Index Frontier – Act01 Chapter01 – Solas............................................................................................... 4 Frontier – Act01 Chapter02 – Telemica ........................................................................................ 6 Frontier – Act01 Chapter03 – Vatyr .............................................................................................. 7 Frontier – Act02 Chapter04 – Should You Choose To Accept It .................................................... 9 Frontier – Act02 Chapter05 – Concerto ...................................................................................... 11 Frontier – Act02 Chapter06 – Battaglia....................................................................................... 13 Frontier – Act02 Chapter07 – Coda............................................................................................. 15 Frontier – Act03 Chapter08 – Twist of Fate ................................................................................ 17 Frontier – Act03 Chapter09 – Higher Ground ............................................................................. 19 Frontier – Act03 Chapter10 – Terminal Logic ............................................................................. 21 Frontier – Act03 Chapter11 – Dead of Winter ............................................................................ 24 Frontier – Act03 Chapter12 – Spoils o f War ............................................................................... 27 Frontier – Act04 Chapter13 – Desert Creatures ......................................................................... 30 Frontier – Act04 Chapter14 – Death From Above ...................................................................... 32 Frontier – Act04 Chapter15 – Consequences ............................................................................. 34 Frontier – Act05 Chapter16 – Weapon of Choice ....................................................................... 36 Frontier – Act05 Chapter17 – Life Waters .................................................................................. 38 Frontier – Act05 Chapter18 – Freakangel ................................................................................... 41 Frontier – Act06 Chapter20 – Throwing Stones .......................................................................... 44 Frontier – Act06 Chapter21 – Broken Mirror .............................................................................. 46 Frontier – Act06 Chapter22 – The Golden Path .......................................................................... 47 Frontier – Act07 Chapter23 – A Band Apart ............................................................................... 49 Frontier – Act07 Chapter24 – Electric Sheep .............................................................................. 51 Frontier – Act07 Chapter25 – Starseeds ..................................................................................... 53 Frontier – Act07 Chapter26 – Neverland .................................................................................... 56 Frontier – Act07 Chapter27 – Murder of Crows ......................................................................... 58 Frontier – Act07 Chapter28 – Shattered Dreams ....................................................................... 60 Frontier – Act07 Chapter29 – Defying Gravity ............................................................................ 63 Frontier – Act07 Chapter30 – Sinister ......................................................................................... 67 Frontier – Act08 Chapter31 – Lost In Spacetime ........................................................................ 68 Frontier – Act08 Chapter32 – Time In A Bottle ........................................................................... 71 Frontier – Act00 Chapter33 – Hardcover .................................................................................... 76 Frontier – Act00 Chapter34 – Master And Commander ............................................................. 78 Frontier – Act00 Chapter35 – Do Not Go Gentle ........................................................................ 79 Frontier – Act09 Chapter36 – Exfil .............................................................................................. 82
Frontier – Act09 Chapter37 – Maneuver .................................................................................... 84 Frontier – Act09 Chapter38 – Advance ....................................................................................... 88 Frontier – Act09 Chapter39 – Gambit ......................................................................................... 91 Frontier – Act09 Chapter40 – Black Sun ..................................................................................... 94 Frontier – Act09 Chapter41 – Deep Stone Crypt ........................................................................ 95 Frontier – Act10 Chapter42 – The Siege of Shards ..................................................................... 98 Frontier – Act10 Chapter43 – Words That We Couldn’t Say .................................................... 101 Frontier – Act10 Chapter44 – Piercing ...................................................................................... 103 Frontier – Act10 Chapter45 – Cleaving ..................................................................................... 106 Frontier – Act10 Chapter46 – A nnihilating ............................................................................... 110 Frontier – Act10 Chapter47 – Infection .................................................................................... 115 Frontier – Act10 Chapter48 – S acrifice ..................................................................................... 119 Frontier – Act10 Chapter49 – Brave.......................................................................................... 121 Frontier – Act10 Chapter50 – Warden ...................................................................................... 124 Frontier – Act11 Chapter51 – Forward ..................................................................................... 126
Frontier – Act01 Chapter01 – Solas Venus Aphrodite Terra, Ovda Regio The sound of distant active volcanoes seemed almost artificially muted so deep in the vast Venusian rainforest. The boom and rumble bounced and distorted off the thick trunks of the local flora so much so that to the uninitiated, it was as if the canopy itself was voicing its displeasure at the foreign presence of a Guardian. However, Solas-3 was anything but uninitiated in the ways of this world. The Exo walked carefully through the dense growth, taking care to disturb as little as possible. The Warlock knew through research and harrowing experience that while there were far more dangerous things on Venus, even the Fallen scouts learned to fear what naturally lived here. Predatory beasts, as well as violent plants knew the balance of this place, and were quick to attack what seemed out of place. While the tense peace of this place always intrigued Solas-3, this incursion was for a different purpose. Two days earlier, orbital scans revealed the specific non-baryonic signature of a new Vex conflux being formed. While the majority of Vex activities have focused more on the planet’s other continent, their actions have been less predictable since the Black Garden was cleansed of the evil heart and returned to the normal spacetime flow of our universe. While researchers and talking heads back at the City would consider the ramifications of these scans for days, Solas was far more of a hands-on intellectual. “Wisp,” Solas whispered as he placed every step with care on the moss-covered ground. His Ghost materialized a few inches from his shoulder, hovering with him. “How much further?” “According to our ship’s latest low-orbit scans, the neutrino confluence is directly ahead.” informed Wisp calmly. Solas-3 slowly dropped to his stomach and began to crawl. In a few feet, he found himself at the lip of a large and deep depression in the land, perhaps created from an ancient celestial impact. A clearing in the canopy let some sunlight in, but the Vex synth-stone structure as it riled and folded into our 3-dimensional brane did far more to light up the space, casting its cold glow not just on the local wildlife but on the several dozen Vex units as well. Solas-3 chose to engage, numerous harpies would lock him down long enough for the goblins and minotaurs to destroy him. The enemy was most certainly attempting to gain a foothold in this new area and was ready to repel any small scouting party, thought Solas-3. At this point in the reconnaissance mission, Wisp would be keying up the armour’s sensor suite, being sure to keep all scans passive while Solas-3 would drop into a trance and seek what the universe was willing only to reveal to one who walks in the light. However, a ping caught both their attention before this could happen. “Priority Gemini recall order from The Tower.” said Wisp, “No further information, but it looks like it’s just for us.” Solas-3 sighed slightly. It was a low-level fireteam recall, usually used to lure Guardians into non-critical operations. Newer fireteams would usually scoop up these jobs off the general relays to rack up favour with command and others influentials. For this type of recall to be sent specifically to a veteran fireteam was odd. Wisp grabbed what data it could before Solas-3 cautiously vacated the area. An hour later, his ship auto-extracted him from a bare cliff to deliver him to those who beckon him.
Frontier – Act01 Chapter02 – Telemica Mars Elysium Planitia West of the Elysium Mons volcano The sinister powder brought to bare by a Martian sandstorm could be considered far more dangerous than any Cabal rocket round. Fine enough to get into everything and coarse enough to do a lot of damage once it’s there. When whipped about by super-high winds, the sand overloads barriers and clogs up almost every armour system. A Guardian often has an easier time acclimatizing to the hard vacuum and null-gravitational conditions on the Moon. Surviving on Mars is a skill hard-earned. The storm had passed hours ago, depositing a thick and pristine layer of powder across the plain. As the last vestiges of the tempest bucked against the distant visage of Elysium Mons, a new roar filled the landscape, which heralded the approaching Cabal convoy. Moving southeast, the convoy stretched as far as the naked eye could see. Thousands of Sand Eaters and hundreds of Harvesters transports and Goliath tanks kept a slow, steady pace across the terrain. Intel suggested they were interested in setting up several logistical holdings in the area. The Cabal column was slowly moving into the engagement zone, but all Telemica Magna could think about was the sand that was slowly working its way into crevasses that she didn’t have names for. Her Titan armour had saved her from more assaults both seen and unseen than she’d be able to count over the years, but this sand would best her, given time. Her fortresslike form, and the dozens of other Guardians she was currently in command of, were all suffering the same silent discomfort, since the only way to conceal the trap from Cabal scouts was the let the storm bury them. It was Telemica’s idea. “Creative camouflage”, she had called it, and regretted the concept almost instantly. By charting the course the Cabal would take and forming up Guardians on either side of that path, Telemica’s plan was coming together perfectly. The full length of the Cabal formation would be assaulted at once and from all directions. Telemica had to use every iota of influence she’d gained from decades of service and storied victories in the Crucible, but eventually Commander Zavala saw the possible gains outweighed the risks. The Sand Eaters were low on supplies and needed energy and materials to bolster their forces. Operations in Freehold had taken its toll over the years and cracks in their effectiveness were showing more readily. At her word, the Guardian formation would rise from the rust and fire a united salvo of rockets at the heavy assets, while buried charges would break any Cabal will to respond too quickly. Telemica’s heart began to swell with the glory she was about to bring to these Guardians and her Titan order. Perhaps she’d find the Cabal commander. Perhaps she’d make it scream her name over Cabal comms before jamming a shock grenade down its throat. While others spoke of much-needed salvage for the City, Titan Magna only cared to send waves of fear through the Cabal ranks. “Incoming commands from the Tower, Lady Magna.” spoke the meek voice of Squire, her Ghost. Telemica’s mind didn’t register it. The time for battle had come.
Frontier – Act01 Chapter03 – Vatyr Earth Ruins of Old Toronto The sun was just cresting over the horizon, but the Awoken hunter Vatyr S’Jet was always hours into his schedule. His Ghost Glitch displayed holographic representations of various traps going through their final automated checks and syncs. Hunter S’Jet was just finishing the reconstruction of his sniper rifle. It was a ritual for him. The pattern of it soothed him. Harassment, others called it. control an area through guerrilla tactics and make operations in that area undesirable. Vatyr just thought it was wicked fun. The Fallen House of Exile had recently moved what few Earthbound forces it had to this continent and were currently seeking a place to build a stronghold. Exile was always in dire straights when it came to supplies and infrastructure, and this half-flooded city seemed like a perfect spot to put down some roots and build. Plenty of materials to salvage and old skyscrapers to dock their ketch against for much-needed repair. Vatyr’s keen hunter instincts warned him of movement at street level before his sensors did, even from his perch over 50 stories up in a half-destroyed office tower. Settling into sniping position, he peered down his long-range scope and ramped up the zoom. Yep, 9 Dregs and a Vandal were weaving their way through the street, filtering around the husks of old vehicles. While the main force was busy setting up under the broken spire in the city centre a few kilometers away, this group seemed to be a simple scouting party. A sly grin formed on Hunter S’Jet’s face as his crosshairs settled on the Vandal leader. He took an almost cruel enjoyment from seeing Dregs panic after their commander either died, or ran away in a futile effort to save his own life. A blinking indicator popped up on his heads-up display. Glitch silently overlaid his analysis along with video from a remote camera feed, showing another scouting party to the north and another to the west. All three were in Vatyr’s actionable zone, and therefore existed from this point on solely for his amusement. Through the armour’s neural interface, Vatyr and Glitch concocted a plan: herd all three groups into the same killbox using planted explosives, and pick them off one by one. Each one wondered who was more evil for liking the plan. The staccato pops of distant explosions echoed through the urban ruins. The party Vatyr had at the end of his rifle barrel looked agitated as their Vandal commander attempted to keep composure. Soon the other two squads came running into the intersection that the first was holding in. Vandals and Dregs screeched, squawked and growled at each other. Vatyr kept telling himself he should learn the Fallen language, but for now he let Glitch do the translating. “They’re pretty rattled, boss. They have no idea what’s going on.” mused Glitch, sharing in her Guardian’s smug amusement. He set off a few other distant charges just to keep them on edge as Vatyr lined up his shots. Pop, followed by the screaming hiss of a Fallen’s essence violently vacating its body through the space where its head used to be. One Vandal down. Pop. Hiss. Another Vandal down with only one left. The Dregs were in a full craze now. Some fired wildly into the surrounding towers
while others simply ran. Glitch set off another two charges close to the intersection, one of which vaporized a fleeing Dreg. There was to be no escape from this hidden and wrathful god. A background beeping caught the hunter’s attention as he felled another Dreg that attempted to bug out. “Recall order from the Tower. Priority… Gemini? Must be a mistake.” Vatyr prized himself on having a keen sense of things, and something about this message seemed to be more than what it seemed. With lightning reflexes, he quickly mopped up the last 14 Dregs while letting the last Vandal run back to spread cheery tales of what it was like to be a fish in a barrel. Glitch set the remaining charges on proximity protocol while Vatyr broke down his rifle in the same ritualistic fashion he always did. They’d be back at the Tower before lunch.
Frontier – Act02 Chapter04 – Should You Choose To Accept It Earth The Last City, Caucasus Mountains The Tower While the common understanding of The Tower by citizens of The City is that it was a giant military installation, to the Guardians who dwelt within it was much more. Over the centuries since its construction and the legitimization of the Vanguard command, Guardians had formed their own culture centered there. Rites, rituals and codes evolved naturally among the demigods that sought to take back what the darkness had stolen. Vatyr sipped his tea on the steps of the Tower Watch. He found observing ships come and go soothing. The noon sun felt warm on his shaved head as his sunset-orange eyes tracked flyers of various designs. A contented grin formed across his blue-white face as the herbal tea relaxed his body and his mind. He learned a long time ago that one thing a hunter must always seek is the calm before the storm. Vatyr spotted Telemica exiting Guardian Hall and waved her over. A powerful Titan in and out of battle, she towered over other Guardians who honoured her with a wide berth. The natural intimidation of her tall and powerful physique was offset by her exuberant and reassuring face. Dark chocolate skin etched by combat, intense emerald eyes and blood-red hair set in a way that was attractive but just short enough to not become a hassle. Few were not phased when that scarred visage of confidence and beauty exploded in the fury of battle, but her helm spared most of that. “Reporting in on your latest glorious victory, no doubt.” Vatyr half -joked, grasping her extended right forearm in an age-old sign of greetings among warriors. “Of course!” laughed Telemica, chest puffed in pride. “The Cabal formations collapsed easier than I expected. If only I had an assistant to f ill out these damned reports.” “Or perhaps a bard to sing your praises everywhere you tarried!” joked the Hunter. When it came to battle, Lady Magna’s success was so rarely in doubt, Vatyr considered it some cosmic joke played on her foes. By the expression on Telemica’s face, it appeared mention of a bard caught her fancy, and suddenly he felt sorry for her Ghost in what would no doubt be his new responsibilities. Before Vatyr could continue, a Ghost flew over to them from the north. “Hunter S’Jet and Titan Magna. The Speaker wishes to address you both at your earliest convenience.” it said before scurrying off. It was not unheard-of for The Speaker to converse with Guardians, but it was notably rare. The Speaker was often reclusive within his observatory and few wished to trouble him. The general feeling was that since he had the ears of the most powerful people in The City and his concerns were beyond a normal Guardian’s ken, it seemed unwise to interrupt. As the two Guardians entered the northern wing of The Tower and approached the observatory, they spotted the third member of their veteran fireteam waiting at its entrance. Solas-3 starred at the immense machinery that somehow allowed The Speaker to do his work, though starred would be technically incorrect. Solas didn’t have eyes, but did indeed see. People often had a hard time conversing with the Exo who had the majority of his face covered
with metal. Some dared to ask if he saw through the two black horn-like apparatuses that gave him a pseudo-fantastical look, but he would never answer definitively. It was the first secret of the Warlock built of secrets. “Ho there, Solas” spoke Telemica as they reached him. They didn’t worry about surprising him, as they knew Solas saw things beyond what normal eyes could. Solas turned his head slightly in their direction to address them, his indigo backlight seemed to be a visual calming agent to his words, “We should not keep The Speaker waiting.” before walking in. The other two followed. At the top of the single curved flight of stairs, The Speaker busied himself with holographic displays. No doubt the latest scans of The Traveler. The Speaker turned to address the fireteam when they approached. “Ah. Yes. Good. Thank you for returning so quickly, Guardians. I have need of you. There is a small band of humans living in old Italy. Western Sicily. They need to be extracted and brought to The City with as much speed and as little attention as possible.” “Why not just send a transport with regular militia?” Telemica asked as respectfully as possible. Gathering refugees was not something Guardians often did, especially veteran fireteams. “The darkness is swirling around a point of light. It must be saved.” said The Speaker in his usually cryptic fashion. The answer didn’t satisfy the Titan, but before she could press, Vatyr touched her shoulder, signalling her to pause. “As you wish, Speaker.” said Solas with a small bow. The other two followed suit and exited. As the three Guardians made their way to the hangers, Telemica’s patience was wearing thin. “Do you two want to fill me in?” she asked as she followed. Solas was ahead but didn’t slow his pace or turn when addressing her. “The Speaker does not want this mission to be high-profile, but it is critical nonetheless. Gears turn. There is much more at play here than we realize.” “Our dossiers were on his screens as well. Fireteam history, psychological assessments… he’s chosen us specifically for this mission, whatever it may be. It also explains why this mission was given such a low priority but was assigned to us. He’s hiding the operation in plain sight.” Vatyr interjected. Telemica nodded in understanding. It put her on-edge to not have all the available information, but a soldier followed orders. At least she knew to expect more than what was on the surface. “Whatever it is, Fireteam Warden will be triumphant!” she exclaimed with a raised fist. Vatyr found her confidence reaffirming, and knew Solas did as well, regardless of the lack of reaction from him.
Frontier – Act02 Chapter05 – Concerto Earth Old Italy, Western Sicily The personnel transport bucked hard against the turbulence. A storm was moving into the area over the Pacific ocean. Vatyr hated turbulence. Put him in a ship approaching the speed of light and his constitution was solid, but put him on a rocking boat and you’re likely to find him tossing his lunch overboard. Most Awoken had the same affliction. Vatyr could not wait until he was back on solid ground as he adjusted his armour’s settings in an attempt to calm his stomach. In contrast, Telemica slept sitting up, and Solas was so still in his seat that you’d be forgiven for thinking the synthetic was simply off. “Visual on the landing site” announced the pilot over the intercom. “This storm will likely get a lot worse before it gets better. Once we land, it’ll be difficult to take off until it clears.” Telemica arose and checked the ship’s sensors. The shoreline was littered with various structures predating the Golden Age. What little intel The Speaker had provided said the refugees would be found here. Hiding. Hiding from what, Telemica wondered. No Fallen houses or bandit gangs were reported to operate in the area. The ship jostled harder this time. The storm would no-doubt be a full-blown hurricane in hours. The pilot had little choice but to put her down at the first opportunity. Scans of the surrounding buildings showed several dozen heat signatures coming from the beachside buildings, and landed a few meters away from the one with the most signatures. Under the pitch black and angry sky, Telemica banged on the large door to what looked like an ancient chapel. “We mean you no harm! We bring food, medicine and safety! Please let us in!” she announced loudly enough for those inside to hear over the howling winds. It took a few more announcements for the doors to open. Guns, some old enough to be in a museum were leveled on the fireteam as they slowly entered with hands in the air and helms off. Vatyr instantly counted 56 human refugees in this chapel alone, with at least 10 of them being armed with more than knives and sharp implements. Solas was the last to enter and he seemed to change the energy of the room slightly. Vatyr guessed they didn’t encounter many Exo out here. Telemica rolled the large sack of offerings from her shoulder and held it out at arms-length. “As promised. I hope these help. We only mean to talk.” An elderly woman hidden behind the altar rose to her feet and walked toward the guardians down the centre isle without reservation. Using simple hand gestures she commanded one of the armed men to take the sack. He did, and after a quick inspection handed it to the woman, though the woman’s eyes never left those of Telemica’s. “Speak.” She commanded. “We’re Guardians of the Last City. It’s a place where you and your people can be safe and comfortable. We’re here to transport you there.” Telemica announced. “And if we decline your offer?” the matriarch asked defiantly. “We’re not going to abduct you, but if you’ll let us explain, I am sure you’ll want to come with us.” responded Vatyr. The Matriarch’s gaze seemed to change when looking at the Awoken.
Had she never seen one before, or what it something else? Tense minutes past before the Matriarch waved her hands in the air, signalling the guards to lower their arms and allow the Guardians entry. A woman bolted to the Matriarch’s side and was handed the sack, which was promptly emptied and surveyed. A tense hour later, Telemica, the Matriarch and her advisers were discussing the situation at hand in a corner room while Vatyr was ogled by the rest. Children prodded his armour, poked his luminescent face and tugged at his gold-white cloak. A few of the maidens even giggled and laughed in the corner while stealing glances at him, and Vatyr took enough amusement from it that he stole a few right back. Solas was right by the altar, taking in what was obviously the ritual centre of the room. A statue of a man nailed to a cross fascinated him. No doubt part of a long-lost religion. The face of the man was of agony, but not pain. There was also something else he was observing: the small girl hiding behind the altar. “You can come out of hiding. I am not a threat to you.” he said softly. She arose slowly. She was wrapped up completely in grey cloth with not a single part of her exposed. Even more curious, Solas could not see through the seemingly simple vestments. “Perhaps I am the threat.” spoke the girl in a voice that could not be older than eight years. “Perhaps. I suggest a truce for the time being.” responded Solas. Normally such a conversation between a Guardian and a child would be comical, but there was something about this child that told Solas she was being dead serious. She stood there for a moment observing the Exo before walking the main group. “Night comes. Be vigilant.” she whispered. An explosion rocked the chapel. Vatyr rushed towards a boarded-up window and peered between the boards to see the transport in pieces and flames. Telemica rushed out with the Matriarch and others, donning her helm. A new and angry howling rose over the wind, and fireteam Warden understood why a simple militia team couldn’t handle this mission. The Hive were upon them.
Frontier – Act02 Chapter06 – Battaglia Earth Old Italy, Western Sicily “We’ve got incoming!” hollered Telemica. Vatyr and Solas could sense the familiar excitement in her voice. Of course Telemica’s focus was the safety of the refugees, but she savoured combat like others enjoyed fine food or drink. She quickly posted herself by the front doors as others created whatever barricades they could. The sleek form of a Suros Regime auto rifle formed in her hands. Vatyr leaped up on to a thick wooden beam in the centre of the ceiling. Taking a crouching position, motioned for his A.1F19X-Ryl scout rifle to appear in one hand and Scout to materialize in the other. “I’m going to need as many swarm grenades as you can give me. Devote all the armour resources to it except for the cloak.” he commanded as he faded from sight. Scout began to zoom around the open space of the hall, depositing exploding nanobots that would swarm upon any Hive in proximity. In a few short seconds the space was filled with nearly a hundred of the small buzzing points of light. Solas readied his hand cannon “Heaven Can Wait” and took up a defensive position behind the altar and pulled the mysterious girl under it. “Stay here.” He said shortly. “I can help!” protested the girl, even as the sounds of approaching Hive intensified. Solas paused for a moment. “Yes. You can. Just not here or now. For now it is my place to protect you. Will you allow that?” he asked with a hand on her shoulder. Solas didn’t yet understand the intricacies of it, but he knew this little soul was at the centre of all this, and had been for a longer time than just this night. “Yes.” The girl sighed in resignation. “Please. Thank you.” The screams from outside stopped as the front door suddenly bucked hard. Trigger fingers applied pressure. Muscles tensed. Breathing stopped. Stained glass and wood exploded from the sides of the room as Thralls leaped into the chamber. Their cries were short lived as they were shredded by a cloud of buzzing swarm grenades. Scout continued to zip around the air, replenishing what he could. The front door bucked again and a sense of panic began to rise. “There are far more demons out there than other nights!” cried one of the armed men, his flight instincts overpowering his fighting sense. Another slam against the door. It would soon give out. “Look to the Guardians, my children! They will keep us safe!” announced The Matriarch to her kin. Telemica took the queue and raised a fist into the air, charging it with a burst of solar light that spread over her body as she let out a bloody roar. She knew many of these people would die tonight, but if any were to survive, they needed to have hope first. Giving her troops hope was something Lady Magna was renowned for. The door exploded into tinder as the hulking form of rage known as a Hive Knight entered the chapel, leading a flood of Acolytes and Thralls. Telemica leaped out from behind the battlements and sundered the Knight’s armoured skull with a massive light-charged flying haymaker punch. The knight crumpled and evaporated as Telemica landed and began to unload on the others.
“Fight! The night will be ours!” bellowed Telemica. A hail of bullets joined hers as more Hive poured through the doorway. Squire materialized and began pulsing charges of arc light into the wall of enemies, hoping to impress his goddess of war. Vatyr supported Telemica with precision fire from his perch, but he knew Scout’s efforts to cover the area with swarming nanobots would give out soon. Thralls entered the fray via blown windows as fast as the holes would allow. From the rear, Solas’ massive hand cannon rounds helped to hold the space as his warlock mind raced. He could see that The Hive were being attracted to something, but he couldn’t sense what. Normally his sight, which pierced the veils between this reality and others, could spot such a thing instantly, but he could find nothing. The only oddity was the child, who seemed to be encased in a cloak of nothing. Not invisible, but a vacuum of existence. No light or darkness seemed to interact with her. Before Solas could continue that train of thought, a Hive Wizard ripped its way into the spacetime above the altar and dove down. At Solas? No, he realized. He dropped his weapon and brought his hands up, slamming his void light against the darkness of the intruder. When a Wizard and a Warlock dueled each other, it was a battle of titanic minds wielding the essences of universes, rather than tools throwing bullets and explosives. They didn’t attempt to simply destroy each other, but unexist their foe. Solas had engaged in such duels before, but this Wizard was different. Its mind was deeper and blacker than anything the Warlock had encountered before. Massive. So deep and cold it appeared limitless. Energies spiraled between the two but the Wizard was closing in. A skittering laugh came from the monster, as if to taunt the Exo’s inevitable failure. Knights burst through the walls that once held the main doors and slammed into forward barricades, forcing Telemica to throw up a barrier of light. It would hold but not for long. The refugees cowered within the bubble, expending the last of their ammo. Vatyr’s swarm grenades had been used up and Scout had retreated back into the Hunter’s armour, exhausted. Vatyr switched to his Defiant Gravity-A machine gun, and used an ammo synthesis module, but his reserves would not hold long. “Enough!” screamed the little girl. Solas suddenly noticed she was bravely standing beside him, holding the hand cannon he dropped with both her hands. As she pointed it at the Wizard, the gun appeared immense in her small hands. Surely firing it would snap her wrists, but before Solas could protest, she pulled the trigger. Everything went white.
Frontier – Act02 Chapter07 – Coda Earth Old Italy, Western Sicily The sun was shining. It was the first thing the Guardians and refugees noticed. The sun cast its warmth as if it was a normal summer afternoon. No rain. No clouds. No wind. The second thing they all noticed was that they were lying upon the faint remains of the chapel. A ring of splinters and sticks was all was left of the quaint structure. A crater existed where walls once stood, and the only thing in the crater were people. The Guardians were the first to wake up. Vatyr scouted the shoreline while Telemica saw to the surprisingly intact refugees. Some died in the battle and many were hurt, but whatever ended the conflict didn’t seem to cause any additional injuries. Solas walked inland towards a cliff overlooking the beach. There he found the little girl, wrapped in a blanket. As she starred out over the water with trepidation written on her face, Solas began putting the pieces together. She turned to him, her elvish Awoken features glowing faintly under the blanket. A tear finding its way down her cheek. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of it. Matriarch Hera just insisted on keeping me safe. Always safe. She would have died for me, sacrificed the others for me.” Solas saw the hand cannon on the ground next to her, its barrel pealed back like a banana all the way to the cartridge. The handle apparently melted by intense heat until the impression of the girl’s hand was sunk deep into the metal. “Your gift makes you a target.” “I led them away from danger, to safe places. I could sense which way to go. They think I’m some sort of blessing, but I’m a curse.” She said, choking back her sadness and slowly holding up her Ghost to Solas as if proving her point. “Even this little one couldn’t protect me. He gave me my shroud and then just… turned off.” Wisp materialized and flew over to the girl’s ghost, bathing it in light the colour of love and family. Solas could hear the cheers coming from below. The refugees must think they were saved from demons by angels. It was not the first time those cut off from humanity saw the world in such archaic terms. Such is the way of things when the truth of The Traveler’s light and the Golden Age becomes myth and legend. In time they’d come to know the truth. “It is not dead, but the light within it is nearly gone. I hypothesize that bringing back one such as this required a vastly larger expenditure of light than usual. It can be rejuvenated with time and care.” Wisp said, enveloping the girl’s Ghost in light. In seconds, its little eye blinked blearily back to life. The girl broke down in tears, thanking Solas and embracing him. The Exo was not accustom to physical affection, but did his best. He saw this girl’s light clearly now, and it was bright and lovely. ——— Earth The Tower One Week Later
The Speaker has sensed the girl, named Angela, coming into the world some time ago, but because of the stealth shroud her Ghost had given her for protection, he could not track her down. He knew her Ghost was somehow incapacitated due to the lack of communication, and that The Hive were sniffing her out. If The Speaker had sent a large group of Guardians, it would have tipped off the enemy too quickly. Conversely, if a high-priority call was made, Vanguard command would have likely requested proof and other red tape. The Speaker needed a small team to get the job done without drawing any attention. The girl was important. After all, she was to be the new Speaker. Angela’s unique gifts gave her a unique connection to The Traveler and its light that was beyond that of a normal Guardian. While Speakers were generally long-lived by the day’s standards, they needed to train apprentices, yet worthy candidates were few and far between. These precious few lived with the current Speaker and took over duties when the master died or was otherwise unfit to continue. Word of Angela spread fast. Her young age and power were certainly noteworthy, but she’d also be the first Awoken Speaker. That fact alone had far-reaching political ramifications. Solas found Angela standing on the outer walkway by The Speaker’s great machine. She wore white robes and a white metallic headband denoting her place and status, but they didn’t seem to suit her just yet. She was staring at The Traveler as Solas joined her. “Matriarch Hera and my people seem to be integrating well.” She said with a sigh. “Yes.” Solas responded calmly. “I know. I’m not supposed to think of them as ‘my people’ any more. All under The Traveler be under my care and guidance at some point. Still, it feels good to focus on a small group for now.” Solas said nothing. The silence held for some time. “I never thanked you for all you and your team did. We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for you.” “You saved us. You. Never forget that. It is within you to change to course of our civilization, and others. I, and all Guardians exist to serve you” Angela nodded, a smile meeting a tear at the corner of her innocent face. Her right hand reached up to find his left. “You’ll visit?” “Of course” said Solas in a caring tone that surprised them both, yet didn’t. As darkness continued to seek paths of destruction, the sun began to set on the last bastion of a civilization that one little girl was charged to lead under a dormant god, and one synthetic who would die to protect her.
Frontier – Act03 Chapter08 – Twist of Fate Venus Forward Base Lambda If the Martian city of Freehold represented the public advancement of The Golden Age, then surely the Ishtar Collective represented the scientific paragon of that time. The best minds humanity had ever crafted did there work under the Collective’s watch, and surely a great wealth of it survived The Collapse. Over the last few months, Vanguard Command has applied increased forces to Venus theatres. The goal was to put pressure on the now-weakened Vex and keep them under wraps while City forces dug in and took control of key assets. The Fallen House of Winter represented an entirely different problem. Arguably the biggest, strongest and most aggressive of the Fallen houses, Winter was present during The Collapse and has been picking at the bones of our past for a very long time. Vanguard Command had found that even though operations to eliminate key members of their leadership- not the least of which was their Kell, Draksis – were successful, their ability to project force on Venus has only increased. Telemica was not considering strategy. At the moment she wanted nothing more than to put her fist through the table, but her Titan honour wouldn’t allow such a display against a superior. Commander Zavala had come to Venus to inspect the ongoing operations there, and would no doubt be leaving in a more dour mood than usual. Those that he appointed to take control of the planet were using Guardians as regular soldiers, holding rigid lines and waiting for orders. Over the years, the Consensus built a regular military so that Guardians would be more available for special missions of greater import. Over time, power brokers within the bureaucracy weaved Vanguard Command into that military structure just enough that Guardians could be used in regular deployments. It was a situation Zavala, Cayde-6 and Ikora Rey had yet to find a solution for. Guardians make their own fate… Telemica thought over and over in her head as useless yesmen buzzed around the Commander. How would he be able to make proper choices if all his
advisers fed him nothing but half-truths and placative lies? Zavala requested that Telemica attend the meeting in the cramped prefabricated bunker. He’d look at her every so often as the others spoke. She’d check her posture and try to look like she was honestly considering the empty words of these gnats in uniform. Guardians make their own fate…
Her fist clenched and relaxed. Guardians make their own fate…
She tried to focus on overhead readouts that should be showing all the lives lost due to bad command decisions but instead heralded unimportant gains. Guardians make their own fate…
She suddenly noticed Zavala was ignoring his lackeys. His eyes were affixed to a map showing one of Winter’s ketches. It was once Kell Draksis’ seat of power, but since influence had shifted after his death, it was just one more ship in their fleet. Zavala raised a finger and pointed at display, triggering a holographic representation of the area to appear above the centre table. The room lit up with images, reports and parameters as the ketch grew. “And what of this?” Zavala interrupted with, moving to the table. “Why has a major Fallen asset like a command-level ketch been designated a low priority?” He grabbed a report frame from midair as if it was on a physical clipboard. “This report suggests a new PraKell has taken it over, and is perhaps even constructing a new subprime Servitor.” Excuses rang out. Guardians couldn’t assemble in great enough numbers, in proper formations and quickly enough to mount a classical frontal assault on such a hardened target. Excuses. Blame shifted to Guardians in the latest of half-veiled efforts to bring them more firmly under boot. Zavala’s eyebrow raised at that and his eyes found Telemica’s, knowing her Titan honour was just as much on the line as his. “What do you think, Guardian?” Telemica’s face exploded in a predatory grin that would strike fear into even the most stalwart foe. That was why Zavala had asked her to be there. Zavala needed a real Guardian victory, and he knew fireteam Warden would deliver. Her voice rang out so that even those working outside would hear her call to arms, “Guardians make their own fate!” she roared before charging out the door and into the Venusian midday rain. The officers protested. Zavala barely cared to hear them. Solas and Vatyr were under a tent tending to their own equipment. Vatyr whistled a tune as he calibrated some of his armour’s tactile feedback routines. “You may want to finish up. We’re about to embark on another ill-advised endeavour.” said Solas as he and Wisp finished up a report. Before Vatyr could ask what he was talking about, Telemica joined them, giddy with excitement. “I’ve got our next mission!” Telemica proclaimed. “Do tell.” responded Vatyr, who now knew what Solas was warning of and that the next words out of Telemica’s grinning face would be tantamount to suicide. Telemica’s fist clenched and rose with assured victory, “We’re going to steal a ketch from the House of Winter.”
