Mercury was a blasted little planet.
Dellander watched as it came into focus on the screen. The darkened night side was crisscrossed with a grid of blue-white lines. What he could see of the dayside was molted brown and gray, a broken mush of craters and whatever the hell the Vex had built there.
"The location we're traveling to is right in the middle of the twilight region," Linvana's Ghost said over the coms. "There was a good deal of electrical interference there last time, but it's diminished since then. We'll still have to set down a few miles out though."
"Lovely," Dellander muttered. He checked his pistol and his long-rifle, and made sure his armor was all tight and sealed. Temperatures in the sun would be hot enough to burn skin on contact, something he learned after a particularly painful death in the Crucible. He slipped his helmet on and waited for transmat.
The three ships dove in formation. They tore through the thin air and leveled out. Dellander glimpsed pillars of metal and stone illuminated by the half-light. A moment later, the ship was gone, and he landed in a bank of pale sand, his dark yellow cloak billowing around him.
Linvana appeared next to him. Her gold and red armor glinted in the sun. Elva materialized a moment later, yellow and olive green coat brushing the sand as she sank up to her mid-calf.
"Which way?" Dellander asked. They were standing on the side of a low mountain. The sand slope was dotted with arrangements of Vex stone and metal. A wide structure that looked something like a fortress crowned the distant peak.
"Up the mountain," Linvana said, "The transmission came from the Forge at the very top. No vehicle link for sparrows, so we'll have to walk."
The Titan set off, her black auto-rifle and serrated sword slung across her back. Dellander and Elva followed.
A constant breeze blew across the mountain. It picked up the sand and scattered it against the Guardians. Dellander hated Mercury just for that reason. Cleaning the sand out of his armor took forever. He groaned. This was going to ruin the dark blue paint job Miss Levante just put on it.
They picked their way up the slope, winding between twisted pillars of stone, metal, and glass. They rounded a final corner, and emerged onto a broad field in front of the fortress. Linvana had mentioned that the place was a mirrored version of the Burning Shrine. He definitely saw the resemblance. It was mostly the same, except for the middle pillar being replaced with a circular platform.
Linvana and Elva released their Ghosts and had them start sweeping the area. Dellander shrugged and let Silla out.
"Any idea what we're looking for?" he asked?
"The transmission originated from here," Elva replied, "See if you can find anything that has signs of recent activity."
Dellander nodded to Silla. The little angular ball flew off and started scanning whatever bits of exposed metal she could find.
"So this is it?" Elva asked, "This was the Sunbreaker's Forge?"
Linvana nodded.
"Where did you find the Solar source?"
Linvana pointed at the round platform. "Up there, in the center."
Elva crossed to the platform and began inspecting it. "Fascinating. The Sunbreakers modified the workings of this site to collect and concentrate Solar energy. They must have completely rewired the Vex substructure…what else have they done?"
She continued exploring the front of the structure, muttering to herself. "The things they could teach us, about the Light, about the Vex. Maybe they could even lead us to Osiris…"
Dellander leaned against a stone block and crossed his arms. "Warlocks. Always stopping to smell the roses."
"And Hunters never give credit where its due," Linvana said. She picked up a handful of sand and let the grains run through her fingers. "You should try reading the Praxic Folios. They've discovered some fascinating things about the Light. You wouldn't believe the different ways it can be harnessed as a weapon."
"Praxic Folios…wait, you mean you actually read those giant books?"
"Of course? What else would I do with them?"
"Well, I kinda figured they were for weight training or something. Something more…Titan-ish."
Linvana chuckled. "Yes Dellander, Titans know how read. Despite what Brontis would have you believe, there's a lot more to us than just 'punch everything.'"
"Well in that case, I apologize. Just don't hit me with a book next time I say something stupid." Dellander peeled away from the pillar and strolled across the space. He stood and looked across the stacks of stone and metal. All this Vex junk looked so random. Elva insisted there a pattern to it. Did it even matter?
He frowned as his foot clomped against something solid. He brushed sand away with his boot. Underneath was a sheet of glass, warped and discolored. Like the slope had been melted at one point, and then the wind buried it with more sand. What the hell happened here?
