Two knives, no ammo, and a destroyed Sparrow. His journey is not a death wish, though he appreciates the substance behind the assumption.
The Crypt pulls at the edges of his mind as he breaks his second-to-last knife off into the chest of a captain, shoving it with a disgusted boot off of himself.
NO SLEEPING, NO STOPPING. HELL OF A DEBT.
No other way to pay it back, he replies silently, not entirely sure if the concerned voice is his own brain or his ghost. Too many blurred boundaries.
His ghost appears at the thought, passing a scanner around the room. "That captain has shock pistols at half-charge, if you care to use them," it comments aloud, instead of simply sending the information to him directly. The better to separate itself from the drum of constant noise inside his head.
He doesn't miss the note of sarcasm. "If I really wanted to die, I'd at least way 'til I got to the warehouse. Be stupid otherwise."
"Yes. Stupid is the word."
Cayde doesn't bother with a reply. He does take the shock pistols, though, along with a single-edged blade hanging at the Fallen's hip. Wrong weight to it for throwing, but he'd make do. It's enough to ease the tension he feels from his ghost; one less thing adding to the racket.
USING THE SAME WEAPON TO FIND THE FRIEND THAT WAS FELLED BY IT, the Crypt answers in the vacuum, the internal cacophony rising just passed bearable. OH, TO TAKE UP THE STRENGTH OF THE ENEMY IN ORDER TO PAY HOMAGE TO THE DEAD. A NOBLE CAUSE, SURELY.
"You need to rest," his ghost says, but its voice sounds tinny and far away. "Can't run into the next nest all scatter-brained. You don't want to 'be stupid', as you put it."
"No place to rest," he replies. BUT YOU LOOK SO MUCH LIKE THE FALLEN ALREADY, WITH GUN AT HIP AND KNIFE IN BOOT. SLEEPING AMONGST THEIR PACK SHOULD PRESENT NO— "Almost at the warehouse, anyhow."
"After, then," comes the desperate, whispered answer by his shoulder. "I'll find you a nook to tuck yourself into once you're finished."
He concedes the logic with a nod. SLEEP IN THE ARMS OF YOUR FRIEND'S CLOAK, BELT HEAVY WITH THE PISTOL OF THE FALLEN.
And because there's not enough racket, bold tendrils of Darkness snake around his boots, whispering to him about things he only peripherally understands in a language he's sure he once knew. Another niggling voice in his head, distracting him from his goal.
But then he emerges from the hole the Fallen had bunkered themselves in and spots the warehouse, its exterior a crooked rusty matte that disrupts the overhead stars. He clocks two guards making the rounds near the main entrance, but only idiots used main entrances for breaking into buildings.
And so he slinks around them in the moonlight, faceplates covered with mud to conceal the gleam of steel. The knives are tight in his grasp, one hunter and one Fallen, ready to find purchase in anything stupid enough to get in front of him. His feet find the quietest path, just like—ANDAL TAUGHT YOU. WOULD HE HAVE GIFTED YOU WITH SUCH A SKILL HAD HE KNOWN YOU WOULD USE IT TO END UP HERE?
Cayde, please, his ghost whispers to him, just loud enough to be heard over the Other voice. We can come back later. It feels wrong to go in now.
Everything feels wrong, he thinks back, and his ghost has no answer because it knows he's right.
Still, the half-thought protest from his ghost is loud in his mind, but it's a familiar argument that he's heard several times. Cloaks don't make the dead come back. It has the grace not to push the issue, settling for a deep-seated unease that pulls at his focus to temper his actions. He accepts the distraction as a necessary caution as he slips through the slats of the eastern wall of the warehouse, taking care not to mark his entry.
It's Dark again, more so than it had been in the Fallen nest he emerged from. Cayde does his best to ignore it, straining his focus on the path he'd walked with Brask three weeks ago. IT'S TAKEN YOU THIS LONG TO COME BACK FOR HIM?
There. The echo of an old boot print disturbs the debris littering the warehouse floor, and he slips in between rusted Golden Age equipment to follow it. He dims his Light as best as he can, and his ghost responds by doing the same, an unseen and welcome presence by his shoulder.
The prints get muddled when he reaches the door that lead to the lower levels of the warehouse—the place they'd bunkered themselves down in as they poured lead and Light into the stairwell below. It had been an easy fight, and he feels the impulse of a smile at the memory. Brask had laughed the entire way down the staircase, stepping over still-warm bodies and picking up spare ammo as he went.