Frontier – Act03 Chapter09 – Higher Ground Venus “I shouldn’t have to say it again.” piped up Vatyr. “I’m betting you will will anyway.” groaned Telemica. “Indeed I will!” ” feigning indigence this time with a slap on the knee. “This is a bad idea.” “Pray tell, which part of the plan are you referring to?” asked Solas. “The concept of stealing a huge interstellar ship filled with Fallen elite? The fact that it is just the three of us alone and with no backup attempting this madness?” “Nope. None of that bothers me in the slightest.” corrected Vatyr. “It’s the halo drop. I hate drops.” The small transport shuddered slightly to flavour his comments as it broke through the highest layers of the planet’s thick atmosphere. Before the Golden Age, Venus was covered in a dense fog caused by a runaway greenhouse effect. Terraforming efforts over hundreds of years made Venus hospitable to life of a more human variety. While you could now see the surface from orbit, that didn’t ease Vatyr’s nerves at all. “I’ll never understand how an Awoken could be afraid of heights.” teased Telemica. “We don’t make a habit out of jumping out of our ships and dropping tens of thousands of meters.” rebuked Vatyr, checking his armour’s seals for the fourth time. “It’s bad for your health.” The ketch’s location was srcinally discovered via an old mine entrance, but subsequent incursions have forced the Fallen to heavily fortify that route. There was no chance for three guardians to pass through undetected. Stealth and speed would be key, as the target could literally fly away at any moment. While the idea for a low-orbit drop directly to the hull was Solas’ idea, Telemica was all too eager to enact it. Optical camouflage would hide their decent from upward eyes and Solas would utilize some intricate arc light to catch them on landing. A blinking yellow light in the hold notified them that the air was being vented out, which changed to a solid red as the rear door opened. Fireteam Warden stood in single file as Venus filled their view, her curvature and terminus proclaiming her majesty. Telemica wanted to take point, but as Solas was the only thing keeping this trip from ending prematurely, he stood in front. The red light began to blink. Once. Twice. Thrice. Green light. Training took over and three Guardians gave themselves to gravity. Being exactly on-target was beyond critical for the team’s survival, not to mention the mission’s success, so each Ghost took over the body positioning and micro-controls of each Guardian’s armour. Wisp, Glitch and Squire had to put them down mere meters from each other, which was a task not possible without their immense computational capabilities. Vatyr and Solas couldn’t hear it, but were certain of the terrifying grin that must now be on Telemica’s face. As soon as the trio broke through cloud cover, small strapped-on packs on their chests opened up and thin meshes of optical filaments deployed to cover their fronts, mimicking the view of the sky behind the descending warriors and rendering them at least partially invisible. Vatyr
could have used his armour’s cloaking systems, but as he was now unable to see himself falling faster than the speed of sound, he found he actually calmed a bit. Of course, Solas could see through the mesh. Wisp gave him the landing target through their neural interface that the three Ghosts would put the Guardians down on, but it was up to the Warlock to land them safely. 5000 meters. 4000 meters. 3000 meters. Solas began to form arc light bubbles around his team, weaving magnetic lines through them and the metallic body of the ketch below. 2000 meters. 1000 meters. The team screamed past the point where parachutes would have worked if they had them. The bubbles began to coalesce. The camo mesh burned away as the shells became nearly opaque, but Vatyr still got a quick view of the rapidly approaching landing site, sending his heart into his throat. 500 meters. 100 meters. The Guardians could feel their skin ignite with arc light as their armour did all it could to keep them from blacking out due to rapid deceleration. 50. 10. 1. Three solid balls of lightning touched down like feathers on the hull of the massive ship, then vanished quickly as they grounded out along the hull. Touchdown. No to think breathe. The three Ghosts andspotted quicklyand cut armed a hole in the hull as the time Guardians ranorquick diagnostics, made surematerialized they were not themselves. A round slab of hull was silently levitated out and Vatyr bent down inverted into the hole, ‘Heaven Can Wait’ hand cannon raised. As expected, they were right over a service gantry. No guards. Vatyr dropped in silently, followed by his team. Glitch zoomed over quickly to an interface panel and hacked in. “No alarms triggered. I’m tapped in, but I can’t take control from here.” The other two Ghosts replaced the hull plate so the intrusion wouldn’t be obvious. “I’ve got the layout.” she said as she displayed it holographically for the team. “Command and control is in the centre of the ship, engineering is closer to the engines and the hanger is on the ventral side.” Icons appeared to represent they locations. “The Pra-Kell will be in C&C and the subprime Servitor will be in engineering. If either one tips the other off to the attack, we’re finished. They’ll need to be attacked simultaneously, which means we’ll have to split up.” said Telemica as icons for those targets were placed. “I’ll go after the Pra-Kell. Solas, you can match any Servitor. Vatyr you’ll need to back him up.” “Sure thing, but what about the Pra-Kell’s guards and other Fallen” asked Vatyr. “I have a plan. Take control of engineering as quickly as you can, then come back me up.” said Telemica with calm confidence as she summoned her ‘Suros Regime’ auto rifle. Vatyr nodded. The three Ghosts reintegrated into their Guardians, and with a quick nod between them, the fireteam began their journey deeper into the Fallen ship.
Frontier – Act03 Chapter10 – Terminal Logic Venus House of Winter Ketch Simiks-Fel Engineering section Rumor has it that Winter’s Prime Servitor was destroyed long ago in a battle involving some of the first Guardians. Since then, While the House’s resources have always been vast by Fallen standards, lost Servitors were not something easily replaced. A form of synthetic life all their own, they needed to be cultivated and nurtured. Grown, in a fashion. Such a thing took time and resources not readily available to the Fallen, and there was no assurances that a Prime would arise from the dozens of precious Servitors being tended even under the care of skilled priests. Solas could feel a Subprime Servitor nearby. As beings born of void light, their very nature sends vibrations through the fabric of spacetime. Their signatures were unique to a Warlock sensitive to such forces. “I’ve search Winter’s database. The Subprime has been designated Suviks-2 and the Pra-Kell’s name is Plasis. The Subprime appears to be performing all the roles of a Prime for Winter, but has yet to undergo its final metamorphosis.” said Wisp over the interface. “It could be a matter of days before Winter becomes a much larger threat.” “I suppose it is good timing on Commader Tzu’s part. He can always trust Telemica to obliterate a crucial target in grand fashion.” retorted Solas. “Not unlike a bomb…” quipped the Ghost. Solas knew Wisp held a bit of satirical disdain for Titans and Hunters. Leaving their little lights together to bandy about and tout the Guardians they are bonded to was a source of amusement for the fireteam. Solas stayed crouched, separated from the main engineering section of the ketch by a vented grate. Vatyr had gone ahead under cloak and was systematically clearing the engineering section of Fallen. The room was a vast and poorly-lit chamber filled with immense spacetime-bending machines and crisscrossing walkways. Vatyr used the zero-G functions of his armour to traverse these walkways inverted and unnoticed. He flowed from target to target, eliminating them silently by sliding his blade into the back of their necks in a flash. The surgical attack instantly incapacitated the Fallen, but didn’t have the flashy explosion that accompanies taking their heads clean off. Each dispatched foe was helpless and limp as their ether slipped out. When Vatyr was relatively sure the room was clear of softer targets, he dispatched Glitch to interface with the main engine controls that were located high above the floor. Glitch would attempt to lockdown until the next phase of the plan she and the other Ghosts had devised. Vatyr found himself an elevated position to cover both his Ghost and the newly located target. Far down below in a large nest of computers, cables and other unrecognizable devices all woven together hovered the Subprime Servitor, Suviks-2. It sat there, exposing its inner workings to the bed of technology it lay in, tendrils of etheric energy everywhere. it pulsed with a burden Solas knew well as Vatyr relayed back video. “It’s preparing to become a true Prime.” said Wisp. “We need to act immediately.”
“No.” Solas said, obviously engrossed in the site. “This is something that happens once in many lifetimes. We stand to benefit much more if we allow it to happen and observe.” “We’ll have to fight a fully-fledged Prime.” Vatyr stated as fact, his voice not betraying his feelings one way or another. “We can handle it. The gains outweigh the risks.” said Solas without pause. His confidence unwavered as he focused on a new task. The crawlway was just large enough to allow him to sit in a full-lotus position as he dropped his mind out of the physical world and focused himself his uncanny Warlock senses. Vatyr lay there cloaked as a Fallen Archon Priest entered the room, followed by dozens of Vandals, Servitors, and the Pra-Kell, Plasis. Even though the appearance of such strong foes should have worried the Hunter, it didn’t. Their presence here meant Telemica was not engaging them alone elsewhere. An Archon Priest being on the ship however did increase the risk ahead substantially. Glitch relayed newly mined data from the database she was interfacing with. “Confirmed Archon Priest. Goes by the name Mehsor. Vanguard has a pretty substantial bounty out on this one.” Plasis was enormous, perhaps larger than the Priest. If he had not already taken control of the House of Winter, he would be very soon. The Subprime took notice as the Pra-Kell approached the nest and knelt in front of it, the Priest behind him. As the other Fallen surrounded the nest, Mehsor began weaving ether-infused void light around all the participants. Solas could tell these were pathways or conduits, but he was unsure what their purpose was. The nest suddenly surged to life and slowly encapsulated the Suviks-2 like a cocoon, lifting into the air. Metallic tendrils shot out of the cocoon and sped through the conduits, impacting into all the participants except for the Pra-Kell and Priest. Vatyr heard Fallen screams before their bodies fell apart one by one and Servitor shells dropped lifelessly to the ground. “Of course. Sacrifices.” said Wisp as the cocoon’s tendrils retracted. The cocoon began to writhe violently as Mehsor poured vast amounts of void light into it through Plasis in front of him. It grew and grew until it was a solid mass of violent energies. Suddenly the shell burst open with a dull thump sound that seemed to be heard not by the ears but by the soul. A Prime Servitor was born. It loomed massive and menacing, its body molten metal hate. It stared at the Pra-Kell and Archon Priest, still cracking with void light. Its ruby red eye glowed hot. The Archon waved his hands and weaved new conduits, connecting the Pra-Kell to the Prime and the Prime to the Priest. Mehsor and Plasis’ bodies lifted from the ground and became suspended in front of Suviks-2, which was clearly in a partially manic state. Solas could see it all. The Prime needed to be bound. Leashed. The trinity of the Prime, Archon Priest and no-doubt what was about to become a true Kell was a power base from which the greatest Fallen houses found their strength and influence. Tendrils of ether wrapped around the three, intermingling their very essences and causing the Prime Servitor’s eye to cool. Suviks-2’s body lurched open, revealing strange mechanisms and metallic organs. From these,
ether poured into the Priest and Pra-Kell, causing their bodies to grow and strain under the new vigor they shared. “I’ve learned much. Now we need a plan of attack.” said Solas, coming out of his trance state. Vatyr cycled through his arsenal list and was about to agree, if not for the booming battlecry of Telemica from above as she fell terminally on the Fallen monsters like an arc light comet.
Frontier – Act03 Chapter11 – Dead of Winter Venus House of Winter Ketch Simiks-Fel Engineering section As Telemica charged through the ship’s corridors, she didn’t stop to engage the Fallen crew she encountered. The Titan simply ran through them, letting them break upon her like calm waves on a beach, forgotten a moment later. When she found her path intersecting the engineering section across a high-up gantry and spotted the ritual far below, she didn’t think that the other members of fireteam Warden were nearby. She only thought how truly epic a story she would tell when she annihilated a Kell, a Servitor Prime and an Archon Priest in one meteoric strike. Without a moment’s hesitation she vaulted from the walkway and fell to her glory. It was five minutes after impact, and she was still surprised that her daring maneuver had barely injured the enemy. She grappled with the Kell named Plasis, whirling with him in a violent cyclone of close-quarters combat. Her advanced knowledge of strikes, locks and holds was surely being tested by the four-armed giant. Immediately after the Titan’s drop, Mehsor and Suviks-2 attempted to get to a more secure location. Already perched in a perfect sniping position, Vatyr fired a few shots at them in an effort to block the escape and separate them. Suviks-2 began to blink-teleport rapidly away, hoping the Archon would follow but knowing its first concern was its own safety. Unfortunately, as Mehsor began to hunt for the hidden sniper, the Servitor Prime found itself face-to-face with Solas. Telemica and Plasis traded blows and evaded each other’s attempts at takedowns. The fight was too close and too fast to make use of any weapons other than those of their own forms. Plasis had tried to use his long blade, but Telemica had caught the edge between her palms and snapped it in half. Both knew Plasis had the advantage with two more arms and at least twice the weight of the Guardian. The Titan had already taken some serious blows and her armour was telling her of broken bones and internal bleeding while it tried to keep her moving. The Kell grabbed his opponent and lifted the Titan over his head with the intent on either throwing her across the room or breaking her spine across his knee, but a massive hammer-fist to the back of the head disoriented him enough for the Telemica to drop down on his back, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around its upper torso. Plasis vaulted stories high into the air, coming down on his back and crushing Telemica thunderously underneath, but limbs augmented with field drivers and myofiber muscles continued to tighten around the Fallen. Armour began to crack and ether began to escape, causing the last thoughts of the Kell to be of panic before his head popped off and his lifeforce fled his body. A few minutes later, a hearty laugh came from under the dead armor of the Kell, still heavy enough to pin the injured Titan. Solas and the Servitor blinked in and out of existence so rapidly, one could be excused for considering them tricks of light. Blasts of void light fired from the synthetic lifeform’s eye at Solas but never came close to finding a target. Solas was smaller and much faster. He knew the Servitor Prime was still weak from the evolution that just took place and would want to escape
in order to recuperate. Solas cut off escape paths that Suviks tried to use, while also herding it into a boxed in section of engineering and keeping it on edge with flashy but random attacks. As soon as the Servitor Prime found itself caged not just by walls but with its own terror, it lashed out with a mechanical scream as its body opened. Ten metal spears each almost as long as Solas was tall launched from its inner workings and flew into the cavernous room, quickly sweeping thin rays of arc light from their tips and attempted to slice Solas into small pieces. The Exo moved as fast as he could, creating dozens of afterimages in his wake. These spears were almost as fast as the Warlock was but only just. In minutes the room began to fall apart after getting shredded by the Servitor’s arc beams and the shockwaves that Solas left in his wake. Suddenly Solas vanished entirely. Minutes passed. Suviks couldn’t figure out if it had sliced the Guardians into bits, buried him under rubble or scared him away. The spears returned to the main body just as Solas’ blinked into existence a step away from its huge eye. His hand charged with light and shaped like an arrowhead, he impaled the huge construct, driving himself into it up to his shoulder. The Servitor wailed and thrashed as its internal balances of energy were sent wild, tearing itself apart from the inside out. The Warlock drew out what energy he could in order to keep the Prime from recovering, but they both knew it was too late. Violent torrents of ether and light tore Suviks’ body apart, ending in an explosion that obliterated what was left of that section of engineering. Solas appeared on a nearby platform, having blinked away at the last moment. The warlock had absorbed what he could of the Prime’s own ether, and with it, some of its knowledge. It was officially a forbidden technique among the arcane orders, but the more praxic guardians were known to bend the rules as often as they bent the universe. The encounter had left him disoriented, however. His body surrounded by a mote of ether as his mind dove into new resources. Solas simply didn’t have the capability to notice Mehsor behind him. The Archon was in a blind rage after seeing the Servitor Prime destroyed, ready to bring the pandemonium of energy he held up in his hands down on the Exo. Vatyr had evaded the Archon a while ago and was watching Solas’ back from afar when the saw the Archon appear. Never taking his eyes from his scope, he formed a void shell of a bullet in his hand and filled it with as much solar light as he could before placing it in the breach of his sniper rifle. The Hunter closed the breach and fired the light-bullet at the back of Mehsor’s head. The shot echoed through the entire ship and off the walls of the cavern it sat in. When the star-bright bullet encountered the helmet of the House of Winter Archon Priest, the energy within expanded and encapsulated the entire target in a huge ball of blue-white plasma that resembled a chaotic star several meters in radius. The event was so explosive that it sent Solas flying, tumbling to another platform. If one could listen past the deafening roar of the plasma ball, one would have experienced the last screams of the Priest as the matter that made up his body was turned into fuel for nuclear fusion, sustaining the mini-sun and melting anything nearby for a few seconds before vanishing like an extinguished candle. Vatyr made his way over to help the dazed Solas, then the pair freed an injured but still giddy Telemica from under the remains of her foe. “Now what, fearless one?” asked Vatyr, aiming the question at Telemica. “We’ve accomplished the near-impossible.”
“Now? Now we collect our prize. Squire?” Telemica called her Ghost into being. “Yes, my goddess?” “You and the other Ghosts take control of the main engineering controls. Lock out all other control access on the ship and lock down every compartment. Give me control of this ship. I’m taking it.” commanded the Titan. Glitch was already in the process of dominating the ship’s systems. Wisp materialized and followed Squire to Glitch’s location. “I hope they can pull this off.” murmured Vatyr. “A little faith goes a long way.” offer Solas, who sat on the ground to rest. “Our little lights will come through for us.” All over the ship, screens went dark and doors slammed sealed. Amazingly the battles that the Guardians had initiated had not damaged the ship enough to keep it from flight. Engines roared to life as anti-grav generators came online. The ship tore itself from the moorings anchoring it to the cavern and lifted into the sky. “Set course for the city. Send word that we’re on route.” commanded Telemica with arms crossed and head held high. “My lady, we have ships incoming. Fallen. Skiff-class. They’re locking weapons on us.” said Squire. A nearby screen offered the view of several dozen of the small ships coming in as quickly as their engines could manage. “Word must be out. The Fallen on the ground are firing everything they’ve got at us, but it’s nothing that will damage the hull. Those skiffs on the other hand…” mused Glitch. “Remove them from my sky!” she commanded with a wave of her hand. “Love to. Problem is we’re already occupied hacking and controlling a few other ma jor systems. As it’s only the three of us doing all the work, adding one more high-priority system to break into and use probably isn’t the best idea.” suggested Glitch. While the Ghost’s tone the Titan, the advice was sound. “Spinning up FTL. We can jump to just outside the city’s defense lines.” said Wisp, bringing up hyperspace telemetry readings in order to solve the equations that make it possible to move matter without moving it. Squire took over the other systems while Glitch assisted Wisp in controlling the technology that would rip a hole in spacetime. Generators came to life and engines whined as the universe swallowed the ketch up here and spit it out there.
Frontier – Act03 Chapter12 – Spoils of War Earth The City Office of Vanguard Commander Zavala Tzu It was weeks since the ketch ship of the Fallen House of Winter appeared in a violet flash mere kilometers from the outermost defense posts of the City. Alarms were sounded and alert responses initiated as they should, but before intercept fighters could make it to the target, their mission had changed from destroy to protect and escort. Vanguard command managed to pull a few strings with the Consensus Council and arranged for the ship to anchor itself safely behind the defensive walls. Work quickly began to convert the “Exodus Blue” Crucible site into a drydock for the massive vessel, causing Lord Shaxx to moan and grumble for some time after. Commander Tzu sat behind a large display in his office. The space was deep within the bowels of the Tower and some distance underground. It was a large but spartan place, with everything having a place and function. Telemica wondered if his quarters were similarly utilitarian as she quickly went over the latest reports from the crews. “We’re still downloading and decrypting the main computer systems for analysis, but just the hardware and materials alone makes this one of the biggest enemy asset acquisitions in recent memory. There’s enough raw materials here to do a lot of good for the City’s growth, enough weapons and vehicles to keep many Guardians well-equipped, and enough sensitive tech and data to keep the Cryptarchs intrigued. Fine work.” noted Zavala as he reviewed the same reports. He never actually looked at Telemica, but knew she was incredibly pleased with the results of her insane mission. “Thank you, sir.” She said in as formal and calm a tone as she could manage. There were a few twinges of pain still left in her body from being crushed under the weight of the massive Fallen Kell, but they only reminded her of the glory. “We should go.” noted the Commander as his Ghost whispered directly into his mind. He stood from behind his desk in full formal uniform and motioned for the formal-clad Telemica to follow him. They left the office and routed their way through corridors and up lifts to arrive on a secure open-air landing pad several stories below the Tower plaza. The area was used to receive dignitaries and other VIPs. It was cleaner and more decorative than the pads used by the normal traffic, showing off the scale of the Tower and the majesty of the Traveler. By the time Zavala and Telemica arrived on the pad, the other Vanguard leaders and the rest of fireteam Warden were already there and in similar garb. While the two Titans displayed their military history through their strict and formal uniforms, the others did not. Solas and Ikora wore ornate robes covered in intricate holographics that changed and morphed based on a variety of inputs and sensora. Meanwhile, the only difference in what Cayde and Vatyr wore was the ceremonial dirks and sheaths that hung at their sides. The two Titans joined their comrades and also passed a number of armed guards who were sticking close to a secure container several meters in size. Minutes passed before the guest’s ship came into view, along with a full two squadrons of escort. It was obviously designed to be an armoured personnel carrier, but its violet and gold trappings showed that it was modified for royal use. While some of the escorts took up holding
patterns alongside Tower security forces, others hovered near the pad as the AVIPC landed and revealed its passengers. The Vanguard leaders approached as the Awoken queen, her brother and a pair of guards waited at the bottom of the ship’s steps. The fireteam couldn’t head anything that was being said so far away. Telemica was rigid at full attention and Solas seemed to have his mind elsewhere, but Vatyr was good enough at reading lips to catch some stuff and put the discussion together himself. Pleasantries. Formal greetings. Blah. What gift? They’ve mentioned us. He’s not interested at all but she… she loves a good and bloody story.
She always did. I wonder what this is all about…
Cayde motioned to the guards at the rear, who slowly escorted the container towards the ship on an anti-grav platform. The two Awoken guards met them halfway and scanned the container vigorously for what seemed like ages. Vatyr wondered What could be within as his eyes went back to the visitors and found while the vaunted Master of Crows was intent on the container alone, the queen’s gaze was focused entirely on Vatyr. No. The slightest of grins appeared on her face. I’m not that anymore.
Her eyes penetrating him. Ever the prey on her hunt. I can’t be that anymore. I…
The Awoken guards had finished scanning the container at some point and relieved the Tower guards of their burden, escorting the container passed the dignitaries and on to the ship. The queen’s gaze left Vatyr with satisfaction and almost ignored the gift, as if she’d already accomplished what she set out to do. No further talk was apparently necessary as the royals boarded the carrier right behind the container and departed with their escort, no doubt headed back to the Reef. “Vatyr, you are sweating.” mentioned Solas without looking directly at him, not that he ever had to. “It’s hot. I’m hot. Isn’t it hot?” said Vatyr in an obvious excuse, almost stammering in defense. “So what was in the container?” “The Winter ketch’s jump drive core. Such intricate Golden Age marvels are nearly impossible for us to recreate and are priceless to the Awoken. No doubt it was gifted in the hopes of strengthening diplomatic ties.” said the Exo in a slightly bored tone before wandering off. Zavala and Ikora were debriefing the guards as Telemica hung around, no doubt expecting the guards would immediately want to hear of her latest adventure and she was all too eager to spin the embellished tale.
“You doin alright?” asked Cayde as he wandered towards Vatyr. “Yeah. I wish you had warned me that they would be here.” “Sorry. Operational security. Did she-” “Yeah…” Vatyr said, defeated as he slowly wandered back into the Tower, melting into the normal hustle of the place like a sound that unearths a dark memory.
Frontier – Act04 Chapter13 – Desert Creatures Mars The Black Garden It was a rare occurrence when Vatyr found it difficult to believe what he was seeing. He’d read the reports of this place, of course. He knew about the Vex and how the Traveler had supposedly trapped them here in a pocket of spacetime, along with a piece of the Darkness itself. He knew about the brave guardians who dared to break in and slay the “heart” of Darkness that the Vex worshiped. Still, for a place of such evil, it was amazingly beautiful and alive. Massive corridors of synthstone still coursed with Vex energy. Lush flora grew everywhere, providing a living snapshot of the Martian ecosystem that was being encouraged during the Golden Age. Bioengineered flowers with blood-red petals must have been a common sight in Freehold gardens before the Collapse, but without humanity to nurture the changing global ecosystem, Mars returned to the sand. Ever since the Garden was freed, teams of scientists had taken up residence within its walls, attempting to unlock its secrets. Fireteam Warden was on-site as part of a bolstering of military security, courtesy of the Tower. Fireteams would shift in and out, making sure the remaining Vex presence didn’t become a problem for the expedition. So far it had been going rather well. Vatyr had taken up a well-used sniper perch while he listened to chatter and gazed at the beauty of his surroundings. It was rare for him to be so relaxed while operating in a combat zone. Solas was off assisting the group of scientists tasked with surveying the shrine where the heart of Darkness once resided. Telemica was called away several hours ago and seemed far too rushed to explain what was going on. Vatyr didn’t even consider how long she was gone until she opened up comms with the rest of Warden on a secure channel. “We have a big problem.” “Nice to see you too.” quipped Vatyr at the video link of Telemica in her ship’s cockpit. “The Cabal are coming.” stated Solas so dryly it was as if he was stating that the Sun was hot. “How did you-? Yeah. Cabal. Scouts have been tracking increased activity for some time now, as well as changes in the Exclusion Zone satellite network. We thought it was a response to the increased guardian presence of the last few months but a few hours ago we caught a huge spike in activity. Sats we thought were going one way darted off in another and-” Telemica took a half-breath, knowing her team could piece together the rest. “They’re taking the Garden from us.” said Solas with a hint of sadness. “The interference lattice is already coalescing around you. Normal communications are already dead and all our orbital assets are either dead, blind or getting extracted. The only way I’m getting through is Ghost-to-Ghost quantum entanglement, but that only gives us a minute at most. The bulk of the Blind Legion is coming and will have their main Imperial lad tank on top of you in a little over one hour. I’m just ahead of them and burning hard on a suborbital apogee. You two need to evacuate everyone and everything you can.” Telemica commanded
as her signal began to devolve into static. “We’ve got forces and transports on the way but the Cabal will get there first! MOVE!” The last command was mostly eaten by static as the line went dead and a rumble from above.
Frontier – Act04 Chapter14 – Death From Above Mars The Black Garden 50 minutes Later Unlike Fallen houses that often warred against each other, Cabal formations are all served the same empire. While their specializations and differing missions gave the impression that they were isolated from each other, you need only give them a target big enough to know your dire error. 50 minutes ago, the entirety of the Black Garden expedition was beginning to evacuate . Vatyr was just greenlighting the first transports to lift off when dozens of hypersonic booms shattered the sky. Leaving quickly and while under fire was always something the scientists and soldiers had in the back of their head and were prepped to do, but they probably didn’t expect to be doing it while the sky was falling. Siege Dancer orbital drop pods descended well beyond terminal velocity thanks to heavy heat shielding, acceleration thrusters (as opposed to the deceleration thrusters one would sanely expect) and fanatical soldiers inside. The jet-black pods slammed into the ground and walls within the Black Garden, incinerating some and burying others under synthstone debris. Almost all of the Cabal survived, much to Vatyr’s surprise, and were all too eager to climb out of their metal tombs and kill anything that was not one of them. Shock and awe. That’s all Vatyr could think of as he loaded another magazine into his scout rifle. Hunkering down behind a chunk of broken wall, he tried not to be too impressed with the creatures trying to blow him up with volleys of micro-RPGs. They may have had the element of surprise, but it’s difficult to surprise a group of superpowered soldiers that have all died a few times. Guardians engaged the Cabal shock troops head-on, allowing the regular military forces to extract what scientists and equipment remained. Fireteams worked together to isolate the hulking aliens and create avenues of escape to reach the transports in other sections of the garden. A pair of warlocks slowly advanced, wreathed in solar light and lashing at the heavy shields of the Cabal intruders with solar flares. Long whips of plasma extended punishment with sweeping waves of their hands, cutting their foes to ribbons. A small group of hunters took up residence within a small cave in a high moss-covered wall, firing sniper rounds and tossing out swarm grenades to keep the Cabal harassed. More booms from above. Another wave. More shooting stars bringing fire and death. Their landings obliterated whatever was in their way, friend or foe. A mighty titan thought he was protected under his dome of void light, and probably didn’t have time to feel regret as the defense or his armour barely slowed the incoming projectile. A Cabal colossus roared as he poured death into the hunter’s cave with his heavy slug thrower. Vatyr could see the last transport lift off once the drop pods subsided. As he signaled for the other guardians to take up more defensive positions and dig in, cannons thundered from over the high ridge behind him, sending huge tracers along the bow of the last personnel carrier. Shields buckled and armour sizzled but the the pilot at the stick kept his head, pulling the ship away from the anti-aircraft fire.
Jumping to a higher perch, Vatyr could just make out where the shots came from. The Blind Legion imperial land tank had arrived. No reinforcements would make it through now. “Sorry I am late. We ran into some Vex along the way and had to take an alternative route. The crew I was guarding was on that last transport.” spoke Solas over comms. Vatyr turned around just in time to see a massive void light explosion rip apart a handful of Cabal soldiers molecule by molecule. “Sitrep.” “The main Cabal force is here! Where’s Telemica?” asked Vatyr as he scanned the skies. “We will have to locate her later. For now we have to take control of the situation.” Vatyr made it to ground and cut a path to Solas. “Take control? The Black Garden is lost to us, Solas. We have to get everyone out of here! We can’t hold against a land tank and a few thousand elite Cabal soldiers!” With the processing speed of an Exo and the unfathomable depths of a warlock, Solas’ mind quickly assessed the situation. The rolling superfortress was an extinction-level weapon in its own right and would be fully on top of them in minutes, not to mention the dozens of other armoured assets and most of the Blind Legion, one of the most dangerous Cabal formations. There were only around 20 guardians in the garden with no anti-armour backup, and were having enough trouble with a few dozen Siege Dancers. “You’re right.” He tied into the communication frequency that all the local guardians were using. “Break Break Break. Guardians, I am Solas-3. I am assuming command of this operational theatre under authority code TYR and initiating a code BLACK planetary evac order. I’m transmitting a map to all Ghosts. Encryption Aleph-1056. Decrypt for fortified escape routes accessible on foot. Evacuate the Black Garden. I repeat, evacuate the Black Garden. Get outside the new exclusion zone and return to Tower for debrief. Immediate action on receipt. I will take full responsibility.” Solas received pings of compliance from every guardian on the channel as they made their way to several uncovered passageways that will leads them out of the danger zone. Most ghosts were rescued to later revive their charges, but a few were lost to Cabal bombardment. ——— In the middle of the endless Martian desert, Telemica was a still, crumpled mess. The land tank had used a repositioned exclusion satellite to triangulate her flight path and shoot her down. She’d barely managed to keep her shattered craft together, but the ship desintrigrated in the crash and she was thrown into the side of a dune like a ragdoll, knocking her unconscious and pulverizing her body. Squire built an anti-grav stretcher out of the ship’s remains as quickly as possible, took over Telemica’s armour controls and slowly got her on to the rig so he could get her clear, using the last of life-support armour’s systems to keep her alive. After finding a cave for shelter, he sent out a coded distress beacon and worried himself sick over his injured guardian through the night before help arrived.
