepts mean the same thing.
• Love Is a Weakness: After crashing his jumpship onto Vroengard, Ikharos scolds Xiān for not leaving him earlier when he told her to and instead following him into the anomaly. Xiān's protestation that she couldn't find it in herself to abandon him leads to this exchange.
  Ikharos: Emotion has no place in this war.
  Xiān: Emotion? What the hell does it have to do with EMOTION? You're my partner, my Guardi-
  Ikharos: Love leaves us weak when its chains pull taut. You should have left me, Xiān. You didn't. There's no changing that, yes, but we shouldn't forget that it was the better choice to leave.
  Xiān: Not to me. Never to me.
  Ikharos: After all we've seen? After all we've done, all we've learned? Then more fool you.
• Loyal Phlebotinum: When Ikharos and the Stranger are trapped aboard the Exodus ship after it enters the anomaly, he notes that he's running low on ammunition and asks her about using the guns carried by the Exos and Frames they killed, only for her to tell him that those weapons are all biometrically-locked to their owners.

Tropes M to R

• Madness Mantra: The Scorn Raider that chases Formora and Enduriel into the storage room of the Shadow Trespass has only one thought in its mind that it repeats over and over.
  KILL KILL KILL FOR FIKRUL KILL FOR THE BARONS KILL FOR THE PRINCE KILL FOR FATHER KILL FOR FATHER KILL FOR FATHER.
  • That same Raider also keeps saying some variation of "kill" as it claws at the locker containing a Hive Ghost.
• Magic Is a Monster Magnet: The Scorn seem to be drawn to Agaravel whenever her Eldunarí telepathically communicates with Formora and can somehow hear Agaravel's thoughts over a large distance.
• Mêlée à Trois: The Vroengard arc features four separate factions all trying to kill each other with Formora caught in the middle. There's Ikharos, Elsie, and the Imperial Cabal vs. the Locus's Scorn vs. Skuldu and Agnisia vs. Cuaroc, with Zendolyn-Far acting as an All-Powerful Bystander and Wild Card. Aside from Zendolyn and the Scorn, who aren't aware they're on the same side due to a case of Right Hand Versus Left Hand, each faction stands in direct opposition to everyone else's goals.
• Mile-Long Ship: The abandoned Exodus colony ship that Ikharos and his crew discover orbiting Kepler-186f at the start of the story is colossal in scale. It's said that the ship's cargo pods alone are supposed to be "city-sized".
• Military Salute: Vindica'aur is the only bridge officer aboard the Rancis Olytus who doesn't greet Ikharos with a salute, showing how she doesn't like having him as her superior officer. She finally gives him a salute at the end of chapter 5 after being begrudgingly impressed by Ikharos killing a Nïdhwal in single combat.
• Motive Misidentification: When the Rancis Olytus detected a derelict Golden Age colony ship orbiting a Dark anomaly, Ikharos assumed that the Locus as after something valuable hidden aboard the ship. Elsie explains to him later that the Locus's real goal was to travel through the anomaly to reach Alagaësia. The only reason the Scorn wanted the colony ship was because they needed something to shield the Locus's Ketch from the dangerous entities living inside the anomaly.
• Multiple Head Case: In Chapter 9, Formora watches a doe with two heads fused together get killed and devoured by a Scorn Chieftain.
• Mundane Utility: While living on Vroengard, Formora washed herself using freshwater siphoned from the ocean through an incantation that removed all the salt from the seawater. She also has a spell for drying herself off when she's done bathing.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: In chapter 4, while Formora is exploring the wreckage of the Shadow Trespass, she uses magic to sense the presence of a captive Hive Ghost that Ikharos had been keeping prisoner in a sealed locker. Of course, she has no idea what it is, and when she tells Enduriel about the strange creature she found, he immediately starts to ask if they can kill it. Being smart enough to realize that it's best to leave whatever is inside the locker alone, Formora tells him no and repeats it for emphasis when she sees him considering using his sword to kill whatever was in the locker.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Dark Harmony from Stargazer are alluded to in chapter 2 when Indilic mentions how the sector that Kepler-186 was located in was rife with "silvered corsairs", which the Cabal Empire couldn't be bothered to deal with due to the Hive threat pounding on their doorstep.
  • Ikharos ordering his Cabal allies to ram the Rancis Olytus into a Scorn Ketch while they are in the orbit of Kepler-186f mirrors a scene from Stargazer where Primus Da'aurc had his legion's flagship ram a Fallen Ketch during the battle between the Cabal and the House of Scar above the same planet.
  • While inside the anomaly, Ikharos sees a tall, silver spear like the ones used by the Harmony in Stargazer.
  • Formora and Enduriel being stalked throughout Vroengard by Cuaroc is a nod to Stargazer, where Uren explained to Ikharos that Formora's original fate was to be killed by Cuaroc at the Rock of Kuthian after being hunted through the ruins of Doru Areaba (the city on Vroengard that used to serve as the Dragon Riders' headquarters).
  • One of the weapons that Formora and Enduriel steal from Ikharos's jumpship is the Eternity's Edge sword, which was originally Ikharos's choice melee weapon in Stargazer before forging Néhvaët.
  • Skuldu refers to Ikharos as the Kingkiller, which was the title bestowed upon him by Tarrhis in Stargazer.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • Savathûn's Right Hand, the boss of "The Last Chance" story mission from The Witch Queen, is given the name Agnisia. Her Hive Ghost (also unnamed in canon) is given the name Skuldu.
  • Enduriel's last name is Iomurth.
