I don't own Destiny. Activision and Bungie do. All I own is what you're reading here. Pls no sue k thanks. Also, thank you Word for spellchecking my shit for me. Lifesaver right there.

[Actual story begins below.]

Atheon was bored. Why? No one was playing his raid anymore. Then again, it had been over 4 years since his raid was first introduced. Those had been the good days, the days when he would watch squad after squad jump off the ledge after two of their members had been killed. Over time, however, they had gotten more efficient, killing him in less and less time. On top of that, they got better weapons and armor, which lead to him and his minions being killed even faster. He would always respawn though, because if the Guardians wanted to truly kill him they would have to annihilate the entirety of the Vault of Glass. They never would, as the Vault extended deep into the heart of Venus. In short, no matter how many times they did the Raid, he would always be there, sitting at his Glass Throne.

But this posed a problem. He was immortal but he didn't have anyone to talk to, really. Sure, there were the Templar and Gorgons, but they had run out of things to chat about as well. They were bored too. And don't get me started on all the Goblins, Hob-gobs, Harpies and Minotaurs there as well. Long story short, everyone in the damn Vault was bored out of their minds. The fanatics don't count, since they're just mindless suicide bombers.

"Yo Templar, you seeing anyone on your end?"

"Nope. Just me and my Vex minions, sitting around… doing nothing… like we've been doing for the past few years."

One of the Gorgons chirped up. "Why don't we just leave the Vault? After all, it's not like there are that many Guardians on Venus anyways, what with Destiny 2 giving a big fat fuck you to D1's planets."

A general wave of disapproval from his compatriots.

Another Gorgon. "Well, why don't we just assimilate the Guardians into our network? Sure, they might die, but the reward is a possibly infinite amount of interesting stuff to experience."

Yet another Gorgon spoke up, berating the previous one. "You fuckin' idjit. Guardians are what make this interesting. We kill them, no one's gonna oppose us. The Fallen are too scared to try and enter our Vault, the Cabal are on another planet altogether, and those god damn Hive are absolute idiots."

"That's cause we kill 'em before we try to understand 'em. If we tried to talk to them, we'd probably find they're a funny bunch. Overly religious, but funny."

"Speaking of funny stuff, remember how the Guardians had to sneak around us whenever they got to our sector of the Raid? They forgot we could hear regular steps too. But D1 game logic required us to not turn around even when a Guardian was inching along right behind us."

"Don't you think it would've been too hard on them if you turned around every time you thought you heard something?" Atheon countered.

"Even still…" the Gorgon left the sentence hanging, his meaning clear. The Templar was about to give his two-cents on the matter but got interrupted by a Praetorian. "Uuhhh, boss? We've got a Guardian right outside the Vault, and she's about to start generating the Spire. The Guardian also has a Hive signature integrated on it. Should me and my bros [the other Praetorians] take the other sync plates and stop her?"

Atheon berated the smaller Minotaur heavily. "No you fucking dolt! This is the first Guardian we've had in years! Why would you want to delay her from coming in?"

"Because of the Hive signature?"

The massive Vex sighed, disappointment permeating the air around him. "That's just another reason to open the Vault! I wanna see what she looks like with my own two eyes."

The Praetorian nodded, cutting the connection as Atheon turned his attention to the Templar. "I want your Vex to move that Relic outside of time, preferably in your pocket dimension. Then, as soon as that Guardian's in your range, I want you to teleport her to my Glass Throne so we can have a little chat. Gorgons, get out of your little maze and fly your glowing asses over to me. If she tries to summon any Hive I want you to be ready to Gorgon's Gaze the shit outta them at a moment's notice.

Not even a split second later, the overpowered Harpies teleported into his sector, stopping in front of, next to and behind the Vex time lord. "And now," Atheon muttered, excitement coursing through every word. "We wait."

[Line Break]

The Guardian trotted down the steps towards the Templar's Well, her Ghost floating after her. She was wearing the [Harrowed Chasm of Yuul], [Deathsinger's Grips], [Transversive Steps] and a [Stormcaller Bond], with a [Deathsinger's Gaze] clipped to her waist. Even from a distance, you'd see that the armor wasn't normal. Everything, from the leg armor to the bond had green cracks, veins and divots all over it, along with small spikes of the same color. Rivers of Ascendant energy flowed freely across her. The [Transversive Steps] looked especially off. Where the holographic shards once were blue, now it was green.

[tl;dr] Picture the Crota's End armor with ornaments, but spikier, glow-ier and greener. As for her Ghost, just use the Ascendant Shell.

As for weaponry, she had [The Continental], [Thorn] and [Hunger of Crota]. All the weapons looked like her armor, in the sense that they were spiked with green cracks/veins of Ascendant energy running through them. I've got all stats at the bottom of the page.

[The Continental] tight in her grasp, the duo hopped down deeper into the Vault. "Drel, do you really think that the Vex'll stop firing just so that we can tell them our plan? I doubt they'll listen for a second."