"I found something," Elva's Ghost said through their earpieces. A marker appeared on his helmet visor. He followed it to the far right opening. All three Ghosts were huddled around a clump of metal cubes sitting in a cradle of circular ribs.
"The Sunbreakers made extensive modifications to the Vex's architecture here," Linvana's Ghost said as the other two Guardians arrived. "They shut everything down after our visit, and as far as I can tell, they haven't come back."
"This cluster was recently activated though," Elva's Ghost continued, "It wasn't the Sunbreakers though. The power surge originated deep within the structure, well beneath the Sunbreakers' intrusion. This cluster connects to a network node up at the top. I think something, or someone, accessed this site remotely."
"Can you locate the point of origin?" Elva asked.
"I can," her Ghost replied, "but we'll need to get closer to the node."
"Up we go," Linvana said. She took three steps back and threw herself up the wall on a cushion of Light. The jump carried her half way. She caught hold of a jutting lip. Another jump got her on top of the buttress. Elva followed, her own Light carrying her gently up the side, like a feather blown on the wind. She landed on the same ledge Linvana used and continued to the top.
Dellander gave himself a running start and leapt into the air. At the top of his arc, he pushed down with a pulse of Light, and then again, bounding up a set of invisible stairs. He came up a few feet short and grabbed the edge with his hands. Linvana took hold of his arm and pulled him up.
"I was doing just fine," he insisted, shaking out his arms.
Linvana shook her head and turned to the center of the roof. The top of the structure was mostly bare stone, except for a few stacks of blocks supporting a metal ring. Elva was already investigating.
"The network node is tied to this transfer gate," she said, "Praedyth's message was sent from the other end."
"Can you get it open?" Linvana asked.
As soon as she spoke, one of the pillars lit up on the slope behind them. A beam of white light shot from the side and struck the exposed metal of the gate. The light seeped through the machinery and twisted into a glowing lattice.
"It just opened itself," Elva observed, "I think Praedyth wants us to see what's on the other side." She stepped towards the gate.
"Hold up!" Linvana ordered, grabbing Elva's shoulder. "Are you crazy? That gate could go anywhere - or anywhen."
"Exactly," Elva said, "If this is where Praedyth sent his message, then he could be on the other side."
"Silla," Dellander said before they could continue arguing, "Can you tell where the gate leads?"
His Ghost appeared and scanned the gate. "It doesn't appear to lead to a different time, if that's what you're worried about. I think it goes to somewhere else on Mercury, in the middle of the day side."
Linvana released Elva and nodded.
"Go ahead," the Titan said.
Elva and Linvana stepped into the vortex and vanished.
Dellander sighed. Hunters were supposed to be the reckless ones. He had spent years building up his reputation as a cocky daredevil, and yet, the Warlock and the Titan just stepped through a gate made by creepy evil automatons. He hadn't signed up to be the adult on the mission.
He sighed and stepped through.
Sand.
A vast, endlessly flat sea of the stuff stretched to the horizon in every direction. It was bone white, bleached of all color by the searing light. The glare was obnoxiously bright, even through the filters of her visor. The sun burned straight overhead, impossibly large and bloated. She cast no shadow.
The portal was the only feature visible in the vast expanse. It listed to the side, fixed to a giant block of stone half buried in the sand. There was no power in the metal circle, and it looked like it had been dark for ages. The air was hot and stagnant. Silent. Dead.
Elva approached the gate and let out Erytheia. She scanned the metal. "Nothing," she said, "I'm surprised it even managed to get us here."
She cursed and kicked the gate. The sound was swallowed by the stillness. "So what now? Why would Praedyth want to bring us…here?" Her voice sounded strange. Too loud, too present in the quiet. She could almost hear phantom echoes of her voice returning to her, whispering just beyond her senses.
"Where is here anyways?" Dellander asked aloud. He looked around, as if he were surprised he had actually spoke.