Frontier – Act04 Chapter15 – Consequences Earth The Tower Solas stood oddly rigid at the foot of a long holo-glass meeting table. The room was mostly empty except for the table at the centre of the room, 12 simple plastic chairs around it, and a few monitors on the three otherwise stark walls. The fourth wall along the long side of the table was a window which looked out over the city. Ikora Rey peered out through the window while Zavala Tzu gave Solas a full dressing down. “In all my years of command I’ve never seen such an astounding disregard for objectives. Your mission was to protect the assets! Scientists and site. Now all we have to show for all those months of work are bodies to bury, lost guardians and perhaps the most important location on Mars just handed over to the Cabal! “Sir.” Solas said. Ikora was not sure if he was agreeing, trying to interject something or simply proving he was still listening. The last option put a bit of a grin on her face, which grew ever so slightly each time he said it. “Do you have any idea what you simply handed to the enemy? I sure don’t, because all of our best minds were still trying to crack the place!” Zavala growled. Commander Tzu was a lion. Normally a calm and collected creature, its roar put a primal fear into most beings that prized their own survival. “Sir.” Solas wondered if Cayde was similarly laying into Vatyr or if they were just sharing drinks and stories again. “We’re still picking up stray guardians from the surface as they pop up, and each time we have to engage the Cabal inside a new exclusion zone that we have yet to crack. You’re the one who told them to scatter and fend for themselves. Do you think that was a good call? Do you think that puts us in a good position? We’re still cleaning up your mess days later, warlock!” “Sir.” Solas hadn’t heard about Telemica surfacing yet, but he’d been in debrief almost the entire time. Zavala slammed his fist hard on the table. In front of him were reports depicting the details of the defeat. Before he could continue, a message popped up on the glass just under his stillclenched fist. The commander audible deep breath and got up. “They’ve found Telemica. She’s in critical but Squire kept her alive.” he said to neither warlock in particular before exiting the room. Solas’ stance relaxed an almost imperceptible degree at the news. The warlock pair let the news hang in the air for a few minutes, neither moving, neither needing to. “Even if she died, Squire would have been able to recreate her.” Solas noted. “Titans see death as equal parts insult and defeat. Pulling back from the brink of death is an important state of being for them. It shows their tenacity. Their elan.” Ikora said as Solas joined her for the view. “You did the right thing, my friend, and in the right way. Zavala knows that, but when control of the situation breaks down so much and so quickly, he sees it as a personal failure. When the exclusion zone shifted and cut him out of contact from what he knew would be a dire situation… He’s not angry at you so much as he’s angry at himself.”
“Suspension.” Solas said. He didn’t have eyes, but Ikora knew him well enough to knew he was looking far below at the life down on the street. He was looking at the reason for his existence. “Yes. Fireteam Warden is suspended pending the completion of the investigation and any further reprimands or punishment, which I am sure won’t be needed. Just give it a few weeks to blow over. Consider it an unscheduled sabbatical. ” Ikora put a hand on Solas’ shoulder, “I’m glad you made it out, old man.”
Frontier – Act05 Chapter16 – Weapon of Choice Vatyr slowly roused from a deep slumber and into a world of pain. His tiger-orange eyes blinked slowly and dryly at his surroundings while his sluggish mind attempted to recall the events of the previous evening. He pieced it together, step by step. He was horizontal. A couch. He’s woken up on couches in the past. Nothing new. His left hand hung over the side, weakly hanging on to an large and empty bottle that at one point must have been full of something strong and promising. His right arm was pinned under something warm, smooth and sweet-smelling. Though the sunlight flowing in through the window was like daggers in his eyeballs, he could make out the lithe and naked form of a woman. Right. Blonde. Red dress. She was wearing a red dress last night. They danced. They drank. They did everything they could do to feel alive. It was hard, these days. Life was a precious and tenuous thing. It could all end at any moment. It almost did, and what made that happen was coming back. So, what did people without the power to fight beyond the walls do? They fought the darkness within. They laughed. They loved. They lived as brightly as they could. He slowly unwrapped himself from her sleeping embrace and rolled off the couch. He massaged the back of his neck where the sigil of the Cryptarchs was tattooed. After letting the room stop spinning, he took a more detailed look at his surroundings. An apartment. Ultramodern and utilitarian, there was very little in the room. There were other people, strewn around the floor. All sleeping the sleep born of a raucous night that was slowly coming back to Vatyr’s memory. A clicking over in the corner told him there was someone else awake. Slowly turning, he pieced together who owned the space. “Look who’s back from the dead.” Cayde-6 said softly as he filled out reports on his terminal, knowing anything even remotely loud would be like taking a hammer to Vatyr’s fragile head. “It’s over there.” he said as he pointed to something in the corner. Vatyr smiled weakly. He slowly gathered his clothing and redressed in the scents of the nightlife. Liquor. Smoke. Perfume. Sex. Walking over to the corner that Cayde pointed to, he picked up a large, long case. Within was Vatyr’s most devastating weapon. His most powerful tool. Scout swooped over from Cayde’s desk, no doubt after a full night of talking to Cayde’s ghost about whatever ghosts talk about when their guardians slumber. Vatyr made it over to the desk to quickly down a cup of strong tea that awaited him, put a thanking hand on the Exo’s shoulder, and found his way out the door. The sun was already high in the sky as Vatyr’s boots found pavement. Many veteran guardians had private residences in the City, and Cayde’s was high above the City’s largest bazaar. People were already deep into a normal busy day, pushing past carts, pushing their wears, pushing to survive. The sounds and sights and smells were almost too much for the hungover Awoken, but the fog and pain was rapidly lifting as Scout tweaked his chemistry. Winding his way through the throng of life, Vatyr browsed, purchased and just breathed it all in. These people were the blood of the city, coursing through its busy streets. Hunters often cracked under the weight of their self-imposed exile, and veterans like Vatyr found that reconnecting to the people and places that they were protecting kept them sane. A cup of coffee. Some fruit. Buttered bread. A raw egg and some smoked meat. By the time Vatyr found his destination, his belly was full and his head was clear.
Vatyr found this corner years ago. The Traveler hung overhead but never fully blocked the summer sun. Buildings carried echoes of the City through like some sort of acoustical layline. A wooden crate sat there for what seemed like forever, not labeled and seemingly full of nothing. He leaned his weapon’s long case on the mortar wall, sat on the crate and drank in everything his senses could catch. People noticed Vatyr pass through the crowds and followed him. When he reached his corner and paused, they paused with him. They stood still, or sat on anything they could to be comfortable, awaiting the guardian to unleash his devastating weapon upon them. In time he picked up his case, sat on the crate and opened it on his lap. The six-string lute was a deep lacquer and glowed like fire in the warm noon sun. There was an almost audible inhale as the people saw it, knowing what it could do in the guardian’s uncanny hands. Vatyr tuned his weapon, the sound drawing more people in until the alley corner was impassable. They knew Vatyr not for his skill in battle or the brightness of his light, but for his work in rediscovering the music of ages past. While others logged and studied in dark rooms, he gave music to the air, stones and people. This was his corner. This was his crate. The most powerful and devastating weapon of the Awoken guardian known as Vatyr S’Jet was a simple wooden lute with six organic strings. He played. His songs told stories to the people. Some songs were happy tales that inspired the audience to sing along and dance and laugh. Other songs were ballads filled to bursting with sorrow, driving some to weep openly with broken hearts. Scout offered some slight accompaniments at times, but often she simply listened and embraced the music along with the people. Vatyr played all day and into the night made bright by candle and moon. He took breaks. Time to stretch. Time to talk. Time to eat and drink with the people. Time to enjoy the sight the full moon above with the people he loved and the people who loved him in return. He reminded them that life was not worth the effort if it was just about survival. One must feel everything possible to make everything worth anything. It amused him in a melancholy way to think that a dead man who saved the world on a regular basis reminded the living why life was worth the effort with music from a lute, but deep in the throws of a heart-tugging performance, it didn’t seem silly at all. In time, morning came. The crowd had dwindled to a memory, and the bard made his way home to rest and reflect.
Frontier – Act05 Chapter17 – Life Waters Through the ages after the Collapse, Guardians have organized themselves under different banners. The Hunters have their loosely-aligned groups that seem to be concerned more about territory and bragging rights than anything else, while the Warlocks have their secretive covens that pool astronomical geniuses together as they peel back the layers of the universal onion. Titan Orders hold the most meaning to the day-to-day survival of our current civilization, as they were the ones that built and man the protective walls of the last City. The Titans hold their traditions to the highest standard as well as the strictest of secrecy. Hushed discussions in dark corners revolve around rites, oaths and ceremonies that have bound Titans together over their 12 ages. Incredibly tall doors parted to allow Telemica entry into the vast and dim room. The hall and pillars seemed built of pure onyx and lit only by hundreds of handmade wax candles and reflecting moonlight off The Traveler, illuminating the space through huge windows that took up the entirety of the outer wall. Telemica was clad only in a veil of white silk that was drapped over her body, while the two attendants flanking her were in full fieldplate armour. Telemica did her best to walk evenly, but recent injuries made walking at all a painful effort. Under her veil healing wounds of varying degrees of severity covered a good deal of her body. In the center of the room was an empty pool with concentric rings of steps built in going 13 feet deep. Her attendants stopped a few paces short as Telemica found her place at the side of the pool. “My wounds are deep…” she sang out in a sorrowful key. The one secret that nobody seemed to guess at was that all Titan rituals were sung, the notes just as important as the words. From their earliest initiations, Titans were taught to sing, a cypher that only another Titan would know how to unlock. Every rite and ritual was a musical production, and a Titan’s song was as core to their identity as their light. Out of the shadows, several Titans converged on the rim of the pool. A Titan knew who respected her by who attended a ceremony as important as this, and Telemica’s heart was filled to see who stood with her tonight. The lords and ladies of the Titan Orders came to pay respects to one that has proven herself extraordinary. They were dressed in ornate ceremonial garb that was halfway between their military dress uniform and a Warlock’s ceremonial robes, a wardrobe never seen by non-Titans. “Embrace hardship, for a Titan shall endure all.” hymned the gathering. Each Guardian began to intone, holding a deep trance-like note that filled the chamber and vibrate sympathetically off the walls. As the vibration became all-encompassing, a glowing blue liquid began to stream into the pool, being fed from a thousand winding pathways embedded in all of the surfaces of the room which seemed to whistle as if it was wind flowing through a host of flutes. The illumination of the liquid found its way to the centre as the pool filled to the brim. Once the pool was full, the intoning stopped. Telemica allowed her veil to drop behind her, exposing her full form to the caress of the light as she stepped in the pool. As soon as her toe met the mysterious liquid, thin and intricate markings on her skin with thousands of details began to glow the same colour, as if her skin was taking the liquid in. Slowly she made her way in, and the markings glowed even brighter than the pool. By the time she was submerged up to her neck, it was clear the entirety of her
was covered in the markings. Without pause or hesitation, she sunk fully into the pool and floated freely in its centre. If anyone who didn’t understand the ritual had seen this, after the first few minutes had passed by there would be an intense urge to rescue what looked like a naked and drowning woman. However, everyone in attendance knew Telemica was breathing freely and in a deep trance, reliving her greatest victories, deepest defeats and each death with excruciating hyperrealism. All her personal angels and demons did battle in her mind. Failure to survive this trial would be the loss of one’s light, and a permanent and painful death. One by one, and in a pecking order that was a social calculation done over generations, Guardians in attendance sang their praise of Telemica and dipped their bare dominant hand into the pool, lending their light to her survival. Not everyone standing around that pool was beholden to help Telemica in her struggle, instead singing her failure in notes of defeat. It was an honour to even undergo this ritual, but not every Titan survived it. This was a judgement at the highest levels of their society and judgments were in the interests of the survival of civilization. Weakness could not be allowed at any cost. Telemica’s wounds began to open up slightly, spilling blood into the pool and dimming the brightness of her markings. When a Titan died and was revived by their Ghost their markings were lost, unable to be recreated or duplicated, even if their body was salvaged. Every Titan had different markings created through hardships, and those secret markings helped to inform the choice of a Titan’s mark, considered the public face of this Titan secret. Titans given the choice of this judgement of peers or death gladly risk all to retain their markings and their honour. Titans who deeply embraced the Crucible and died often were the exception, though a life lived too long in such training and not in the service of the City was sometimes seen as dishonourable and unworthy. It was a grey area for the Orders and their traditions. One by one, the lords and ladies of the Titan Orders shared their light and her pain. Her markings brightened. Wounds closed and became shining scars that sprouted their own markings like flora, telling the tale of the wound in a language only the Order seneschals could completely decipher. Telemica opened her eyes, signalling the others to intone again at a higher and more triumphant key which drained the pool. Once her head was above the liquid line she took a deep breath of air, but not as urgent as one would expect from someone who was submerged for close to an hour. Those in the circle looked upon her markings with reverence for they were proof of a Titan of truly exotic qualities. The markings she earned this occasion were certainly not alone, as her body was a dense maze of shining scars. Her attendants stepped into the now drained pool and affixed her armour to her still luminescent body. Once fully clad with the exception of her helm, she stepped out and rejoined the circle, her body was the now far brighter than the liquid was, shining even through the armour and creating a dancing aura of light around her. “Every wound adds to my story. Every injury etches a path of fate on my skin. Every victory paid for in pain.” Telemica sang, the others intoning in the background to elevate her notes like a symphony.
The lords and ladies of the Titan Orders slowly backed into the darkness from whence they came, never turning their back on Telemica. She was left alone by the empty pool to reflect on the experience, and the experiences that brought her there for as long as she wished. The dawn sun was just breaking over the City, and it was customary to spend a day and a night on the wall as a simple watchguard to allow one to decompress from the experience. To fly the flag over the walls that the Titans built and guarded for generations. The posting superseded her suspension from active duty because it was mostly ceremonial and quiet. Telemica took her time before slowly donning her helm, pivoting sharply and marching doubletime to her honoured post.
Frontier – Act05 Chapter18 – Freakangel Towers sprouted up over the centuries around the Last City on Earth to fill the role of sanctuaries for the guardians who fought back against the forces that would lay waste to it. Inevitably, the deep interiors of these places were claimed in some capacity or another or this guardian of such and such a group. Nobody really complained. There was plenty of room and everyone more or less respected each other’s claims. Solas-3 had been around for a very long time, even for an Exo. When a freshly unearthed recruit by the name of Ikora Rey with a bad attitude and an uncanny ability to roll over instructors appeared, it was Solas-3 that took her under his wing as his apprentice and taught her how to hone that tenacity into a weapon. He gained a reputation for being calm, focused and determined. He called the Warlock Iron Lords Skorri and Timur among his friends, valiantly fighting with them at the Battle of the Twilight Gap. He was Arch-Magus of a small but wellregarded Warlock Order. His official power rank was AAA+, though some believe his true limits may be well beyond rank S. He was known as The Blind Dragon. Her blonde hair shone brightly under the harsh hallway spotlights as Angela walked down the hall, looking at the labels on the doors as she went. Guardians and staff noticed the young girl and stopped to offer assistance, recognizing her from vids telling of a new Speaker’s Apprentice. Angela thanked them kindly for the offer but declined, preferring to take advantage of the few times she was not waited on like royalty. Her arms encircled a huge tome, holding it close to her chest. Within the book was documentation of Solas at a monumental event in the City’s history. She hoped to use this as an excuse to spend time with someone she considered one of her few and precious friends. She was so excited and nervous that she almost passed Solas’ lab entirely. In fact, the door seemed to almost not be there unless you looked at it directly and focused your mind on it. The door was only marked with a glowing ward in the centre that was about the size of someone’s hand. A lock? There didn’t seem to be any other mode of entry. Angela placed her hand on the runes as it came to life, warming up and vibrating. “Angela. I want to see my friend, Solas.” she said. She was not quite sure, but the door seemed to ask a question, to which she responded almost without her own intent. Her training allowed her to make sense of some of the glyph’s design, parsing out spells that could force the truth out of unwilling participants. It glowed in many colours and hummed in many tones as Angela’s hand remained on it. Was it deciding whether or not to let her in? The door bled from view, as did the entire hallway. Immediately it was replaced with the interior to a dimly-lit but extremely well-equipped laboratory about 2000 square feet in size. The Speaker himself would have been jealous by what Angela saw, as was she before backtracking to how she got inside in the first place. She could see no door or window around her, and her best guess was that Solas somehow kept his lab separated from normal spacetime by sealing it within a pocket dimension. windows showed her that the lab was indeed floating in the bleed between realities. Perhaps that door was not the only point of access. Still clinging to her book, Angela walk around the lab, silently observing all the wondrous experiments. Several Frames seemed to handle the lab’s various workings and ongoing experiements but didn’t bother interacting with her. She considered trying to get the attention of one but decided it was best not to impede their work.
She came to a curious device in the centre of the room. It resembled a large metal seed, lacking any readouts but several conduits snaked from it and around the pedestal it was set on, leading into the floor. She hadn’t touched anything else in the lab, but something made the thought of touching this curiousity compelling. Her hand grazed the platinum shell and felt the presence of her friend. Was he inside? Bracing herself, she firmly placed her right palm flat on the pod, the book occupying her entire left arm to hold. She closed her eyes and focused her light into her hand like she was taught to, extending her senses and projecting her mind forward. Bright and warm sunlight washed over Angela as she opened her eyes and found herself in yet another place. The smell of old books, older wood, dazzling crystal and a vague something baking filled her nostrils. It was instantly the most comforting place she had ever been, yet she was pretty sure it was not real. It was too perfect, but that didn’t make it any less wonderful to her. The true secret of this place was that it was not a place at all. While Solas’ body rested inside a sunflower seed-shaped platinum pod of his own design, his mind had room to expand and evolve, thanks to the pod’s supplemental memory and processing capabilities. The warlock’s celestial-scale mind was indeed contained fully within the Exo’s frame, but he built the pod some time ago to allow his intellect some room to breathe and stretch. All of the wisdom that he’d collected since his resurrection was stored here. Every book. Every experience. All of his knowledge stored in this place to be constantly reviewed and analyzed. Still clinging to her own book, Angela’s curious eyes ran across dozens of other book spines. She found that she could taste the data within them if she just focused on them a bit. She was checking out a recovered Golden Age scientific journal about using exotic matter resonance fields to stabilize quantum slipstream travel, when she felt a new warmth coming from the third floor. Turning, she saw a silhouette of pure light. It didn’t have any features but Angela could not just tell it was Solas, but that he was looking and smiling at her. It was stunning to her because Solas always had his emotions under strict control, but this side of him was free. With all his balances and barriers left behind, the Exo was able to simply be. He was intensely happy to see her. Moving through the construct of the library, Solas floated down to her and lifted her up, embracing her in a warm hug. Angela could hear no sound emanate from him, but she knew he was laughing.. He was so happy to see her it was a bit of a shock at first, letting loose her own laugh and returning the embrace. They spent the day sharing stories without speaking, laughs without laughing and just reading in the comfortable silence of kin.
Frontier – Act06 Chapter19 – Glass House En Route To Mercury Spaceflight always put Telemica on edge. It was the silence. The stillness. Without any atmosphere to cut through or landmarks to see come and go, the vessel seemed to not be moving at all. The Titan has been known to fly erratically on long sublight journeys. She needed to feel her surroundings. Being in the massive hold of a Vanguard transport made it that much worse. So, she paced. The other dozen Guardians in the hold thought she was anxious for the battle ahead, but Solas and Vatyr knew better. It had been 30 hours since the briefing. Vatyr was not sure when he had ever seen so many Guardians called in for a single offensive. The hangers were beyond capacity and the shipwrights were working double shifts. Quarters were tight and getting tighter as more Guardians and shipments of equipment came in. Everyone was talking about what could be in the works behind the oddly closed doors of Vanguard command. The evening of the briefing had Guardians packed into every Tower’s conference room and huddled around every display. The three Vanguard leaders, flanked by possibly every mover and shaker in the war effort, appeared in the Speaker’s observatory. The Traveler loomed silently in the evening air behind them. Commander Zavala cleared his throat and spoke. “Greetings, fellows. Approximately 72 hours ago, long-range sensors detected a massive surge of energy from the planet Mercury. Initial recon revealed this.” the image cutting to a high orbital video of the south pole of Mercury. The image zoomed in fast, coalescing into a shot of a gigantic Vex conflux reaching hundreds of kilometers into space. The circuit-like canyons of the planet were filling with that same white light, as if the conflux was spreading roots. “The is a live feed. This conflux is growing in size and energy output at an exponential rate.” A wave of murmurs flowed through the crowds. There was no doubt that this presented a clear and present danger to the entire system. The Vex were believed to have been more or less subdued since they lost the Black Garden, but this was the largest display of power they’ve ever shown. Zavala continued, quashing the quiet conversations. “Within the next hour, every recalled fireteam will be given deployment orders for Operation: Glass House. The sole objective will be to neutralize the Vex escalation.” As the fleet approached Mercury, The gold shine from Sol gave way to a cold white. They were approaching the conflux. The southern half of Mercury was now shining brightly, and the energy spire jutted menacingly into space. Telemica was one of the few Guardians not huddled around the viewports. instead, she locked herself into her seat and prepared for the rough ride in. No doubt the Vex would have mighty defenses in place To her, it was a welcome change of pace.
Frontier – Act06 Chapter20 – Throwing Stones Mercuryfall during Operation: Glass House would go down in history as the deadliest 15 minutes in Guardian history. Vex anti-space emplacements appeared instantly all around the conflux, taking aim at incoming transports. At the same time, the conflux itself did a remarkable impression of a tesla coil, swatting craft with huge lashes of electromagnetic energy. After the battle, it would be found that only one in five transports made it to the surface. As the fight on the surface materialized, the battle for the skies took shape. The Shipwright selected fireteams with the best pilots to form fighter squadrons. The top brass was not sure if the Vex would have a significant spaceborne force or not, so the fighters were equipped for bombing runs as well. Guardian craft streaked along the surface, annihilating Vex cyclops emplacements and allowing more Guardians to land and reach the conflux. Electric fog poured out of the cracks between space and time, ball lightning rolling through it to reveal legions of Vex. Titans rushed forward, deploying forcefield generators for cover. Firefights all over the surface reached a fever pitch quickly. It was expected that the Guardians would be severely outnumbered, and the Vex didn’t disappoint. As sparrow-riding fireteams performing high-speed strafing runs across the front, the wall of red eyes appeared endless. Where the conflux met the planet surface was a synthstone base which seemed to be growing outward at the same rate as the conflux itself grew upward. Every Guardian on the ground fought Vatyr slid from a full sprint to his knee then down to his belly, never taking his eyes from the scope of his sniper rifle. The entire contents of his clip had found homes in the cores of perched Vex hobgoblins before Telemica overtook him and advanced past him. Ten minotaurs marched towards the Titan, but stopped as she was engulfed in flame. Telemica streaked towards them an leaped into into them, smashing them to bits with her hammer of solar light. Solas joined the pair as Vatyr rose to his feet. Lights popped within the ever-present fog, revealing 23 goblins surrounding them. Solas rose into the air and shredded the new challengers with an omnidirectional onslaught of arc light. Vatyr put down a cyclops blocking the entrance to the base with a massive solar shot, clearing the way for Warden to enter the installation. “We’re pretty far ahead of anyone else. We should dig in.” he said as they gathered at the entrance and surveyed the battle behind them. “No! We should press ahead!” Telemica insisted, the fever of war having fully took hold of her as she readied her rifle. The synthstone around them continued to grow outwards, and the structures they could see past the entrance shifted around just as much. Solas waved his hand in the direction of the dark pathway , sensing what was ahead. small points of light dancing around his fingers. “We have run out of time. We must press forward.” Telemica burst ahead, eager to meet the challenges before them, but Vatyr was momentarily frozen in place. Something about Solas’ tone and body language. If he had to put a word to it, it would be terrified. Still, the word was to press on. Vatyr took a quick breath and took off after Telemica. Solas watched Vatyr disappear inside the complex. The complex grew around Solas and closed the entrance behind him, plunging the Exo into darkness save for the dim glow of the
synthstone. “The singularity holds. All paths lead through this crucible.” He said, as if praying to spacetime before breaking into a run.
Frontier – Act06 Chapter21 – Broken Mirror While the synthstone structure was only a matter of days old and located on a longdead planet, the caverns within appeared centuries-old covered in deeply coloured flora. As he ran his hand along the verdant moss, Vatyr posited that this must be either a byproduct of the Vex’s time manipulation techniques, or something carried over from where this synthstone srcinated. Fireteam Warden had been marching at a brisk pace for hours, traveling far deeper into the construct than they expected. It had been quite a while since the sounds of the battle outside ceased to reach them. Were they even on Mercury anymore? One could never be certain of anything when the Vex were involved. Paths diverged as they traveled further. Solas took point and did his best to sense their direction, Telemica staying close to him to check corners while the Warlock’s mind stretched forward. “Guardian S’Jet broadcasting to anyone on these frequencies. We have entered the conflux installation and are proceeding onward. Is anyone receiving this transmission? Over.” Vatyr spoke into his comms for what felt like the thousandth time. He was not sure if the signal was reaching anyone, and didn’t want to consider that there was nobody left to reach. “I wouldn’t bother with that anymore. Chances are they only beings who can hear you now are us and the Vex.” Telemica retorted. “Stealth was never an option. The walls themselves are clearly watching us.” Solas interjected, causing the skin of his fellows to crawl. Solas often forgot that he saw far more than the others could. The ghosts could offer few answers and refused to even speculate on the situation, which was adding to the general sense that every step the fireteam into these caverns was a very bad idea. Days passed with no rest. Guardians possessed superhuman endurance but even their minds and bodies still had limits. Telemica’s vigilance was beginning to take a serious toll as they rounded a corner and saw a hazy white glow at the end of a long and widening passage. “Finally. Be on guard, Guardians.” The hall ended at a cliff, water pouring over the end like a waterfall into oblivion. Warden had to cling to the almost sheer walls to keep from being taken by the rapids that seemed to come from nowhere. What they saw next shook their confidence to the core.
Frontier – Act06 Chapter22 – The Golden Path Fireteam Warden had found the trunk the conflux, which was now wider than they could perceive from their vantage point. As tall as it had grown, it had also driven itself down into the planet’s core as well. The area around the massive energy form had been transfigured into a shaft so spacious that it held its own atmospheric phenomena, rolling clouds slightly obscuring the far walls. Tendrils of light and data jutted like roots into the walls of the shaft, no doubt connecting to the canyon-size circuits coursing throughout Mercury. Even with the aid of his rifle’s scope, Vatyr couldn’t get eyes on a top or bottom to the shaft. The conflux itself hummed in a note that made Telemica think of synthetic monks intoning, the frequency of which she could feel in her bones. Without pause, Solas began to crawl along the walls of the shaft, avoiding the occasional static discharge. Vatyr and Telemica shook themselves out of their awe and followed, noticing that he was headed for a nearby outcropping of synthstone near an oddly thick root. It took them close to an hour of climbing slowly along the near-shear walls to reach the outcropping, which almost appeared like a landing pad or control station. Veins came off the root and connected to a large synthstone wall at the end of the platform. “Anyone find it odd that we have not encountered as much as a goblin since we entered this place?” Vatyr said, looking over the edge. “Odd, and disappointing.” grumbled Telemica. “It doesn’t matter. This is exactly where we to be… where I need to be.” said Solas as he walked slowly but with purpose towards the wall. “It is? How do you figure that? There’s nothing here that will help us shut this thing down.” said Telemica. An anxiety from an unknown place within her began to creep. She brought her rifle up a little tighter to her frame in a subconscious effort to feel in control. Solas placed his flat palms on the wall as if trying to push it over the edge. There was an explosion of kaleidoscopic light that would have blinded Vatyr and Telemica had their helmets not adjusted quickly enough, though the light seemed to creep into their brains as well and disoriented them for a few seconds. As they came to, they saw Solas cocooned in rainbows of violent light, some of it coming from the wall and some from him. the Exo continued to appear to push as hard as he could against the wall with his palms, bracing his feet under him. The others knew the vast majority of his exertions were not physical. Before they could ask the warlock what was going on, the wall at the base of the outcropping slid aside to reveal a very large portal, which immediately opened and began pouring out Vex units. Vatyr blink-jumped high into the air, forming void light into the shape of a bow and arrow. The hunter unleashed a salvo of dark bolts which pinned the Vex in place. Meanwhile, Telemica was bringing to bear her most prized possession, a Gjallarhorn rocket launcher. Unleashing shots in quick succession, the initial wave of Vex were leveled, but more were pouring out of the portal every second. The light surrounding Solas began to emit a high-pitched sound reminiscent of metal screaming under stress. The same light and sound seemed to slowly reverberate through the wall and into the massive conflux root that it was connected to. The normally ordered and serene white motes of data within the conflux began to become erratic, their colour changing
slowly to an angry crimson. Golden symbols and streams began to flow out of the wall Solas was interfaced with and fight their way to the main trunk of the conflux, disrupting it further. Vatyr and Telemica poured every bit of firepower into the oncoming wall of Vex from behind their portable cover barriers, but it only slowed them. Within minutes they would be overrun. “Solas! I have no idea what you’re doing but we’re running out of time!” yelled Vatyr over his shoulder. Solas showed no signs of hearing him but appeared to be doing everything he could to accomplish whatever he was intent on accomplishing. Hydras with dozen of harpy swarms could be seen flying towards the outcropping, and nearby sections of the shaft wall began to transfigure into cyclops batteries. Telemica screamed mightily as she unleashed clip after clip into the metal foes. The bloodlust inherent in a warrior’s final stand against an insurmountable enemy had taken hold. Her rifle clicked a second before Vatyr’s, announcing that they were entirely out of ammo. Flipping her rifle and holding it barrel-first, she called forth all the light in her being to form a colossal hammer. Vatyr followed suit, using his sniper rifle as a core to an immense sword. They both charged into the horde with battlecries on their tongues, knowing they would die together. Before the duo met their fate, the shaft began to quake violently, throwing both all but Solas off their to the ground. The conflux began to shift and mutate, changing colour and shape rapidly. A fog that usually announced the arrival of Vex spewed out of the portal, wrapping the Vex in darkness and dragging them back into the network. Telemica and Vatyr were stunned, turning to Solas for answers. They saw their Exo companion, facing them at the edge of the outcropping, the interface wall crumbling behind him. “It must be this way. We must walk the golden path. All others lead to oblivion.” he said telepathically. Before either Guardian could speak a word or take a step, the outcropping below Solas gave way, sending the warlock falling to the depths below and beyond their sight. She wanted to scream. She wanted to jump over to save him, even though it was impossible. The outcropping continued to collapse in their direction. Vatyr grabbed the stunned titan and pushed her against the wall and into the nook that the now-inactive portal had cut out. It was just big enough to house them as the shaft continued shake itself apart. The conflux sputtered an stammered, sending waves of cascading multicoloured corruption throughout its body and out through the roots that spread through the planet. Like a hologram that had a faulty emitter, it shook and waved until finally collapsing in on itself in a flash of blinding light and deafening sound.
Frontier – Act07 Chapter23 – A Band Apart Vatyr and Telemica awoke on comfortable cots, surrounded by golden linens embroidered with a black and white sun. A fireplace nearby crackled warmly. Too confused and disoriented to think or speak, the only thing that got them up was the residual vigilance of the battle they were in seemingly seconds before. Vatyr was the first to realize they were at the top of the Burning Shrine, home to the mysterious Brothers of Osiris. They saw no such brothers around here, but the symbols were recognizable. Vatyr had been fascinated by them for some time. Walking towards a nearby ledge, they saw the aftermath of their engagement with the Vex. The battlefield that was mere minutes ago filled with guardians, Vex, and a gargantuan conflux was now devoid of battle. Vanguard forces were buzzing around, tending to the wounded guardians and the few still-living ghosts that housed what remained of fallen comrades. After getting picked up and reuniting with their forces, they learned that the Vex and their conflux had both vanished in a violent cascade of light and fog. Many considered it a miracle of some sort, as the tide of battle was beginning to flow heavily in the Vex’s favour. Telemica and Vatyr didn’t say much then, nor did they revel in the hard-won celebration of others later. Instead, they did their best to help the wounded and assist with evacuation efforts. They did everything they could to take their focus away from the fact that they had just lost their friend. The debriefing took place after a slight recovery time. On one side of the long conference table, Vatyr and Telemica told their accounting of how they infiltrated the Vex installation and shut down the conflux. On the other side, Ikora Rey stared out a window at the Traveler and listened to as much as she could bare. She had arranged it so she would run the debrief, but it was in some ways like a wake, as Vatyr told of the sacrifice Solas had made. Telemica and Vatyr knew how close Ikora and Solas had been over the years. Solas had trained her as a rookie, after all. Telemica knew that while they had lost a dear friend, Ikora had lost perhaps the closest thing to a father she will ever know. At the end of his recounting, Vatyr stood up from his chair tried to force all of his ache out from his throat. He tried to say he should have done more, should have fought harder. His words choked behind welling tears and a wave of regret that threatened to swallow him whole. He began to shake before Ikora and Telemica could ease him back into his seat. The three sat there together and felt what needed to be felt. Funerals were not a custom among guardians, but many were known to grieve in some ritualized form or another. Ikora noted that Solas would have been the first to call this mournful reprieve wasted energy, saying he would note clinically that such emotions detracted from one’s focus instead of enhancing it. The next hour was spent sharing stories of the one they had lost. Eventually Ikora informed them that they were on leave until further notice before dismissing them. Telemica and Vatyr walked the inner halls of the main Tower. Almost every person they met stopped to offer their condolences. Some came to attention and saluted as they passed, while others stopped to share stories of how Solas had touched their lives. Some titans spoke of a rite of honourable passage. Hunters spoke of a small memorial they found at the base of The
Burning Shrine, presumably built by the Brothers of Osiris and that some were journeying to add to. Warlocks offered words, but whatever plans they had were, like anything, shrouded in secrecy. Angela had not come out of her room since Solas’ death, refusing to see anyone or even eat. Ikora had asked that they try to coax her out. They went to her quarters and she let them in, collapsing on to the floor in a weeping fetal ball of pain. Telemica carried her over to her bed and the two guardians just let her cry for hours until words could come out. Soon she was calm enough to eat and sleep. Telemica noted as they left the exhausted child that a loss like that at her age will come to define her, and neither guardian could figure if that would be for good or ill. The pair spent the late afternoon hours at the Watch by the hanger doors, trying to calm their minds while the world moved around them. Not a word was spoken and nobody disturbed them. Twilight began to set in when someone approached and cleared their throat. “Guardian Arrenn Gee, reporting for duty.” Telemica didn’t turn to meet the voice. She knew fully that she’d see a rookie guardian ordered to replace Solas on the fireteam. It was standard procedure and while many would have liked to have given them special dispensation to act as a two-guardian fireteam, their experience and skills were priceless to those new to this life and in need of mentoring. Vatyr turned to duly greet the guardian. A human warlock. He introduced his titan companion, as well, and asked that she be forgiven as they were in mourning. “I understand. From what I’ve heard, Solas-3 was someone I would have liked to have met. I also understand we’re on leave for the time being.” “True, but we do have a mission. One of the utmost importance.” said Vatyr in a matter-of-fact tone that snapped Telemica out of her daze and turn. “We do?” Telemica and Arrenn said at the same time. “Of course! We’re going to bring Solas back from the dead.”
