Authors Notes:
Hey, this is my first TRUE story that I will be dedicating my time to, and my first true Destiny story at that. I will try to put out updates semi-frequently, but I'm a busy boy with school to do. Don't expect very much of me. Please R&R, I need some feedback :)
Destiny and Destiny 2 do not belong to me.
The Last City was quiet, as it usually was in the early hours of the morning. The cool, crisp breeze slowly wafted through the narrow streets and buildings that lined the great walls that protected them. The shops were just opening, the homes only recently being lit, and the people slowly making their way into the streets to go about their business.
Among the small crowds of people, a fireteam full of guardians strode through the city, dressed in light clothing with the Vanguard symbol plastered on the front. The citizens could recognize a few of them from the Crucible matches they would watch, while the others were known by name for their exploits against Hive gods. They were veteran guardians, each having carved their names out into the stones of history. Save one, the smallest Awoken female. While she had participated in the fall of Oryx, very few knew her name. She was still a legend in her own right, but nowhere near as revered as the others. It caused her envy to see the stunned glances of citizens when looking upon their leader, of the others, but nothing but the usual sideways glance that citizens gave the average guardian.
It was demeaning.
She felt a warm hand pat her shoulder, the one that belonged to the human Hunter of their group, Tom, although they called him Swift more often than not. He gave her shoulder a light squeeze, silently telling her that everything she felt was okay. He knew how she felt, he was once in the same position.
"Don't pay them any attention, they don't know anything."
The reassurance was nice, warmer than the broth they had trudged all the way out of the Tower to have this morning. It wasn't exactly her idea of a great meal, and it wasn't the favored drink of their Exo companion, Gale-12, but it was a hot meal regardless. Besides, when was the last time they'd eaten real food? Sure, the light could sustain them almost indefinitely, but it was nice to put something was some flavor in your mouth from time to time.
The whole group tensed for a moment, unsure of what in the hell just caused all of them to be on high alert. Each of their ghosts sparked into existence above their shoulders, adding a pastel colored arrangement of machinery to scan for disturbances. At Gale's nod, each of the ghosts trans-matted their respective guardian's armor onto them, which caused the citizens in the area to get the message. People scattered and headed back into their homes as the weapons began to form on their backs and hips.
Then the faint explosion could be heard. The group looked to the source of it. The South end of the top of the Tower had just been hit by a barrage of missiles. But from where?
Then the storm shifted in the sky, and began to spit out blood red ships of Cabal design. By the hundreds, by the thousands, they filled the storm to the brim.
"Get to the Tower, now!"
A silent acknowledgement, the sound of several boots hitting the pavement, and the group was on their way. Vanguard protocol was to divide any fireteams into Strike teams were the Tower to be attacked so that a greater area could be protected. Gale took the elder Warlock and Awoken Titan with him while Swift took the young Awoken and female Titan named Aspis with him. Swift took his team to the base of the Tower, reaching one of the trans-mat stations and sending them to the highest floor with an available connection.
When they arrived, Swift was greeted by the stench of smoke and destruction. He raised his Vision Of Confluence rifle and scanned the room, flanked by Aspis and Day as she insisted they call her. He had no room to judge about strange names, so he went with it.
Moving quickly through the remains of the ship storage stations, Swift's group managed to make it up a level before encountering Cabal Legionaries. A few precision shots from his rifle, and a hit from Aspis' Party Crasher +1, and the intruders were no more. The group had alerted several more Cabal in the area, and encountered a few more Legionaries before making their way to the crumbled path to Amanda's workshop. A well placed pulse grenade by Day caused the rubble to shift enough to allow them access to the stairs.
Once they found themselves in the ship bay, they found Amanda and several workers fighting for their lives against Phalanxes, Centurions, and Centurions. Amanda was using her Chaperone shotgun to send one or two flying back in a puff of black smoke, but there were more to take their places.
The guardians quickly put their skills to work, each pulling out a rocket launcher, one of them being a Gjallerhorn, and disposed of the clumped up enemy force below them. A few final shots from Day's Hawksaw put the rest down.
Amanda stood up with a bit of trouble as her bionic knee was sparking. "I owe ya one guardians, but I've gotta go. Zavala's got a need for me in the sky. Stay safe."
Swift just nodded to her, not one for conversations in warzones, and nodded to the others to get moving towards the courtyard. The path back to the courtyard was crumbling, almost caving in, causing the trio to speed through for fear of being crushed. Just as they reach the end of the path the stone structure above them crumbles into flaming dust. Swift nods forward and they continue on.