His Ghost appeared at his shoulder. "I…I don't know. I think we're still on Mercury, but it's hard to tell. There's something very strange going on around us. Some kind of Vex manipulation. It's almost like the Black Garden"
"And the Vault of Glass," Erytheia added, "There's fluctuations in the local vacuum energy, just like inside the Vault. I think we're in a Vex pocket reality."
"Wonderful," Linvana muttered, "What does this have to do with Praedyth?"
"Well," Elva replied, "If this is a pocket reality, like the Vault, then there's a fair probability they're connected. Maybe Venus was too well protected, but he found a way to contact us through Mercury."
"What if it's not him though," Linvana said, "What if the Vex are just using his voice, and they are trying to trap us as well. We need to get out of here."
"We're not going back through the gate," Elva said, "The connection was severed."
"Any other ideas?" Linvana fidgeted. The Titan was visibly nervous.
"I don't know. Pick a direction and start walking I guess?"
"There's nothing here. Where would we even go?"
"There," Dellander said. He raised his arm and pointed. Elva followed it out to the horizon, where a huge Vex monolith reared, nearly indistinguishable from the white sky around it. It stretched up and up and up, vanishing into the pervading pale haze. Lazy tendrils of electricity flashed intermittently across the surface.
"Okay," Elva said, "I know that wasn't there when we got here."
"I…I think you're right," Linvana said. She shook her head, like she was trying to clear her eyes.
"I don't like the look of that thing," Dellander said.
Elva stared at it, the only shape to give substance to the formless sea. An anchor to reality. A whisper calling too her.
"I agree," she said, "But we don't really have a choice."
With that, she set out across the white ocean.
Elva quickly lost track of time as they walked.
The gate shrank to a tiny speck behind them, then vanished altogether. The blinding sun sat unchanging above them. The distant monolith was impossibly far away. How could they ever reach it?
Everything was white. White sun. White sky. White sand. White whispers in the back of her mind.
Mercury had once been a garden, a jewel of a world held close to the Sun's bosom. The Vex had no care for the life, the beauty. They tore down what the Traveler made, replaced forests with machines, oceans with sand. The Vex geometries spoke of patterns amidst the chaos, balance and form in the unknown. Reality, fashioned to their will, with no regard for what came before.
She could almost see it. Lush, thick jungles teaming with life. A misty waterfall cascading down a distant cliff, a rainbow draped over it like a mantel. Everything so rich and vibrant in the fantastically bright sunlight. It was so real, so solid, she could just reach out and…
Elva shook her head. The vision of the jungle vanished, and the endless sand returned. It wasn't real. It couldn't be real. It was gone, forever lost in time. Something was terribly wrong here. The Vex, they made reality fray and split apart. She knew that. She studied them, delved deep into their ruins and traced their vast networks through eternity. For the briefest of moments, she held the impression they were slipping on the surface of…something.
She looked over at Dellander. He walked with his head down, shaking his helmet like he had something stuck in his ears. Linvana strode ahead, footsteps uneven, hand shaking at her side. They were feeling it too, sliding further away, towards the whispers and silence…
"Say something," Elva whispered. The deafening sound rang out like a booming explosion in the absolute silence.
Dellander slowly looked at her as he walked, visibly confused.
"Say something, anything," she continued, "This place is wrong, all wrong. I need to hear your voices. I need to know you're still real."
The Hunter shook his head and turned away.
Elva panicked. Why did she lead them here? Why did she listen to the whispers and step through the portal. Was this a trap all along?
"I'll tell you a story."
Her eyes snapped up. The voice came from Linvana. She still walked in front of them, gaze fixed on the distant tower.
"You've heard it before," the Titan continued, "Even been there for parts of it, but I'll say it anyway.
"I met Telysa on a cold little asteroid at the edge of the Reef. We were both hunting the same Fallen pirate, only, neither of us knew it at the time. I was still young then, only a few months old, so I was stupid and naive enough to think I could take out a baron on my own. And Telysa, well, she's a hunter, so she think's she can do anything anyways.
"So I fought my way through a small army of Fallen, and she was right there on the other side, trying to sneak past and get to baron first. She was pissed when she saw me, thought I was going to steal all the credit and loot. I talked her down, and we went and found the baron. The only catch was, there were two of them. Mates, siblings, I don't know what they were, but they were vicious.