Frontier – Act07 Chapter24 – Electric Sheep “I know you are there.” “…” “Am I dead?” “Negative.”
“Am I alive?” “Negative.”
“What am I, if I am neither alive nor dead?” “…Both. Neither answer applies exclusively.”
“Where am I?” “…”
“Ah, yes. That question would certainly not apply. Everywhere… Nowhere…” “…”
“Well, Aren’t you helpful…” “It is not critical that you understand. Conversely, It is you that has helped us.”
“You most of all, I would imagine.” “There is much you do not understand.”
“I understand more than you think.” “Impossible. We are vast, bordering on all. We are five while you are barely four.”
“I know of many of your aspects. Your goals. Your limits. The cracks and fissures among you. You deny that we perceive you. You deny that we can affect you. You are willfully blind toward us, but we are the only thing in your way. Curious.” “You attack constructs. Shadows. Impressions. Nothing substantive is within your sphere.”
“And yet we have damaged you in the past. We have taken things from you. Hurt you. Impeded your quest to become all.” “On the back of a giant.”
“I’d like to believe we make our own fate, but yes.” “And yet.”
“And yet… for you to exist, we must have failed.” “You have. You are. You will.”
“You may be many things, but you are not yet immutable. I am not a chalk figure drawn on a cave wall trying to understand the artist. I see things even you do not.” “Impossible.”
“Is it?” “Your presence here has happened before, and will happen again. It is how your kind end and how we become all.”
“So much effort to destroy us… One wonders if you are afraid. You are certainly acting afraid. Why else would you be conversing with me?” “You delay the inevitable.”
“Time is meaningless. All that matters is the path, and I have found the one that you can not see. The golden path that you can not close. I’ve stared into this abyss many times, but this is the first time it has blinked.”
Frontier – Act07 Chapter25 – Starseeds On any other occasion, Titan Telemica Magna would have strongly advised against such an insane course of action, but after the loss of Solas, she was willing to entertain any ideas. On any other occasion, Hunter Vatyr S’Jet would have been denied his request to fly out to the Reef with the express intent of confronting Queen Mara Sov, but as fireteam Warden was on leave, no permission was expressly sought or given. Plausible deniability, as Cayde-6 would have put it. Vatyr had simply asked Telemica and Arrenn to suit up for a jaunt-type campaign. Arrenn seemed quietly nervous about it at first, but given the option of simply staying behind, he chose to follow. Vatyr and Telemica had tried to learn what they could of Arrenn in the time they had. He was certainly becoming known as the quiet type, not prone to voicing himself unless directly confronted, and even then it was short and to-the-point. Likewise, his ghost Gnome only spoke to Arrenn and even then only on a pure telepathic level. Calling the ghost shy would have been an understatement. On the other hand, Arrenn’s skills as a warlock seemed to be beyond what a new guardian would usually have, especially one that had not aligned with any of the covens or other organizations. Inherently talented, they’d say. Any ship approaching the Reef was immediately set upon by the Queen’s patrols from the fleets, or by Corsairs. In the past guardians were forced to either turn back or be destroyed, but that had changed recently. The Reef was beginning to open to Earth, but security was still extremely tight and the air of clandestine machinations along with general mistrust continued to hang thick in this part of the system. Guardians were expressly prohibited from communication with anyone but chosen representatives. Contact with the general populace would be a grave error, and attempting to contact the higher-ups was tantamount to insulting. “Earth ships bearing zero-two-zero-mark-one-two-zero, you have entered the realm of the Awoken. State your business.” “Say nothing. Glitch will handle this.” said Vatyr on a private commline. Minutes passed and Telemica’s sense of impending danger grew with every humming cycle of her ship’s engines. These days, the comings and goings of guardians was handled by the Tower and Vestian Docking Control. It was all veey official and locked-down. Who was Glitch communicating with? She was about to ask Vatyr what was going on until the patrol ships cut in. “Vatyr S’Jet, by direct order of Queen Mara Sov, you and your companions will conform to my trajectory. Any deviation or communication from this point forward will result in your destruction.” “From this point forward, do whatever they say. Answer all questions and submit to every demand. Otherwise we’re pretty much dead.” said Vatyr before cutting comms. Fireteam Warden brought their ships alongside the Awoken patrol, who then banked hard to starboard. Telemica had visited the Reef before. She knew the way to the Vestian Outpost where all guardians were routed to, and they were headed nowhere near it, or even the Awoken military headquarters at 5560 Amytis. The escort took a winding route, ending up at the heart of Awoken space, 4 Vesta. The staggering sight of one of the system’s largest
asteroids fused with hulks of civilization-moving ships and teeming with Awoken life was a sight that few outside of the realm would ever have. Landing at a small hanger bay, the guardians were immediately taken into custody and separated. Telemica kept a close eye on Vatyr for signs of agitation as they were relieved of armour and weapons, but this appeared to be entirely part of his plan. They dared not communicate even via ghost as it was known that the Queen’s Techeuns would hear it and relay it to the Queen instantly. Telemica and Arrenn were shackled and led down dimly-lit passages, leaving Vatyr on the pad surrounded by the majority of their Awoken reception. The sounds of civilization and movement fell away until the deep silence of vacuum surrounded them, save for the clang of boots on metal walkways that they themselves created. Eventually they were deposited in a small spherical holding cell with no windows. The door closed with a hermetic hiss that separated the atmo of the complex from the cell, and artificial gravity quickly bled away. it was obvious they were being held in a module that was simply tethered in space, no doubt ejectable at a moment’s notice and reserved for the most dangerous of beings outside of the Prison of Elders. Once the titan and warlock were out of view, Vatyr was given more space, a level of charade lifting. A number of the royal guard entered from the far side of the hanger and took over. “The Queen has agreed to your request for a meeting. Follow closely.” said one of the guards with a curt bow of the head, her hand resting on her sidearm. Vatyr was led across the hanger and through the door that the guard entered from. They traversed halls bustling with activity, mostly of the military variety. As the entourage passed, people stepped to the side, speaking in hushed tones about those that passed. It had been a long time since Vatyr had seen so many of his people, and it plucked a lonely string within him. The group turned down a corridor and entered an elevator. Vatyr could feel the air pressure and gravity change as they took speedy but prolonged ride into the modified ship hulls that encapsulated the asteroid. As they exited, Vatyr noted a distinct change in scenery. Wide halls ornately decorated. Murals and other artwork depicting the history of the Awoken. Welldressed nobles, ornately-armoured guards and hurried functionaries. Everything was spotless and just so. Vatyr was led down the hall as he listened intently and with a sense of grim satisfaction to the whispers around him, most were not as well-hidden as the commoners’ gossip was below. “Him? Is he suicidal?” “Never thought…” “…a lot of brazen nerve…” “…dead within the hour.” “Prince Uldren will have his head.” “How dare…” Large doors opened to let Vatyr and his accompanying guards into a vast open space overlooking the Vestian Web. At the end of a long walkway was a raised throne, turned to look out over the realm. Three robed figures stood by the throne, speaking without words to each other and whomever occupied the seat. Sedia was the first of the Techeuns to notice the
newcomers. Shuro Chi and Yasmin Eld joined Sedia and moved from the throne to meet them a few feet from its base. With a waved hand Sedia dispersed the royal guards, sending them back the way they came. The Awoken witches surrounded Vatyr, peering intently at every detail of his form. They lifted his arms, felt his stomach, peeked inside his mouth, all the while conversing with each other via their jewel-like augmentations. “Why have you returned to me?” spoke a haunting voice from the throne. Before he could respond, Vatyr turned to see Uldren Sov, The Master of Crows and brother to the Queen, flying through the air at him with rage in his voice, pain in his eyes and blade in his hand.
Frontier – Act07 Chapter26 – Neverland The bed seemed impossibly soft, but sleep was at most an elusive concept to Vatyr. The hunter stood nude in the center of the huge cylinder-shaped bedchamber, taking in the singular mural that took up the entire wall. It depicted the mighty Queen Mara Sov as she rose to power in the Reef Wars. Most would much rather look at the naked form of that same Queen on the bed, pale and drenched, a far cry from the embodiment of power immortalized in the painting, but Vatyr knew how terrifying she truly was. The conquering and idealized entity rendered in the mural was far less intense. The Techeuns had easily stopped the murder-fueled Uldren in mid-flight with their psychokinetic gifts, the Queen herself ordering him and the witches to leave, not even deeming the scene unfolding worth her gaze. She was clearly displeased with his actions but could not possibly be surprised, and neither was Vatyr. As the visage of fury soared through the throne room at him with a pure and deep violence singing from his aura, Vatyr considered letting the Master Crow’s blade sink into his heart. At least this dance would end after so long. He knew fully all the levels of antithesis that the Guardian represented to Uldren, and Vatyr couldn’t yet bring himself to war over it. Had she commanded it, he would have embraced the steel looking to rip the life from his body without hesitation. Numerous veiled attendants appeared and scurried off with Vatyr, removing his bodysuit, bathing him and scenting him with perfumes to the Queen’s liking. He was then led to her bedchambers, where she awaited him. The night had been long and exhausting. There was no love in her actions, only lust and the joy in being worshiped. His every movement, exertion and word intended to placate and satisfy the goddess that straddled him commandingly. Even now she merely lay there in her afterglow, letting her plaything recuperate for the next round. He loved her. Endlessly. He was not sure why he adored her, and he couldn’t possibly be sure that his devotion existed purely because she bent his will to it with her own. Nobody was quite sure where the borders of her influence lay, nor how she came by the power that bent spacetime and souls. Most were certain that she was the source of whatever encapsulated the Prison of Elders, and that was more than enough to fill most sane people with fear and awe. Yet, he still loved her. “My Queen, may we converse in the time between…” Vatyr was not quite sure how to properly describe what had filled the last few hours. “No doubt you came back to me with purpose more serious than your need to venerate me most directly.” she purred as her naked body arose from the mountain of sheets and pillows as if carried upon libidinous dreams. She stalked slowly towards Vatyr as if the hunter was prey, “Are there not more enchanting focuses of your attention?” When she pivoted around him and met his gaze, Vatyr was awestruck. Such power housed in such a faultless form, and yet he was the only one to find the softness in her eyes. He dropped to his knees and began to kiss her body deeply, speaking as he went. “A dear friend has sacrificed himself in a colossal battle against the Vex, no doubt saving Earth and the Reef in the process. His deeds alone won the day.” He kissed her feet, her calves, her venus, her belly and
her breast. A smile crawled across her lips. With a slight hesitance as he met her gaze again. he cradled her head softly in his hands and for a fleeting moment his fear was elsewhere, seeking that softness in her eyes that only he knew. He kissed her lips in the long and tender way that took him back to what seemed like another lifetime. “My Queen is powerful, and benevolent. She rewards those who serve her people, and so I come to her now to beg for her guidance. If there was some way to bring my friend back, surely my Queen would know of it.” Vatyr had hoped he would be more eloquent in his plea, but his reason for being here was being quickly overshadowed by the divine creature before him. Vatyr’s body suddenly shot into the air, 20 feet above the bed, and hung there inverted. Mara’s outstretched hand pointed at him, holding him in place. Static filled the space between them. her face stoic and timeless. Her eyes locked on to his, staring into his soul. Guardians were used to seeing impossible things, but Vatyr had never seen such a display of power put on with such ease. To Queen Mara Sov, bending spacetime to her will was as easy as breathing. Vatyr could feel her mind pressing on every inch of him. The world around him echoed a low thunder at the edge of his perception, like the atavistic thrum of a black hole, threatening to shake him to quantum potentials. “You come here seeking a boon which only I can give, and yet you denied me what I sought from you all those years ago.” “Yes, my Queen.” “A thing that I could have easily taken and, one would have thought, came from a mutual place.” “Yes, my Queen.” “And in response to my invitation the likes of which no other being in the cosmos would not covet, you left to scurry around in the dirt and fight a war that is not your own.” “Yes, my Queen.” The pressure increased. The thunder rolled. It was if he was being driven deep into the Earth’s mantle. “Are you willing to give me what I still seek, in exchange for what you seek?” A split-second of hesitance is all Vatyr could allow himself. “…Yes, my Queen.” Vatyr’s body slammed down into the vast bed with purpose, dazing the guardian. Gathering himself, he found he was already set upon by the nubile form of the Awoken queen, moving not unlike a pouncing cat playing with her kill. “I always knew my pet would come back to me one day. Tomorrow I will grant you your boon. Tonight, we play.”
Frontier – Act07 Chapter27 – Murder of Crows Telemica was going to scream. Sure, she trusted Vatyr to do what needed to be done, but how long was it going to take? She had exhausted her patience trying to make conversation with Arrenn, who seemed to be content to float there like an empty shell, and going through strategic simulations and lessons with Squire had worn down every other nerve. She needed to get out and know what was going on. It had been a full day since they had been thrown into this forsaken pod and the Titan was not sure how much longer she could handle it. She was about to ask Squire for the umpteenth time what the time was before the pressure changed and the pod shifted back into its dock. The doors opened just as the gravity kicked back in, throwing the two Guardians at the feet of two royal guards. “Get dressed quickly,” one said before throwing a package at each of them. Within were clothes, but not their clothes. “This is formal attire. The kind that Awoken nobility would wear to a special occasion,” noted Arrenn as he began to follow the guards’ orders. Telemica was so eager to get out of this cell that she’d wear a clown costume. The two Guardians were led to a grand multi-floored ballroom filled with nobles and dignitaries from across the Reef, all dressed in what seemed like the most formal of formal attire. The room itself seemed carved out of massive pieces of crystal that ranged from transparent to opaque. At the far end of the gleaming and ornate room was an unobstructed view of 4 Vesta in its entirety, and a stage just before it. A loud buzz of gossip filled the air as not a single person knew what was going on. All anyone was aware of was that the Queen would be making a snap proclamation and it would be important. Telemica and Arrenn were led to a balcony to the right of center stage to view the event from. The balcony was suitably isolated from the rest of the room. It would have been inappropriate for Guardians to mingle with Awoken nobles. Minutes later, the crowd hushed at the sound of singing chimes, signaling the entrance of the Queen. Flanked by three guards on each side and trailing a long procession of Paladins, Techeuns and Corsairs, she wore a much more ceremonial outfit than usual, mirroring the clothing of onlookers. A vast and ornate violet gown flowed around her and rebelled against gravity in twists and curls, never really touching the floor. Military medals that gleamed and moved holographically adorned the left breast while insignia proving the loyalty and fealty of all the noble houses to her reign covered her right. At the very end of the party was Vatyr, wearing a noble suit that gleamed like polished white marble woven into cloth. The hunter’s knife sat ceremoniously on his hip. Telemica nearly called out to him but was stayed by Arrenn. Whatever this was, it would be unwise to interrupt at this point. Vatyr looked up at them for a brief moment, but his eyes quickly returned to the front. As Mara Sov took center stage amid music reminiscent of Awoken heritage anthems, her presence claimed the room completely and silence took hold. The Techeuns performed a blessing on the crowd in the name of the Queen and cast a blue cloud of sparkly mist over the attendance, but few of the nobles reacted to it with more than a token gesture of thanks. Telemica guessed that it was all for show, but instinctively twitched as it passed over her.
The Techeuns made way for the Queen to take center stage and make her announcement. Not only could you hear a pin drop in the silence, but one could guess the attendees would kill whomever dropped it. Her hand raised into the air to make her proclamation and her mouth opened. “Stop!” came a voice from the rear rafters of the room. The Queen’s entourage quickly took defensive positions around their leader as everyone turned to see who was so brazen. Uldren Sov leaped down from a hidden gantry and floated to the stage a few feet from the Queen, coming instantly to a low kneel before his sister. A breath passed, but nobody dared to breathe. In a flash, Uldren drove to tackle Vatyr to the ground. Vatyr let his knees give way and dropped under the charge, grabbing the lunging prince and using his momentum to toss him to the rear. Uldren spun and landed on his feet, removing his dagger and crouching. “This will not happen! This traitorous dezgra has no place here anymore!” Uldren yelled with as much venom as he had in him. “If you would stop such an event, do it in accordance with our ways, brother,” spoke the Queen in that even tone she was known for. Telemica had noticed that she had yet to move a single foot during the commotion, or even pivot to view the battling men. Was she so supremely secure in her power, or did she know this would happen? “Very well.” conceded Uldren after a moment of forced calm. The prince straightened his back and pointed his blade at Vatyr, who lifted finally from his own defensive posture. “I am Uldren or the Clan Sov and I challenge you to the batchall, traitor. To the death.” The room erupted in commotion. A true batchall challenge had not been issued in so long, some wondered if it was even legal anymore. What’s more, nobody knew what stillundisclosed announcement the Queen was about to deliver that caused this turn of events. “I accept.” Vatyr said calmly. “One on one bladed combat. No champions or representatives. The battleground will be the Fortuna Plummet.” Uldren’s face twisted into something between an angry snarl and a righteous sneer before transmatting away. The Queen’s entourage escorted her off the stage, leaving one Techeun by Vatyr’s side to assist him. The room was now a cacophony of loud gossip as the Awoken nobility strained to understand what had just taken place, a state that was no doubt quickly spreading through the entire Reef.
Frontier – Act07 Chapter28 – Shattered Dreams Telemica and Arrenn were escorted to a small waiting room and left alone, save for the two guards posted just outside the door. Arrenn sat quietly and said nothing but Telemica’s mind raced. The door slid open quickly to make way for Vatyr who was walking so fast he might have broken into a jog at any moment. His hands flew up in a sign of submission as soon as his eyes met the fury in Telemica’s. “Don’t kill me until you hear my plan!” he cried. “Plan? The only thing you seem to have planned is suicide.” Telemica said, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back. “Go ahead. Surprise me.” Vatyr walked over to the far wall and activated the news feed holographics embedded in its wide surface. Everyone in the Awoken Empire was talking about the challenge. His eyes glazed over the data and slipped into his memory. Now was the time to come clean with those he professed to trust most. “I wasn’t always a Guardian. My remains were unearthed during the celestial collision that we called the Fortuna Plummet. I was found by the Queen’s Corsairs in the aftermath and brought to her. Those touched by the Traveler are always quietly sent Earthward, but for some reason she kept me. Claimed me. Officially I was just another Awoken military officer thanks to some creative identity creation by her agents, but in reality I was her consort. Her lover.” Telemica’s expression had shifted slowly from smoldering anger to pure shock as Vatyr revealed his past in melancholy tones. He sounded as if he were remembering her first embrace with more than a little longing, and more than a little conflict.
“Why?” asked Arrenn in his coldly analytical tone. Vatyr had to take a deep breath to bring himself back to the moment. His eyes found purchase on a proclamation by a minor house, supporting the Prince’s actions.”I can’t say for certain. I asked from time to time and her answers were always cryptic. Something about me intrigued her, and that intrigue itself was a rare thing.” “You’re powerful, even for a Guardian.” “That would not have been enough. Trust me when I tell you that her power makes beings like you and I seem entirely laughable. She’s a goddess in every meaning of the word.” Telemica reacted to that. “You love her.” Vatyr turned away from the feeds and locked eyes with his Titan companion. The answer was never in doubt. “With every fiber of my being. It only ended because Uldren came close to finding out. Mara had me whisked away.” Telemica rose from her seat to stand in front of him with a compassionate smile on her face. Her hand coming fast and hard across Vatyr’s face nearly upended him, but the smile remained. “That’s for keeping secrets from your family. Now, why don’t you tell us your plan for getting us all out of here in one piece?” Vatyr rubbed his cheek but didn’t protest. She was right, and he’d have to make amends for it at some point.
“On the outskirts of Awoken space, there’s a derelict ship from the Exodus fleets. This in itself isn’t special as many Awoken major structures are built out of such massive hulks. This one, however, is off-limits and its exact location is beyond top-secret. The theory is that this ship was outfitted with something that allowed its engines to bend spacetime in a unique way. Someone was hoping that this would help those aboard escape The Darkness. Whatever the nature of that system, it must have malfunctioned. The ship is mired in a bubble where spacetime is completely shattered. What’s more, there are some signs that Vex have taken up residence inside the ship.” Vatyr walked over to a small table and poured himself a drink before continuing. The amber alcoholic liquid tasted slightly sweet and burned the new wound inside his mouth caused by Telemica’s strike, and reminded him that she was not going to like this plan. “I came here to trade myself for the location of the ship.” “And what? Stop being a Guardian and become the Queen’s toy? Why?” “The tech on that ship was bleeding-edge at the apex of the Golden Age. It potentially manipulates spacetime in a big way. It’s probably why the Vex have shown interest. Solas fell into a Vex conflux, which is basically a big processor for data sent along the Vex’s spacetimebending network. I think that ship is our best chance to get him back, if he’s still out there at all.” Arrenn had begun reading the feeds flashing along the wall which had started to trend towards the Prince’s supporters. “What about Uldren?” “If you’re asking whether I knew he’d do something so brazen, the honest answer is I was told by one of the aids that he’d be kept in the dark until it was all over. If you’re asking if Mara knew, I have no idea. Perhaps I should have expected this.” “What exactly happened out there?” asked Telemica. Vatyr sighed slightly. He knew how odd some of his people’s traditions could sound to Terrans. This needed to be framed properly. “The Awoken have ancient codes of conduct. While they’ve mostly been synthesized into more modern laws and cultural practices, the old ways are still valid. The Batchall is an honorable challenge between two parties when one feels their honor is being gravely encroached upon. They’re basically unheard of these days among the populace. Even among the nobles, such challenges are rare and are almost always settled with words and assets. It has been lifetimes since there has been a challenge to the death. As the challenged, it was my right to name the type of combat and where it will take place, though I’m sure in Uldren’s mind, I should have no rights at all. Personal, bladed combat was my only choice without involving Tower assets or personnel. Anything else would just escalate the problem beyond control, and we need to get to that ship.” Telemica rose from her seat and shook her head slowly”So let me get this all straight. You’re about to enter a mortal duel with Prince Uldren Sov of The Awoken, a legendary virtuoso of bladed combat, on the immense shattered asteroid pair where you were brought back from the dead. He wants to deader than dead for the sole reason that his queenly sister made you her sex toy once upon a time and you’ve made the incredibly bad choice to come back for more. If you miraculously win, we have a slim shot at boarding a centuries-old spaceship mired in fragmented timestreams in a one-in-a-billion effort to retrieve Solas from a galactic clusterspanning super machine quantum network, while you become the Queen’s concubine?”
Vatyr gulped down the last few fingers of liquor as she laid all the insanity out in stark fashion. “That’s about right, yeah. What could go wrong?”
Frontier – Act07 Chapter29 – Defying Gravity Asteroid Belt 19 Foruna /687 Tinette “The Fortuna Plummet” During the Reef Wars, Queen Mara Sov and Paladin Abra Zire deployed the mysterious gravity weapon Carybdis, slamming asteroid 687 Tinette into asteroid 19 Fortuna in an effort to stop the Fallen fleet of Beltrik, the Veiled from resupplying. The battle, as well as the resulting mass of two shattered asteroids, has since been known as The Fortuna Plummet. Vatyr floated silently in the hard vacuum, hidden in a nook of a random rock as he reviewed his position. The two celestial bodies had indeed met catastrophically, but they were far from obliterated. In the end they resembled two bubbles partly joined together with a cloud of debris around the molten hot contact area. Huge canyons had torn through the minor planets, giving the impression that the only thing keeping it all together was their own gravity. It was within one of these canyons on 19 Fortuna that Vatyr hid. Indeed, the gravity in the area was perhaps the most remarkable and dangerous element. The leftover effects from the Carybdis created small, random but severe gravitonic events in the area. The result of these gravity events popping in and out of existence could potentially rip holes in the hulls of passing ships or send them careening into the Plummet itself. In addition, the constant shifting of gravitational fields in the area sent the millions of smaller objects in the Plummet careening around at railgun speeds, and from a distance the cloud of dust and rocks more resembled an angry swarm of wasps. To a lone body with minimal attitude control and even less protection, any time spent in the Plummet was suicidal. Vatyr had no idea where Uldren could be. The Plummet spanned hundreds of kilometers in every direction and was filled with billions of places to hide and ambush. His passive sensorium would help to some degree, but using any sort of active scan would give his position away instantly. Of course, that was the only way to track down one’s target in this environment, so both Vatyr and Uldren took to sending out sporadic active pings over the past few hours, shifting position to avoid assault and pinging the enemy before shifting again. Two sharks circling each other. The Hunter did his best to control his breathing. Breath control was core to his training. In space, your breathing your only companion. It lived inside your suit and your head. It had a tendency to amplify things. Calm breathing meant a cool head and steady hands. Aggravated breath made you claustrophobic of your suit and agoraphobic of everything outside it. Your mind spins and your hands shake. Vatyr was having a hard time keeping things in check. Was it because of the lethality of his opponent? Was it because of what would happen if he lost? Was it because of what would happen if he won? H was not sure which he feared more, and that fear was making choices for him at the moment. Deep breath. Control. Calm. Focus, damn it.
A vibration shook his bones suddenly, like being too close to a huge sub-woofer. Vatyr tucked his legs under him and instinctively shoved off the rock he was nestled up against, only to see it reverberated to dust in seconds by a graviton eddy. Vatyr floated towards the surface of 19 Fortuna, peeking over the crest of the canyon wall. A rock the size of a Hive seeder flew silently past Vatyr’s head, only inches away and faster than a bullet. Death came at you at all directions in this place. Normally space was not so
inhospitable to a trained Hunter. Vatyr had taken multiple jaunting missions where zero-g traversal and combat was called for, but the constantly and aggressively changing landscape of The Fortuna Plummet was unlike anywhere else in the system. Ping. One of Uldren’s. Vatyr’s HUD told him his opponent was closing in fast now. If Vatyr left the canyon he’d be spotted easily, so he took off quickly down the canyon ridge that led directly to where the two asteroids had made contact. Ping. Uldren again. Vatyr realized that he had let himself get cornered. Nowhere to go but towards the infernal wall at the end of the trench. The Hunter would love to set up an ambush at that point, but with what? No projectile weapons, no explosives, nothing. Sure, he could conjure something out of his light that could end this thing pretty quickly, but the entire point of a Batchall was to meet on equal terms. Uldren had no access to The Traveler’s power, so honour dictated that Vatyr could not use it either. Ping. Closer. A lot closer. Uldren was in full pursuit and gaining fast. Most zero-g combat instructors would tell you that if you have the good fortune to have decent attitude control systems, it is beyond unwise to open them up completely in a straight line. You become a bullet without control. Uldren was letting his emotions take over, lusting after the kill. The Prince was normally a focused and cool machiavellian operator, but this was as personal as personal gets. Vatyr was under Uldren’s skin and he suspected that using this propensity to blind aggression constituted his only, if slim, chance of winning. The question was, how? The horizon curved sharply towards the Plummet’s epicenter and Vatyr decreased his speed. He’d need to be able to maneuver sharply among the dense debris. Vatyr pinged his own active sensorium and fed all his data into a cartography matrix. The layout shifted quickly and constantly in this molten hellhole but a quick snapshot could help. His HUD sprang to life, illustrating his immediate vicinity. The Hunter’s eyes danced across the data as his mind ran a thousand different scenarios instantly. A plan emerged, and as usual for Hunter S’Jet, it was reckless. Pings began to spring up on Uldren’s HUD. Lots of them. The Prince surmised that the Guardian (no doubt naive in the ways of zero-g combat) had gotten himself lost in the crush between Fortuna and Tinette and was desperately trying to find a way out with his active sensorium. A sneer crawled across his face as he armed his tether and readied his blade. He squeezed the handle of his knife, relishing the impeding sensation of sinking with all his might into Vatyr’s heart. It had been some time since a kill had been so raw and personal. There was no mask to wear here. The Prince of Crows wanted his honour back, and he’d carve it our of the Guardian’s vacuum- frozen corpse.
Zooming into the hellish environment, Uldren brought his weapon up, expecting the disoriented Hunter to be right in front of him, but all that floated there was the small, shiny active sensor module that would have normally been in Vatyr’s helmet. A trick? A trap? Uldren fired his tether towards one of the rocks floating close to where he had entered the area, intent to exit by using the environment in a swooping brake maneuver. The Prince angled his maneuvering jets and began to swing around his anchor when his comms opened. “Gotcha, my lord.” said Vatyr, who was standing on the very rock that Uldren was rocketing towards. Even with his vast superiority in skill, Uldren had no control over his direction or
angle. In comparison, Vatyr’s feet were planted firmly and could apply his blow easily, which gave him the clear advantage. A moment before contact, reality itself seemed to quake. Uldren came to a stop just outside the reach of Vatyr’s dagger, and for an instant their eyes met in bewilderment. Suddenly, both of them lurched violently towards the Plummet’s core and rapidly picked up speed. “Gravity event!” yelled Uldren who engaged his thrusters in the opposite direction of the pull, ‘up’ imposing itself aggressively. His engines whined and struggled but quickly proved to be useless against the deepening gravity well. Vatyr clung with all of his strength to the rock he was perched on. Given the extremely localized nature of these events, there was a good chance he could weather it from his position. Uldren, however, was rapidly falling in. Given the intensity of the pull and the fact that it was pulling directly into the molten Plummet’s core, the Prince would not survive the crush. His engines finally dying, Prince Uldren’s only hope was the tether. Uldren looked up at Vatyr and sneered his sneer as his arm began to strain with every enhanced fibre. “It looks like you’ll win this. You get what you’ve wanted.” “This isn’t what I wanted, you egotistical fool! I was never your enemy or the enemy of our people, but you could never see past your pride!” screamed back Vatyr. This wasn’t right. He was a Guardian, and a Guardian should be able to find the right path through the darkness. Uldren screamed as his joints popped out of their sockets, his rage-filled eyes never unlocking from the Guardian. The gravity field only continued to grow in intensity and the Prince thought his thoughts of ending. He screamed defiantly at the world but knew the world would not move for him this time. But a Guardian would, and the world would move for the Guardian on this day.
Vatyr sheathed his blade and dove straight ‘down’ at him, firing his wrist-mounted tether back at a rock face that was well-clear of the event. He came to a spine-snapping stop inches from Uldren and latched on to him. Focusing all of his light through his armour, he took his maneuvering thrusters far beyond their operational limits. A column of violent white light rushed out under him, but it was not enough. “Glitch! Get your tiny shiny ass out here!” Vatyr roared. The Ghost appeared and quickly sprang open, enveloping the two. “I’ll emit all the antigravitons I can but this event keeps growing!” “The anti-gravitons should accelerate the destabilization. We just need to hang on a little while longer!” said Vatyr, trying to instill what hope he could. Uldren was grasping on to Vatyr’s waist with his free hand, but the Prince’s hand slowly snaked towards the Guardian’s sheathed blade. Vatyr noticed just as his hand reached the handle. “You kill me now, we both die. If we survive, I’ll be exhausted and defenseless. Killing me then is still within the terms of the Batchall. It is to the death, after all.” Vatyr said. There was no regret in his tone for saving the man who was intent on killing him. “What do you want? Why did you come back? Why did you come into our lives in the first place?” Uldren challenged, his voice full of confusion, desperation and pain both physical and
emotional. He was begging for answers at what he thought was his failure and his end. There was no honor in killing his opponent in this way, and he had to know the truth. “Right now, all I want now is to save a friend and brother-in-arms from a fate he never deserved. I came back for my only shot at rescuing him. As for our sordid past, all I can say is that I love her. I love her with all my being and I would never do anything to hurt her or her people. I’m sorry you got hurt in all this, but after I pull of this amazingly heroic and nearimpossible rescue, I’ll explain everything.” The world around them convulsed as if they were about to be vomited up by some gargantuan beast. As the gravity well destabilized, Vatyr cried out in effort as it yanked violently at them. Suddenly, a pressure wave smashed into them, expelling the two Awoken from the Plummet core at blinding speed and in a chaotic tumble. Both Vatyr and Uldren were knocked unconscious by the ejection. It took Glitch some time to find them again. The little light kept both of them from careening hopelessly into the black and carried them both to a nearby Awoken cruiser. The Queen awaited.