"If it comes to it, we'll just kill them all and open the portal ourselves," Drel replied nonchalantly. "The only other outcome I can think of is us dying, and I can't see that happening anytime soon."

"Even still, I really don't thi—"

The Ghost stopped, shell whirring around it. Drel stopped, turning to look back at her companion. "Ira? What's wrong?"

Ira, as the Ghost was called, clicked a few times before rejoining the Warlock. "Nothing… I though I detected a massive horde of Vex all around us…"

"The last time you thought something and didn't follow up on it we were ambushed by a fireteam of Guardians," Drel replied, obviously irked by said ambush. "Get to scanning, Ira. If anything's in here I want to know about it yesterday."

Ira stopped just short of making a time joke, instead following Drel's directions. The Warlock fingered her rifle's trigger warily, glancing around every few seconds, moving slowly as if to examine every crack in the ground. When they finally reached the Well, a voice filled her head, tripping her up and almost making her fall off the platform. "Drel. Chill out. I just finished scanning and there's nothing in here. At least, nothing that I can detect anyway."

"Somehow that doesn't make me feel any better," the Guardian replied apprehensively, giving the area a full 360. "And don't scare me like that again. I almost fell off the fucking edge thanks to that."

No apologies were received, but Drel didn't notice. What she did notice was an odd set of blue balls hanging from the ceiling near the back wall. They were glowing slightly, and seemed to be tracking her every move. "Hey Ira?" she asked, a dash of uncertainty on her words. "What're those blue balls right over there?"

"Balls? What ba— oh… those balls. Get me closer and I'll find out."

As she got closer, the air seemed to poke at her, almost like static. Drel ignored it and continued forward. Her Ghost appeared in a poof of green light and flew towards the mysterious balls. Not even half a second later he was tearing back towards her, his green eye filled with panic. "THAT'S THE TEMPLAR! HE'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! GET BACK NOW!"

In the split second it took for her to process this, the platform around them disappeared, replaced with an open room surrounded by silicon. As for Drel, she was surrounded by Gorgons. "Oy, Guardian. The boss would like to speak to ya. If you would follow me, please?"

Seeing as they had no choice Drel and Ira accompanied the glowing Harpies as they traveled towards the Glass Throne, towards Atheon, Time's Conflux. One 15 minute walk of silence later, Atheon stood before her, white eye almost blinding the duo. "So, a lone Guardian carrying a Hive signature comes down into my Vault for… what, exactly?" the Vex asked, suspicious. Why would a Guardian come here alone? And one who seemed to be part Hive, if his hypothesis was right. It was all a bit strange to him. Ira answered, "We want to use one of your portals and go back in time. Back between the end of D1 vanilla and The Dark Below."

Atheon tilted his head, perplexed. "You want to go back there? Where Thorn users ran rampant and the Mythoclast was the OG Promethean Lens?"

"Yep," came a completely serious reply, this time from Drel. "We've got a job to do, and if we fail, we die. Plain and simple."

Atheon considered it for a few seconds, agreed, then gave them a condition. "Let me and my Vex come with you."

Silence reigned supreme for a few seconds, only being broken by Ira's confounded voice. "Did I hear that correctly? You want to come with us?"

"Well, yeah. We've been stuck in this Vault for 4 and some years. Believe it or not, even Vex time lords get bored," Atheon countered, slightly irritated.

"And why didn't you leave the Vault before-hand?" Ira asked, the Couldn't you have just made a clone of yourself or something?"

"If I even took one step outside, the entire Tower would be on my ass in less than a second, along with every other species in this system. But since I'm going through time, I can leave without any worries. Once we go, the Vault'll still be here, but empty. Forever closed off from this timeline." A low grumble came from Atheon. "I'll kind of miss this place... Oh, right. Fun fact: I won't be able to go into past me's Vault. That'll cause the place to collapse, and time will start to unravel."

"How the fuck'll that happen?"

"If I go into past me's Vault, we'll both disintegrate. And since time converges on us, once there's no point to converge on the threads of time will become undone. There is one way to stop this, but I've only got in it's theory stage right now."

"Oh yeah," Drel groaned. "Everyone knows who you are in The Dark Below since the expansion didn't really add all to that much content. Can you change your appearance or something? 'Cause if not, you're fucked once we reach our destination."

"I have a solution to that," Atheon said cryptically.

"One last thing. Me and Ira aren't the only ones coming with you. We're going to be joined by my friend Gray and one other person, if things go right."

Atheon didn't mind. In fact, he wanted more people to come with him. It would be more to observe and experience. He didn't say anything though, nodding in place of words. 'That was easier than I thought it would be,' Ira said over their mental link. 'Then again, they've been locked in here for around 4 years.'

'You sound like you'd act differently,' Drel retorted.

'I wouldn't, but still. Way too easy.'

Drel acknowledged this with a nod, distracted by a white light flashing in the corner of her eye. The Templar had teleported next to her, shields down. "You have a Hive signature, and yet you look like a regular Awoken. No offense, but what are you?"

