Destiny Hunter Story
L.A. Davidson
The guardian crouched gasping behind a rock, its shadows flickering wildly against the pocked cave wall by the light of many shades of indigo and lilac. She breathed raggedly, a taste of blood in her mouth as her visor grew dim. Doesn't look as if my shields will be up any time soon, she thought.
"I can't get them to regenerate!" her Ghost murmured within her in its accented tones, "I'm doing all I can, but the…the Darkness…it's so heavy down here…"
It's okay, the guardian said in her mind, shushing her gibbering companion. The light stopped and as she regained her breath and felt her hands steady. She gripped her hand cannon and leaned on her other hand to peer around the crumbling, frigid stone as much as she dared. A looming shadow stood in front of her fellow guardian, his Ghost flicking its eye hither and thither as it began to slowly dim.
The immense shadow bellowed ferociously and the guardian quickly remembered: a massive ogre had crushed the Titan into the ground, pummeling his corpse into pulp, the durable armour the only thing saving his body. His Ghost had came out from him, frantically spinning around its beloved partner. Before she had been able to save the Titan – her friend – the ogre had thrown her into the wall she had only a moment earlier regained consciousness staring at. Now, the Hivebeast reared its head, the sickening, amaranthine eyes squirming beneath a thick, mottled sheet of skin.
She barely had recoiled in time to hide before the eye blast continued disintegrating the stone. Again, the wall flashed in many hues as she realized the rock wouldn't play castle walls for her forever. Flicking the release on her hand cannon, she sighed and raised her eyebrows in mock surprise – four shots. Just my luck. With a whir, the cylinder spun and snapped back into place before she holstered the weighty gun.
Good thing I like a challenge. She closed her eyes and focused for only a fraction of a second, as her Ghost had not long ago shown her. The Light illuminated her. She no longer was huddling behind a failing rampart. Now, she was reclined, floating before the massive Sun, Sol, with Mercury, Venus and Earth all distantly in view. All was pristinely silent as the star raged before her, enormous arcs of heat lashing out, each large enough for multiple Earths to play jump rope in. Holding out her hands, she pleaded, and a single flare snapped at her as if it were a whip. Slowly, she pulled herself forward in a way physics never would have allowed as a small, glowing object spun towards her from the scorching sun-tendril. A massive, flaming hand cannon. Reaching for the gun, it pulled itself into her hands as if by magnetism, warmth spreading up her arms from it.
"Ready to go to work?" she asked it lovingly.
In an instant, she was back in the dingy moon-cave, miles beneath the surface with her crushed and dead Titan friend. The ogre had not relented in the thousandths of a second she had been away, communing with the Light. The Golden Gun glowered and crackled like a feisty coal in her palms, hungry to feast on a creature of the Darkness. She would not deny it this privilege.
In a leap, she turned about and was bearing down on the monstrosity, its beam of death following her, nigh upon her, licking at her vibrant cloak. Pow! her mystical weapon sounded once, the intense heat washing over her as it drilled through the face of her foe. Pow! it rang out again, the second shot nearly separating the ogre's arm, a smouldering, sickly smelling strip of sinew all that remained to hold it on. Pow! the Golden Gun trumpeted the death of the ogre as the point blank blast melted a cauterized hole a foot wide through its head alongside the first shot.
The Hunter came down on the chest of the dead ogre, standing on its carcass, her breathing even, shallow and focused as the flaming weapon disintegrated into the air. She was still quite new to this, but was growing better with every hour she spent afield. He Ghost iterated this thought in her, a humble yet satisfied grin cracking on her face.
Strutting to the Titan's Ghost, she felt her own reach out from within her and feed life back into her friend, many pops and wet sounds turning her stomach as his body was reassembled beneath the suit with the power of the Light. These noises were punctuated by a gasp and many coughs.
"Oh man….oh…ugh, I'll never get used to that…" he said in a brassy, pidgin-esque baritone.
"If you didn't die so much…" she replied, "Maybe you ought've been a Hunter, mate?"
"Hah! And hide in shadows? I'd rather punch something to death than sneak up and sli' its throat. I want it to lookit me and know I killed it. Bastards." He spat towards the ogre, quickly realizing the spit wouldn't be leaving his helmet. "Ghost?" he asked.
"Y…yeah?" his Ghost said, exiting him and dancing in his hand.
"Can't we figure out some way for me to take me helmet off to actually spit on this dead swine? God, I want to remind their corpses who did this."
Before the Ghost could reply, the Hunter said, "Oh, but, Bjarni …I killed it. You just sat there…being a suit filled with…juices and a husk…?"
"Shu'up!" he snickered, "I'll do better next time. Let's keep going, eh, Astrid?"
"Let's head back to the Tower – this fieldwork is meant for us fleet footed Hunters, old boy, you'll just keep ending up dead…or worse! In my way…" she ribbed, garishly. Hanging his head, he agreed he needed more work in a less Darkness infested hellhole. In minutes, they were back in the Tower, the Traveler filling its vessels to the brim with light.