At the top of the central stairs stands Zavala and a few of his guardians who happened to be there at the time. Each of them situated behind cover deployed by their own ghosts, fighting off a crowd of Cabal. It was as if a flagship had dumped the entire crew onto the courtyard. The concrete slabs beneath the giant warriors cracked from the sheer weight of the beasts.
Shots rang out to the side of the invading Cabal force as the Strike team moved in, burning through their ammo reserves like tinder. Zavala's crew laid down some suppressing fire so the trio could make it over to the defensible position.
"Guardians! We must hold until the civilians are safely away! Do not let them have this courtyard!" Zavala echoed with his thunderous voice, dripping with anger. He dare not let loose his rage, but this was becoming too much for him.
"Sir, they're attacking the Traveler!" Aspis yelled and pointed towards the large, pronged machine being flown towards their god. Zavala shook his head.
"Civilians first, we must see them out safely!"
But safety was not something that could be guaranteed. Within moments of Zavala's order, several ships, including the largest, fired salvos of missiles at the guardian home. Zavala threw up his Ward of Dawn, but the missiles were not headed for them. They arched and swiveled downwards, right into the center of the Tower, causing it to lurch forward and groan in steel and stone. All who occupied the top of the Tower were knocked form their feet and sent towards the railing. Aspis and Zavala managed to stop themselves by grabbing onto the remains of Tess Everis' shop, but the rest of the unlucky guardians found themselves free-falling. Swift tried to reach out for Day as they fell, but all he could manage was to look at her helmet, right where her eyes would be, and nod.
"-om! We ne-" The crunch of my bones being shifted back into place.
"-aveler is in dan-" The feeling of blood flowing through my veins again.
"-ome on!" The clarity of a whole mind once again.
Swift stands up to find Dart, his Crimson shelled ghost hovering over him.
"We need to go Tom! The Cabal have taken over half of the City!"
That woke him from his daze completely. He held out his open palm for Dart to materialize a good gun in his hands. She supplied him with a Cure rocket launcher, cluster payload.
"I can access what remains of the Tower armory and trans-mat rockets into your launcher. Just point and shoot."
Swift nodded and jumped up to the nearest rooftop to get a good view of what was going on. Small bursts of gunfire peppered the streets, no doubt belonging to guardians. And then there were loud, large bursts of solar slugs being pounded back at the guns, decimating anything in their way. Tanks. Hundreds of them.
Leaping up into the air, Swift fired once, twice, three times at the heavily armored vehicle and shattered it like glass. Several Cabal infantry units stared upwards at him and began to fire but it was far too late, their corpses were nothing but ashes.
He fired on a cluster of three tanks in an open section of the City and destroyed each from a considerable distance. Just as he was to finish a fifth tank his rocket ran empty.
"Tower armory is gone, nothing more to draw on but your synths. Probably going to need those later."
Swift aimed his Her Benevolence sniper at the side pod of the tank and finished it off. "What ammo do you have?"
Dart seemed to smirk with her tone. "Only about five thousand rounds for all of your exotics since they all have seperate ammo types."
With that, he held slung his sniper over his back and held out his hand once more, being given his Suros Regime rifle.
Day wasn't having an easy time. She had landed quite far from the Tower and was revived fairly quickly, and managed to regroup with some guardians lead by Lord Shaxx on the ground. Shaxx was laughing like a madman as he cut through ranks of Cabal with his Raze Lighter, purely in his element. But even the largest, strongest Titan could not hold off the incoming assault indefinitely. Threshers began flying overhead, and while guardian ships were able to take some out, more guardians were being brought down than Cabal. It was the greatest slaughter Day had ever witnessed.
Reloading her Hawksaw, she found herself being backed into the Great Wall. It seemed the Cabal were leading them into a corner. Filled with frustration and anger, she felt her palm crackle with energy as she sent waves of lightning through the incoming forces, frying several Legionaries and melting a Centurion where he stood. More forces still flooded through the streets before them, some with odd lights dancing from their guns.
Shaxx growled and let out a war cry at the sight of them. Day almost didn't understand until she realized the lights were fallen ghosts, seized not very long ago. She felt her lightning forming again and sent it into the back of the sprinting Lord Shaxx.