"You take me to the nicest places," he says, grin evident in his voice.
Cayde brushes off the offending blood from his cloak and matches his friend's amused expression. "Thought I'd start you off easy after being cooped up for so long. Don't want to risk depriving the Vanguard of your wise counsel."
DEPRIVE, INDEED.
He finds the same path he'd taken before down the steps, his ghost flaring a beam of light the moment the shadows grow too thick to see through easily. More memories flood in, filled with familiar banter and the smell of sulfur. It sounds and smells and tastes real; if he avoids looking over his shoulder, he could easily imagine the near-silent pad of Andal's boots behind him.
ORPHEUS LEADING EURYDICE OUT OF THE UNDERWORLD, the Crypt whispers—YELLS—and it sounds almost like Ikora this time. DO WELL NOT TO LOOK BEHIND YOU, ORPHEUS, LEST YOU LOSE YOUR LOVED ONE TO HADES.
He only resists that exact temptation out of spite for the cacophony inside his brain. Besides, there's no god with which he could barter for Brask's life, and they'd never been married anyhow. He also doesn't know how to play a harp to save his life—his hands only know the whistle of a knife and the bark of a barrel, and he doubts that most gods would be interested in the music he could sing with those talents.
His ghost blares an unspoken warning at him, a mixture of stay focused, leave, keep your guard up, stay to the shadows, be caref—
Buckshot brings reality back into focus, blasting the slats of old metal and concrete to the left of his temple. He ducks, his Light bleeding solar, and his hand cannon quickly finds a home for the round in its chamber. The Vandal falls ten feet from him, screeching and bringing forth a dozen more of its companions pouring out from hidden doorways.
Focus!
YES, FOCUS, LISTEN TO YOUR GHOST—
"Too much talk can kill a man, Cayde," Brask chides, removing a wasted casing from the side of his pauldron. "You really need to—"
FOCUS!
A flaming pistol blazes in his grasp without his consent, the barrel nodding to the head of every enemy in the room. Fiery lead finds purchase, spilling out of burnt flesh and scorching those not blessed with the kiss of his pistol. They all drop at once, screeching and then dead, and the room quickly swallows the Light and returns to shadow.
Brask's body is just in the other room, his ghost tells him slowly. He shudders as the pistol fades from his grasp, leaving him cold.
Shouldn't have forced my hand like that. Knew what I was doing.
I knew what I was doing, too, it spits back, but there's no bite to the retort. Only an old sadness.
How much time do I have?
Taniks does not keep regular patrol schedules, it replies. So be brief.
He would. He just needs the cloak, anyway.
Cayde finds Andal's ghost first.
The shattered cogs lay open and bare on the musty floor. He can still feel the sense of it in his brain, the calm-warm-leather-small-fire-old-book feeling that is—was—unique to the mental profile of Brask's ghost. His own ghost keens low and floats down gently to the broken shell, filling his head with longing and mourning and the bitter taste of things left forever unsaid. He moves past it, lets it grieve, and finds his own body to mourn for.
Splayed out, wasted, old and so very small is Andal's body on the ground. There's none of the usual crackle in the air when Cayde sees him, no whisper of electric Arc nor the smell of lightning that had always enveloped the man. Andal is only dim and cold, and the world dimmer and colder for it. His fingers find his friend's jacket, feeling upwards to his helmet.
He remembers this, too. The long, impossible fight in here with the Fallen. He remembers it well.
"They'll be here soon!" Andal barks, voice nearly drowned out by the flare of his rifle. The basement of the warehouse is crawling with Fallen so thickly that they move like lice over the walls, the grounds, the broken equipment—two replace every one that falls. Cayde quickly finds his ammo running dry. He can't even remember when or where they'd all appeared from. "Just keep—keep at it. Cayde!"
"I hear you!" He uses the steel of his boot to crush the neck of a Dreg that had crawled too close, and draws the knives from his belt. "Pistol's out."
"Last clip," Brask reports. "Can't damn well see we made much of a difference either."
Cayde can't see much of anything besides bursts of Light and the blink of a million eyes around them. He can hear Taniks laughing somewhere, far away and close all at once. The noise is sick and infected, knowing and intimate. He hasn't known fear this deep in a while. He cannot see the Kell, and it doesn't seem to have joined the firefight. It's waiting for something, and he doesn't want to hazard any guesses as to what that is.
"Backup'll be here, like you said."