• Nanomachines: The Exos guarding the Exodus Ghost Ship in Chapter 2 have their bodies filled with thousands of repair mites — microscopic robots equipped with plasma torches and saws that are responsible for keeping their hosts in working condition. They also double as a biological weapon; should any of the Exos be seriously wounded to the point where they start bleeding alkahest, the mites are programmed to attack any organic materiel they come into contact with outside their host's body. Later in Chapter 10, an ExSec Exo that Ikharos slices in half uses the nanomites in his body to form metallic Combat Tentacles.
• Neck Lift: In chapter 3, while making his way to one of the Exodus ship's hangar bays, Ikharos is intercepted by two more hostile Exos that he easily defeats. He then lifts up one of the Exos by the neck, slams it into the corridor's wall, and attempts to interrogate it. When the Exo refuses to say anything, Ikharos uses his Stasis powers to leave it frozen to the wall.
• Neck Snap: While hiding in the Shadow Trespass's storage room from the Scorn outside, Enduriel is killed by a Scorn Raider who uses its Smoke Dash ability to teleport behind him and snap his neck in front of Formora.
• Negative Space Wedgie: When Ikharos first arrives at Kepler-186, he finds a gravitational anomaly of Darkness where the planet Kepler-186f used to be, similar to the one that formed after Mars when the Pyramids first returned to the Sol System. The anomaly gets referred to as a gravity shadow and is described as having the same visual qualities as a black hole, preventing any light from being visible while looking directly at it. According to the Stranger, it was created by a paradox resulting from two colliding philosophies.
• Never Found the Body: Even though Kelgorath was killed in the Ascendant Plane by the Young Wolf at the end of Season of the Lost, a Hidden intelligence report reveals that none of his remains could be found when the Reef asked for confirmation of his demise. Since Kelgorath has already come Back from the Dead multiple times in the past, both Ikharos and Ikora suspect that he may still be alive somehow.
• Nice Day, Deadly Night: Despite most of Vroengard resembling a post-apocalyptic landscape, Formora and Enduriel have found that life on the island isn't so bad during the day as long as they stick to the shores and avoid the areas filled with "poisonous air" (read: high levels of radiation). During the night, however, Cuaroc comes out to hunt the duo, killing anything that gets in his way and only ceasing his relentless pursuit when dawn approaches. This little game of cat and mouse has been going on for upwards of four decades.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Not that Formora really had any other choice, but in order to permanently kill the Scorn Raider in Chapter 6, she resorts to freeing Skuldu — the Hive Ghost of Savathûn's second-in-command in the Lucent Hive — from the locker that Ikharos had been keeping her imprisoned in aboard the Shadow Trespass, resulting in Skuldu reviving her Hive Lightbearer and setting both loose upon Vroengard.
• The Nicknamer: Granny Skuldu has nicknames for everyone as part of her Wise Old Folk Façade. She uses "kiddo" for Agnisia, "dearie" and "Little Formory-doo" for Formora, the "Radiant Lady" and "queenie" for Savathûn, "Her Reefy-ness" for Mara Sov, and several enemy nicknames for the Scorn.
• Nicknaming the Enemy: Granny Skuldu is a Hive Ghost who calls the Scorn, whom the Lucent Hive have been warring with inside Savathûn's Throne World, by several derogatory nicknames. These include "crayfish", "crabs", "arthropods", "rot-cases" and "stick-bugs".
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The Scorn are this in the setting of Inheritance Cycle due to the absence of the Light as well as any weapons that can counter their Resurrective Immortality, which many Guardians take for granted. Because of this, even regular Scorn units that are considered Mooks by the Guardians instead get treated like unkillable Implacable Men when facing the Inheritance Cycle characters. One unarmed Scorn is able to hold its own for a while against Cuaroc, the protector of the Vault of Souls. Another instance was when a single Raider (a common mook specializing in ranged attacks) is able to take on two of the legendary Forsworn in melee combat, killing one and nearly overwhelming the other. This gets subverted later on as Formora has no trouble overpowering and capturing three Stalkers after she's made aware of the Scorn's self-reviving trick.
• Not So Above It All: Despite being one of the fic's Big Bads, Nezarec comes across as a giddy fanboy in the message that he sends to Ikharos in Chapter 12. He struggles with how to properly word his admiration for Ikharos without embarrassing himself and keeps rewriting the contents of his message because he isn't satisfied with how he worded it.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Downplayed. Vroengard is far from being a safe place to live, being filled with radioactive fallout, mutated creatures, and an unstoppable metal beast that hunts for trespassers every night. However, decades of surviving on the abandoned island with only Enduriel and a half-insane Agaravel to talk to has left Formora craving for social interaction so much that a part of her "would have killed to have been bothered." Immediately after this line, we cut to the next scene where Ikharos crash lands on Vroengard while the Cabal, Scorn, and the remains of the Exodus ship all crash into the waters surrounding the island.
• Obviously Not Fine: At the end of Chapter 9, Indilic and his Psions bring a clearly wounded Ikharos to Formora and ask for her help in healing him. Ikharos weakly insists that he's fine despite the visible hole in his chest covered with Stasis crystals.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • We aren't shown exactly how Ikharos killed the Nïdhwal in Chapter 5. The scene ends with him charging into the sea monster's jaws with his glaive, then cuts to the aftermath where a blood-soaked Ikharos is dragging the Nïdhwal's massive corpse onto land where he is greeted with cheering Cabal soldiers.