Swift ducked into an alleyway and tossed his Suros to the ground, empty. Half of his cloak was burnt off, which was particularly irritating to him. Not only did he just have his favorite set of armor destroyed, but now his favorite cloak was gonna need some serious work. As Dart finished trans-matting his backup breastplate onto his body, he held out his hands and received a Last Word and Thorn. Spinning out of cover, he popped a Legionary in the head with the Tex Machina revolver and stabbed a Phalanx in the hand with the cursed cannon in his other hand. Using the two instruments of death, aided by his ghost's automatic reloads, he was able to tear himself a path through the Cabal and closer to another raging gunfight.
Turning the street corner, Swift lowered his weapons in awe. Before him was Lord Shaxx, brutally destroying Cabal left and right with his Fists of Havoc, but each punch seemed to send a shock-wave through the forces, and the lightning was only fueled further by Day's screeching electric charge burning through him. Other guardians stood behind the pair, firing everything they had. One Titan even held two Super Good Advice machine guns and sprayed down the lane full of Cabal.
Once Shaxx had finished his brutal massacre, Swift ran over to Day and looked around.
"Where's the rest of Spectre team?" He questioned.
"No clue, last I heard, Gale was taking Mia and Dresden up to the flagshi-"
Before she could finish, a huge explosion rocked the ground not too far from them as guardians were sent flying, their ghosts mangled by the sheer impact of the explosive. Shaxx called out for guardians further back, and they arose in a line twenty guardians strong, each carrying a Gjallerhorn.
"FIRE!" He bellowed as the wolfpack rounds burst from their tubes, latching onto the unlucky craft above them and ripping it from the sky. The massive ship crashed down into the City, causing a squadron of Cabal to be destroyed under it.
This caught the attention of several other large ships and nearly a hundred Thresher dropships. Golden Guns flared to life and shot out rocket pods, engines, cockpits. Tethers were fired into the masses of ships, aided by another volley of wolfpack rounds to finish them off. Hammers of Sol were flung into Threshers and violently brought them down, and Nova Bombs were flung straight into the lead cruiser, damaging it heavily.
It seemed as though there might be a chance of survival yet, as if there could be a victory.
But the pronged machine had other plans. As it finished latching onto the Traveler, the god, it severed their connections. Guardians stood for a moment and looked at their suddenly appearing ghosts, then crumpled to their knees as their light was lost. Blue, purple, and orange auras left their bodies, their ghosts flickered and cracked on the ground.
Swift felt as though a thousand bricks had been dropped upon him as he struggled to find a way to stand once more. He could see Day and even the mighty Shaxx were suffering from the same feeling of powerlessness. Of hopelessness.
He got up on one knee and raised his Red Death. This would not be his last day. He saw several other guardians rise back up from the ashes of their own light, determined to fight until their last breath. He quickly scooped up Dart and hooked her to his belt, determined not to let his ghost die so simply.
There was no time for rest, however, as the remaining Threshers rounded on them. Several crouched guardians were cut down for the last time, spraying blood across the street. Swift ran forward, grabbing Day in his arms and half dragging, half walking her to a small alley. She squeezed his shoulder tightly, as if she was unsure if this was real, and he squeezed hers in reply. That was all she needed to make her realize just how real this all was.
Nodding grimly to her, Swift lead her away from their fallen comrades and closer to the Wall. A solemn voice soon came over their helmet communications. None other than Zavala spoke.
"Guardians, the City is lost... We must rally on Titan and collect ourselves before we can build a counter-attack... I pray you all make it safely."
The two looked at each other and then at their ghosts, both hanging lifelessly from their belts. Swift had a beacon on him in the event that he would ever find a suitable patrol route, and made a plan. They could at the very least flag down a guardian ship with the beacon. Day was already heading for the City wall. Neither of them wished to be here any longer than they had to.
Just as they reached the edge of the City, they heard a voice boom across the whole city.
"I am Dominus Ghaul. I have taken your light, and now, I will take your lives."
Swift raised his sniper rifle and scoped in on the source of the sound, the capital ship of the fleet, and quickly wished he hadn't. Kneeled upon the edge of the ship were Gale, Dresden, and Mia. A few flashes of slug rifles, and three corpses fell from the ship.
Three legendary guardians, held at the mercy of the Cabal. They were not merciful.
With tears in her eyes, Day made her way through a hole punctured in the wall by Cabal mortar fire, not wanting to look back at their beloved City, now turned to ash. Swift took a moment as he stood in the breach to look back at the smoldering ruins, quickly being turned into a Cabal fortress, and turned away.