Another Fruitless Year

Sangheili did not like the cold. Their homeworld was warm and arid, with little to speak of in the way of winter seasons. The very sight of snow was enough to make some warriors’ skin crawl. Such a substance was unnatural, some said. A strange condition that bred inferior species. If creatures like the humans found it beautiful, was that not simply proof of their degeneracy? Looking about the snowy fields stretching out around him as far as the eye could see, Tuka ‘Refum couldn’t help but wonder if such talk was simply an excuse for the warriors of the great houses to stay safely within their keeps, fighting on the homeworld while those of lesser houses—the impoverished, the outcast, the exiles—went off to die on worlds such as these, bodies sinking into the white, inferior snow. In his short life he’d seen dozens of worlds beyond Sanghelios, even as far flung as the human homeworld. So many different worlds, different species, different climates. But they’d all had one thing in common: war. How old was he now? Sangheili measured the span of their lives in seasons and years, but it was said the number of one’s days mattered little until one reached maturity and became something more than a burden on their clan. If this were true, than Tuka was perhaps senior even to many of the warriors who called themselves his elder. After all, he’d become a warrior far earlier than any of them. Had it been that terrible night when he discovered Shinsu standing amidst the corpses of House Kotar? The night his brother had ceased to be his brother, the night the world had stopped making sense. Or perhaps it was earlier, on another dark night when shadowy warriors had come to purge House Refum and burn away everything he’d thought he’d known. Tuka pulled his cloak tighter around him, mandibles twitching in the cold wind of memory. A Sangheili lived for battle. Wasn’t it an honor to become a warrior sooner than most? Yet a warrior fought to honor his clan. To have his deeds recorded in the family’s battle poem so that his name might be passed down to future generations. That way it never truly mattered how long you lived, so long as you spent whatever time you had in the world bravely and honorably. But he had no battle poem to aspire to. No clan to fight for. He’d never even had a proper keep, just the paltry sum of land allotted to Refum before their destruction. And what would the poem say, if it even existed? Tuka ‘Refum abandoned his brother and kaidon. Joined the Covenant, defeated and spared by the mercy of human Spartans. Pledged his sword to a human, made a mockery of the warrior tradition, and even then could not protect his master. An exile and a failure. The thought stung, but Tuka couldn’t help but smile at such a fate. It was fitting for a warrior like himself, he reasoned. Refum had no legacy save for Shinsu’s bloodlust. Tuka was glad to have no part in that. “You’re your own man now,” Stray had said the last time they parted. When the commander released Tuka from his service and faded off into the shadows. “Do whatever you want.” The commander. By human standards, Tuka surmised, he was twenty-one years old today. Older than the outcast warrior he’d once pledged loyalty to. Humans, it seemed, came of age even sooner than Sangheili. And what did he want, anyway? He lacked Shinsu’s drive or Stray’s ambition. All he’d ever really wanted was a cause worth fighting for, yet even that simplest of goals had eluded him. In the end he simply drifted from one battle to another, never really knowing what could be worth all the pain and doubt. There was no warrior’s pride in any of this. Just fear and uncertainty. But he couldn’t help but smile all the same. Perhaps he was a failure many times over. Some warriors lived their whole lives in comfortable certainty, never knowing what it meant to lose everything and be forced to rebuild. At the very least, young Tuka ‘Refum had come this far of his own accord. He’d been meant to die alongside the rest of Refum, yet he survived another year all the same. That in and of itself was accomplishment enough for him.