The Guardian chuckled, amused by the Templar's little apology. "None taken, but I'd rather not talk about what I had to go through to be like this. I wouldn't have it any other way, though. Can't you just look through time and see what happened?"

"We can only see the past and future of the Vault," the Hydra explained. "If we wanted to see outside of that we'd have to expand the Vault to include the Hellmouth, and that ain't happening any time soon. And even if we did, you obviously don't want to talk about it, so I won't push ya to tell me."

Drel opened her mouth to thank the Vex when Atheon butt in. "Ok, so the portal might reject you since you're part Hive. To prevent that, I'd need you to drink some of my very own radiolarian fluid. Where did it come from, you ask? My own veins. Side effects may include turning into a Vex hybrid, serious brain damage or death."

He handed her a bottle of radiolaria. She looked up at him, suspicious. "You say it like it's a prescription commercial. Also, why would I want to drink your blood?"

"Just fucking drink it. And save this for your friend," he said, giving her another. Before she could grab it, Ira appeared, placing the container in their inventory. Atheon watched with amazement as the vial disintegrated in his hand. "Ok, that's kinda creepy. Do it again."

"Later. Maybe," the Ghost replied, and Atheon just barely detected a twinge of amusement. All heads snapped to the middle of the room, however, as a black portal appeared, similar to the ones found on Oryx's Dreadnaught. Drel shot up, her auto-rifle snapping towards the black wormhole. "How can the Taken still get in here even if you're around?"

Atheon and the other Vex ignored her, instead staring at the portal with what could be called reverence. "That's not a Taken portal. That's Vex-made. Only one Mind can do that kinda thing, and she usually never exits the Black Garden. That same Mind also happens to be my boss."

"Wait. You have a superior?" Ira asked, incredulous. "You're a literal time lord, how could someone be better than you?"

The Templar turned to Ira, his white eye seeming to penetrating the Ghost's green one. "Rack your brain for a second. What other gods do the Vex have?"

It took the duo a second to figure out who the Hydra was talking about, but when it clicked, they groaned. "I thought you said that thing had died permanently!"

"Yeah, that's what I said, but reality begs to differ."

Two beings appeared before them, the portal closing immediately after. Both were Exos. One had Hive armor all over him, the other was completely made of Vex parts. Both had massive tendrils of Darkness radiating off them. "If I'm not mistaken," Ira said quietly, "that's the Black Garden's Heart standing there holding Gray's arm. Why is it holding Gray's arm?"

Atheon turned to her, obviously confused. Ira proceeded to un-confuse him. "Oh, Gray's the buddy Drel mentioned before. I thought he'd come back with Protheon or Brakion, hell, even Panoptes or Argos, but not the Heart."

The female Exo yelled something in Vex Binary, which translated roughly into, "You got somethin' against me Ira?"

Ira was taken aback, his shell twitching slightly. 'How does she… it… whatever the Heart is, know my name?'

'Gray must've told her about us, obviously,' Drel deadpanned. Her Ghost noted the use of the pronoun and the deadpanning. 'Why he did that, I have no idea, but nothing we can do about it now.'

The male Exo, Gray, walked up to the Warlock. He appeared unconcerned about the legion of Vex surrounding them. "We ready to roll Drel?"

The Warlock's green eyes bored into him, wanting to know what had happened in the Black Garden. "Yeah, but you've got quite a bit of explaining to do when we get to the past."

Gray sighed, his mouth glowing slightly. "It's kind of a long story. I'll try and explain it the best I can in the next chapter."

A|N: Hoo boi. My first attempt as writing fanfiction. I really need to get this out of my head. Hopefully it turns out alright. To anyone reading this, I hope you liked it. If you didn't, then tell me what I did wrong, 'cause I'm pretty sure I did at least one thing wrong. Life sometimes be like that to me.

If you want to visualize my OCs, I've got some pointers. Gray is eyeless with black skin, a yellow mouth, straps on his head (look it up and you'll see what I mean) and a yellow spray across his face. Drel has light blue skin, deep eyes and purple hair. If I mentioned her eye color being different somewhere in this chapter tell me so I can fix it. I've got OC stats below.

Name: Drel.

Age: Unknown [Estimated to be 24].

Height: 5' 9"

Class: Warlock.

Armor [remember: they all have more extreme versions of their ornaments]—

Helmet: Deathsinger's Gaze.

Gauntlets: Deathsinger's Grips.

Warlock Bond: Stormcaller Bond.

Chest Armor: Harrowed Chasm of Yuul.

Leg Armor: Transversive Steps.

Ghost Shell: Ascendant Shell.

Artifact: None.

Weapons [in terms of looks, are similar to the armor]—

Primary: The Continental.

Secondary: Thorn.

Heavy: Hunger of Crota.

Sparrow: [TBA]

Ship: Ceres Galliot.

[Line break]

Name: Gray

Age: Unknown.

Height: 6' 6"

Class: Hunter.

Literally anything else about the man: [TBA].