Disclaimer: I do not own the Borderlands franchise, nor anything related to it.
Chapter 2
The Seraph base was a hive of activity. Soldiers moved to and fro, some carrying weapons and ammunition, others carrying crates and other items. Docked in the center of the base was a massive starship, a technological marvel, the pinnacle of Seraph research and development. Some of the soldiers were loading equipment into this ship. Judging from the fervid pace of the activity, it was as if the Seraphs were preparing for an evacuation.
They were.
From the starship's command bridge, a golden-armored Seraph general observed the preparations in contemplative silence. He watched as his men, such diligent supporters of his cause, scurried around the base. He was eternally grateful for their support; without them, he would be just another madman, spouting nonsense upon deaf ears.
It was a shame that most of them would die in less than an hour.
He heard the doors to the bridge hiss open behind him. He heard the urgent clack of boots against the metallic floor approaching him. He did not turn.
"Hyperius, sir," the owner of the boots said. "Most of the equipment is loaded and secured. We're still waiting for the last few fighters to get back from their recon route." He paused, waiting for a response. When an immediate one was not given, he asked, "What are your next orders..?"
Hyperius sighed and shifted his gaze to his own boots. The recon team had been gone for far too long; they were likely shot down or captured. An unfortunate loss, but a loss that would have been inevitable. "Give them another thirty minutes," he said quietly. "If they have not returned by then, we leave without them." He raised his head back up. "The sooner we get this ship off the ground, the less likely the Queen and her Guard will catch us." He heard the soldier behind him bow, turn on his heel, and leave. Thirty minutes would be pushing his agenda, but it was the most he was willing to spare.
An alarm sounded on the console in front of him. He tapped a button, and an audio feed opened. The sound of laser fire and explosions filtered through immediately. "Hyperius, sir!" an urgent voice reported. "The first line of defense has engaged the Queen's forces. They're hitting us with everything they've got!"
"As expected," Hyperius said calmly. "Hold them off as long as possible. Fall back to the second line when necessary." With that, he tapped the button again, and the feed closed. The Seraph's brow furrowed; the Queen's Guard had arrived sooner than he had planned. This wasn't a good sign.
He wanted more time, but time was not on his side, not today. The bomb had already been activated, and his is memory served him any good, the timer had at least 45 minutes left on it.
45 minutes. After that time, all this chaos would come to an abrupt end. In 45 minutes, a war would be won, a "rebellious" ideal would triumph over an iron-fisted, tyrannical regime.
In 45 minutes, an entire race would be exterminated. They would feel no pain.
The trio's digging eventually yielded unexpected results. A massive raised Vault symbol, spanning nearly the entire circle of sand, had been uncovered. The symbol's stark white color, slightly worn down from time and the elements, stood in contrast to the sand around it.
"Was this what you were expecting to find?" Axton asked, his sand-covered hands on his hips. Whether he was underwhelmed or simply annoyed was hard to tell.
"No..." Maya answered blankly. Her mind was elsewhere, trying to feel where those mental tugs were coming from. Sure, they came from below her, but there was no visible means of getting there. There had to be a way; she simply had to figure out what that way was. Her face was scrunched up in a look of concentration. "No, this isn't it... It's further below, but how..."
"We've been digging here for over an hour," Gaige whined. She flopped down on the raised symbol. "If there was a way to get underground, we would've found it by now." She laid back with a sigh, her head hanging over the edge of the symbol.
Undeterred, Maya stepped up onto the outer ring of the Vault symbol. She scanned the huge white structure, as if searching for an answer to her question. There where few puzzles the Siren couldn't solve. She spent a lot of time on Athenas working on logic puzzles; they distracted her from the general misery of her time there.
Maybe, Maya eventually thought, what I'm looking for isn't on the symbol itself... but the negative space inside it. With that thought in mind, the Siren turned her attention to the interior of the massive arch. While the trio had spent over an hour digging up the Vault symbol, they had only revealed the outline of the structure. Much of the sand covering the inside space was relatively untouched. "Yeah, that might be it..." she thought aloud.
Moving all the sand that remained would easily take another hour's worth of labor, but the Siren had another idea in mind. She stretched her left arm out, concentrating on the mass of sand. She visualized gathering it into a Phaselock sphere and moving it. Sure enough, a bubble materialized close to the surface. The sand swirled around it and was sucked inside of it. More and more sand got swept into the vortex, until nearly all of it was collected into a neat bubble of energy.
Axton gawked at her display, a mixture of amazement and sudden irritation fixed on his face. "Why couldn't you have done that a bit earlier?" the Commando asked, with more than a hint of his irritation in his voice.
With a flick of her wrist, Maya sent the bubble of energy and sand sailing to her left. She released it shortly after, causing the sand to pour out in a large plume. Much of it went over Axton's head, but a fair amount washed over him, covering him in sand. "Because I like seeing you suffer, Axton," the Siren answered, a smirk on her face. Gaige giggled at the display, but the Commando was not amused.
With the sand gone, Maya turned her attention back to the problem at hand. The revealed surface mirrored that of the raised Vault symbol: stark white and smooth. Centered under the arch was a grid, etched into the ground, four squares by four squares. Interesting, the Siren thought. She approached it and knelt down to examine it. She slid her hand over the square in the bottom left corner, feeling its smoothness. It depressed under her touch.
"Pressure plates?" Gaige guessed. Interested by the discovery, she had sat down to get a closer look herself. She pressed down on the square above Maya's, and it depressed as well. "Why would there be pressure plates? That seems... too primitive for the Eridians, don't you think?"
"It's a puzzle," Maya said, making the connection. "An added security measure to keep unwanted people out." She stood up and glanced at the entire grid, rubbing her chin slowly. "My guess is either all of these plates have to be pushed down at the same time, or there's a pattern they have to be pressed in."
"Pushing them all down seems like an easy place to start," Gaige chirped. Once Axton had cleaned most of the sand off his uniform, he helped the two go about pressing the plates down. It took a while to figure out just how to make it work, but once a method was found, they held the plates down for a few seconds. At first, nothing happened.
Then, the plates sunk a bit deeper into the ground, and the lines flashed with purple light. Lines appeared on the raised Vault symbol as well, and light-purple waves flowed across the smooth white surface. The entire slab of stone under the arch abruptly sunk slightly and began to slide. The trio scurried off the slab to witness what was about to happen.
The slab slid up under the arch, gradually revealing a tunnel underground. Pearly-white stairs led down into the dark abyss, spiraling to the right slightly. The slab clicked into place once it stopped moving.
"Guess that's our way down," Axton shrugged.
"If we're gonna go down there, we'd better get moving," Gaige said. "You know how Lilith gets when we stay out too long."
"Ugh, don't remind me," Axton groaned, shaking his head. He put a hand on Maya's shoulder. "Well, ladies first, eh?"
The Siren scoffed, "If that's the case, you should be first."
"Hey, this was your idea!" the Commando countered.
"Alright, alright," Maya chuckled, throwing her hands up in mock defeat. With that, she turned back towards the stairs and took a careful step down, with her companions in tow. Slowly, step by step, the trio descended into the darkness below.
A/N: Well, well, well... A mysterious staircase leading into the abyss. What discoveries await our trio in the darkness? You'll find out soon enough. In case you haven't caught on yet, the italicized first portion of these chapters are flashbacks to the past. You've seen the imprisonment of the Destroyer; here, you see the beginning of the aftermath. These flashbacks will end in a chapter or two, but pay attention to them. They'll come into play later.
Feedback, as always, is encouraged and greatly appreciated.