"Don't reckon it's enough," Andal mutters. "Should have—" He pauses to stick a dagger in a Vandal's gut and shove it away. "Should have called sooner, dammit."
"My fault. Thought we coulda cleaned this up on our own." He'd been greedy with Brask's time, not wanting to soil their precious time out in the Wilds with any third-wheelers. And now they were paying the price for that.
"Dunno why I keep trusting a gunslinger's operational decisions."
"I'm usually right." Cayde ducks away behind an old generator and watches Andal do the same beside him. Bursts of electricity splash the ground and metal, and the Fallen shriek in annoyance at having missed their mark.
But they did not miss completely—Brask cries out, taking a knee and holding the other. He curses into the comm, shaking with the shock of having his knee blown out by a lucky sniper.
"You good?" Cayde doesn't look at the other hunter. Instead he lets loose one of his few remaining knives and takes out the lead of an encroaching pack of Vandals. If he could just dart out quick, he could pick up their weapon….
More sniper shots ring out, making him think twice about it. He turns to Andal once he realises the man hasn't responded to him, and catches the briefest glimpse of his ghost repairing the damaged knee before the bolt of a rifle rips through its tiny centre.
He can feel it die, feel the Light bursting and leaving in a sudden, silent pop. It crumbles to pieces, some of its broken cogs falling into Andal's lap, and then it registers with them both what's just happened.
"NO!" The mic of Brask's comm blows out with the scream, and he cries out again, afraid and violated and alone all at once. "No, no oh god, no, please, no—"
There's Taniks' laughter again, so close now Cayde can swear he smells the breath of the Kell in the air. The thing comes into view, disgustingly massive, its arms reaching for Andal, enveloping him, squeezing the life out of him, and Cayde thinks in horror that that's the last thing he'll ever hear Andal say—
And it's all his fault—
Cayde.
He jolts back from the body, ass to concrete, and looks at his ghost. His chest hurts, his shoulders ache, and the hollow feeling inside of him only gets worse when he looks at the small, lone eye of his ghost.
Do not, it breathes, its internal voice a sob. Don't you dare take his helmet off, Cayde. Please.
He sits up again and crawls back to the body, unable to help himself. It's a tempting thought. His fingers find the clasp at the back of Andal's head, nestled inside his cloak. It would be nothing to slip it off and fist his hand through the black curls that always seemed to escape a meticulous ponytail; to find Brask smiling beneath a cracked visor, laughing off any attempt to snuff out a Light as bright as his.
You won't find that. Nothing but dust and ash and death. Please, Cayde. His ghost comes up and nudges his shoulder, and the poker-chip-clink-laminated-cards-wet-earth sense of the ghost shrouds around him, pulls him close, keeps the pieces whole. There's no name for the ghost, no one word that can summarise the sum total of its presence in his brain, but it's as familiar as anything could be, and it is enough to keep him from peeling Andal's helmet off. His fingers dance downwards to the clasp of Brask's cloak instead, feeling for the metal buckles and clinking them loose with careful movements. He holds his friend close to his chest as he pulls it off slowly, gently, until the damp cloth is lying beside Andal's body and his own cloak is being wrapped around dead bones.
He slips Brask's cloak over his own shoulders and forces himself to his feet. The cloak he'd used as a home for so many decades and centuries now cradled his friend in the dust of an ancient factory, and the burden of a new vow rests heavy and musty on his back.
His ghost whistles behind him, and he turns to see it floating once again over Andal's ghost. He nods in understanding. He picks up as many pieces of the ghost as he can off the floor and pools them inside the cloth around Andal, right next to his head.
It is not a proper burial. There is no grand funeral pyre, no clamour of acquaintances gathering around and pretending to grieve for a man they reckoned they knew. Andal is dead and laid out on the ground with no ceremony and no fanfare, with only the shell of his soul to rest by his head and keep him company.
As how a hunter should be, his ghost whispers, and he can't help but agree. Now please, Cayde, let's go. Let's rest. The sound of his ghost's voice is loud and clear in his head, unburdened by anything else trying to worm its way into the forefront.
It's done then.
Yes. I know a good place to stop. Come.
He follows his ghost out of the Fallen tomb, exhausted. The sick tilt of the Earth makes his feet drag, but he does not look behind him for Eurydice or Hades or anyone else. He rests instead inside the still-damp cloak of Andal Brask, nestled in between an ancient cliff face, and he does not dare think of anything else for a long while.