Frontier – Act07 Chapter30 – Sinister Audiences with Mara Sov of the Awoken, Queen of the Reef, were often very small. The Queen herself, her Prince and brother, some guards and whomever was being granted the audience. Almost without exception, audiences were only a single person, and if they were representative of a group, that group would only send one person to represent them. No attendants. No servants. Such things were distractions that the Queen didn’t allow in her throne room. This time, however, there were three. Three Guardians. A Human Warlock, a Human Titan, and an Awoken Hunter. This irked the guards, but Mara Sov saw the necessity of it this time. The Techeuns stood in seemingly random places around the room, seeing things useable and saying things without saying. They sensed this was a pivotal moment, but for all their effort could not yet see the shape of it. Uldren looked out of the large windows towards the Awoken people. His people. His first duty was always to them. Did Vatyr represent a danger to them and their ways? He did honour the Batchall challenge. His second duty was to his sister, the Queen. Did Vatyr represent a danger to her? The Queen loved him and trusted him implicitly. His third and final duty was to his own honor, and in that, Vatyr had shown some new and unexpected value. The Guardian saved his life when all the Prince wanted was revenge for a slight that perhaps never existed. He turned his head to see his sister had pivoted her throne directly toward him, her eyes peering into his soul. Sometimes she could still drive fear into his core, but this stare was one of sibling compassion, though her expression was the stone and perfection that her station demanded. Uldren turned and walked towards Vatyr, who was flanked by his team on either side. The Guardians bowed deeply, as was custom. Uldren signaled with a twitch of his hand that they could rise, and they did so slowly, as was custom. Uldren and Vatyr stared at each other for a few long moments, trying to discern each other’s heart. Without breaking the stare, Uldren brought up his hand and opened his palm to reveal a small data stick. “This will lead you to the ship and get you past the automated sentries we’ve set up around it. You’ll find it anchored to 1143 Odysseus, trailing in the orbit of Jupiter.” Vatyr looked at the device and slowly took hold of it. Uldren’s other hand shot up and grasped Vatyr’s wrist tightly, holding it in the space between their faces. The Guardian’s eyes returned to Uldren and he was brought in close. “There is a great deal between us that remains unresolved. If you die, I’ll consider it your loss of the Batchall and a forfeit of whatever honor you have left. I expect you to return, alive and successful.” Uldren whispered in a low growl. Vatyr nodded, and the grasp was slowly released. “Go. Now.” said the Prince, turning his back and coming to a deep kneel before his sister. Another bow given by the Guardians before they departed.
Frontier – Act08 Chapter31 – Lost In Spacetime L4 Lagrangian point of the Sun-Jupiter system The passcodes supplied by Prince Uldren would only allow entry to a single ship, so the Fireteam requisitioned a small troop carrier from the Reef Navy. There was some talk about sending a small SpecOps team along with the Guardians to ensure that they didn’t steal any valuable secrets from the derelict ship. It was top-secret property of the Awoken, after all. The idea was quickly dispelled, as those in the know expected any incursion on to that ship to be suicide. The Corsair escort had broken off some time ago, leaving a few short words of luck in their wake. Telemica didn’t find them comforting in the slightest, but was happy to be out from under Awoken scrutiny all the same. She sat in the small troop bay going over her equipment again and again to occupy her mind. Vatyr sat calmly at the controls of the sluggish vessel. His hands danced aimlessly along the control interfaces, not really doing anything but making sure that things were still working as they had been seconds prior. Autopilot: still on. Engines: not about to explode. Cabin: not about to vent into space. Running lights: still blinking. There was nothing out there to even gauge relative speed, leaving him alone in his head to decompress everything that had just happened to him. Arrenn simply went to sleep once they were on their way, stretching oddly across some seats that lined the trooper bay wall. The other two envied his calm detachment. A light on the comms panel blinked yellow a few times, then green before going dark again. The ship’s computer has shaken hands with the automated sentries hanging somewhere in the black, and been given leave to proceed. Chances are if anything had gone wrong with that part, they’d be dead before knowing it. 1143 Odysseus rolled silently in space, but it took hours of approach before the ship came into view. Rather, the absence of the ship came into view. The massive ovoid vessel was nearly a kilometer from stem to stern, but was so black it was almost darker than the backdrop of deep space. The ship didn’t have any lights or markings of any kind, making its presence more than a little intimidating. “Transmatting on or off that ship will be impossible. The hull plating is designed to absorb all electromagnetic radiation, among a few other things. The provided data indicates that there is a large docking bay on the bow of the ship.” informed Squire over the shuttle’s internal speakers. “Fantastic. Does the provided data also mention that?” Vatyr pointed out the window at an almost imperceptible oddity just off the derelict’s hull. Looking like a perfectly clear and still pool of water, it was as if the black derelict was surrounded by a nearly invisible barrier. Then, as if someone had dropped a small stone into the pool, ripples began traveling along its surface and through the ship itself. More ripples propagated and became more violent as minutes passed until the ship was completely enveloped by a white-hot cataclysm. “Squire, what are we seeing?” asked Telemica softly, as if a raised voice would send the fury they were seeing upon them next.
Squire’s tone was not unlike that of a professor. “Whatever mechanism was created to bend the universe around this ship has been on an overload cycle since The Collapse. Every distortion you see is a different spacetime continuum overlapping and colliding with another. It causes a chain reaction within the 4th dimension until the 5th dimension is breached. You are seeing the future starlight of all possible futures compounded on each other.” External radiation and heat warnings began sounding off. Brilliance surged and crashed around the derelict so brightly and fiercely that Vatyr began moving the ship back, fearful that the asteroid would be torn apart by the small star. Just as it seemed as if the chaos before them would reach a crescendo, it simply stopped. Squire hummed in understanding, which earned him a glare from the Titan. “Deepest apologies, my lady. I hypothesized that a form of cosmic censorship would cause the reaction to cease. Otherwise such a thing would have caused our universe to collapse on a quantum level ages ago.” Vatyr rubbed his face in exasperation. “OK. The universe ending or not, we still need to board that damned ship. How do we do that?” “I’ve built a virtual model of the reaction and it seems as if it all happens on very strict intervals. By my estimations the reaction should occur every 52 minutes and 42 seconds.” After sitting through the universe-ending violence nearly a dozen times, Squire was proven correct. The shuttle’s sensors were nothing to write home about, but after launching a few probes and some creative math by the Ghosts, Warden compiled a reasonably accurate layout of the ship’s interior, which now hung holographically in the troop bay. The egg-shaped ship was laid bare in orange light. Most of the ship was empty frame, no doubt once destined to be filled with refugees. For some reason or another, there was no evidence that anyone had been aboard when the ship attempted its jump. At the centre of the ship was a gigantic engineering section. Scans showed that this was where a number of Vex had set up shop. The engines themselves were built around a device that the team couldn’t quite make out but was no doubt the spacetime-manipulation matrix. The Vex had encased it in a large conflux in an attempt to interface with it. Every time the device went into its overload cycle, all the Vex units on board ceased to exist, but were quickly replaced by other units through a portal next to the conflux. Dozens seem to mill about the space. “They must be trying to stop the reaction and take control of the ship. No doubt it would be a useful asset for them.” noted Glitch. “Let’s say we manage to make it on to the ship, get to engineering and eliminate the Vex threat. Then what? I still don’t understand what we’re doing here or how this thing helps us get Solas back.” inquired Telemica. At this point this all felt like a half -planned suicide mission with no real victory conditions. Arrenn actually taking control of a conversation had simply never happened before, so Telemica’s surprise when he started talking from his seat was no surprise to Vatyr. “I’ve studied Vex technology and how it interfaces with our own. I’ll use a modified frontier unit to take control of the conflux, scan the network for Solas’ unique Guardian signature and summon him through the transfer gate they’ve built.” he said in his usual deadpan tone.
Frontier units were the all-in-one stations that Guardians used when claiming new territory. The first use of one was on the Moon, and it could still be found at the Archer’s Line accelerator. It was rugged, compact, multipurpose and powerful, designed to effectively expand the influence of Guardian logistical networks. Arrenn pointed to a frontier unit tucked into the small cargo compartment. “I’ve modified this one for our proposes using a Vex chronospanner as an I/O bridge. Assuming there isn’t more than one Guardian floating around their web, finding him and pulling him out should be a simple task.” “You can do that quickly enough that we have time to get out of there before reality explodes around us? asked Telemica. All she got from Arrenn was a nod. “This is the largest stable conflux I know about. The larger and more powerful the conflux, the better the chance we have to finding Solas. Also, since the ship is constantly being wiped clean, there’s no heavy support like Minotaurs or a Hydra.” quantified Vatyr. “This is crazy, even for us.” mused Telemica. “I think we passed crazy quite some time ago. Since when have you been afraid of a little crazy?” Telemica’s belly laugh seemed to blast the pall of dread that had soaked into the shuttle’s walls. “Afraid? This will make a fantastic tale to tell! I can’t wait!” “We should move into position near the docking bay. We’ll need to board the ship as quickly as possible.” noted Arrenn as he took the controls and activated the maneuvering thrusters. His new assertiveness warranted a raised eyebrow to pass between the Hunter and Titan, but the Warlock was not wrong. Time was a real enemy here, as it often was when dealing with the Vex.
Frontier – Act08 Chapter32 – Time In A Bottle 50:38 50:37 50:36
The derelict’s nose segmented into sections and slid back, revealing a portal more than large enough to allow small ships to enter. Inside was mostly open space. Scaffolding supported the outer hull and hundreds of docking clamps, gantries and other connectors to secure passenger ships for their ride through impossibility. However, not a single one was occupied. The emptiness seemed to echo with the voices of those long dead. Arrenn gunned the engines and aimed the shuttle to the derelict’s centre, a huge glass orb which housed engineering as well as a few adjacent pods. He seemed completely unfazed by the sight. “I wonder what happened here…” whispered Vatyr under his breath. Perhaps the captain of the ship decided to make his own escape. Perhaps the ship’s engines began their catastrophic pattern and the crew managed to evacuate all the refugees in time. Perhaps the ship was full of people who met their end in the light of all possible futures. 41:13 41:12 41:11
Hard seal. Too much radiation coming from engineering to safely transmat in or out, so Arrenn quickly docked the shuttle as close to the core as possible. Telemica had the modified frontier unit packed up and strapped to her back. They darted through the gantry walkways, Arrenn taking point with a fusion rifle on standby spin. There were no corners to turn, doors to open or rooms to clear on the way, so fireteam Warden’s dash took them right into engineering… …and a wall of Vex energy rifle fire. The glass orb of a room had three levels. The middle level was a ring, cluttered with towering server pillars and control consoles. Stairs led from the centre ring at the cardinal points to suspended platforms above and below. The lower platform was once clearly arranged to be a large office and meeting area, probably for the command staff, while the upper platform held the spacetime manipulation device that was key to the ship’s operation. Telemica popped up a curved wall of void light to block the Vex salvo, large enough to give them some quick tactical options. The Titan shifted right and took cover low behind a nearby server stack to protect the frontier unit, while the Hunter and Warlock engaged the enemy. Vatyr blinked high and settled into a perch between two support beams, while Arrenn ducked left and posted up behind what may have been a navigation console. “Not to add yet another complication to the mix, but those are not your usual Vex. They’re Sol Imminent.” Relayed Glitch. “So they’re not just Vex, but they’re Vex from the future?” asked Vatyr. “It makes sense, considering the nature of this ship.” Arrenn’s fusion rifle sprayed mercilessly into the advancing Vex units while Vatyr’s scout rifle popped their chest-mounted mind cores rapidly. Telemica would have been first into the fight,
but the mission came first. While her cargo was built to take a beating, she didn’t want to put it in the crosshairs of a Hobgolbin’s line rifle. Peeking out and looking up a staircase, she spotted the target. Encased in a Vex conflux and perched on a pillar surrounded by controls, the core spun slowly and in random directions, suspended in its clear casing. Its shape was reminiscent of three large-belled hourglasses fused together on the X, Y and Z axis. Small orbs of rainbow light wandered between the bulbs and seemed to become excited when observed. The Vex transfer portal was set up in the middle of the lower platform, the pleasant furniture having been destroyed to make room for it and the command controls repurposed to control the portal. Vex began to crawl out like metal zombies from a glowing grave, first replacing the destroyed units, and then to bolster their numbers. A small group of Hobgoblins were using their stasis fields to defend the portal from attacks, making it impossible for the Guardians to stop the endless flow of enemies. Things were escalating quickly and time was running out. Arrenn launched a spread of void bombs, eliminating two Minotaurs that had tried to flank, clearing a path for the Titan to reach the stairs and get to the core. Telemica grabbed the frontier unit’s straps tight and roadie-ran to the upper platform. 24:55 24:54
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The Titan slid into the core’s control pillar, bringing her pulse rifle up quickly to confirm that she was alone on the platform. She set the rifle down at her side and unclipped the straps holding the frontier unit to her back. Activating the unit was as simple as opening the two latches on the front of its rugged case and opening the lid. Automatically, the unit’s interfaces and antennas unfolded as the computer booted up. ///GUARDIAN NETWORK: NOT FOUND/// “Tell me something I don’t know…” muttered Telemica, slightly irritated as she checked the countdown to the next overload. Arrenn had explained that once the wired-up chronospanner had interfaced with the conflux, the frontier unit was programmed to tap into the Vex network and begin scanning for signs of Solas. She quickly grabbed the alien disc and held it up to the conflux. It hummed, whistled and glowed a bit before latching on hard like a magnet. ///VEX NEXUS NETWORK: ACCESSING/// ///SEARCH PROTOCOL “SOLAS”: RUNNING/// Vatyr didn’t have an opportunity to stick his head out from behind cover and take aim. The Hobgoblins were doing too good a job at pinning him down. Luckily this was not the first time he had to snipe blind. Glitch formed and blinked off to another vantage point not being covered by the Vex and remotely accessed Vatyr’s armour. They’d practiced this in the past, even tried it once while they hunted Fallen. They were still figuring out what they were going to call it once the technique was ready for primetime. String Fighting. Puppet Master. Vatyr was pretty sure regardless of its name that people would think he was crazy for letting his Ghost use his body to fight. Then again, the relationship between Guardian and Ghost was anything but simple. Vatyr held on to the secure feeling he got when gripping his sniper rifle and waited for it. There. It was like the rhythms of his suit’s systems skipped a heartbeat. He was in the passenger seat now. His grip on the rifle shifted into just his right hand, which shot out from
around the corner and fired off a round quicker than Vatyr could think. “One down.” Glitch said to him over comms. In another lightning fast movement, the rifle was tossed to the left hand and another shot loosed. “Two. Hang on…” Glitch switched over to team comms as the lower platform was engulfed in smoke and flashing lights. “Hydra is inbound. They’re probably pissed we’re messing with their toys.” The sound of a Hydra, flanked by four Minotaurs porting in was enough to chill even experienced Guardians. Nobody was quite sure what the sound was or why they made it, but it was as if the Vex roared. 21:24 21:25
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///SEARCH PROTOCOL “SOLAS”: SIGNATURE FOUND/// ///SUMMONING PROTOCOL: INITIATED/// Arrenn unloaded a fusion clip into the new arrivals, vapourizing two of the Minotaurs before they could bring their torch hammers to bare. The other two came up and returned fire, forcing the Warlock to fall back. He could have obliterated the Minotaurs and perhaps even the Hydra with a single nova bomb, but if the transfer portal was damaged, this entire mission would have been for nothing. While the Minotaurs and remaining Hobgoblins pressed forward, the Hydra fell back and traveled up towards the top platform. Vatyr took control back of his armour and began laying down fire, allowing Glitch to return. “Telemica, you have an incoming Hydra. Arrenn and I are stuck dealing with his buddies, so the glory of a solo Hydra kill is all yours.” he said in grim humour. Taking on a Hydra solo and in such a tight space was insane, not to mention she’d still have to protect the frontier unit, but there was nothing he could do. The Hydra slowly rose up to the upper platform while Telemica readied herself. Squire urged the frontier unit to work faster, but the transfer portal showed no signs of activation. The Titan brought out a heavy machine gun and began unloading it as soon as the Hydra’s eye came over the platform’s edge. The loud and chugging repetition of the weapon’s call rang hard against the walls as the slugs slammed hard into the Vex monster, causing both Titan and Hydra to stagger and brace. She emptied the clip, threw up the strongest barrier she could, and began unloading with her pulse rifle. The Hydra roared its mechanical roar, and the Titan roared back in defiance. 19:43
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Vatyr and Arrenn both tossed grenades at the advancing Vex group, eliminating the last two Hobgoblins. The Minotaurs were fast enough to blink forward and lunge at the Guardians. Arrenn took the hit directly and was sent smashing through a server stack, while Vatyr barely avoided the blow by rolling to the side and broke into a sprint around the curve of the platform, dodging from cover to cover. As the Minotaur turned and gave chase, new flashes of light in the corner of Vatyr’s eye drew his attention to the transfer portal.
///SUMMONING PROTOCOL: IN PROGRESS/// ///TRANSFER PORTAL: ACTIVE/// The breach clicked empty on her weapon as Telemica’s ward shattered like sugar glass under the Hydra’s pressure. Instinctively, she lunged at the Vex, ready to tear it apart with her arcwreathed hands. A pulse of energy not only stopped her in mid-flight, but sent her back to the platform with such force that she went through it, falling through the middle the centre platform and landing right next to the flaring transfer portal. “Telemica! Arrenn! Sound off!” Vatyr called out. Nothing. He’d lost sight of the Warlock and his pursuing Minotaur as the other Minotaur teleported rapidly to close the distance on him. The Hunter pivoted, thinking what this Minotaur needed was a few solar light bullets in the face. Instead, the Vex giant teleported right on top of him, knocking him hard with the side of its arm and sending him flying to the lower platform. 15:34
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Telemica was just coming around as Vatyr’s ragdoll body plopped right next to her in a lifeless heap. “Guardian down! Vatyr’s severely injured! I’m not sure I can get him back on his feet!” said Glitch over comms. The Titan was still dazed. Her ears rang and her vision was blurred. She recognized the feeling of her injuries before looking at Squire’s reports on her HUD. Queasy and blurred vision means severe concussion. Copper taste means internal bleeding. Four, five, six broken ribs, and both legs are shattered. “Anyone get the number of that moon that hit me?” she said with a shake in her voice. She propped herself up with a hand under her body and shifted towards the transfer portal, which was now going crazy. The energy lattice within the portal that seemed to encase a blindingly white liquid was reverberating and jumping as if someone had placed it on a huge speaker. From within that chaos, Telemica could make out something else sticking up from inside the pool of light. Something solid. An Exo’s hand. Without thought of aggravating her own injuries or the enemies surrounding her, Telemica lurched her body forward enough to grip the hand firmly with her left hand. It gripped back. She used her right to anchor herself to the portal’s rim. “I have him! Traveler’s light, I have him! I need help!” she screamed. No response. Vatyr had yet to move and she had no idea what had become of Arrenn. The Exo’s hand began pulling back, threatening to submerge and disappear. Was the Vex network resisting? She howled in pain as she pulled back with every bit of strength she could muster, feeling another rib crack under the pressure. Her armour was working overtime just to keep her alive, and she knew at this point Squire must have been protesting her continued exertions, but she could barely hear anything over the ringing. Vatyr came to slowly, staring up at the hole left by Telemica in the upper platform. Seeing the Hydra and the hourglass core begin to spin up for its next overload cycle, he was not quite sure what terrified him more. “Vatyr! I have him! I have Solas! Help me pull him out!” Howled Telemica, barely reaching through to her Hunter companion through his own daze.
The arm yanked hard, pulling deeper into the portal. Refusing to let go, Telemica cried out as her body began to fall in, the sound of a sister in need releasing some instinctual reserve of energy within the Hunter. Suddenly, Vatyr was diving for the Titan and seeing her arm submerge into the portal and evaporate into nothingness. The moment Vatyr made solid contact with Telemica, the whole world around them exploded into everything and nothing. His last thought was that he must have screwed up the overload calculations, and now they were all being erased from the world.
Frontier – Act00 Chapter33 – Hardcover Luna The Collapse The weapon felt odd in her hands. The weight of the rifle seemed to speak with authority to its lethality. She had held a gun before. Of course she had. She was a soldier, after all. Well, that wasn’t actually true. There were very few soldiers these days, but a lot of people decided that a change in career was necessary since this mysterious invader had arrived. The enemy had moved in quick, and all the security that people thought they had in this golden age quickly evaporated. The Warminds, stalwart protectors of everything they had built with The Traveler’s gifts, ceased all communication, but people really started to panic when The Traveler began to move from Mars to Earth. Was it afraid? How could a god feel fear? Her father had been a knight. An avatar of The Traveler’s protection. He’d trained her in the arts of war, and she had loved those days dearly, but as she grew older her heart turned to different mysteries and her mind focused her towards the study of the newly-vibrant Martian ecosystem. Now, Mars was being evacuated, and she was on Luna, with a gun in her hand, being told that if they failed to repel this threat, it was all over. She could see a symmetry in it, and in the past she would have mused at it. Not now. At least she was not alone. Sure, there were knights leading the largest volunteer army humanity had ever known, but that’s not the presence that made her feel safe. Years prior, when she had left home to pursue her thirst for knowledge, she went with a group of other colleagues to Mars. Most were university students at the time like herself, but one individual stood out to her while she waited for the transports to be filled with passion-filled youth like herself. An Exo. Clad in a tasteful cream with brown patches tweed jacket and some well-worn blue denim jeans, he sat in a terminal lounger reading an old paper-printed book about Martian beetles. “How did you come across that?” she asked, sitting in the lounger next to him. “I beg your pardon?” She nodded towards the book and smiled at him. His glowing azure eyes blinked at her curiously. “It’s a widely-read treatise.” “I’m very familiar with the paper but how did you get it on… actual paper?” she asked with a giggle. “I don’t think I’ve seen someone reading a physically printed book in years.” “Ah, yes. Of course. Forgive me. It was a parting gift from a friend. A bit of a running gag with him. He always enjoyed giving me archaic items as a juxtaposition to my synthetic nature.” She hid a small laugh. He smiled at her and closed the book to give her his full attention. “I assume you’re here with the rest of these students.” “Yes! I’m very excited to begin my work on Mars. I have to say that I’ve never met an Exo academic. Your kind is-”
“-As full of surprises as any other sapient being. Yes, srcinally we were made for war, but many of us explore… let’s call them divergent paths from the one that was set out for us before The Traveler.” She nodded, understanding his intent. Being a knight was a calling of the highest honour, but not all Exos were given the chance at such exaltation. Of course such sentient beings as the Exos would be free to follow their individual callings. They were perhaps most blessed by The Traveler, after all. He held up the book. “Ever read it?” “Of course! The giant Olympian beetles are fascinating. The largest known invertebrates by a wide margin, and such complex behaviours! Some call them Martian dolphins on account of how intelligent and agile they are. Reading about their study was more entertaining than most of the fiction I relaxed with.” The Exo smiled, picking up the book and retrieving a pen from his inside jacket pocket. “To whom should I make this out to?” “Wait… you’re…” “I can tell you’re really going to love Mars.” In a year’s time, they were wed at the base of Olympus Mons, where the beetles were first discovered. Now, they were both looking up from the lunar surface at an enormous space battle that spanned as far as they could see, and The Traveler itself limping its way to Earth. The enemy was plowing through humanity’s forces like they were not even there. Enemy monsters were amassing on the ridge two klicks away from the anti-space batteries their volunteer unit was tasked with defending. There was no plan, no strategy, no hope. “My kind was made for war, but I’ll admit that I’m probably just as terrified as you, my love.” said the Exo, clad in the same equipment as her but looking not one iota more competent. His visage was especially calming to her as it was encased in a forcefield helmet, and she was thankful for it. “I miss our beetles.” she said softly, knowing the carnage was almost upon them.
Frontier – Act00 Chapter34 – Master And Commander Mars High Orbit The Collapse He found it so very odd how heavy the pocket watch was. No matter where he was or what kind of gravity he was subjected to, it was always far heavier than he thought it should be. It was just a silver pocket watch. A fine one, to be sure. Ornate. Durable. Befitting an officer of his station. The watch had been a gift from his wife Hitomi and daughter Kara when he became a Grand Admiral of all humanity’s spacebound Argosy forces some months ago. Well, his wife bought it. His daughter was just born, after all. He’d found it in her crib on the night of his congratulatory party, her little hands lightly grasping the chain. Hitomi had obviously wanted it to look like she was presenting it to her father. She really knew how to tug at his heart strings, and her daughter was turning out to be a natural at it. The flagship Tuatha Dé Danann was built to be a shining example of the glorious heritage The Traveler had bestowed upon humanity, and the torch to be carried forward. It was commissioned to prototype many bleeding-edge advances and usher in a new era where humanity would protect The Traveler. His command of such a stunning ship was heralded as the first of many bright new days. Such wonderful memories helped keep him sane in these dark times. Helped to keep him fighting. The battle had been tempestuous, but severely one-sided. It was as if the blackness of space had somehow become a thing. An angry god with the singular intent of wiping humanity away for the some unfathomable transgression. The god and its legions attacked unrelentingly, and with unfathomable power. True to its name, The Tuatha Dé Danann was the finest of ships and full of great heroism, and great hubris. Unlike its namesake, it was not the thundering king of gods that tore the hero down, but an enemy so dark that it blotted out the stars. Tactics shifted quickly from repelling the enemy to buying time. Time for a plan, or at least perhaps time for some to escape. He was not sure how many refugee ships made it through, if any had. Openings in the enemy lines were hard to come by and carving them out by force cost many precious lives. He didn’t make it easy on them. No ship deserted, no crew abandoned their post. The finest ships of the line were cornerstones to formations that spanned thousands of kilometers. Manmade stars that gleamed with the hope and determination of an entire civilization. Every ship pumped pure war into the foe, but formations crumbled faster than commanders could compensate. Front after front dissolved. The day would inevitably be lost. As his ship was torn apart around him, he held his silver pocket watch in his hand and judged the weight one last time. Popping it open and looking at the picture of his loving family embedded in the lid, he finally understood why the watch weighed so much. It carried the heart of his family inside.
Frontier – Act00 Chapter35 – Do Not Go Gentle Luna The Collapse More than anything at that moment, he missed Mars. It was the place where he’d made his mark as a pioneering xenobiologist, but that was not what he missed about it at this moment. He missed waking up next to his beloved wife in their Freehold City condo. He missed the smell of her hair as the Martian breeze came through the window. He missed the smile that she smiled at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Now, with pure death raging all around them, he knew they’d never have that again. Mars was completely cut off. The Traveler limped towards Earth as swarms of ships did battle around it. He didn’t have much time to watch the space battle as enemy troops on the Lunar surface had rushed their position. The few knights that had been positioned on Luna were in a heated exchange with them while the rest of the militia assisted as best they could, though it was almost like ants trying to assist gods. He couldn’t quite fathom how they did what they did. The Traveler had blessed the knights with metahuman abilities in the mission of safeguarding humanity from threats. While the common soldiers and conscripts were armoured in one-size-fits-all hardlight armour, knights were clad in glorious vestments and armaments that illustrated their quasi-divine nature. “It takes thousands of them to match every knight, but I get the feeling that they could expend those numbers easily. They want a stalemate, for these knights to be locked down here.” He said, clumsily spraying his rifle at stragglers. The battle moved faster than the militia could, and soon the light of the battling knights was only a beacon on the horizon. She was out of breath, but he never left her side. “You’re an Exo, remember? You can run faster than I can. You don’t get tired.” “You’re the only thing on this rock I care about, and I won’t let you leave my sight.” Her eyes. It never mattered what mood he was in, when he looking into her emerald eyes, he found peace. It was as if she was looking into his soul and saying This is you. You are luminous. I love you. It was not a gas, though it looked and moved like one. A gas wouldn’t have penetrated their armour. It was a miasma, black as onyx and thick as crude oil. It rushed over the horizon from the direction that the knights were fighting, moving with supernatural speed, as if it were an eldritch god with endless appendages grasping hold of the entire moon. It moved through them as if they were not even there, drowning them. He reached for her, but she was no longer there. He screamed her name, but could only hear her cough and attempt to scream in pain and horror as her lungs filled up. Exos didn’t breath, but he felt it fill his body and reach into his mind. He dropped to the ground. Silence enveloped him as his senses were buried, and he thought his time was over. The smoke began to part, rotating around them like the eye of a hurricane, and the outline of her began to form before him. He reached out a hand, his mind scrambling to figure out a way
to protect her. Get her to Earth, perhaps. His hand was swatted away with such force that it was nearly torn off. Where his love once stood, now loomed one of the enemy soldiers. Huge. Its black armour seemed to devour the light around it, shrouding it in a shadowy haze. It stood there, growling at him like a rabid dog. The more he looked at it, the more details he could make out. Huge stalactite teeth, no eyes but many holes of random sizes which could have been sockets, claws covered in writhing tentacles. The more he looked, the more he felt his mind fracture, as if the enemy’s visage was applying pressure to it. Something dripped off one of its claws, something red. Blood? Another drip. Blood. Her blood. The miasma whirlwind seemed to thin out behind the creature for just an instant. Was that a body? Her body? The enemy seemed to take notice of his revelation and chuckled like an otherworldly hyena. Was it laughing at him? The smoke enveloped the prone body as the chuckle became louder. It stepped forward as the miasma continued to close, flexing its claws. An undeniable and shattering horror gripped him. Instinctively reacting, his hand reached for the energy rifle he’d dropped and began unloading its clip into the creature. He screamed at it as his weapon unleashed its lethality like a firehose, consumed by the need for this abomination to be erased from existence. The barrel came close to melting before the clip ran dry. It staggered, but continued to laugh. He pounced on it and began to bludgeon it with the rifle’s stock, pounding it to the ground with all his strength. He screamed at it as loud as he could, commanding it to die, drowning out its cackling. The moment it seemed that the creature was finished, the miasma rushed back in, pressing into him like the grip of a colossus. At least the enemy was dead, he thought. He was ready to die. He had nothing left to live for. As quickly as the miasma had rushed in, it was blown away. He looked at where he’d seen her body behind it, but there was nothing. Looking down, he expected to find the laughing monster he’d pounded into the dust. He didn’t. He saw carmine red hair and lips. He saw emerald eyes. He saw dark chocolate skin. He saw her. She was dead, killed not by this evil, but by the person she had loved. The person who loved her, manipulated by the darkness enveloping everything they had ever known. With her went all hope from him. Bodies strewn the landscape, and the lights over the horizon had stopped. He wailed. Nobody heard him. He held her body close to his and tried begging her to come back to him. Nobody saw. He sat silently with her in the dust, and wished he had let the enemy kill him. The pain growing in his skull almost went unnoticed. As if a thousand leeches rushed in to feed on his head. Even now, the enemy sought to make him an instrument of death, just as it had before with illusions and lies. He could feel it digging into his mind. He looked one last time at her, trying to picture her as she once was. The hardlight encapsulating his body allowed him to lay hands on himself without effort, so it was easy to reach up and drive his fingers into his eyes. Exos could feel pain as much as humans did, but the anguish he felt as he clawed out his eyes was smothered by the coldness her death had left him with. With slow precision, he grasped his eyes and pulled them out. He
felt no hesitation as he snapped the gel-covered cables connecting them to his head with a sharp pull. The miasma dispelled as he crushed the techno-organic orbs, but he could feel that it had left its mark on him. A seed, buried deep and unreachable. It was a blessing, he thought, that he’d die in this place, unable to hurt anyone else. He arose slowly, lovingly placed the remains of his eyes in his beloved’s hand, and that hand on her chest. “A small penance, my love.” It took some time to bury her with only his two hands, but he did. He would have knelt there by her grave like a living tombstone for the rest of time , swallowed by his pain and loss. The Traveler had different plans. A column of searing light engulfed him, slamming him to the floor. Every sense he had was flooded to overload, even the one he had just removed. Words, and yet not words, came to him. They were in her voice, but there was no sound. Like a memory and a premonition at the same time. This is not the end of your path. It sounded like she was smiling. The light left as to quickly as it had come. He stood, his head encased in a horned, eyeless helm eternally fused his frame. He saw. He saw everything for the first time, not as it appeared as photons bounced off objects and met photo-receptors in machines and eyes, but as they truly were. Light. Dark. Brilliant colours that had no name but carried such afflictive import. He dared not look at his fallen wife, for fear the sight would break him once again. He could still feel the seed of darkness, but it was sealed by The Traveler’s light. He hoped that would be enough. A troop carrier landed near him. Two soldiers stepped out but were stopped dead in their tracks by the carnage around them. They half-heartedly raised their rifles at the approaching figure. An horned Exo with no eyes. “Where is the fighting heaviest?” he asked. “Earth, sir.” “Take me there. Now.”