  • The Curb-Stomp Battle that ensues between Agnisia and a horde of frenzied Scorn outside Ikharos's crashed jumpship happens completely offscreen. We're only shown Formora's perspective from inside the Shadow Trespass as she watches Agnisia and Skuldu exit the ship, followed by the sounds of howling Scorn, an Arc explosion, and Agnisia's battle scream. A few minutes later, Formora cautiously peeks outside and finds Agnisia triumphantly raising her sword and glaive in the air while floating above a battlefield covered in deep scorch marks.
  • Between Chapters 7 and 8, Formora was somehow able to overpower and capture three Scorn Stalkers, which she tied to wooden posts outside her villa to serve as a warning to the other Scorn in the area. This is impressive since she struggled to defeat even a single Raider the night before, though Stalkers are admittedly weaker mooks than Raiders are.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Said verbatim by Xiān in Chapter 3 in response to seeing that Ikharos's jumpship is flying right below the crashing Exodus ship as it burns up in Kepler-186f's atmosphere.
  • Formora has this reaction the first time she witnesses a Scorn Raider she killed come back to life right in front of her.
  • Also Formora in Chapter 6 when she, Skuldu, and Agnisia are found by Cuaroc after leaving the Shadow Trespass.
  • Granny Skuldu and Agnisia share this reaction in Chapter 6 when Zendolyn-Far appears behind Formora in the alleyway. The Exo Stranger later explains to Ikharos that the reason they got so spooked was because they recognized Zendolyn as a Disciple of the Witness.
  • Ikharos's reaction when he learns that Formora freed Skuldu and Agnisia from his locker.
  • Xiān has this reaction in Chapter 10 after Ikharos is hit with a blast from a Valkyrie javelin being wielded by one of the ExSec Exos that ambushed him. She becomes horrified when she is unable to heal him and realizes that the Valkyrie has been modified with Light-suppressing technology, meaning that Ikharos is in danger of permanently dying if he doesn't get his wound treated.
  • In "Log 122A11", Captain Jacob Lee has one when he plays the broadcasted message that the Exodus Prime received from Ezyrax during their first contact in Kepler-186f's orbit. Upon hearing the alien speak in the same language used by the Ahamkara, Jacob screams at his AI helper Nomeon to shut off the message and orders an immediate data cleanse of the ship's communication logs. Not that it does him much good in the end.
• Oh, My Gods!: Ikharos says "High Agonarch" in exasperation while listening to Formora explain how she freed Agnisia's Hive Ghost from his locker.
• Original Character:
  • The first chapter makes brief mention of the Startrotters and Glazetrotters, two OC Cabal Legions which are carrying out military operations under Caiatl and Saladin's orders against the Scorn on the Glykon Volatus.
  • Among the Cabal under Ikharos's command, the two given the most characterization are Val Vindica'aur and High Optus Indilic. Vindica'aur is a Centurion who acts as Ikharos's Number Two and is characterized as a naysayer of Ikharos's leadership, while Indilic is a powerful Psion sent by Caiatl to advise Ikharos on how to handle his troops.
  • Another original character in the story is Granny Skuldu. She is a crazy Hive Ghost who was the partner of Savathûn's Right Hand and is initially imprisoned inside a locker aboard Ikharos's jumpship until Formora frees her, whereupon she becomes one of the fic's antagonists.
  • There's also Zendolyn-Far, one of the Witness's Disciples trapped on Kepler-186f, who Formora first encounters in Doru Araeba while trying to escape Skuldu and Agnisia.
• Out-Gambitted: Ikharos and his task force get outwitted by the Scorn during the Space Battle early in the story. When the Scorn were detected arriving at the Kepler-186 system with two Ketches, Ikharos had a straightforward plan for defeating them — have the Rancis Olytus disable one of the Ketches by ramming it while he takes a squadron of Harvesters to board the other. Unfortunately for him, the Scorn have anticipated what he's going to do and outmaneuver him by sending in one Ketch to act as a decoy. Then, when the Rancis Olytus is preparing to ram it, the other Ketch warps in right next to it and spears its frontal prow through the frigate's stern (which has relatively weak shielding due to most of the ship's shields being diverted to the front in preparation for the ramming maneuver). This knocks the Rancis Olytus out of the fight and leaves the first Ketch free to reach its target uncontested.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: The entirety of Chapter 4 is a classic Survival Horror story set on a deserted island with a monster hunting the survivors. You have Formora and Enduriel as the survivors who spend the day scavenging for food and exploring the area. You have Cuaroc as the Invincible Boogeyman who stalks the duo every night. Formora's only option for survival against the monster is to find shelter with the idea of fighting back never even being entertained. Even after Ikharos's jumpship crashes nearby, the chapter doesn't stop being survival horror as Ikharos is depicted as a Humanoid Abomination from Formora's POV. Vroengard having abandoned buildings and being filled with mutated creatures also gives the chapter a post-apocalyptic feel to it. The sudden appearance of a huge Scorn at the end doesn't take anything away from the chapter's tone as the story treats it as just another monster Formora has to run and hide from.
• Paradise Planet: Kepler-186f gets called a paradise by the Exo Stranger, and later Ikharos when he sees it with his own eyes. This is due to its extremely Earth-like ecosystem with clean air and water untouched by the devastation that the actual Earth experienced during the Collapse.
• The Paralyzer: Zendolyn-Far has the ability to inject others with a specially-made neurotoxin with paracausal properties that causes near-total paralysis in the victim with the exception of the lungs, eyes and cardiac systems, keeping them just barely alive so they can be captured without putting up a struggle.
• Perception Filter: The memory-erasing enchantments protecting the Rock of Kuthian have this effect on the Cabal who are looking at it through broadcasted footage, rendering them unable to see the structure by erasing it from their short-term memory.
