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Xivu's soul is peeled apart violently, in a single, rapid strike. Her other half, the Ascendant one, shrinks and rolls up like paper in flames, and its scream is terrible, ear-splitting and bloodcurdling and enough to make her see stars. That's some damn great power, she thinks. Rage and pain blind her like blood streaming over her eyes. She lands hard, face down, on the surface of Crota's warmoon, and now the blood is in her mouth as well, rushing out through the teeth and chitin-cracks and between broken bones.
She needs a moment to collect herself. Every part of her is howling—her flesh, her worm, her soul ripped in twain, the cacophony rolling over her like a landfall as she lies struggling for breath. Oh, she will kill her for this. She isn't even sure which sister she is thinking of; and that's of little matter, really, she'll kill both of them, for the gall and audacity and sheer foolishness. She already feels the influx of tribute: the power drawn from that act of war upon her, the entire weight of her throne world being ripped away from her, returning twofold and rushing back down her veins like the sweetest nectar. The sheer force of it is enough to keep her pressed to the ground, straining and trembling with newfound strength. She laughs shakily, and spits out five teeth.
Shutting her out of her throne world, really now. She had an unfinished dice game with Haroktha. The flow of tribute shuts her parasite up, but there is still a cacophony of voices yelling in her head; worms her gods and the Deep Itself and her confused adjutants all screaming like thrall set on fire and asking how, HOW, how did she do it and how did you let it happen and how could you not see this coming. The constant noise blinds her almost as much as the pain does. It is harder to tune them out now that she is locked out from her own mind palace.
They do not ask the useless question of Why—it is useless when Savathûn is involved, they've learned, with her lies and tricks and imbaru-schemes serving no other purpose than sustenance and her own amusement. She likes to pretend to have reasons for her foolishness, but it is results moreso than motives that speak volumes about her actions, and her erstwhile gods consider managing the former to be far more efficient than wondering about the latter. The only thing that concerns them now is Xivu's failure to contain her.
But Xivu Arath has never been able to keep from asking the useless question.
So why would her sister do something so stupid?
It is always like that with Savathûn. A victory that is a defeat that is a half-truce that is a means to an end, the paths branching out like chemical blooms and blending into each other, until it is impossible to map them, and the strategist in Xivu screams in fury. Eris Morn is different—clever, yes, but a lot like Oryx, knowing the value of power and impatient to cut down to the core of things. She was single-minded in her goal, sword-sharp: to defeat, or to die trying. No; this plan, this defeat-that-is-a-victory is Savathûn's language, a coded message, and admission of something too delicate or too dangerous to speak aloud.
Her worm gnaws at her impatiently. It too is sword-sharp in its pursuits, demanding either victory or defeat and never an ambivalence, and it cannot stand those two mutually exclusive concepts twining. You lost, it hisses, you gained power, but you lost, you lost, and you must never lose, you must never fail to be the strongest, even if the price is power. It thrashes and shouts furiously. Xivu Arath ignores it, and scrambles to sit up.
Her head flares up with white hot pain, a cascade and then a string of pulses in her temples. Her broken ribs and barked skin pulsate along. Blood crusts at the edges of wounds, coalescing in the cold thin air, and every movement pulls at the scabs and tears them open anew.
And through the ache and the cries of her worm, Xivu Arath smiles.
She smiles, because Savathûn her Sister loves her, and this love is war.