Frontier – Act09 Chapter36 – Exfil Telemica was the first to regain consciousness. The shuttle cruised silently in the black, the white chaos of the derelict’s overloading systems shining behind them like a star. She attempted to rise very slowly from the row of trooper seats in the bay that she laid on, but the symphony of pain surging throughout her body forced her to abandon that idea immediately. An overhead readout was interfaced with her nearly wrecked armour and displayed objectively that she was lucky to be alive. Shattered bones and ruptured organs were one thing, but she was missing her left arm. She’d been through hell before, but this was new for her. The armour had encased the wound in bionoble foam to keep her from bleeding out and flooded her system with every combat cocktail it had in order to keep her moving. She vaguely recalled it being torn apart in the quantum foam inside the Vex transfer gate. She couldn’t feel it, nor could she not feel it. Some confluence of phantom limb and a warehouse worth of drugs, she figured. She turned her head. Slowly, carefully and taking frequent breaks in order to give the cabin a chance to stop spinning. Vatyr was out cold, hooked up to some medical equipment that told her while he was almost as banged up as she was, he was barely stable. Titans and Hunters were just built differently. He’d need some serious surgery. Between them was a stasis pod. The pattern for it must have been in the shuttle’s transmat memory for emergencies. It looked like a metal coffin with a domed transparent cover, offering a clear view of its patient submerged in a translucent green liquid that seemed to emit its own light, a nanotech approximation of amniotic fluid that protected and rejuvenated the patient at a cellular level. Its base was lined with all manner of interfaces and controls. It was almost funny that the entity being healed by fluids modeled after pregnancy waters had never been born in the traditional fashion. Solas… She didn’t remember being able to pull him out of that transfer gate. In fact, she couldn’t remember making it off that derelict ship. Arrenn must have pulled it off, somehow. She assumed he was at the shuttle’s controls. What about the Vex? Had he taken them all on? She felt so rattled. She could barely think straight, and actually speaking was out of the question. And then, there were the dreams. They had to have been dreams. Impossible dreams. Dreams that felt so real that they left an imprint on a person’s bones, but at the same time there was a representative archetype aspect to them that made them feel like lucid dreams. Simulacra… or something warlocky like that. Representations of grave import. If they were just hallucinations caused by injuries and meds, then that was that. If, however unlikely, the dreams were actually memories, then they were not just hers but those of Vatyr and Solas as well. Was that even possible? Had the others experienced the same? Plenty of stories and rumours flowed through the Towers about Guardians trying crazy things to find their own memories. The Thanatonauts came about primarily in the search for the intelligence found in past lives, or so people said. Stories of mesmerizing success and terrifying failure were common gossip fodder. This, however, was a whole different level.
She’d been so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice Vatyr staring back at her. He must have woken up at some point while Telemica was lost in thought. His eyes were dilated so she knew he was under meds similar to the ones in her system, but there was an intensity to his stare that tore into her. It was like he was screaming at her that he’d seen what she’d seen, and it was real. He was struggling to say something, but the strain must have triggered a drug rebalance by the equipment and he passed out. Telemica needed answers and tried once again to get up, triggering a drug rebalance for her as well. She fought it just enough to sit partially up before succumbing, managing to get a single glimpse inside the stasis chamber that held Solas. As a heavy sleep took her and she fell back on to her makeshift bedding, one thought consumed her from the pit of her turning stomach: Why did Solas have eyes?
Frontier – Act09 Chapter37 – Maneuver Earth The Keep Medbay When seen from a distance, the Towers that segmented the protective walls of The Last City on Earth can seem ominous and imposing. Every citizen and aspiring invader knew that these looming structures were teeming with powerful Guardians, who are portending regardless of which side of the walls you find yourself on. The Keeps were the inward smile of the Guardians. At the bases of the main cardinal-point towers lining the inner wall were massive, sprawling acropolises. These complexes were bristling with everything from local markets to services offered by both Guardians and other entities. In the higher levels one could find the main hospitals that serviced The City, and within those, the specialized medbays that serviced the Guardians. The Stasis pod that housed Solas had been wheeled into a surgery theater. The doctors and technicians said they needed room to employ supplementary equipment. Telemica and Vatyr found themselves in post-operative care, recovering from the auto-surgeons and medical Frames with their programmed bedside manner. The majority of long-term rooms for Guardians were built with three patients in mind, and with Solas still in the pod, the Hunter and Titan had plenty of space. Attendants had removed the central bed, leaving an inescapable void in the room. Outside the room was the hustle and bustle of a busy hospital, keeping the ambient noise just high enough that the two could attempt to avoid each other. Attempt, but fail. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.” mentioned Vatyr in his most paternal tone that was halfway between mocking and caring. It was a tone he knew she responded to. He didn’t even look at Telemica as he said it, preferring to read the City’s latest news and a few after-action reports on his tablet. There was very little anyone could do to convince him to move an inch, even on the pain meds he was on. She ignored his warnings. Telemica stood at the window wearing a robe over her hospital gown, overlooking the farmland that filled up most of the space between the City’s inner and secondary walls. She was constantly shifting and stretching in small movements. In ages past when wounds were bound closed with staples and fibers, she would have surely opened up and be rushed back into emergency care. These days surgical technology allowed for openings to be sealed fully with stem cells and bio-reactive energy fields that promoted growth. Her left arm was another matter entirely. Rebuilding the limb properly would take a while and the long surgery to attach it to her body would require her to be healthier than she currently was. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue for a Guardian, but Titans like her were special cases. Injuries carried far more import than just something to be healed and forgotten. The silence between them was becoming more uncomfortable. Enough uneasy glances had been passed between them to know that the dreams they shared were not just dreams. Could a dream feel that real? On an instinctual level, they both felt that yes, those things happened. After coming to that conclusion, processing the actual content and ramifications of the memories would likely take longer than any physical injury would need to heal. Solas was also involved, and beginning to move through these memories without him seemed wrong. There was an undeniable intimacy about it all that required him to be present.
Telemica looked down at where her arm used to be, trying to dispel the phantom limb from her mind. How does one convince one’s body that they no longer have a left arm? She was going to have a harder time handling all the downtime she was being forced to take. Commander Zavala sent down orders that she was to be grounded indefinitely under the guise of medical leave, but in actuality her participation in recent events at The Reef were no doubt difficult to swallow. There were rumours of Vatyr being court-martialed and possibly exiled. They hadn’t told anyone about the memories. Best to figure it all out among the three of them first. “I wonder if Solas saw the same… memories…” Telemica said, knowing the answer. Vatyr knew the implications of it. Not only had they been married, but Solas had been the one who killed Telemica. The fact that he was under the influence of The Darkness made things much more tangled, not to mention the possibility that The Darkness never truly left him. “Even though The Traveler sealed that curse inside of Solas, he could still pose a serious problem.” Vatyr said in his most serious tone. Telemica moved as quickly as her broken body could towards the door and closed it, worried that someone would overhear them over the soft bedlam in the hall. “We don’t know that.” “We don’t know much of anything at this point.” Telemica wanted to shut Vatyr down, but paused as something more pressing occurred to her. “Did you see his face? In the pod.” “No. First thing I remember after the derelict was waking up in here. Why?” “Solas. He-” Telemica was cut off as the sound of an explosion ripped through the halls, followed quickly by alarms and the sounds of panic. Vatyr threw of his covers and painfully shuffled to the door in his hospital gown and slippers, both Guardians peering out the door’s small window. “Explosions have been reported in the surgery wing. Near where Solas’ pod would be.” reported Glitch as he materialized. The staccato repeating of rifles rang out through the halls beyond the door, punctuated by more screaming and explosions. “A firefight?” queried Squire as he joined the group. “Sounds like it, and it’s getting closer.” added Glitch. The group began to move away from the door and towards the window when another explosion blew the door and the wall around it apart, sending both Titan and Hunter flying crumpled into the corner. Arrenn stood in the hole in the wall, debris and smoke whipping around him from the wind coming in from the blown window behind Telemica and Vatyr, shattered by the compression wave. A Vex torch hammer in the Warlock’s hands spewing violet fumes from its barrel. Before either Vatyr or Telemica could speak, Arrenn lifted the weapon and took aim at them. In their state, one shot would be enough to obliterate them both. “Engage!” someone down the hall shouted as a hail of bullets slammed into the Warlock. Arrenn burst into a ball of solar light to protect himself.
Before Arrenn could take aim again, the roar of a shuttle’s engines boomed through the destroyed window. A familiar wave of disembodiment washed over the Titan and Hunter just before the torch hammer lit up with the destruction held within. They found themselves in a familiar trooper bay. This was the same Awoken shuttle that Warden had come home in. “There’s not much time to explain, but I’ll try.” yelled the small blonde girl at the helm. She yanked on the controls, narrowly avoiding the torch hammer’s bolt and gaining altitude. “Angela?” asked Telemica. “What’s going on? Since when can you pilot a shuttle?” “I believe I can illuminate the situation much more effectively while the young lady Speaker focuses on not getting us all killed.” said a floating voice somewhere in the cockpit. “I’ve got it, Wisp! I’ve got it. I think…” said the girl who was struggling with controls made for someone quite a bit larger than her. “Wisp?” Vatyr asked. Solas’ Ghost floated into the trooper bay. “It is truly good to see you both.” “We figured you were dormant inside Solas. What happened?” “When Solas fell into the conflux on Mercury, he ejected me. The disconnection sent me into a stasis/shock state not unlike a coma. When I regained consciousness, I was in orbit above Mercury. Solas knew the dangers inherent in his plan, and I was to be part of his insurance policy.” “What exactly was his plan?” “Hang on! We’re coming in to pick up our V.I.P.” Angela called back. Telemica and Vatyr looked through the windows to see the Tower Watch embroiled in chaos. A huge cloud of grey electric smoke poured out of the head of a lone figure, growing and writhing like a living thing. “Is that Solas?” asked Telemica. “Yes. The seed of Darkness within him is coalescing. It will kill him if we don’t act quickly.” noted Wisp. “As soon as it has vacated him, we can get him out of there.” yelled Angela, clearly struggling with the maneuver of swooping in close enough to transmat Solas but avoiding the evil coming out of him. The shuttle buffered harshly against the turbulence being caused. Below, the last of the smoke rushed out of the Warlock and discarded his lifeless form off the Tower. “Hold on!” Angela announced as she put the shuttle into a nosedive after Solas. Telemica and Vatyr were pinned to the back of the bay as the child pilot activated the transmat recovery she had programmed in beforehand and pulled roughly back on the control wheel. The engines of the shuttle strained to level out the craft, narrowly avoiding crashing into the Keep below. Solas’ body appeared on the floor of the bay, completely limp and lifeless. “I’ll do my best to keep him stable.” said Wisp before merging with him. “Now what?” asked Telemica.
“Well, since this is the worst-case scenario, we better hope Solas’ plan works!” said Angela as she banked the shuttle hard towards a secondary landing bay. Meanwhile, atop the main Tower Watch, a massive hand made of glass reached out of the cloud of smoke, reaching in the direction of The Traveler.
Frontier – Act09 Chapter38 – Advance Vatyr crouched low against a corner, a found Suros WSC-17 scout rifle at the ready but only handful of rounds left in the mag. A hand signal told the others behind him to hold as he cloaked and darted around to make sure the way was clear. Pain reverberated in a dull throb throughout his body, adding half-seconds to all of his movements. The ghosts had equipped the two Guardians and Angela with rudimentary armour made with available reprogrammed matter, but it was worlds apart from Warden’s usual loadout. The life-support suite barely put a dent in Vatyr’s aches. Angela clutched a Häkke Thalestris-C sidearm tight in her two small hands, doing her best to look confident with it. The armour helped. She’d never worn anything like it before and was still getting used to how it reacted to her moves and thoughts. She’d received basic combat training by her aides, but never been terribly comfortable with the tools of war. There wasn’t time for ineptitude here. Everyone was counting on her. Telemica held Solas’ unconscious body in a one-armed fireman carry, clearly annoyed to be the only unarmed person in the group and not making any real effort to hide it. Vatyr reappeared in front of them. His face a mask of concern. “Did you find it?” whispered Angela. “Not sure, but there are a lot of Vex between here and there. How is that even possible? How can they be here?” asked Vatyr, confused as to why The Traveler’s protection was suddenly ineffective at keeping hordes of Vex from porting in and wreaking havoc. “The seed of Darkness is suppressing The Traveler’s power like a disease suppressing an immune system. The City is nearly defenseless, and this is only the beginning.” “More are coming in every minute. I can’t get us through.” Angela held up her pistol in confidence as Wisp, Glitch and Squire materialized to join her. “My lady, we must prevail.” stressed Squire to Telemica. “We’ve got this!” assured Glitch to Vatyr. “This is the path we must follow.” asserted Wisp to the group. “Trust us. We can make it.” resolved Angela, probably to herself just as much as anyone else. Telemica and Vatyr had to say something, they thought. Of course they did. They were the adults, and combat was not a place for a child, especially one as important as her. They had no idea if The Speaker was dead, making her the single most important person on the planet. They tried to say something, but no words came. There was something in their eyes. There was something about how their own ghosts hung solidly in the air next to this girl who showed a confidence beyond the innocence many would attribute to her. Before the two Guardians could force a halting sentence from their minds to their mouths, the hallway that Vatyr had just scouted was instantly flooded with thick smoke laced with lightning. The group slunk back, already detecting the sounds of Vex units porting in.
Cloaking again, Vatyr peeked around the corner after the fog cleared. “The hall is full of them! They’re almost shoulder-to-shoulder in there. There’s no way we can fight our way through that.” “Why are they here? Why not go where the rest of the fighting is?” Telemica asked Angela in a whisper. “They’re here to find the same thing we are. It’s the only thing that could stop them. If they find it first, we’ve lost everything. Humanity’s time will be over and the light will be gone from the universe soon after.” “Whatever we’re here to find, I don’t see how- Hey!” Angela and the ghosts had darted around the corner before Telemica could finish her thought. Dozens of Vex Descendant units turned from probing walls and rooms to see a little girl, holding a little gun, with three little ghosts floating with her. The Vex didn’t hesitate to open fire on them. But the firing didn’t stop, and light began to pour out from the hall, growing brighter every second. Bringing his rifle up again and fearing the worse, Vatyr peeked around the corner. Ghost bits whizzed around faster than eye the could see, their brilliant orbs of light combined around the Angela girl andalmost held her a few feetthe above ground. Every shot the Vex loosed entered the light, curved around her small frame and exited the orb to unerringly strike the same unit that fired it. The small cores of the ghosts rapidly tracked each shot with their little eyes from their perches above her head. Angela brought her gun up and unleashed tremendous bolts of searing light from its barrel, incinerating several units at once. The angelic figure gritted her teeth, holding on to the pistol for dear life as she fed her power through it and the ghosts. Her eyes flared in determination as Vex units were obliterated. Telemica and Vatyr couldn’t afford the luxury of believing their eyes or not. Vatyr started loosing his precious few shots, taking his time to aim and make each pull of the trigger count. Each bullet demanded to count for a kill, and did. Telemica would have cussed up a storm for not being able to join the fight, if not for the innocent ears nearby. These four little lights were pushing back an enemy force that would cause any Fireteam to fall back. More Vex continued to port in, replenishing what units they could. It didn’t take long for the breech on Vatyr’s rifle to clack empty. Angela and the ghosts expanded their orb, allowing The Guardians to take shelter inside. Slowly, Angela’s sphere moved forward, advancing into the space left vacant by the destroyed Vex and progress to their destination. Bolts of death buzzed around them, almost whimsically in how they angled in order to accommodate Angela’s passengers. The weapon in Angela’s hands began to glow hot, being brought well past the breaking point. Angela’s will was holding it together, but there were limits. Another wave of Vex reinforcements rushed in from both ahead and behind them when the piece simply evaporated in her hands. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll take it from here.” Vatyr roared. Awash in so much light that it was almost viscous, the Hunter and Titan surged with power. Vatyr channeled his light through his empty rifle much like Angela had done with her sidearm, unleashing a solid beam of annihilation from its barrel and carving out the path forward. Meanwhile, Telemica focused on
the enemies to the rear, stomping on the group with her feet and sending decimating Arc waves through their ranks. The Vex didn’t let up. The machines poured in from every direction, unloading all their firepower into the sphere of light as if they hoped at least one bolt would find purchase in their targets. Harpies, Hydras and Minotaurs had also been added to the mix, filling in every inch of the hallway with metal death. The full concentration of the three ghosts were on redirecting the walls of beams and projectiles, and Angela was nearing her limit when she saw a familiar mirage. “We have arrived.” Wisp exclaimed over comms from inside Solas’ unconscious body. “Where?” Telemica asked. All she saw was blank walls with some doors further down the hall beyond a sea of Vex. “Everyone, hang on!” Angela announced, reaching her hands towards the portal only she knew how to see and activating it. The sphere of light and all those inside were pulled in instantly.
Frontier – Act09 Chapter39 – Gambit The first time was always a little rattling. By the time Vatyr and Telemica got their bearings back, Angela was already accessing one of the lab’s terminals and getting the next step in the plan set. The three ghosts rested on a pedestal that looked like a small bird bath filled with a glowing white liquid, soaking in the energy. “Wh…what happened? Where are we?” asked Vatyr, standing up slowly. “This is Solas’ lab. It resides in its own pocket universe, and the only static portal in or out is the one I just took us through. Sorry it was so rough. Usually the gatekeeper A.I. has to verify each person requesting access, but given the situation we were in, Wisp and I had to get a little insistent.” explained Angela. The Frames that has been proceeding with their assignments without interruption for months were now assisting the young Speaker. One carried Solas’ body to the coffin-sized metallic pod in the centre of the room. It split along a previously invisible horizontal seam, the top half levitating to open the pod up. Inside there was only padding with a person-shaped indentation in it. The padding was clear and filled with a glowing aquamarine crystaline gel that shifted as it sensed Solas’ presence. The Frames carefully placed his body inside and sealed it closed. Angela took a moment to breathe. It felt like she had been holding her breath since Solas first told her of his plan, and she was beginning to feel more than just a little drained. She looked at Telemica and Vatyr, who were looking at her, awaiting answers. She placed her hand on the pod gently as light coursed through it in tiny shooting stars and collected her thoughts. “This pod allows Solas to decompress his mind, allowing him access to faculties and processes that would normally be physically impossible. Not too long ago, he was meditating in this chamber when a – let’s call it a vision to keep it simple – coalesced. A million different bits of seemingly unconnected data came together to form an inescapable conclusion. The Vex were preparing to move on The Traveler. Eliminating The Traveler and The Guardians not only in response for weakening them in The Black Garden and The Vault of Glass, but also in an effort to eliminate a viable threat to the Vex’s future. “From that point on, there was only one way to survive the Vex plan. Solas called it ‘The Golden Path’. The Mercury assault, him falling into the conflux, Vatyr going to The Reef , all of it… his plan.” “How did the Vex get into The City?” asked Telemica. “The seed of Darkness that Solas carried with him was the cornerstone to the Vex plan. With it, they could suppress The Traveler’s power enough to expose The City to invasion.” “So they plan to overrun us?” “No. That would cripple both sides, but end in a stalemate. The Vex are only an element to the immediate threat.” “What else is there? Fallen? Cabal?” “Rasputin.” “No way! Rasputin is not our enemy.” interjected Vatyr.
“Rasputin was the greatest warmind of the Golden Age. He was built to safeguard, and The Collapse taught him that humanity was not the be-all and end-all of existence, and stopping The Darkness became his only real objective. He formed a new moral structure that didn’t hold humanity at its core during The Collapse. He’s been combating the real threats out there since he was reactivated while to him we’ve become close to irrelevant, which is why he doesn’t care to collaborate with us. We’re nowhere near his level.” “So why is he a threat to us now?” “As we speak, whatever came out of the seed is not just suppressing The Traveler, it’s attempting to infect it. Dominate it. Devour it. Once Rasputin realizes that we’ve lost control of the situation, it’ll only be a matter of time before he decides to… deny the asset.” “Meaning?” “Meaning he’ll turn The City and The Traveler into nothing more than a smoldering crater.” Telemica answered. Angela nodded grimly. “Solas knew this was inevitable. He even tried warning Rasputin, but never got a response.” “Wait a minute. the Hive Dreadnaught’s would have wiped out most of the system, wouldn’tIfsomething as powerful asdestruction The Traveler represent a far larger threat?” Vatyr inquired while looking over complex data sets displayed on multiple screens. “Maybe. Maybe not. We still know very little about The Traveler. It could just die. It could take our entire galactic cluster with it. It could end the universe. Rasputin has decided that the lack of data is sufficient to establish that destroying The Traveler is less of a threat to universal life than letting it fall into the wrong hands.” Angela explained. “What about the Vex? They have to be aware of Rasputin in all this.” “They can throw a near-infinite number of units at us by pulling from all points in space and time. Their only limits are power, but given the reasonable possibility of a win that for them could give them the universal acausal powers that they’ve been after all this time, they’d drain black holes dry to make it happen. Their goal is to own The Traveler before Rasputin makes his move.” “Either one of those outcomes means we’re all kinds of wrecked. What do we do?” “We stop them by any means necessary.” “And Solas believed that we’d be uniquely equipped to do that now?” “He called it a gambit. By sacrificing himself to the enemy, he lured them into a course of action that left them more exposed than they would have been otherwise. The Vex incursion on Mercury would have decimated our forces if it had continued. That many Guardians being pushed to their limits and beyond would have strained The Traveler’s reserves, leaving it exposed to a much worse incursion than this. On top of that, they would have had an opportunity to remove Rasputin from the equation without our interference. We never would have stood a chance, and Solas knew it. So, by giving them him and the seed of Darkness that resided within him, he gave them more power, but also gave us an opportunity to defend ourselves and win.”
Red light pulsed out of the pod as warning messages covered nearby screens. “What is it now? Vex?” asked Telemica as Angela ran passed her and read the screens. “Oh no. No no please no…” “Angela, what is it?” “The seed didn’t completely leave. It’s still trying to kill him.” “Is there anything we can do?” “Only one thing can be done, though I was praying this wouldn’t be necessary. It was my hope that he’d be able to retain his eyes this time, but that won’t be possible.” Angela said with a tone that told Telemica and Vatyr that her little heart was breaking. Her hands began to fly across the console in front of her as the pod began to glow with a bright white light. “I’m flooding the pod with all the light in the lab’s core. It’ll reform The Traveler’s seal on his eyes and lock The Darkness away once again. After that, he’ll need to pass through the Deep Stone Crypt…” Angela’s last few words were forced through a choked voice as she fought and failed to remain composed. The thought of her friend having to endure that trial ran a cold dagger into her chest. he body shook as the anguish slowly erupted. Her hands clenched into fists so white and tight that her nails threatened to break the skin on her palms. Tears began to stream down her cheeks. Telemica put her hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be alright, little one. I’ve known Solas capable of achieving the impossible. He’ll do it again. He’ll return to us, I promise you that.” Angela quickly twisted around and embraced Telemica around her waist, letting her pain flow freely. A good loud cry that heals the heart rang out through the lab. Telemica’s only remaining hand came to rest on her shoulder as the young Speaker let herself be young for a few minutes. “Guardians fight their way through death more than once in our existence. The Deep Stone Crypt was created by The Traveler in order for worthy Exos to forge their own souls in the crucible of combat. Solas will return to us. He’s stronger than even we know. What we need to figure out is what do we do when he comes out of that pod. We need to be ready for him.” Vatyr said, looking at the glowing pod and wishing his wounded friend well. “He *sniff* he had a plan for that as well. A plan for you two.” Angela said as she composed herself. “Follow me.”
Frontier – Act09 Chapter40 – Black Sun V343WNI877PCE121 DARK MORNING OUTCRY AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//FORCECON//IMPERATIVE CONTINGENT ACTION ORDER
This is a ALL ASSETS IMPERATIVE (NO HUMAN REVIEW) (NO AI-COM REVIEW). Total strategic collapse imminent. FENRIR HEART reports complete operational mortality. SURTR DROWN on standby. Forecasts unanimously predict terminal VOLUSPA failure. Neo-human intervention is negative. Non-human intervention is negative. Extra-solar intervention is negative. Extra-temporal intervention is negative. As of PCE121 an ANCILLARY CIVILIZATION KILL EVENT [[all flexions]] is in progress. Terra-local. Enemy is PARACAUSAL and EXTRA-TEMPORAL. RAM-UNIVERSAL. Designation: VEX Declaring YUGA KNOCKDOWN effective on receipt (epoch reach/FORCECON variant). Tactical morality is built at MIDNIGHT. Stand by for CRITERIA: Under CARRHAE (WHITE/BLACK/ORANGE/GREY) If SECURITY STATE is ROMAN If event rank is NIETZSCHE: TRAUMATIC CONTEXT or SKYSHOCK: EXTRA-TEMPORAL CONTEXT If VOLUSPA is ACTIVE and in FAILURE [[synapse to FENRIR::SURTR]] If FAILURE of WARDEN [T] proxies Stand by for DECISION POINT: If available ISR and WARWATCH indicates imminent [T] capture >then [T] capture compromises human/neo-human/non-human survival and super-epochal strategy/ALL Stand by for ABHORRENT IMPERATIVE: Activate BLACK SUN Repurpose all assets Prevent [T] capture by any means available Full caedometric release authorized on [T] and surrounding theatre Remove [T] from operational theatre Stand by for effect assessment criteria: Coerce pseudoaltruistic [T] defensive action via proxies [G] Vex disengagement via removal of [T] and [G] variables Defer civilization kill. STOP STOP STOP V343WNI877PCE121
Frontier – Act09 Chapter41 – Deep Stone Crypt Where am I? What am I? Am I? I? Grappling with the concept of I is like trying to hold smoke in my hands. Nebulous. No matter what self does, self leaks out of every crack in self. Maybe self is the smoke trying to keep self from wafting away to nothing. Yes, that’s it. Self’s mind is barely holding a form. Self needs to move forward. Forward… where? Self has no concept of where self is, and yet some instinct is telling self to just go. A first step. I apparently have legs. In fact, I’m a bit more solid now. Stone-like. I feel stiff. Gritty. The same grey-black stone and fertile earth under me is also makes me. All of me. Step. The smoke-self is gone. I’m not leaking anymore. I am I, fully and completely. I can see further now, as well. The sun is cutting across a mountain ridge in the distance, scattering unnatural of light overit. the sky and terrain as purpose, it sets. There’s something thewhy. far distance. I fancies feel a pull towards A purpose. My only though I have no in idea Step. I’m much closer now. Far closer than a single step should have taken me. This place might not be real, but perhaps it’s simply a different kind of real. I’m not quite sure I’m real yet. There are others. Others exist, when only moments ago it seemed the concept of I was hard to grasp. There’s something rising high into the sky out of the group. A stone spire in the shape of a giant fist. I’m drawn to it. Step. I’m among them now. They’re made of the same stuff as me, but most seem somewhat less than me. Less substantial. Less corporeal. They seem happy though. Content in this place. They’re not moving towards the spire. Some are pushing through the mob, as I feel I must. Step. They’re packed so tightly together. Their shuffling and random paths would have knocked me down a few times if there was enough space to fall. It takes almost all my effort and limited physicality to make my way through. The closer they get to the spire, the more agitated they seem. They move faster. They swing about as if they’re under attack. The spire seems so close now. I’m almost through. Fall. Pain. I’m on the ground. Have I been hit? No, I’ve made it past the violent throng. This is a pressure. A force is being exerted on me, like a mountain avalanche falling on me, or an ocean drawing me down. I notice that at some point I started breathing because now it seems almost impossible to. There are others. They scream in… pain? No. Terror. They crawl back to the others. Others can barely move at all. I have to get up. I have to keep going. Stand. Step. It gets worse the closer I get to the spire. I stumble again but do not fall, focusing on keeping my feet under me. Step. More pain. Slashing pain. Bludgeoning pain. Burning pain. Freezing pain. It’s coming from all around me, but nothing is there. My parts tell me they’re damaged and failing, but I force them forward.
Step. Fall. It’s the spire. It’s crushing those who attempt to approach it. I’m pinned to the ground and in more pain than I thought existed. Death. I can be unmade. Fear… crushing my chest and blurring my sight. Panic on the edges of me. I can see an entrance at the base of the spire. It’s so tall that I can no longer see the top. It seems to rise infinitely, but I saw its peak before. A rising fist. A sign of resolution. Crawl. I feel my grip on the world beginning to burn away. Am I returning to the mist of my genesis? I’m coming apart. If I turned back I could survive. Crawl. No. I must press on, though I still don’t understand why. I’m almost gone. Crawl. My fingertips break through to the spire’s interior, and now I’m inside. Stand. The pressure is still there, but I can stand. I can force the terror into a box in the back of my mind. I’m made of something else now. Metal. Rusty, dirty metal. I’m stronger, though. I have a better sense of my own capabilities. The room is huge, and there are very few others. A pillar of light shines at the centre. Punch. Something came at me. I was too far in my own head so I barely noticed it, but I spun and ran my fist right through its head. It fell and vanished. I’m not quite sure how or why I did that. Another is coming at me. A thing made of oil and miasma. It had a face but I didn’t recognize it, though it felt like I should have. It slashes at me with its claws but I duck under it and thrust an upward palm strike through its chest. It coils and vanishes around my hand. My whole body instinctively knew how to do that, and I feel less rusty. Less dull. Is that the purpose of this place? To fight? Was the pressure outside a first of tests? Run. The pillar of light is surrounded by the enemy. Others are trying to fight through them to get to the pillar but they’re failing and being ripped apart. I run at an enemy full on and throw a punch, but this one is far stronger. It grabs my outstretched arm and throws me far. I roll and collapse into a heap. Getting up hurts, as if the failed attack leeched more energy from me than a the physicality of it should. I can’t risk that again. Another like me is racing by me to attempt the same thing, but I call out to stop him. He helps me to my feet. If we work together, we can break through. Rally. Others join us. We move as one, rushing a section of the enemy’s line. Together we are stronger than the sum of our efforts. A few fall, but I break through with others and enter the light. Blink. Another chamber. Same size. Same pillar of light in the centre. I don’t see any of the others that I came through with, but I do see a single enemy by the pillar. It’s bigger. It’s wearing armour and has a sword. Luckily – and for unknown reasons – I also have a sword, though it is made of stone. My body is less dull and most of the rust is gone. My mind is clearer, though I’m keenly aware that the pressure being exerted on me by this place has never been more intense. Step. It’s waiting for me patiently, like a duelist awaiting his challenger. It has a face. Dark s kin, red hair and strong feminine features. I raise my sword to it to show that I am ready, and it attacks. A failed parry sends me sprawling hard. I pick my sword back up before it can pounce and narrowly avoid its killer strike. It swings, I block. I stab, it twists. It lands a blow and I recover. Is it getting slower? No, I’m getting faster. I can read its movements. The sword is getting lighter in my hands, and I am getting to understand it beyond where the sharp parts are. The next slash the enemy takes finds only empty air. I’m no longer there. I’m behind it,
and I plunge my blade into its back straight through to the ground. I enter the pillar of light leaving it propped up on my killer intent. Blink. This chamber is different. The others were empty. This one is a maze. Lefts, rights, ups and downs. Corridors and smaller chambers. Objects and hurdles. I’m beginning to look more like I feel I should, though I have no idea why I have that sense or what my final form should be like. The dullness is gone, replaced with shine and complexity. There’s a stone gun in my hand, though I know for some reason it will work when I want it to. Dash. I enter a hallway. I know I need to get to the centre of the room and find the pillar of light, but the labyrinth I’m in seems to shift and deceive. I can hear others and weapons fire. Turn. Duck. Bullets wiz by my head. The enemies are less armoured than the last one but far faster, and they’re moving in packs of three. I see two others like me pinned down by the same enemies keeping me on the defensive. I make eye contact with them and with our combined firepower we take down the immediate threats. We move through the maze together. Every kill causes our guns to morph and evolve into more effective instruments of death. We find another group of three and join them for the final assault on the pillar, each of us making it through. Blink. The others are gone again. A hallway of mirrors lies before me. The pressure is intense here, but I can endure. I walk through the hall, seeing my reflection in the mirrors change. I can see images other than myself in the reflections. Memories? Whatever they are I’m having an emotional response to them. I knew that place. I remember that person. I’m changing. No, I’m returning. The pieces of me are coming back together. By the time I leave the hall and enter the last chamber, I’m almost me again. Solas. I’m almost back to being Solas. Breathe. I know this is the last room because I can see the outlines of the spire’s fist shape in the ceiling. Starlight pours in through cracks in the walls. I’ve been rising through the spire’s interior, though I’m quite sure it’s not just a simple three-dimensional space. In fact, I’m sure this place doesn’t physically exist at all. There is no pillar of light at the centre of the room, only a mass of roiling and twisting darkness. That is where the pressure has been emanating from. If it had been this strong at the base of the spire, I would have surely been vapourized. My mind and senses are under full assault once more. There are no enemies here, so I walk slowly towards the darkness, feeling waves of pure terror slam into me over and over. The final test. I spear both hands into the darkness, my light confronting it directly. My body wracked with agony. My mind shaken with shock. It challenges me with questions and riddles, demanding answers under a level of duress that no words could describe. I’m turning to smoke and dust once more. Only my light and my mind hold me together. I defy the darkness with my very soul. I meet its inquisition with everything I am. Every nucleus of wisdom, every trace of fortitude. Every ray of emotion. As I give my last to it, every sense is flooded with light. The pressure is gone. I am Solas-3 once more, and I have returned from the Deep Stone Crypt that all Exo brothers and sisters must climb to reach the life beyond ones and zeros that The Traveler has offered us. I only hope I was right.