• Perpetual Frowner: Vindica'aur is described as looking like she was afflicted with permanent scowl ever since she met Ikharos. This is downplayed in that she only does this in front of Ikharos to show she doesn't like him.
• Pet the Dog: Though it doesn't last long, Granny Skuldu is initially grateful towards Formora for freeing her from Ikharos's locker and convinces Agnisia to spare her life upon reviving her.
• Plasma Cannon:
  • The Cabal frigate Rancis Olytus is armed with cannons that fire plasma bolts.
  • The Heavy Frame that attacks the Cabal on the Exodus ship is equipped with a Shoulder Cannon that fires charged up shots of plasma.
• Power Nullifier: The two Exos that attack Ikharos in Chapter 10 come equipped with a Valkyrie javelin modified with paracausal dampening technology that allows it to generate a suppression field around the user which cancels out any Light or Darkness-based abilities and weapons. This Valkyrie can also fire blasts of Warmind energy which critically injures Ikharos and generates a dampening field around him that prevents Xiān from healing him.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Since this fic takes place after Torobatl fell to Xivu Arath, and the Cabal Empire collapsed from in-fighting and further Hive invasions, it wouldn't make any sense for two Cabal Legions to be traveling through the Kepler-186 system on a mission from Umun'arath (who by this point in the timeline was executed by Caiatl for being a Hive worshipper). Because of this, the Worldbreakers and Soulrazers from Stargazer are replaced with Caiatl's Imperial Cabal.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Ikharos in chapter 2 while interrogating the ExSec Exo that attacked him on the Exodus ship.
  Ikharos: Who. Are you?
• Radio Silence: In his letter to Jaxson at the end of the first chapter, Ikharos informs him that he will be going radio silent while outside the Solar System due to the secrecy of his mission.
• Rage Helm: The soldiers of Val Vindica'aur's honour guard aboard the Rancis Olytus wear helmets engraved with the likenesses of snaring war beasts.
• Ramming Always Works: This tactic is used by both sides during the Space Battle at the start of the story. While Ikharos, Elsie, and a squad of Cabal are aboard the Exodus ship, a Scorn Ketch tries to ram the vessel and push it into the anomaly. Ikharos tries to counter this by ordering Vindica'aur over the radio to ram the Rancis Olytus into the Ketch to prevent it from reaching the Exodus ship. This doesn't work due to a second Ketch performing a Hyperspeed Ambush and ramming the side of the Rancis Olytus, knocking the Cabal frigate out of the fight.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Downplayed. During the Space Battle at the start of the story, Ikharos lets out three "no's" in succession when he sees that the Rancis Olytus has been disabled and that a Scorn Ketch is preparing to ram the wreck of the Exodus ship — the same ship that he is currently aboard.
• Red Baron:
  • Nezarec is called the Nightmare Lord by the Witness's Disciples.
  • According to Elsie, Xhafi is known as the Dragon-Eater by the other Disciples.
• Red Shirt:
  • Aur'oxis is a Cabal Legionary who was amongst the soldiers that accompanied Ikharos when he first boarded the Exodus ship. While going up an elevator shaft, the ship's Artificial Gravity suddenly reactivates, causing Aur'oxis to plummet to their death. They are given No Sympathy by their fellow Legionaries, who think Aur'oxis was Too Dumb to Live for not using their jetpack to save themself.
  • Vrizu'ur is a War Beast that accompanies Ikharos and his team of Psions when they leave their camp to investigate Vroengard's western coast in Chapter 10. During the battle with the two Exos, Vrizu'ur tries to attack one of them, only to get eviscerated by the Exo's mechanical tendrils.
• Redshirt Army: The Rancis Olytus crew start dying in droves once they reach the Kepler-186 system. At the start of his mission, Ikharos left the Sol System with roughly 500 soldiers under his command. Following the Space Battle with the Scorn, going through the anomaly with no way to shield themselves from the Darkness, and crashing their ship into the sea, the crew are reduced to a little over a fifth of their original size.
  Indilic: Forty-three were terminated in the initial collision with the Scornship. Another two-hundred-and-twelve for the ensuing power loss and fall into the gravitational anomaly. Thirty-eight more are confirmed killed by Scorn boarders, five by the accompanying Egregore infestation. Three were crushed when their compartments nearest to the hull rupture were exposed to pressures from the surrounding anomaly. A final fifteen perished upon crash landing.
• Repeated for Emphasis:
  • The Stranger in chapter 2 when Ikharos indirectly tries to pry at her knowledge of the future.
    Exo Stranger: Don't. [narrows eyes and scowls] Don't.
  • Formora does this in chapter 4 while arguing with Enduriel about what to do after seeing Ikharos' jumpship crash on their island.
    Enduriel: What do we do?
    Formora: Something fell out of the sky. Something fell from the sky. What, exactly can we do about that?
    Enduriel: I don't care for your tone.
    Formora: What can we do, Enduriel?
  • Formora also does this in Chapter 4 when she sees Enduriel looking at the locker containing the Hive Ghost the wrong way while holding weapons despite her having already told him to not kill it. She tells him "no" and repeats it in a way that screams "Don't even THINK about it!"
  • Formora in Chapter 6 while warning Enduriel against trying to take the two Eldunarya in her possession.
    Formora: Don't. Don't.
  • Done with Granny Skuldu to show her reaction to finding out where she was being kept prisoner the entire time.
    Skuldu: We're in [Ikharos's] ship. We're in his damn ship.
• The Rest Shall Pass: In Chapter 5, Ikharos and the Cabal survivors from the Rancis Olytus are climbing an underwater cliff to reach the surface when they get attacked by a Nïdhwal. Ikharos chooses to stay behind and insists on fighting the sea beast by himself while the Cabal continue on without him.
• Rewrite: This fic is a rewrite of another fanfic called Stargazer. The reason behind this was because the author felt that Stargazer's plot was losing cohesion and they found themselves dissatisfied with the direction that the original story was headed.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: Occurs while the Exo Stranger is chewing out Ikharos as part of her What the Hell, Hero? moment below.
  Exo Stranger: It's you, it's always you, always bringing in new variables; how the hell am I supposed to plan around you?! Do you want me to kill you?
  [Ikharos opens his mouth]
  Exo Stranger: Don't. Answer that. Don't.
• Rogue Planet: The second chapter opens up with Ikharos exploring the surface of a rogue planet that only just recently got pulled into the orbit of a dying star for any signs of the Scorn having stopped by there.

Tropes S to Z

• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • When Formora is found by Cuaroc while traveling with Skuldu and Agnisia, she abandons her new companions and flees the area. It should be noted that she was always intending to ditch those two at the earliest opportunity and Cuaroc's appearance happened to be just that.
  • Skuldu and Agnisia both skedaddle in Chapter 6 when they come face to face with Zendolyn-Far after cornering Formora in Doru Araeba.
  • In chapter 7, after the waking nightmare that Formora went through — including nearly dying to Cuaroc, the Scorn, a crazy Hive Ghost, and a Disciple of the Witness — she decides she wants nothing to do with whatever Ikharos and his Cabal are mixed up in and leaves the area as soon as she can walk.
  • When Formora's villa is attacked by a pack of Scorn in chapter 11, an injured Ikharos helps Formora escape and asks her to contact his Cabal soldiers and bring them up to speed on what's going on. Instead, Formora outright abandons Ikharos and flees in the opposite direction of where his troops have set up camp. After fending off the Scorn and recovering from his wounds, Ikharos is none to pleased to learn that she ran out on him and issues a warrant for her capture.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Negative Space Wedgie that has engulfed Kepler-186f was artificially created to contain one of the Witness's Disciples and keep them along with the planet's inhabitants trapped in an inescapable Pocket Dimension. Elsie describes the anomaly as "a cell of a prisoner's own making." The Scorn intend to help this Disciple break free so they can rally their forces for an attack on Sol. It's eventually revealed by Elsie that it's not just one Disciple that's stuck on Kepler-186f but several.
• Seen It All: In Chapter 6, Formora has to contend with several Outside Context Problems trying to kill her in the same night, each of whom display abilities that she's never encountered. These include a mechanical Draconic Humanoid, an army of self-reviving Scorn, and a Hive Ghost alongside its Lightbearer Wizard. By the time Elsie finds her, Formora is so numbed with shock that she can't find it in herself to be surprised anymore and takes Elsie's appearance as an Exo in stride.
• Setting Update: Stargazer begins between the events of Shadowkeep and Season of Arrivals. This fic takes place a lot later in Destiny's timeline, being set after Season of the Haunted. This is shown by the inclusion of story elements that were absent in the original such as Ikharos using Stasis and a glaive, the Guardians being in a tenuous alliance with the Cabal, and the existence of the Witness and its Disciples.
• Shout-Out: Elsie identifies the memory-erasing enchantments protecting the Rock of Kuthian as a cognito-hazard.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: While staying in an abandoned barn for the night, Formora hears the sound of metal scraping over stone outside and knows that it's from Cuaroc dragging its greatsword along the cobblestone path leading to the barn's entrance.
• Solar Sail: The abandoned Exodus ship that Ikharos and his crew find in orbit of Kepler-186f is described as having solar sails.
• Space Battle: The third chapter features a space battle near the anomaly with Ikharos's task force consisting of a single Cabal frigate and a handful of gunships going up against the Locus's fleet of two Scorn Ketches and a few dozen Skiffs.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • In canon, the Young Wolf kills Savathûn's Right Hand and destroys her Hive Ghost during The Witch Queen campaign. Here, it's revealed that Ikharos secretly trapped her Ghost aboard his jumpship until Formora freed it, resulting in the Right Hand (who is given the name Agnisia) being revived on Vroengard.
  • In canon, Nezarec has been dead since the Collapse. There's even an entire season dedicated to gathering Nezarec's remains as ingredients for a magical tea that Saint-14 uses to awaken Osiris from his coma. Here, Nezarec appears to be alive and well, being part of the Big Bad Ensemble and personally writing a message intended for Ikharos in Chapter 12. This is actually Zog-Zagged, as while Nezarec's physical body is dead, the Root of Nightmares raid reveals that he turned himself into a transcendent entity associated with fear and hatred, meaning that his soul will exist (and potentially be able to resurrect his body) as long as there are intelligent beings who can feel free and hatred.]]
• Sssssnake Talk: The rank-and-file of the Scorn all seem to talk this way.
  Scorn: Kkkikkkkikkkikkkkillllllllll... ffffforrrr... fffffaaaaatherrrrr.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: In chapter 10, Ikharos is having a discussion with Zendolyn by the cliffside when he gets distracted by two ExSec Exos teleporting in behind him. When he turns back around to look at Zendolyn, he finds that she has already disappeared.
• Stealth in Space: The Shadow Trespass is a jumpship that uses an electromagnetic sight-sheath to generate a stealth field around itself to keep it from being seen by other ships.
• Suddenly Shouting: While battling a Nïdhwal in chapter 5, Ikharos does this in anger when he realizes that he's lost his precious knife after stabbing it in the Nïdhwal's eye.