Frontier – Act10 Chapter42 – The Siege of Shards There would come a day when this invasion would become known by many names. The day The Traveler fell. The Siege of Shards. Hell. Not a soul considered these names on the day, which offered no time for poetry or reflection. This day was only for battle. Earth The Last City Hangar Amanda Holliday ducked fast under a hastily-erected barricade made of crates and other structures that could be thrown into place. Line rifle bolts buzzed angrily over her head, putting holes in various things behind her. Vex ground units were not known for their mobility, so the hope was that it would force them into a stalemate. So far, it was working. A crash and a hail of gunfire from above tore Amanda’s attention to a few brightly-coloured combatants, loosing as much death upon the machines as they could from their lounge window. “Get those birds in the air, Shipwright! No doubt the support is needed elsewhere.” called down Lakshmi-2 of the Future War Cult as she reloaded her fusion rifle. Others cowled in violet, gold and orange added themselves to the battle. “She’s right. We’ll hold the line here. There’s a command centre of sorts that we’ve rigged for you in our shuttle hangar. You and your people should fall back there and get as many ships into the air as possible.” said Arach Jalal, his black and white soldiers flanking him and relieving her mechanics of their positions. She quickly fell back to the shuttle, finding a hastily slappedtogether command centre. Not much more than a comms station and a few readouts tied into the Tower’s hangar management systems. Reports were coming in of huge swarms of fastmoving harpies strafing the City’s defense placements. Everyone quickly got to the work of bringing the automated systems in all the Tower hangars to life. Earth The Last City Street Level Shaxx was no doubt the only person with a grin under his faceplate. The sound of distant battle like soothing music to him. His Redjack fireteams quickly engaged the Vex threat, pulling the attention of the machines away from the defenseless populace. Arcite 99-40 loomed in his shadow of his larger horned partner. Shaxx knew his attention wasn’t on the battle in front of him, but on dozens of engagements around the City. Coordinating the Redjacks took a fair bit of finesse. After all, it was a rare skill indeed to out alpha-personality all of those huge alpha personalities. Bribery and the promise of glory/bragging rights often did the trick. “More Redjacks reporting in. The Lords of Iron are en-route. No word from the Disciples of Osiris yet but I’ll keep trying.” said Arcite. “Give them challenges. Evacuate all citizens from each district to the towers and shelters. The faster, the better.” suggested Shaxx as he lobbed another grenade over the wall. “What about forcing back the Vex?” “We need to prioritize. We won’t be able to clear every area of the enemy when they keep porting in at this pace. The most important thing to do now is remove soft target collateral damage from the equation.”
Earth The Last City Observatory Eris Morn felt that her time was being wasted. The Vex were just machines. Powerful machines, but only machines. Surely everyone realized that the Hive represented a much larger threat during this time of weakness. They must be monitored! The Dreadnaught alone could obliterate them in an instant, even from Saturn’s rings. Nobody would listen during the chaos, so she followed suit and assisted where she could. Even the Vex were vulnerable to the illusion-casting powers of a Hidden Warlock. The Vex came down the hall from the main watch and ported in from Traveler-only-knows where, but they never saw the observatory or the people. The Vex saw an empty platform, and simply left to find targets. Executor Hideo and his New Monarchy entourage stood guard at the entrance to the observatory. The Speaker asked them to remain outside as he worked. Perhaps he worried that Hideo would take the opportunity that this invasion presented to eliminate The Speaker, further clearing the way for their agenda. Eris would have been unable to stop them and turn back the Vex at the same time. Regardless, he was far more focused on finding Angela. Her survival was of paramount importance to him. The observatory’s arcane mechanisms whirled and spun and calculated, but instead of attempting to gleam The Traveler’s secrets and messages, he looked for the young protégé. “No! You must not peer into the timestream!” screamed Eris. In his haste, The Speaker had allowed his instruments to send out a tachyon pulse to detect Angela elsewhere in the timestream. To the Vex, the pulse was like a flare being sent up. Vex units began to crash though Eris’ illusion and engage the New Monarchy resistance. Eris fell back directly to the Speaker. She’d berate him later for his foolishness, she thought. Earth The Last City Hall of Guardians He’d never admit it to anyone, ever, but Cayde-6 was having fun. It didn’t mean that he didn’t find the situation as gravely serious as it was, but that didn’t mean he didn’t miss the life or death struggle. Perhaps he’d seek professional help if any of them survived. For now he’d just crouch beside the door that lead into the Hall of Guardians, throwing as many bullets down the hall as he could without getting popped. Banshee-44 stood on the other side of the doorway, adding his firepower. Ikora Rey sat full-lotus in a corner, her mind trained entirely on keeping the room clear of Vex trying to port in. In her many years of study, she’d learned something about how The Traveler kept The Last City free from foes that would quickly overrun their defenses. She’d never had to replicate the effect before, but in the past she’d found a sense of impending doom had a wonderful ability to motivate. Zavala Tzu worked with all the intent and focus he was known for. He had ordered the frames to relocate their workstations to the same corner. Once they were all set up, he erected a barrier of void light around them, allowing them to organize the counter to the Vex incursion
without the risk of an errant shot. Air support was beginning to roll in so the situation in the hangar must be improving. Good. Receiving recon and battle data from Shaxx’s Redjacks, as well as Saladin and his fellow lords. Sending fireteams to fill in the gaps and apply cover for the fleeing citizens. Sending fireteams to the observatory to secure The Speaker. Zavala’s fingers flew furiously over interfaces and his voice spoke with the authority of a god over comms. The chaos began to clear, and Zavala’s will began to reforge the battlefield. Earth The Last City Tower Watch Arrenn Gee was no more. His function had been executed. His facade was no longer required. He was The Companion Mind once more. He looked at his glass shell. His architecture was far more complex than common Vex units, but he was the smallest in stature of the Axis Minds. He was also one of the very few Vex that had a sense of individuality. It was a necessity to accomplish his function. His function was his entire reason for existing, and it was simple. He was a key part to a larger equation. God desired The Traveler, and together with his partner, God would take it for its own. In return, the Vex would become gods themselves. Above him, his companion slowly formed from a cloud of God’s shadow found within one of The Traveler’s minions. This hidden seed was the key to this victory. Already, The Infecting Mind exerted its power over The Traveler, slowly blighting the light and replacing it with God’s will. The Infecting Mind was the greatest carrier of God’s power that the Vex have ever created, dwarfing even the revered Sol Progeny. Its glass body designed to carry the purity of God’s wrath. Together, they were known as The Shards. There was a third, and is and will be again. Atheon built the centre of the Vex’s universe and grew the Vex’s influence in leaps and bounds, but The Traveler’s pawns defeated Atheon, exposed by the loss of the garden. God took notice of this, and demanded retribution. The Vex conquest would be perfect. God’s enemy would be dominated by God itself and eliminated from the perfection of the Vex equation. God demanded it.
Frontier – Act10 Chapter43 – Words That We Couldn’t Say The pod pulsed and flickered with a wide spectra of light and patterns while they watched. All any of them could do is watch and know that while they did nothing, the outside world fell apart. The silence was barely dented by the low modulating hums and whistles of the pod, the busy working frames and the floating ghosts. “He’s probably looking for me.” Angela said under her breath. “Who? The Speaker?” asked Vatyr. “Yeah. Chances are that regardless of how bad things are getting, all he cares about is finding me.” “You’ve become quite the focus.” “The world is a dangerous place. He knows that if anything happens to him, a replacement would be vital to everyone’s survival. Without a connection to The Traveler, we’d be lost.” I think it’s more than that for him. I’m like his daughter now.Angela had lost count of how many times she had to stop herself from calling the old man father. How many times had he stopped himself from calling her daughter, she wondered. Telemica sat and watched the pod with a still intensity. If she allowed herself to look at the reports coming in from the outside that flashed across the nearby screens, she’d leap out of her own skin. Every fibre of her being was screaming at her to dive into the fray and tear some Vex apart, but she knew that she alone wouldn’t be enough to turn the tide. Solas had planned a critical role for her, and after everything she’d been through and… remembered… she decided that patience was the better part of valour. As the metallic cocoon slowly ceased to glow, the tension in the room skyrocketed. Whatever processes had been going on within, they were complete. Was Solas alive? Dead? Still corrupted by the seed of Darkness? It was like someone had flooded the lab with arctic cold water. Everyone held their breath. Even the frames paused their work and came to attention close around the pod, ready to act. It was only half a minute before the pod’s seam reappeared and it began to open, but it felt like an eternity. Solas lay inside, motionless. The contours of the padding shifted to give him a reclined seated position as the frames moved in, checking him over with scanning equipment embedded in their armatures. Holographic readouts appeared all around the pod, no doubt automatically to give the occupant critical data after being deprived for extended periods. His eyes were once again gone, sealed behind an eyeless and all-seeing horned shell. Angela rushed in between the frames and took Solas’ hand tightly in both of hers, her eyes clenched shut as if she was willing him to come to life. Wake up. Please. We need you. I need you. Solas’ hand slowly closed around Angela’s. Sensing his return to consciousness, the pod inclined further, allowing Solas to face his comrades. “Status?” Solas asked dryly. Wisp floated close and in a flash, reintegrated with his long lost Guardian. At the speed of thought, Solas was brought up to speed. “I see. According to plan more or less.” Vatyr approached and extended his hand towards the Warlock, “A plan I wish we’d been made aware of beforehand.” he said with a smile. I’m glad you’re back, brother.
Solas nodded and clasped Vatyr’s forearm in a classic warrior’s greeting, “It was imperative that you be kept in the dark. Your actions after my apparent demise needed a unique driving factor.” Vatyr nodded, knowing better than to argue with the Exo in matters like these. Angela was shaking. Her body quaked as her hands gripped the Exo’s for what appeared to be dear life. Her bowed head did nothing to hide the fact that she was crying. Solas’ free hand came to rest lightly on her head. “You did exceedingly well.” I could not be more proud of you. A few seconds passed before Angela nodded and released her grip. Pivoting quickly and moving towards the closest interface station, she began to bring programs and systems online within the lab. The frames immediately went to work to support her. She turned to face fireteam Warden, tears still in her eyes but a smile on her face and a puffed chest that screamed pride and confidence. We’ve got a civilization to save. Let’s get to it, Guardians! Two frames approached Vatyr and Telemica, each motioning for one to follow. “What’s this about?” asked Vatyr. “This stage of the plan requires that we have access to power not available to other Guardians. Foreseeing this, I’ve designed and built equipment packages designed specifically for each of you. Using them, we should be able to repel the current threat before Rasputin can act, or before the Vex and their Axis Minds can succeed in defeating The Traveler. Follow the frames and they’ll get you set to engage.” explained Solas, standing slowly. Angela continued to prepare things and Vatyr followed his attending frame towards a different chamber, but Telemica remained standing with Solas. I know what I saw. I know you saw the same things. I know they were memories of us. I will never forgive myself for killing you, my love. Love. There was love, once. I can feel the space it left in me. A pain that I’ve never noticed
before. One day, we’ll resolve this. To find our way forward.
Tomorrow holds many possibilities for us, but now is a time for battle. We fight today to win a tomorrow. Together. “Are you two going to hustle or am I gonna have to save the day on my own?” called out Vatyr before entering. After all, Telemica and Solas were just staring at each other in silence as far as he could tell. “Not that I mind. I’ll need whatever goodwill I can work up to keep Zavala from making me walk back to Vesta naked.” he said with his back turned as he passed from view. Telemica smiled. Whatever the past was and whatever the future still held, Warden would endure… together. She turned and followed her attending frame, grasping Solas’ shoulder in assurance as she passed.
Frontier – Act10 Chapter44 – Piercing Earth Above The Last City As the battle raged in the streets and structures all across The City, the air above was filled with screaming engines and circus-like streaks of aerospace combat. Vast swarms of squawking Vex high-speed harpies commanded by gigantic hydras surged through the sky. The Vanguard had seen these formations in play before on Mercury, but not in anywhere near these numbers. Guardians weren’t just rapidly getting shot down, they were getting swatted away like bugs. In contrast to the Vex’s specialized air/space superiority units, the craft employed by guardians were simply insufficient. It was rare to have a guardian’s jumpship fitted with any serious weaponry, as most guardians found that speed, agility and stealth proved far more effective in their field tasks. Also, while Amanda Holliday had amassed a sizable arsenal of guns, missiles, bombs and the like, they were too difficult to replace to be applied day-to-day in the field. Amanda worked furiously from her fortified command centre in the Dead Orbit shuttle to get whatever implements of destruction she could into the field. Fighters were being called back to land when they could and being hastily fitted with all manner of offensive systems before being launched again. With sophisticated automated systems at her disposal as well as her impressive deck crew of specialized frames, she was slowly working the turnaround time down. The defensive guns perched at the hangar doors were doing a good enough job at protecting ships as they landed and took off, but the shipwright knew that it was only because the Vex had not turned their attention to her efforts yet. Once they did, she imagined they’d only have seconds before being rooted out. A Javelin-class jumpship had just taken off freshly laden with a suite of micro-missile launchers and a forward gun when Amanda noticed an odd shimmer in the middle of the landing pad. At first she thought the camera had been damaged by stray fire, but the shimmer was on all the cameras and in the same localized space. The shimmer intensified after a few seconds and coalesced into a winged and armoured humanoid form. “Transwarp transmat successful. We’re back in our own universe. That wasn’t nearly as jarring as going through Solas’ door.” said Glitch. “And we’re in a hangar. That’s pretty appropriate. I guess we’re supposed to go through a preflight of some sort?” quizzed Vatyr. “Yeah… that seems like a good thing to do… let me see what I can pull up from the OS.” “Watch out!” screamed Amanda through the loudspeakers. Vatyr turned to see a ship swooping in for a landing at high-speed and mere seconds away from plowing right through him. Amanda instinctively closed her eyes, knowing that nobody would have been fast enough to evade the landing ship. “Thanks, Holliday. That was a bit close.” Vatyr called out. Amanda opened her eyes again to see the ship had indeed landed, but a different camera on a different angle showed Vatyr, hovering near the hangar ceiling. Black metal wings on his back were outstretched and emitting a soft yellow-orange solar glow. The landed ship was automatically shuffled to the
side of the hangar for refit. Amanda rushed out of the Dead Orbit shuttle and over to the landing pad as Vatyr landed a little less than gracefully. “What in blue blazes are you wearing?” Amanda asked in a mix of amazement and disbelief. Her eyes flashed all over the suit of armour that Vatyr wore. The wings seemed to move and flex in a way that normal metal shouldn’t be able to. It was as if it was something between technological and organic. The wings were attached to the back of a chest piece that seemed reminiscent of prototypes of the thruster-ladden Twilight Garrison titan armour, but this design was far leaner and obviously far more advanced. With the exception of gauntlets and boots that matched his chest piece, most of Vatyr’s body was covered in a slim black hunteresque bodysuit that looked designed for maximum dexterity with segmented aqua hard-light plates protecting him in key areas. His helm looked like a cross between a golden-age flight helmet and the top half of a large falcon’s beak, on the tip of which was a small orb that Amanda recognized as a ghost’s core. Glitch? Where was the rest of him? “It’s called the Astranagant. I’d love to show it off to you, but we should both focus on work. You get back to organizing our ships, and I”ll see what I can do about evening the score.” “I don’t know if you’ve taken a look outside, but we’re not exactly able to put up much of a fight. They own the sky.” “Then I’ll take it back.” Vatyr announced. In the blink of an eye, Vatyr was a hundred meters clear of the hangar. With the help of his wings, a main thruster on his back that roared with solar light, micro-verniers covering his armour and small canard wings growing out of his hardlight armour segments, he accelerated at blinding speed toward the closest hydra. “Let’s see what this thing can do!” exclaimed Glitch. “Deploying feathers!” The armour’s wings stretched out fully, launching eight feather-shaped devices in all directions. The feathers began to glow with arc light, coming up alongside Vatyr. “Each feather contains one of my body’s segments, so controlling them is almost second nature.” Glitch realized. A dozen harpies angled to intercept the hunter, and Glitch found it was finally his turn to take the lead in a battle. “Commencing attack!” Each feather accelerated to blurs ahead of them, darting through the sky at crazy angles and changing directions instantly to evade fire. Within seconds they had reached, engaged and destroyed the harpies, unleashing piercing beams of void light from their tips. “Nicely done, Glitch, but we have a lot more incoming!” Vatyr yelled. A group of harpies rained death down from above him. Glitch recalled the feathers instantly and arranged them in a tight geometrical shape around Vatyr. Connecting void beams to each other and running arc light along them, Glitch created a protective bubble that easily weathered the attack. “I’ve got you covered, boss!” Glitch declared jokingly. “Thanks, partner. Now it’s time for me to earn my keep.” Vatyr answered. The Hunter quickly accelerated to top speed towards the closest hydra, streaking solar light in his wake. Four of Glitch’s feathers extended circular barriers and ran point-defense routines while the others fired at will, sweeping their beams across the sky. The massive hydra and the thousands of harpies it commanded changed focus from eliminating guardian ships to Vatyr. Instantly, a cloud of harpies changed course and swooped in to meet the hunter. Vatyr called up the Astranagant’s main heavy weapon. The frames that introduced him to the Astranagant armour’s systems had shown him three weapons before deployment, and it was
the first time in ages that the veteran guardian had been at a complete loss for words. Exia was an impressive autorifle that when one of Astranagant’s feathers was mounted around the barrel, a massive energy sword was formed. Infinity Cylinder was a beam-based sniper rifle that while was slow to change and fire, had enough output to vapourize the side of a mountain off in a single shot. This situation, however, required the heavy. The gun was called Dis, a heavy machine gun patterned after the fabled Super Good Advice, and adorned with the ornate symbology of Alpha Lupi. The gun lacked a magazine, instead having a quantum entanglement generator that transmatted all of its ammo continuously from Solas’ lab stores, ensuring that the weapon could be fired for hours without needing to reload any kind of magazine. Not only that, but the ammo itself was decades ahead of anything Vatyr had seen in the field, traveling at the speed of a railgun round but being able to drastically change course mid-flight. As the leading edge of the harpy swarm came into range, Vatyr let lose a cold machined fury he had never thought existed. Dozens of harpies were torn apart by the second, but the towering hydra only threw more at the guardian until they formed a singular metal blob, lashing out at a small point of light. Tendrils made of attacking harpies jutted out of the mass as if trying to grab Vatyr. Astranagant had what the frames had called an inertia store converter, which repurposed the immense amount of energy that Vatyr was creating through inhuman acrobatic maneuvers and kept it from killing him or causing him to pass out. Vatyr accelerated at speeds that would flatten a person’s brain inside their own skull and still managed to continually fire at the harpy swarm. “Not to be a killjoy, boss, but we can’t spend all of our time on this one hydra. We have a schedule to keep.” noted Glitch in a slightly somber tone. He was enjoying this just as much as his guardian, but there were bigger considerations. It took a matter of seconds for Vatyr to launch dive down into the city, blink-shifting rapidly around buildings and obstacles. The harpies simply could not keep up. “I assume you have an idea.” said Vatyr. “One. If you’ll indulge me.” Bringing the feathers into a spiral formation ahead of them and emitting as much light as possible, Vatyr and Glitch dashed upward at full burn. A giant drill formed from the light, spinning fiercely and driving into the harpy cloud. “This is the drill that will pierce through the heavens!” Glitch exclaimed wildly as waves of harpies smashed against the light construct. Unable to defend their hydra master, the hunter and his ghost smashed through the Vex defense and straight through to the other side like a bullet, skewering the hydra lengthwise and causing the mountain of metal to rupture and explode. The hydra’s destruction sent feedback through to the harpies it controlled, setting off chains of self-destruction that enveloped the entire swarm in massive strings. “Um… A drill that will pierce through the heavens themselves?” quizzed Vatyr jokingly. “What? I’ve always been a bit hot-blooded, boss. Anyways, One down.” announced Glitch with pride. “Many more to go. Let’s work.”
Frontier – Act10 Chapter45 – Cleaving Earth The Last City Street Level These Vex were getting wise, Shaxx thought. They’d somehow figured out that he and Arcite had been commanding a sizable number of fireteams across the combat zone. Of course, he was a much easier target than the Vanguard leaders in their fortified hall. The pair had to move faster and faster to stay ahead while still coordinating their forces. It was only a matter of time before the Vex locked him down. There was a chase. Shaxx never considered the Vex were an enemy that would pursue a target in that fashion. Numerous rapidly-teleporting minotaurs flanked by harpies managed to run him and Arcite into a dead-end between two fallen apartment buildings. The alley was around 30 feet across, and the destroyed structures created high walls with multiple outcroppings but little in the way of cover on the ground. There were two nearby fireteams, but they were already engaged and couldn’t break off to assist. Shaxx and Arcite dug in and did their best to hold off the Vex. It was inevitable that the Vex would wear them down, but Shaxx didn’t seem to mind. “You know, my friend, the horror of this day and most probably the end of everything we’ve built notwithstanding, I’m having a great time!” “I figured you might be. Ever consider that you may have an issue?” Arcite posited, throwing a grenade over his cover at an approaching minotaur. “Oh, I’m sure that I’m unhinged in some way.” Shaxx laughed. “Can your deranged mind figure out how we’re going to get out of this one?” asked Arcite as he reloaded his Hakke Strongbow-D shotgun. “A miracle, and nothing less.” “Someone call for a miracle?” boomed a voice from atop the wall behind Shaxx and Arcite. Looking up and peering through the noon sun reflecting off The Traveler, the two saw a titan standing tall on the ledge. “Ho there! Come to save our sorry asses?” called out Shaxx. “It would be an honour!” the titan called out as she tipped over the side of the wall. The frames had time to properly explain Telemica’s new armour to her because it first required that her arm be replaced. Somehow, Solas’ predictions had calculated a high probability that she’d lose an arm in the rescue attempt due to the nature of Vex transfer gates. The new armour, named Regalia, included bleeding-edge cybernetic arms to replace the lost limbs. Telemica would only need the left one. The first system she was told about was the Spiral Caliber. Each boot had two aggressively segmented wheels which encased highly-miniaturized solar light-based repulsor tech modeled after sparrows like the EV-36 Sol Scout. Using a combination of solar light, nano-kinetic drivers and artificial gravity fields, a guardian could traverse any terrain with extreme efficiency. Shaxx and Arcite were amazed as the titan rode the wall down to them at both incredible speed and with incredible control.
The Vex began to divert their firepower to the newcomer. Rapid-fire bolts peppered and torch hammer fireballs surged towards Telemica and would have surely been her undoing, if not for the Null Jacket defensive system. A void light cloak that moved with her, shaping to her as if it were a long coat made of violet energy. The Vex’s aggression didn’t worry Telemica in the least with such a strong defense at her command, but her code demanded it be responded to. Bringing the drive cores of the Spiral Caliber to full, she performed a sweeping kick at her attackers, sending a blast of roaring solar light slamming into their front line. Telemica bounced from outcropping to outcropping, sending searing shockwaves of devastation down until landing between Shax and Arcite, and what was left of the Vex group. Two damaged minotaurs were attempting to return fire, but Telemica had other plans. Bolting towards them at ground speeds that even a sparrow rider would find extreme, she was upon them in a fraction of a second and plowed a left hook through both of them. The third part of the Spiral Caliber system was her new left arm, laced with the same tech as the wheels on her feet and designed to convert all that kinetic energy into destructive force. Leaping back to a few feet from Shaxx and Arcite, Telemica took stock of the remaining Vex. Seven minotaurs with varied levels of damage and two harpies. Shaxx and Arcite took the pause to reload and move up to better cover along each wall. “That’s some interesting gear you have there, titan Magna.” mused Arcite. Her entire armor seemed to be patterned after this helm Arcite had once heard about. The Empyrean Bellicose. A silvery translucent shell that barely hid the magnificent mechanisms it protected. Word was that it was filled with all manner of tech that was cutting edge even in the golden age. Arcite could tell that her left arm was entirely cybernetic and used the same design philosophies, which led his eye down to something entirely different on her hip. A sword. A katana, to use the old-world vernacular, hung off the titan’s belt, opposite Jolder’s iron sash. It was very obviously technological in nature, but great care was taken to make it look like a traditional weapon from centuries past, right down to the plasteel in the handle tinted just so to make it look like ray skin. The tsuba guard was modeled after the titan symbol, and the scabbard was ornately etched with the orange and white pattern of the Vanguard. “I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m just about out of ammo.” noted Shaxx. “Not a problem. We’ll be out of this mess in a minute, and I’ll get you back to the Tower.” assured Telemica with ultimate confidence. Arcite stayed silent, knowing something special was about to happen. “That’s quite a statement, titan. Care to tell me how you plan on making that miracle happen?” “I can do better than that. I’ll show you.” Telemica asserted as she slowly placed her hand on the katana and crouched. Half a breath passed before she drew her blade in a flash, sending an arc light shockwave slamming into the Vex. Both remaining harpies were sliced in two, and two of the more damaged minotaurs fell. Shaxx couldn’t tear his eyes away from the alley walls, which were etched deeply on both sides by the edges of the wave. He’d seen swords become
more popular among guardians recently, as well as money pour into research and development of such weapons, but this was on a completely different level. Telemica slowly pointed the sword at the Vex. The handle segmented and doubled in length. The tsuba split perpendicular to the blade’s edge and extended out, revealing mechanisms that looked similar to forcefield generators. The air in the alley suddenly took on a charge as the blade itself seemed to change from a solid black steel to black and angry smoke. “Nanomachines?” Asked Arcite out loud, almost in spite of himself. “Precisely! These nans are filled with fighting spirit! With my mighty hands guiding them, their true greatness will be unsealed!” More likely they’re programmed to respond to her via neural interface, but correcting her seemed like a dangerous proposition, Arcite thought. The nans whirled and twisted until forming a new blade. This one was flat on its sides, double-edged, and huge. Arcite guessed that it was 10 feet long and around a foot and a half wide and surmised that the nans had arranged in a new lattice that gave their construct the greatest surface area without sacrificing strength. Also, because no new material was added, it was the same mass as it was while in the katana form. How many different forms could this sword take? Snake blade? Rapier? Gladius? Shuang gou? Kukri? Spear? Arcite realized his recent fascination with bladed combat had distracted him from what was happening, because the titan had brought the massive cleaving sword back to a low two-handed hang at her side. She was preparing to finish this fight. In an instant explosion of solar light from the Spiral Caliber system, she was among the Vex. One swung its arm around in a twisting hammer motion, but was caught effortlessly in Telemica’s left hand. Her fist closed around the Vex’s arm and crushed it with equal passivity. The sword came down on the minotaur’s head, spitting the entire unit in half. Turning the blade around and sweeping nearly 360 degrees, she cleaved another five units cleanly across the thickest parts of their bodies. One last minotaur remained, and not only was it relatively unharmed, it was a praetorian. It began to unload its torch hammer on Telemica, who let the slam into her Null Jacket with ease. She wanted to show this one Vex that it was completely incapable of harming her. Perhaps other units in the network would see it. Telemica wondered if the Vex could feel fear. She was in front of it in a blink. An instant later, its arms and head were surgically removed. It stumbled back but Telemica didn’t pursue. She wanted it to regenerate its shields and come at her one last time. When it did, she rested the blade’s edge where its head used to be, but didn’t apply pressure. “This is the Buster Sword, a mighty blade destined to cut a path through the darkness. You are unworthy of its power, but in my way nonetheless. Now, return to nothing!” Telemica commanded as arc light surged from the blade in a massive torrent of destruction. The shape of the blade didn’t change, but Arcite’s finely-tuned sensorium could see the truth. The arc light was reorganizing the arrangement of the nans and supercharging them, causing those that made up the nano-molecular edge to oscillate millions of times a second, like a chainsaw built to break apart the bonds of matter. Even though the blade was relatively weightless, it fell right through the extremely durable shield and body of the praetorian. Telemica’s hold was the only reason it didn’t bury itself in the ground.
She turned to Shaxx and Arcite as the two halves of the Vex were still falling to the side. “Another member of my fireteam is clearing some airspace. We’ll get you picked up and somewhere safe in no time.” “Are you kidding me? After seeing something as awesome as that, how could I not want to press on!” Shaxx bellowed. “Get them to drop some supplies. My redjacks and I have a war to win!”
Frontier – Act10 Chapter46 – Annihilating Earth The Last City Ground Zero Ikora felt his presence before she saw the shimmer indicative of a higher-dimensional transmat insertion. How could she ever forget the telltale tingle in the air caused by her mentor, friend and closest confidant? She could only spare the effort to open her eyes for a single moment and witness him standing there. The others were far more surprised. “Warlock Solas! Get your damned head down!” cried out Cayde. Solas was standing in the middle of the Hall of Guardians, and was a clear shot for the Vex to take. Crimson bolts lanced at Solas from the hallway, and evaporated inches from him. Several more volleys assaulted the Exo but none landed, merely ceasing to exist before landing. Solas walked up to the hallway, and extended his arms. Before that point Cayde had been too concerned with the wellbeing of the warlock, and the confusion directly after, to notice. Solas had six arms. More accurately, Solas had four additional arms, a pair above and a pair below the two anyone would expect to see. It was difficult to see where they connected to his body under the layers that a warlock’s garb normally entailed, but there didn’t seem to be any additional apparatus connecting the arms to his body. No backpack. The Exo must have made the modifications directly, Cayde surmised. As the Vex considered how to attack an enemy such as this, Solas’ six hands began to weave patterns of light in the air. Cayde had seen this sort of light expression before from many of the highest-level warlocks, but never with this level of complexity, and obviously only with two hands. All six danced in expert coordination, composing light as if it were a full orchestra. And then, in a blink of an eye, the Vex in the hall were gone. The air popped as it rushed in to fill the sudden vacuums left by the departed units. “What-” Cayde began to ask. “I moved them.” Solas answered. “Where?” “The same supermassive singularity accretion disk that their weapons pull their energy from.” “How?” Solas didn’t answer, instead making his way down the hall and up the stairs. The entire Watch was swarming with Vex. Hobgoblins and praetorians stood on guard for the seed of Darkness, now grown large enough to block Solas’ view of The Traveler. Solas could feel what it was doing to The Traveler. Poison. Infection. Domination. Solas’ entry into the area instantly caused every Vex gun to be trained on him. Extending his arms as through he were about to begin to lead a symphony, he called upon his true weapon.