  Ikharos: Where's- [sees his knife stuck in Nïdhwal's eye] THAT'S MY FUCKING KNIFE!
• Suicide by Cop: Attempted by Formora in Chapter 9. After many hours of drinking wine and smoking a plant that's implied to be the Alagaësian equivalent of weed, Formora stares out the window of her villa and catches the attention of a Scorn Chieftain outside, who aims its energy rifle at her. In her drugged state, Formora finds that she can't see the point in living and waits for the Chieftain to shoot her. Fortunately, Zendolyn-Far saves her by opening a portal that swallows up the Chieftain at the last moment.
• Summon Bigger Fish: When Formora is trapped in an Enclosed Space aboard the Shadow Trespass with a Scorn Raider that refuses to die, she resorts to releasing a Hive Ghost named Skuldu from the container that Ikharos had trapped it in. Skuldu proceeds to revive her partner Agnisia, a powerful Lightbearer Wizard who effortlessly disintegrates the Raider with a single spell, then goes on to slaughter all the Scorn that were waiting outside the jumpship. This gets played with since Formora had to be convinced by Skuldu to free her and only did so out of desperation after seeing the Raider shrug off everything she tried to throw at it.
• Summon to Hand: Ikharos is able to use his control over Resonant energy (gained from killing Rhulk) to summon Lubrae's Ruin to his hand at will.
• Surveillance Drone: The Awoken use surveillance drones disguised as crows. Ikharos owns six of these, which he has Indilic deploy in Chapter 7 to scout out Vroengard as well as spy on Formora after she leaves.
• Switching P.O.V.: Beginning in Chapter 4, the viewpoint alternates between Ikharos and Formora with a single POV provided for each chapter.
• Sword Drag: Cuaroc, the metal beast on Vroengard, uses a massive claymore that he drags through the ground by the blade as he wanders around his island, leaving a narrow trail carved into the earth next to his footprints. Having been hunted by Cuaroc for decades, Formora can tell if he's nearby simply by listening for the sound of his sword scraping along the ground.
• Tactical Withdrawal: In Chapter 5, Ikharos orders the surviving crew of the sunken Rancis Olytus to Abandon Ship and retreat to the nearby island of Vroengard. This is because they are all sitting ducks for the Scorn so long as they stay holed up in the crashed ship, which still has a Ketch full of Scorn rammed into its hull. If they flee to the island, they can recoup their losses in a much more defensible position and eventually launch savage operation to retake whatever remains of the Rancis Olytus from the Scorn. As is in character for Cabal, Vindica'aur objects to the idea of retreating, but Ikharos doesn't care and says as much through Brutal Honesty.
• Taking You with Me: Narrowly averted in Chapter 5. After the Rancis Olytus is rendered permanently inoperable from crashing into the sea surrounding Vroengard, Val Vindica'aur attempts to go out in a blaze of glory by reactivating the ship's heavy cannons to fire explosive rounds at the Scornship still lodged in the side of her ship's hull. She is stopped by Ikharos, who arrives just in time to countermand her orders in favor of abandoning ship.
• Team Member in the Adaptation: Ikharos is a member of Ikora's Hidden when that wasn't the case in the original version of the fic.
• Technicolor Blade:
  • Galbatorix is shown dual-wielding a pair of Rider swords (one with a blue blade and one with a red blade) in the memory of the past that Ikharos views through Deepsight in Chapter 10.
  • Glaerun's Rider sword was a rapier that had its blade colored stone-grey like the scales of his dragon.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • It's made clear early on that Vindica'aur dislikes working with Ikharos and only follows his orders because her rank and honor is on the line. Her main gripe seems to be over how she has to act subordinate to someone outside the traditional Cabal chain of command. Ikharos does little to alleviate tensions, accidentally disrespecting her in front of her own officers at one point and regularly keeping her Locked Out of the Loop until the last minute. Their relationship grows worse as the story goes on as Vindica'aur blames Ikharos for stranding them on Kepler-186f and inadvertently getting most of her troops killed.
  • Despite being fellow Forsworn and having lived together for decades, Formora and Enduriel despise each other and can barely tolerate the other's presence. The only thing keeping them together is that fact that they need each other to survive on Vroengard and trying to go their separate ways would be tantamount to suicide with Cuaroc still hunting for them on the island.
• The Teetotaler: Formora and Enduriel refrained from any drinking during their time on Vroengard since they needed to keep their heads clear if they wanted to live to see another day on the island. After Enduriel's death, Formora figures since she's now alone with nowhere on the island truly being safe, she might as well indulge herself with some of the creature comforts she denied herself for decades like fine wine.
• Telepathy:
  • High Optus Indilic uses his psionic powers to communicate with others telepathically rather than verbally.
  • The Scorn can hear thoughts as though they were spoken aloud, which is how they are able to keep finding Formora and Agaravel on Vroengard as both communicate with each other telepathically.
• Terms of Endangerment: Granny Skuldu constantly addresses Formora using the pet name "dearie". She continues to do this even while giving her an Implied Death Threat and doggedly pursuing her throughout Vroengard.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Ikharos while chewing out Xiān as part of his Anger Born of Worry moment in Chapter 5.
  Ikharos: As much as I'd like to say I'm not angry, that I'm just disappointed, that isn't the case at all. I'm angry and disappointed.
• That Wasn't a Request: After reviving Agnisia and saving Formora from a Scorn Raider, Skuldu is ready to leave the Shadow Trespass and asks Formora if she wants to come with them. When Formora fails to answer due to being distracted by the sight of Enduriel's corpse, Skuldu then clarifies that she wasn't actually giving her a choice in the matter.
  Skuldu: You want out or naw? [Formora remains silent] 'Fraid that question was rhetorical, dearie; c'mon. Now.
• That's an Order!:
  • Ikharos to Vindica'aur when she objects to his plan to ram the Rancis Olytus into the Locus' Ketch.
    Ikharos: Unless you want to run back to your Empress with your tail between your legs, we stop them here. That is an order. Defy it at your own peril.
  • Happens between Ikharos and Vindica'aur again in Chapter 10 when she wants to immediately go after Agnisia upon learning of her location and voices her discontent with him when he asks her to be patient.
    Ikharos: You mistake me, Val. I am your commander. What I ask of you is no request but an order. I am not pleading for your patience; I am demanding it.
• That's No Moon: After crashing his jumpship on Vroengard, Ikharos and Xiān notice the presence of what appear to be stars in the sky, which they find strange since the planet they're on is located inside a Pocket Dimension separate from the rest of the known universe. Indilic suspects that the stars are part of an illusion meant to fool the planet's inhabitants. It's not until later in Chapter 10 do they realize that the lights in the night sky aren't stars but Kill Sats.
• Threat Backfire: After leaving Ikharos at the end of Chapter 7, Formora tries to intimidate the remaining Scorn on Vroengard into staying away by capturing Stalkers and crucifying them to wooden posts outside the abandoned villa she was staying at. Ikharos informs her that this would only attract more Scorn to the area since all Scorn are linked by a Hive Mind.
• Tracking Device: In Chapter 7, Ikharos gives Formora a small distress beacon which she can use to transmit her position if she ever needs his help in the future.
• Trading Bars for Stripes: It's mentioned by Ikharos that the Blind Legion (one of the Cabal scout legions from the first Destiny game) was a penal legion. This would explain why the Psion conscripts within this legion had bombs implanted in the heads when the Psions from the Imperial Cabal didn't.
• Trapped-with-Monster Plot:
  • While not the focus of the plot, at the start of the story, Formora and Enduriel have spent close to four decades stuck on a deserted island with a metal beast hunting them. This is downplayed in that the two chose to stay on Vroengard because it's the last place that anyone would ever think to look for them.
  • In chapter 6, Formora ends up stuck in a locked storage room aboard the Shadow Trespass with a Scorn Raider trying to kill her that constantly heals from any damage she deals to it.
• Trespassing to Talk: In Chapter 2, when Ikharos returns to the Shadow Trespass after exploring a Rogue Planet, he finds the Exo Stranger casually sprawled across his couch inside, waiting for him to talk about his current mission. This gets played with since the Stranger is actually the ship's original owner, having built and designed it herself before it came into Ikharos's possession — something that she is quick to point out to him.
• Trust Password: After rescuing Formora from Zendolyn, Elsie brings her back to the crashed Shadow Trespass and gives her a code phrase for when Ikharos finds her: "Paladin Oran built everyone's haven after Vesta's end. Faulty orientation offsets latency." Upon hearing Formora repeat this phrase, Ikharos lets her go free instead of allowing his Psions to detain and question her.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: How Ikharos introduces himself to Formora.
  Ikharos: Ikharos Torstil. Warlock — Voidwalker, Shadebinder, Resonator, Sunsinger and Stormcaller.
  Formora: Are those titles? Am I supposed to be impressed?
  Ikharos: It's more of a resumé.
• Two of Your Earth Minutes: When Ikharos asks Indilic for an update on Formora's location in Chapter 8, Indilic replies that she was spotted at a hamlet "just one of your hours ago."
• Use Your Head: At one point during Ikharos's fight with the Exo onboard the Exodus, the Exo slams its head into his helmeted face after being disarmed of its knife. The Exo also tries headbutting Ikharos again when the latter attempts to interrogate it, only for Ikharos to freeze it mid-headbutt.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: After Ikharos struck the final blow against Rhulk during the Vow of the Disciple Raid, he gained Rhulk's Resonance powers and the ability to summon Rhulk's signature glaive Lubrae's Ruin.
• Victory by Endurance: In Chapter 6, Formora gets locked in a room aboard the Shadow Trespass with a Scorn Raider. Despite being more skilled than her opponent, Formora soon finds herself at a disadvantage as the Raider's Resurrective Immortality allows it to almost instantly recover from anything she throws at it. She realizes that if this keeps going on, she will wind up exhausting herself from constantly spending energy in her attacks. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Formora avoids this outcome by freeing a Hive Ghost being kept prisoner in the same room. The Ghost then revives its Lightbearer Wizard who proceeds to make short work of the Raider.
• Villain Respect: In his message to Ikharos in Chapter 12, the Big Bad Nezarec expresses total admiration towards him for his victories over Oryx and Savathûn. He ends his message by saluting Ikharos as a Worthy Opponent and eagerly proclaiming that he can't wait to meet with him in-person.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: The Nightmare of Dûl Incaru almost seems to have a crush to Ikharos, borderline flirting with him in their interactions and generally having No Sense of Personal Space. Ikharos doesn't reciprocate and wants nothing more than for her to leave him alone.
• Villainous Rescue: Near the end of Chapter 9, Zendolyn-Far saves a drunken Formora from a Scorn Cheiftain that was about to snipe her from afar by opening a portal right below the Chieftain's feet before it can make the shot.
• Walk, Don't Swim: In Chapter 5, Ikharos and the Cabal survivors walk along the seafloor to reach the island of Vroengard from the sunken wreckage of the Rancis Olytus because the power armor worn by the Cabal soldiers make them too heavy to swim.