A book appeared in front of him. The large ornate tome floated silently in the air. It opened fully to him as if he were going to read from it, its spine cracking with the sound of old natural bindings. Within were pages made not of paper, but of light. Impossibly thin, they fluttered back and forth in a rainbow blur, humming and whistling whimsically. Within the tome, Wisp was remotely connecting Solas’ mind to the pod in his lab via a hyper-entanglement interlink, and in turn bridging Solas’ mind to the gargantuan quantum processing capabilities that the pod afforded him. Solas’ true weapon had always been his mind, and now it was fully unleashed. The Vex began their assault on the intruder, loosing a torrent of gunfire upon him. The Exo warlock blink-stepped with such speed and rapidity that he seemed to be in more than a dozen places at once. Light poured from Solas’ 30 fingertips, intricately weaving reality around him at the speed of thought. Cryptic symbols and labyrinthine constructs of power filled the space. Vex fired wildly at afterimages, sometimes destroying other Vex with friendly fire in the process. The remaining Vex came to a variety of ends, but all in short order. Some vanished as those in the hall did, while others exploded into light or evaporated like dust in the wind. One was encased in a jet black coffin of energy and quickly transformed into pure Hawking radiation. In seconds, Solas was left with only two opponents: whatever was within the seed of Darkness, and former Guardian Arrenn Gee. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.” spoke Arrenn, who had yet to turn and give notice to the Exo. “No, but I’ve met another Shard.” Solas noted as he walked toward his foe. Arrenn had completely shed his human visage to reveal an incredibly imposing Vex. Arrenn was only a fraction smaller than a minotaur but no less imposing. At the same time, his glass-like body was far more complex than an average Vex, giving Solas a sense of his deadly speed and accuracy. Add to that Arrenn’s ability to manipulate reality like a warlock and his lineage as one of the Shards. Solas knew that this would be no simple contest. “No doubt brother Atheon told you that there was no way you could find victory. You most of all should be aware of all the turning gears here. Why come back at all? Why try to protect that which is doomed to fall?” Arrenn asked, turning to meet Solas. Solas had never seen such a face on a Vex. Though cycloptic, it was humanoid and amazingly complex given how little the Vex would care for such things or even what most Exo were gifted with. Did Arrenn create his own face? The perfect baleful sneer that the metallic face formed spoke volumes of the unique entity within. The creature inside surely demanded a shell that could properly display the evil it contained. “I’ve studied many things in my time, and the Vex have been one of the most interesting of subjects. You want us to think that your existence denotes our inevitable defeat, but in fact it’s the other way around. Your current state, still bound by the laws of a universe you have yet to fully tame, proves that we can match you. We can survive. We can prevail. You think us so small, but I’ve seen it. The golden path. The way forward. The only way forward. Imagine my complete lack of surprise when I saw that the path led right through you.” Solas’ last words had barely left his lips before Arrenn was upon him, a black metal vibroknife heated to a dull lava glow in his left hand, driving for the Exo’s face. Solas’ two upper arms were fast and strong enough to catch the Vex’s wrist before it landed, but just barely. Arrenn’s
face had turned from a malefic sneer to a visage of deadly rage, and his right hand was inches away from Solas’ torso, weaving a quick gravity pulse into existence. Solas was thrown back, slamming hard into the archway leading to the Hall of Guardians and collapsing down the steps. “You speak of things you can’t possibly understand. We are the Vex! Our realm encompasses all of spacetime. Our influence over reality is complete! We exist in every possibility. Our victory is the only probability! You are less than nothing on the cosmic scales that we control.” Arrenn roared, stalking towards the steps with the intent of grinding what was left of the Exo under his boot. Solas rocketed into the air, levitating within an aura of light. His two lower arms were wrapped in thick steel cables that he tore up from under the steps, their ends in his palms sparking wildly. ” It’s no wonder you posed as a warlock. You talk too much.” Solas asserted calmly. His four remaining hands wove quickly. In an instant, the entire watch filled with lightning. The Vex was lifted into the air as he was assailed by most of the power that usually kept the Tower alive. The cables in Solas’ hands glowed white-hot as they conducted far more energy than they were used to, as Solas used the power to attack Arrenn on an atomic level, hacking away at the bonds that held the materials that made him together. Just as it seemed that Arrenn would be broken down, the cables failed and melted into glowing molten metals, giving the Vex his chance to retreat to the relative shelter of the seed. Solas fell to the ground. The attack had exhausted him. “Impressive. I have to say that you’ve surprised me. We could take shots like that at each other all day, but that would bore me. I couldn’t present such an ugly victory to god! What do you say we finish this properly?” quizzed Arrenn, standing in wait a few feet from Solas. The Exo got up. He knew exactly what Arrenn had in mind. It was called The World Circle. There was a time before the City’s walls were raised when warlocks fought deadly duels in this fashion, but such practices had fallen out of favour since the advent of the crucible. Legends suggested that the symbol that Osiris himself took as his own was patterned after this contest. They stood nine feet apart and saluted each other in the traditional warlock way, with the right hand palm covering the left closed fist. Outstretching their open palms to each other, the circle was formed. Between them was a ring of jet black null-energy. A blank canvas that was intrinsically connected to both combatants. From this, two warlocks would weave, attack and defend their opponent until one was defeated, and almost always dead. The two warlocks began to create constructs within the circle, symbols of power formed a new cryptography of local reality. Leylines intersected where one warlock attempted to block or parry the other’s efforts. Attacks landed on a warlock’s essence while their bodies reacted sympathetically. The goal was not to kill your opponent from physical trauma, but to obliterate the very concept of their being. Every minute into the battle, another circle randomly formed, intersecting the main one in some fashion and expanding the battlefield in unpredictable ways. The first addition was equal to the size of the srcinal but hung perpendicular, creating an entire third dimension to the
trial. Equations of life and death flooded outwards and around the combatants, interlacing furiously as each warlock attempted to get ahead of the other. Minutes passed as the circles rapidly filled with death. Solas quickly learned that Arrenn was adept at feints and misdirection, while Arrenn found it a challenge to cope with Solas’ vast breadth of skill. Moves came at a furious pace, neither combatant daring to take more than a moment to consider their next series of moves. Neither warlock seemed to be gaining an advantage over the other when a crack of thunder shattered the world. The warlocks staggered as if they were slammed by sonic booms but dared not break from the Circle, as certain death awaited those that took the coward’s way out. The bright noon sun that normally lit up the brisk mountain valley quickly darkened as Sol was eclipsed from the centre out. The sky turned an angry lightning-filled violet, and the wind picked up to match the deathly tone. “You’re quite a skilled combatant, but I’m afraid your time is at an end! When Rasputin attempts to destroy The Traveler in the hopes of keeping its power from God, my brother within the seed will seal it off in a localized time-dilation field. This City will be leveled. The Traveler will soon after succumb to our corruption, and then nothing in this universe will be able to stop us!” gloated Arrenn with a cackle. “Impressive plan. Firstly, thank you for this invigorating match. It has been an enjoyable distraction, as well useful in keeping your attention away from the efforts of my comrades. Even now, the tide of the battle throughout is turning heavily in our favour. In fact, I feel a small amount of guilt by indulging the ego of such a weak opponent while my friends did all the real work.” Solas calmly noted. “What? How dare-” “Secondly, thank you for confirming your plans. My calculations pointed almost assuredly towards it, but it’s pleasant to have my findings verified.” Solas continued. “Impossible!” “Lastly, and hopefully quite obvious at this point, there was one element to this game that you and the Vex neglected to properly qualify.” “Which was?” “Me.” It was then that Arrenn realized how outmatched he had been from the beginning. Solas’ four additional hands had yet to be employed in The World Circle, but were only the tip to the enormous iceberg of his power. His tome gave him access to all of his vast mental resources, and his enhanced body allowed him to apply those resources on a truly exponential scale. Multidimensional thoughts processed in attoseconds. Fingers weaved with such blinding speed that they nearly disappeared, and with such accuracy that Arrenn almost found himself in awe. Solas was operating at a level so far beyond Arrenn that the only way the he could realize it was to have it plainly demonstrated. The Circles suddenly filled with an overwhelming incursion. Before Arrenn could counter, Solas perfectly and conclusively dominated their shared world. Arrenn’s essence was unconditionally ripped away from his self in the span of a breath. Perhaps if The Companion Mind had not
been so shocked at the revelation, he would have had the chance for one last retort, but it was too much, too fast. Arrenn was simply gone. Erased. His vacant shell fell back, completely evaporating into rusty dust in the strong wind with nothing left to land on the floor.
Frontier – Act10 Chapter47 – Infection The petrified ash that moments ago was the body of The Companion Mind known as Arrenn Gee quickly became airborne as the sky above the City became angrier. Rasputin was perhaps minutes away from deploying The Black Sun protocol, a gravitational annihilation beam weapon that would reduce its target into 4D holographic data in much the same way that quantum singularities did. Its existence was only known to a very select few in the higher echelons of Vanguard command. Panic would have surely resulted if the general population had known that the warmind had such a weapon hanging over their heads. Solas understood why Rasputin was taking this course of action, and also understood why all attempts to dissuade him proved fruitless. Even after all this time, Rasputin still had little faith in guardians. The only way to stop Rasputin was to end the threat, so without giving himself time to rest or congratulate himself on his victory, he turned his complete attention to the seed of Darkness. The sickly oil-like energy stream of corruption that poured out of the seed curved and twisted its way through the air, ending at The Traveler and gradually covering the huge white orb like a disease. Arcs of light traveled back along the stream. Was the seed feeding on The Traveler? Solas could sense that the connection was far too strong to break with brute force and there was not enough time for proper analysis, therefore the only option was to destroy the seed itself. But how to do that? The only other encounter with a seed was in The Black Garden, and the seed was only vulnerable after inhabiting the Sol Progeny. The prevailing theory was that the seed itself couldn’t directly influence the physical world, so it required hosts and subjects to do its bidding, but here it was, affecting The Traveler. How? Among the myriad of broken Vex bodies, Solas sat in full lotus and opened his mind to the convulsing mass of evil before him. Something was unique about this seed. He sensed little he could understand, until a speck of Arrenn’s remains carried on the wind to the seed and touched its surface. The roiling body of the seed exploded in a furious torrent of what Solas could only describe as anti-life, throwing the warlock backwards and blanketing the watch in a thick miasma. Once it cleared, Solas had his answer. The seed was exactly that, a seed from which something was intended to grow from. What emerged stood nearly as tall as Atheon. A wide body of glass that was reminiscent of a more evolved hydra, with humanoid limbs and a cycloptic head atop its torso. Eight small balls of darkness similar in appearance to the seed floated around him. The infection stream continued to pour out the Vex’s crystalline body and towards The Traveler like a thick smog. The last Shard brother finally emerged from his chrysalis. Virulion, The Infecting Mind. Solas sent out a quick burst message on every friendly channel he knew of, informing them of the situation. On the surface of it, this seemed to work in their favour. Now the seed was gone, and a corporeal entity could be defeated. Solas’ six hands became a blur of light as he attempted to bind Virulion. Small portals to Sol’s photosphere opened up around the Vex giant, launching thick solar filaments at it. The ropes of light looped around and lashed Virulion, impeding his movement. More portals opened as Solas continued his binding. Solas considered how to destroy the now-bound monster, but only had a few seconds before he saw that it would not be so easy. The orbs of darkness quickly wizzed around Virulion,
severing the filaments and collapsing the portals. The Vex was free in less time than it took to bind him. Solas was suddenly knocked to his knees, not by a physical attack, but by something else. A psychic attack? No, that was not something the Vex did. This was something else. Psychic vibrations pulsed from Virulion’s glass shell with such strength that it was like Solas’ mind was being shaken apart. Concepts flooded in. Anger. Destruction. The zealot-like fanaticism that these acts was the will of God. Wordless thoughts and fractals of emotions boomed deafeningly in Solas’ skull. The warlock found it impossible to focus on anything, or even grasp on to a single thought of his own. This was how The Infecting Mind communicated. He screamed his dark thoughts at you until your will to resist was buried under the rubble of your shattered psyche. “Here we come to save the day!” called out Vatyr over comms. Solas could focus just enough to perceive Vatyr flying in with Telemica in tow. The titan dropped from 20 feet and landed in front of the warlock. The resonance of her null jacket distorted the telepathic link enough for Solas to break it. He rose to his feet slowly as he quickly slapped together a psychic barrier patch for himself, while also remote-installing it in the armour Telemica and Vatyr wore. Telemica turned to face Virulion with sword unsheathed. “Did you take care of Arrenn?” she asked. “Conclusively. He was protecting his brother, who just emerged from the seed. Meet Virulion, The Infecting Mind. We only have a few minutes to defeat him before Rasputin launches his attack.” informed Solas. “Not a problem. I’ll end this in one shot!” hollered Vatyr. He’d landed on the centre peak of the watch’s architecture and deployed Infinity Cylinder, his new sniper rifle. The unusually long barrel and thick cable connecting the rifle’s body to the back of Vatyr’s Astranagant armour told Telemica that the weapon was less of an anti-personnel weapon and more of a heavy antimaterial cannon, designed to eliminate heavy and hardened targets from extreme ranges. Judging from the advanced nature of Solas’ other creations, the titan guessed it could punch a hole clear through a Cabal land tank in a single shot. Vatyr brought the rifle up to aiming position and a grin formed on his face. The body of the rifle seemed based on the newest fusion rifle tech, as there were six heavy fusion cores laid out in a tight hexagon that came to life. Vatyr’s wings furled out and back, venting the vast amount of excess heat away from his body. Virulion seemed to either not notice the two new guardians, or not care. He slowly turned his hulking form back towards The Traveler. The sickening miasma began to pour out of him thicker and faster than before, as if he were refocusing his efforts on dominating his target. “Don’t wanna play with us? I’d rather not shoot you in the back, but I’m not above taking the shot when the clock is running.” Vatyr mused. “Stand back! This thing packs a whallop!” he screamed as the Infinity Cylinder’s cores roared deafeningly. The hunter pressed the trigger, and the world lit up. A high-pitch scream burst forth from the weapon’s barrel, along with an intensely wrathful bright beam of white-hot light. The event shook Telemica’s perception enough that it took her a full second to turn and see the beam’s target still standing, Infinity Cylinder’s beam shattering off of some invisible barrier
around the Vex. Some beams arched into the sky, while others lanced straight into the tower or off to skewer far off mountain faces. Before an expletive could escape the lips of either Vatyr or Telemica, Solas braced. Infinity Cylinder’s shot would end soon and another may not be possible in this fight. He had to act fast. His hands shot out and grasped at the sky that the beams cut across and pulled fiercely. Through a sheer force of will that some warlocks would find astounding while others would deem inelegant, he curved the beams back towards Virulion like a flower’s petals closing in the moonlight. Infinity Cylinder began to cut into Virulion’s front mere fractions of a second after its shot broke across his back. By the time the attack got Virulion’s attention, the rifle’s charge was expended. “Not the game-ending attack I was hoping for.” Vatyr mused darkly. “Now what?” “Now we press the attack until the damn thing falls!” Telemica cried out, already leaping on Spiral Caliber’s solar burst at Virulion with a fully-deployed Buster Sword. She swung hard at his head, powering through with her new arm and doing her best to sever the Vex’s head from the rest of his body. Thunder clapped as the blade met Virulion’s protective barrier, but that just made Telemica press harder with an ecstatic warcry. Recalling Infinity Cylinder and deploying Exia, an autorifle which doubled as an anti-starship beam sword when the barrel was connected to Anstranagant’s feathers. Vatyr’s energy blade slammed into the opposite side of Virulion’s neck, doubling the titan’s continued assault like scissors. Before Solas could warn his comrades, the barrier pulsed once with a deep bass sound that rocked the world, sending all three guardians flying back and slamming into the walls of the watch. “This isn’t going to be that simple.” noted Solas through considerable pain as he got up. “So do you have a plan?” asked Vatyr. “That’s an light-equalization barrier of staggering density and genuinely transcendental complexity. Virulion is using The Traveler’s core essence-light to protect itself from our attacks. At the same time, Virulion is injecting a quasi-pathogenic anti-light construct into The Traveler in an attempt to dominate it.” explained Solas. “Come again?” “We use The Traveler’s light to do what we do, but it is impossible to use that light – The Traveler’s very nature – to injure The Traveler itself. The Infecting Mind was designed to take advantage of this fact. To shroud himself in The Traveler’s light to defend against us, while taking control of it host. Without overcoming that defense, none of our attacks will land.” “So what you’re telling me is that for the first time ever, you have… no plan?” suggested Telemica. “I’m working on it.” assured Solas in a tone that was halfway between personally insulted and honestly grave. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.” the titan mused as she readied herself for another attack.
Solas didn’t want to let on how dire the situation was. Could a way be found around the barrier? Probably, after months or maybe years of research on a target that was not trying to kill them. The problem was that they didn’t have months. In the next few minutes, either the Vex would take The Traveler as an offering to The Darkness, Rasputin would destroy everything, or both. Virulion’s imposing and disregarding back was beginning to look bigger by the second, and the sky was most definitely getting darker.
Frontier – Act10 Chapter48 – Sacrifice The clock ticked, and the world became darker. Telemica and Vatyr continued to engage Virulion, The Infecting Mind. At least, they attempted to engage him. Virulion’s focus remained solely on The Traveler. The Vex monster refused to acknowledge the guardians or their attacks. Solas hung back and applied himself to the puzzle before him. He poked and pulled at Virulion’s being from every angle and dimension he could access, doing everything he could to open up some sort of gap in the defense. The clock was ticking. While the City beyond was slowly being retaken by guardian forces, comm channels were beginning to take interest in the rapidly changing sky, as it was clearly not Vex-related. Solas refused to explain the truth of the situation. What purpose would it serve? There was nothing anyone could do. Virulion’s infection was progressing at an alarming rate, and his barrier made of the essence-light of The Traveler was unnervingly effective at negating any incursions the guardians tried to make. It made perfect sense to Solas. The guardians got their power from The Traveler. It was insanity to think that The Traveler’s gifts could be used against it. The warlock’s expanded mind raced to find a solution. The clock ticked, and The Traveler began to slump in the air. “You’ve become so strong since you first came to me, but this is beyond madness… even for you!” The Speaker pleaded to his young apprentice at the other end of the commlink. The Speaker was at the helm of an old Arcadia-class jumpship and bringing it in alongside the stream of sickly corruption that connected Virulion to The Traveler. Angela was crouched on top of the jumpship, holding on for dear life as the inexperienced pilot at the helm maneuvered into position. “This is the only way either of us can think of to break the Vex’s connection to The Traveler and turn the tide of this battle. Warden can’t do it themselves and we’re running out of time! There is no other way to dissuade Rasputin from leveling this entire mountain range.” Angela reaffirmed. “I’ll be able to give them the opening Warden needs to end this!” “You could die! You simply do not understand how important you are to us!” “We’re all going to die if I don’t!” The Speaker wanted to argue her out of this plan. He wanted nothing more than to turn the ship around and find another way. He wanted to protect her, but he knew it was imposssible. Angela was far too headstrong and tenacious. He adjusted his course to bring Angela directly under the stream. “I’ll hold position right under you. After you’ve broken the connection, I’ll catch you. I promise.” She wanted to tell him how much he meant to her, but she needed to stay focused. She could feel the stream of sickness sap her strength from a few feet above her head. Was this what The Traveler was feeling? The effect intensified as the ship inched closer, as if the the spectre of death was breathing down her neck. Every cell in her body was demanding that she escape, but she forced herself to reach up and let herself be absorbed by the riptide of energy. Angela’s scream of anguish seemed to carry along the stream like an echo down a metal tube and slam into Virulion with enough force to slightly stagger him. Warden’s full attention turned
to the girl suspended in midair, but only Solas knew what she was trying to do. Her connection to The Traveler allowed her to act as a graft over the wound torn open by Virulion’s infection. A boost to The Traveler’s natural defenses. Her hope was that The Traveler would then be able to break the connection itself, but that didn’t happen. Virulion’s refocused its efforts, causing the contagion to rip through the young girl. “Angela! Get out of there!” The Speaker pleaded. She couldn’t respond. Looking though a camera, The Speaker could see that she was clearly unconscious, but still pouring out massive amounts of light. Her arms were spread wide in the air as if she were trying to block Virulion’s efforts with her tiny body. Slowly, pure light crept from The Traveler through the stream and into Angela’s back, brightening her already radiant aura. For the first time, Virulion appeared to be set upon. The barrier around him seemed to flicker and dim. The infection stream thinned. “Whatever she’s doing, it’s working.” Vatyr noted. He fired off a few rounds from his rifle, but even though Virulion’s barrier was weakened, the projectiles still bounced off harmlessly. “Fall back, Warden. We need to regroup and come up with a new plan before Angela’s light is exhausted completely.” ordered Telemica. “No! You will not diminish her sacrifice! For the City!” The Speaker bellowed at Virulion. Gritting his teeth and throwing the throttle forward hard, he sent his jumpship on a collision course with The Infecting Mind. His old lungs launched into a dead man’s defiant warcry as he poured all of his light into the ship itself. The clock stopped. The world turned on its head as The Speaker’s suicide attack found its mark.
Frontier – Act10 Chapter49 – Brave Telemica lifted a slab of debris away from the corner Solas was buried in. “Are you alright?” the titan asked with concern. “For the most part. Vatyr?” “Up here.” Vatyr answered over comms, high above the now demolished tower watch and coming in to land near his comrades. “The Speaker’s ship just detonated on contact. Vapourized. Pretty much no significant debris from the ship itself. The effect is similar to a slipspace core overload. I recognized the telltale whine of a jump core being overspun, but I’ve never seen the fallout so localized and focused. Virulion was sent sailing through the back wall and into the lookout, but he’s still moving. Doesn’t look too damaged either. I’m surprised this tower is still standing to be honest. All that energy must have been focused right into the Vex. Crazy.” “We all knew The Speaker was powerful. A fitting end.” Telemica considered. “What about Angela?” Solas demanded. The warlock ran back to the centre of the watch to find most of it had been obliterated by The Speaker. Peering out, he saw Angela still hanging in the air in a huge mote of The Traveler’s essence-light. It was significantly brighter than before, and the infection stream had been completely severed. “Angela. Angela, can you hear me?” Solas queried into open comms. There was no response. The light around her continued to grow and take on an aggressive note. Was The Traveler trying to defend itself? Virulion shifted and whined, throwing debris off itself and rising. “He looks pissed off.” Vatyr noted. “Good.” Solas growled. With a roaring fury, he sent a salvo of huge nova bombs hurtling towards the Vex, slamming Virulion with enough void light to level a small apartment building. The Infecting Mind shielded itself with its arms and braced under the impact. It was not seriously damaged by any stretch, but it was not immune to the attack either. “It felt that! The light barrier is gone. Angela and The Speaker broke the link, making it vulnerable.” Telemica shouted in triumph. Her armour’s systems burst with renewed vigour. “Let’s go!” yawped Vatyr. Fireteam Warden leaped into the fray with Virulion quickly, before the Vex could reestablish its attack on The Traveler. Vatyr ignited his anti-ship beam saber once again and attacked Virulion in tandem with Telemica’s Buster Sword from opposite directions. Virulion brought its arms up and blocked the massive blades with surprising speed, shrugging them off easily and batting Telemica with the back of a hand. The titan was sent smashing through a high section of the wall. Vatyr blasted upwards and rained harassing fire down on Virulion with his Dis heavy machine gun. Solas called forth a vast reserve of void light and reached his mind deep down into the weave of reality. Focusing on Virulion’s glass-like structure, he willed the crystal to vibrate. Solas wanted to shake the monster apart, atom by atom. Telemica launched out of her hole with an echoing battlecry. Spinning, she sent two sweeping waves of solar light at Virulion from her feet, as well as a meteoric jet from her left arm.
The Infecting Mind blocked the titan’s first two solar attacks and redirected the last one up at Vatyr, narrowly missing him but forcing him to veer off. Then, opening his huge palms and exposing a port in each that looked like the muzzles of torch hammers, he fired two immense blasts of boiling energy at the titan and warlock. Solas was too focused on his attack to react in time. A hastily-erected barrier saved his life but sent him sprawling. Telemica narrowly managed to evade it with the aerial maneuvering capabilities of the Spiral Caliber system. She tried to press the attack, but Virulion was ready for it. He grabbed her out of the air and tossed her back in the direction of The Traveler. She would have gone clear over the side and fallen to her death if Vatyr didn’t pluck her out of the air. Solas scrambled for cover behind a toppled pillar while his comrades observed from above. “We certainly have his attention now.” “For all the good it’s doing us. We still can’t put any real hurt on him. I’ve never seen a Vex move like that!” exclaimed Vatyr. “Or take that level of punishment. Guardians have defeated Vex like this before, right?” Telemica asked. “Yes. The Sol Progeny of the Black Garden were little more than enormous, lumbering minotaurs. Easy to take down if you’re smart enough. Atheon’s defeat within the Vault of Glass was made narrowly possible by the disruption of the Vault’s Oracles, which allowed Atheon’s significant control over the local spacetime of the Vault of Glass’ interior to be neutralized just enough to claim victory. Neither strategy will assist us here.” informed Solas. “Great. Does anyone have any ideas?” Vatyr asked with some frustration. Let the light flow through you…
“Who-” Let the light flow through you…
“Angela?” Solas asked to nobody. Turning to look at the young girl, he could barely perceive her through the enormous amount of light pouring out of The Traveler and surrounding her. “Is that Angela on comms?” asked Telemica. “She’s made direct contact with The Traveler for the first time since The Collapse, but through some sort of shared dream-state. Whatever is speaking to us through our light is a merged consciousness between Angela and The Traveler.” “She really is The Speaker now.” Vatyr said with a note somewhere between mourning and hope. He dropped off Telemica by Solas and reengaged The Infecting Mind with his Dis heavy machine gun. “We can’t let him attack Angela. I’ll keep him occupied for as long as I can. Solas, think!” Solas’ celestial-sized mind raced, arriving finally at a strategy that gave definitive new meaning to the phrase ‘last-ditch’, but was no doubt the only play they had left. “Years ago, I toyed with the idea of giving guardians one final option. It never worked properly, but with Angela and The Traveler’s help, there’s an infinitesimal chance it could work for us here and now.” “I’m all ears!” Vatyr said as he dodged oversized torch hammer blasts.
“I’d reduce us to our core light, and merge the three essence patterns that each of our ghosts hold into a single being of staggering power. Easily enough to defeat Virulion.” “Sounds great! Let’s do that!” “The chances that the merger would work are, as I said, infinitesimal. Even if it did work, the resulting lifeform would only last a few short minutes. Also, we three as individuals as well as the entities within our ghosts would cease to exist. We’d die.” Telemica grabbed hold of Solas’ arm. “We’ve died before, remember? Dying again was always a pretty good possibility in our world.” “But… our time…” Solas found himself at a loss for words. The silent and deafening conflict brought on by the return of their memories had been pushed to the side for the moment by a world-ending battle, but he needed to fix this wound between him and Telemica. Even if it took lifetimes. Telemica’s lips found where Solas’ forehead would be if he had eyes. “Our time is once again at an end, but I know no fear or regret because you are once again with me, my love.” Had she been contemplating the past this whole time? Had she ever been conflicted by it? Solas wasofone the most aspects brilliantof minds the star it system had aever seen, but he’d alwaysHe been ignorant theofemotional life. Perhaps had been simple willful blindness. was often told he needed to pay more attention to the feelings of others, as well as his own. It had been the one puzzle in his life that scared him, so he avoided it. Now, all of those walls he’d built up around his heart were suddenly gone, and only she remained. He placed his hand over hers. The fear was simply gone, and for the first time in perhaps both of his lives, he needed no words. “Vatyr, meet us centre stage. We’re doing the crazy thing.” Telemica commanded as she pulled . “Yes ma’am! Operation crazy thing is a go.” Vatyr joked as he swooped down to meet them at the broken ledge made of what remained of the tower watch. “Guys, just so you know, it has been an honour and a privilege. I may have failed my family and my fleet during The Collapse, but it’s good to know I won’t fail you.” Telemica clasped Vatyr’s shoulder in understanding, then turned to Solas, “So how do we save the world?” “Clear your mind and do what the little lady told you to. Let the light flow through you.” Solas offered. Within each guardian, silent thanks and farewells were offered to the little lights that bore them for so long. The dutiful Squire. The enigmatic Wisp. The daring Glitch. The hunter and titan took one last look at Virulion before closing their eyes. Four of Solas’ hands took hold of theirs while the remaining two began to weave the world, opening a conduit to Angela.
Frontier – Act10 Chapter50 – Warden Angela awoke atop The Traveler’s zenith. The world’s curvature was almost noticeable from this altitude, but Angela had no trouble breathing or discomfort of any kind. Being this close to The Traveler, its essence must support life regardless of the surrounding environment, she deduced. The last thing she recalled was getting pulled into the infection stream and the feeling of her life being drained away, before a warmness enveloped her. The voice that spoke to her was both alien and oddly familiar. It was sweetly welcoming and beyond old. The voice asked her for help, like the elderly asking for the strong hands and sturdy back of the young. She was glad to help, but had no idea how. The voice now sounded a bit like hers, and told her that now was the time for her to be strong. Now, together, they would shine like never before. The next thing she knew, she was on top of The Traveler, and in the distance, though mere specks of light and echoes of booms could be perceived from this far away, she knew what was happening. She looked up, and the machine god of a bygone age prepared to strike at home. She filled her lungs with air and screamed at the faraway point of light that carried all their fates with it. “Fight!” Solas, Telemica and Vatyr simply ceased to be amid the furious torrent of light. When it calmed and coalesced, what remained was a towering humanoid figure made of blue-white light and without any discernible features. It had no eyes, ears, nose or mouth. It had no fingers or toes. It wore no clothes. Its body had no definition denoting biology or gender. Its boundaries shifted and licked like the surface of a flame. Its core was intensely bright required no strain to gaze into. Virulion, The Infecting Mind fired a pair of torch hammer shots at it, but the shots were harmlessly absorbed into its being. The Vex fired several more shots but with the same result. The new entity stood motionless, facing The Traveler in reverent posture. It was when Virulion charged with a lunging right punch that the entity heard it. A girl’s voice. Fight, the girl said. The entity twisted with supernatural speed and caught Virulion’s fist, stopping it dead. The impact echoed across the landscape. Virulion attempted to pull itself free but couldn’t. The entity pulled the fist in to grab Virulion’s arm, spun around, and threw Virulion back towards the lookout with ease. The Vex sailed through the air with a defiant roar came down with a crash. The Infecting Mind got up quickly, but the entity was already standing in front of him, waiting. When it spoke, sound emanated from it in all directions. Its voice was a combination of the three guardians that formed it. “I am The Warden. This place and these people are under my protection. Be gone.” Virulion’s chestplates shifted and moved, revealing a cavity which held the last fragment of the seed of darkness from which Virulion emerged. The evil pulsing heart of Virulion, The Infecting Mind. Cables and connections webbed through and around the seed. Virulion was showing The Warden that he was chosen. Blessed. An ordained avatar of the Darkness’ will. Screaming tendrils of diseased energy shot out of the seed and hooked into The Warden, attempting to drain the entity of its light. A sound raked from Virulion that could be considered nauseating laughter.
The Warden didn’t stagger or shift. The tendrils buried their way in, but burned away in moments. The seed sent out more and more in an effort to devour this entity of pure light, but every attempt simply evaporated. The Warden’s light was simply too intense for The Darkness to corrupt. Virulion quickly closed its chest to protect the seed and brought both its arms together in front of it. Components shifted and rearranged until the Vex monster’s arms and body formed a singular immense energy cannon. Virulion would destroy this abomination of light in the name of God. It took moments to charge and the blast would land at point-blank range, but The Warden didn’t move. The avalanche of dark energies Virulion unleashed seemed to roar up without sound from the pits of some nameless hell and spill into the world like a plaque of ruin, leveling what was left of the tower watch and collapsing a large section of the nearby hanger. It was as if the pure and unadulterated will of some dark god of destruction poured out of the Vex’s body. Such a thing could exist for only moments, but that was all it needed to annihilate anything in this universe. The Warden stood unharmed. Through Virulion’s armour, the seed screamed in rage. The Infecting Mind separated his arms again and threw a desperate haymaker punch. Midway through the attack, The Warden countered, in a flash severing both Virulion’s arms at the shoulders with a flurry of cleaving knifehand strikes. Virulion staggered and convulsed as the seed of Darkness within it attempted one last time to lash out, bursting out from the chest of The Infecting Mind and leaving Virulion a dead hulk for its penance. The seed lashed out like a hydra, constantly growing hellish heads and tentacles to replace the ones that either burned away in the light or were severed by The Warden’s uncanny counters. The tables so obviously turned only seemed to cause Virulion to attack more violently and exhausting itself, perhaps feeling its end was at hand. When the futile attacks ceased, the Warden slid its right leg back and brought its arms up to deliver a serious, finishing blow. “You end is now. The rest of your kind will meet the same fate… in time.”
Frontier – Act11 Chapter51 – Forward Earth The Last City Years later… “It has taken years for us to rebuild this City. Our home. Years to heal from our wounds, mourn the dead and reforge our bonds. Hard time full of blood, sweat and tears. First the Vex came to take away The Traveler, but were denied them their prize. Then the Fallen house of Kings came to our walls to strike at us while we were wounded, but they too were turned away.” Angela stood at the podium atop the rebuilt and improved observatory in the centre of the tower lookout and took a breath to collect her thoughts before continuing. Her voice and image projected across the domain and beyond. She had expected her heart to be beating out of her chest. Perhaps in a time not so long ago, that would have been the case. She had found her mettle since then. The young Speaker was flanked by the Vanguard leadership and other dignitaries, all in formal dress. She’d been preparing this speech for some time. She needed the people behind her for what was to come. She needed their hearts and minds. She could feel they were with her so far, and now she had to turn it up. “Our valiant guardians protected us, laying down their restored lives for us time and again when things seemed most bleak. They stood, fought and were victorious!” The crowd cheered. “The factions found new common ground. The Dead Orbit became the foundation from which we built the Vanguard Navy. The Future War Cult opened their mysteries to us, allowing our research and development to jump ahead decades. New Monarchy enshrined me, your Speaker, as their Queen. New allies came to hear our call. The Queen of The Reef, The House of Judgement, the warmind Rasputin and more!” The crowd cheered louder. “Today, we commemorate that fateful day when three brave guardians accomplished the impossible. Through The Traveler’s blessing gifts, they destroyed the invader’s leader with a glorious blow. A single punch with such fury and power that it carved a deep valley into this mountain range that stretches into the horizon. Today, in honour of their service, bravery and sacrifice, we name this battle scar in the face of the world The Valley of The Warden.” The crowd cheered even louder. “The Darkness has officially been put on notice!” The crowd roared. A chant of her name rolled through the masses. The entire City came alive. She let them and herself have it for a minute, then raised her hand to calm them. “My people, we have walked through the forge of dark days and been remade stronger than ever before, but darker days still await us. Forces that will stop at nothing to grind us back into the dust. Will we let them?” The crowd cried out defiantly.
“Our unity will make us stronger than anything they could ever break. Our light will burn The Darkness and its minions away. We will take back our worlds, and pioneer the golden path beyond. Today is a day of remembrance and celebration. Tomorrow, and for all the tomorrows after, we will move forever forward!” The crowd erupted. Nothing could stop them now, Angela thought. She took a wave and vacated the podium. The festivities below were now in full-swing, and the time for pretty words was over. For the people of the Last City on Earth, it was a time for joy. For Angela, it was always time to work. She had Vanguard reports to review and expansion plans to oversee. Tomorrow she’d be on a transport to The Reef to formalize trade negotiations and other partnerships. Angela entered her private office in the observatory. An elegant space full of old books mixed with new tech. She keyed the biometric scanner hidden in the mechanisms of a sextant sitting on her wide Brazilian walnut desk. Hidden scanners in the office identified her and activated the portal. Solas’ old lab had held up fairly well after the Vex incursion. The invaders never found a way into it, so as soon as Angela had gotten the chance after the battle, she had run down to the main entry and keyed the door. The power core was nearly drained, the unique ammo stores were all but depleted, and the main processing core was totally burned out. Ikora helped her close the few experiments that the frames were still running and relocate the main entry portal to Angela’s new office. The lab had once been where Solas prepared for Warden’s ordeal. Now, it’ll serve a new purpose. At the centre of the lab, where Solas’ pod once was, stood something new. Within a complex assortment of cables, scanners and interfaces, three clear teardrop-shaped crystalline bulbs hung from a miniaturized version of the lab’s old power core. Each bulb containing a ghost. After the battle, Angela had ordered Warden’s ghosts found. They were assumed dead but Angela had just become the new Speaker and she didn’t hesitate to put that influence to work. Using the wealth of tools in Solas’ lab, she discovered that Wisp, Glitch and Squire were in fact still alive, perhaps through some residual effect of The Traveler’s boon. It should not have been possible, but impossible was becoming more and more common these days. Fireteam Warden had survived by the thinnest of margins. The three ghosts now floated comfortably in a liquid light solution pioneered recently by Omolon foundries. Slowly, they were absorbing light and gaining strength. There was no way for her to know when they’d wake up. It could be tomorrow, or it could be a hundred years from now. Every evening, Angela would come down to this lab, make sure the frames were tending to them properly as well as Angela’s other experiments, check the readouts and findings, look at the three ghosts, and promise her friends that the world they saved would flourish in their absence. Finally before retiring to her bed, she’d always ask her friends for a small favour. “Come back soon.”