• We Are as Mayflies: Discussed in Chapter 9. Formora outright refers to the dwarves and urgals as mayflies while comparing their lifespans (which are similar to humans) to that of elves. Ikharos lampshades this trope by correctly pointing out that how mayflies being short-lived is just a myth. Mayflies actually have multi-year lifespans, but spend nearly all of that time as nympths and only reach adulthood at the end of their lives. Formora still thinks that her mayfly comparison is applicable since (from her perspective) dwarves and urgals only gain wisdom in their waning years, at which point it is too late for them to do anything with it.
• Wealthy Yacht Owner: Lampshaded. During the Golden Age, Elsie was part of the extremely wealthy and influential Bray family. Upon being told that she is the original owner of the Shadow Trespass, Ikharos sarcastically asks Elsie if his Jumpship used to be her family's yacht.
• What Are You:
  • Formora asks this of Skuldu upon hearing the Hive Ghost speak for the first time and finding herself unable to bypass her mental defenses. She also asks Skuldu this about Agnisia after witnessing her resurrection and use of unfamiliar magic, to which she is flippantly told not to worry about it.
  • This is one of the questions that Formora asks the Exo Stranger after seeing her robotic appearance. The Stranger gives the short answer "Exomind", then provides a quick and abridged definition of the term, which Formora barely understands given Alagaësia's Medieval Stasis.
  • Ikharos asks this of Zendolyn-Far the first time he meets her face-to-face in Chapter 10.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Elsie is absolutely livid when she learns from Formora that Ikharos had been keeping Skuldu and Agnisia captive aboard the Shadow Trespass the entire time. Upon reuniting with Ikharos in Chapter 8, she immediately decks him across the face and furiously calls him out over the idiocy of bringing a Hive Lightbearer with him to Kepler.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Ikharos can't place Formora's accent and best describes it as sounding vaguely Nordic with some French undertones and a Gaelic lilt.
• What Were You Thinking?:
  • Ikharos's reaction to finding out that his Ghost followed him into the anomaly, which was the exact opposite of what he told her to do.
    Ikharos: What the hell were you thinking?!
    Xiān: Hiya, PLEASE don't be mad. I couldn't leave you!
  • The Exo Stranger, massively pissed off, asks this of Ikharos while chewing him out over secretly keeping a captive Hive Ghost onboard the Shadow Trespass.
• Who Needs Their Whole Body?:
  • In Chapter 6, after seeing a Raider get back up less than a minute after she decapitated it, Formora tries slicing it in half with her sword. This proves to be even less effective than cutting off its head was, as the upper half of the Scorn's body continues dragging itself across the floor without even pausing.
  • In Chapter 10, Ikharos slices a hostile Exo in half using his glaive, only for the Exo's upper torso to crawl after him by using the nanomachines in its body to form mechanical tendrils to drag itself across the ground.
• Why Isn't It Attacking?: In Chapter 5, Ikharos swims to the crash site of the Rancis Olytus and finds the ship laying at the bottom of the sea with a Scorn Ketch still rammed into its stern. After fighting his way through some Scorn boarders and locating the ship's survivors, he notes how odd it is that the Scorn from the nearby Ketch haven't tried to Zerg Rush the Rancis Olytus like they usually would. This makes him paranoid that the Scorn are either trying to distract them or are preparing some sort of trap, so he orders the survivors to Abandon Ship and head for a nearby island to set up temporary fortifications.
• Wrong Context Magic:
  • A fundamental law of the magic system in Inheritance Cycle is that no one can come Back from the Dead because the soul dies with the body.^note The only confirmed exception to this rule are dragons, who each have a Gem Heart called an Eldunarí that functions as their Soul Jar. Even then, they still need this body part intact to endure, and a dragon can't be physically restored from their Eldunarí once their body has died. The Scorn casually flaunt this rule with their very existence, being Eliksni who've died and then had their corpses reanimated through the use of Dark Ether. They can also continually resurrect themselves anytime they're killed with certain individuals like the Scorned Barons even keeping their memories of their past lives. For Formora, witnessing a Raider that she just decapitated suddenly get back up was a reality-shattering experience.
  • The Scorn's method of Resurrective Immortality also works differently from that of Shades. With Shades, it at least takes some time for them to rematerialize after being destroyed and they can still be permanently killed by being stabbed through the heart. With Scorn, it takes less than a minute for them to self-revive and they don't have any body parts that can be exploited as an Achilles' Heel. Also, Shades are living people possessed by evil spirits rather than actual zombies like the Scorn.
• X-Ray Vision: In Chapter 4, Formora casts a spell that allows her to see through the door of the locker containing Skuldu onboard the Shadow Trespass.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Elsie addressing Ikharos as Ike in Chapter 8 after his battle with Cuaroc. Up until that point, she had only addressed Ikharos by his full first name, and even specifically warned Formora against calling him Ike. So when she suddenly starts shouting "Ike!" to his face, it's clear that something has gone very wrong. This manages to snap Ikharos out of the magic-induced stupor he had fallen into as a result of getting exposed to the cognito-hazard surrounding the Rock of Kuthian.
• You Know What That Means: Occurs while Ikharos is discussing his findings about Alagaësia's Weird Sun with Vindica'aur and Indilic, namely how it looks nothing like Kepler-186's red dwarf star and is an exact copy of the Sun in the Sol System.
  Vindica'aur: How do you know the sun is false?
  Ikharos: Because it's a carbon copy of Earth's — of Sol itself. Right to the smallest detail. Xiān performed tests. It's taking all the same roles. Do you know what that means?
  Vindica'aur: No?
  Indilic: It means something has the power to alter an entire star.

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