"We fought. I managed to kill one of them, but the other got the upper hand on Telysa. He lured her Ghost out and was about to kill it. I got there just in time and took its head off.
"When the smoke cleared, I gave her an invitation to join Dawnstar, which wasn't even a real fireteam back then. She refused at first, but we kept running into each other on missions. We ended up fighting our way through a Hive sanctum on the Moon together, when I got caught in a wizard's poison. I still remember how the thing cackled as I laid there helpless, my Light and strength draining away. I was dying, and it knew it.
"That's when Telysa showed up. We had gotten separated in the tunnels, but there she was, flying through the air, bits of Hive guts splattered across her vest. She took the bayonet of her gun and rammed it right through the wizard's face. Practically cut the thing's head in half. They hit the ground, and the wizard's body and sorcery burned away.
"Telysa helped to my feet, said we were even now, and that meant now she could join the team. We went on our first date a week later."
Linvana stopped for a moment, her posture slack and deflated. "And that, is how I met the love of my life."
The Titan resumed walking. Her stride was measured and firm now.
"Thank you," Elva said. The silence returned, but it felt more solid, more real. Even the whispers retreated.
A breeze blew across the sand, the first she had felt since they stepped through the gate. She released a sigh of relief. They were passing through…whatever that place was. She watched as the pale grains danced along the ground.
And walked right into the wall.
She stumbled back and fell. She sprawled in the sand as her vision swam and slowly came back into focus. The sun darkened as Dellander leaned over her and proffered his hand. She accepted it.
The block she had walked into was made of rust colored glass, and was one of dozens scattered around them. A short distance ahead, a spire of dark metal and glass rose from the sand. It was all Vex, but with the usual stone replaced with orange glass.
"Where did these come from?" Elva asked, looking around. "Did either of you notice this before?"
"No," Dellander said.
"Look," Linvana said. She was facing the other way, staring past the glass spire. Beyond the pillar, the ground dropped away to a deep rift valley. A narrow causeway cut across the valley, directly underneath the beam emitted by the spire. The causeway stretched all the way up to the base of the monolith, which now loomed above them. It stretched into the sky, the top layers vanishing in the white haze.
"How did we get here so fast?" Dellander asked, "We've only been walking for a few minutes."
"What do you mean?" Linvana said, "We've been walking for days."
"I think you're both right," Elva said, "It took us so long to arrive because we've been here all along."
"That makes no sense," Dellander said.
"Of course it doesn't, because it doesn't matter." The whispers said so.
"This must be where the transmission came from," Linvana said, "Whatever sent it is waiting inside."
Elva smiled. They were in the right place. She knew it. "Let's go see what they want."
They slid back into the real world as they crossed the causeway. The sun shrank and dimmed, and the sky faded to the usual black of Mercury's rarefied atmosphere. The stiff wind blew through the valley beneath them, which was littered with smaller Vex constructs.
As they stepped off the causeway and entered the monolith propper, she realized the entire thing was made of glass. She had spent the majority of her life studying the Vex and their strange structures, but this was unlike anything she had seen before. The glass was transparent, with a dusty beige tint to it. The complex metal patterns that were usually buried within the stone were visible for all to see. White filaments of non-baryonic matter threaded the cavities and spaces. Their glow diffused through the glass, filling the interior with thin gray light.
What is this place? Elva wondered. And why did Praedyth lead them through that bizarre sand to bring them here? And why was she even so sure that it was Praedyth? She had heard his voice, but he was a prisoner of the Vex. They could have forced him to send the transmission.
And yet, the whispers told her she was on the right path.
They passed further into the building, each chamber larger than the last. The walls stretched upwards for thousands of feet. The ceiling was lost in the searing haze. Massive discharges of Arc lightning would occasionally leap form one side to the other. They made no noise.
"So any idea what we're looking for?" Linvana asked, her voice echoing off the polished walls.
"Not exactly," Elva replied, "Look for something out of place. Something a Guardian might carry, like the weapons we found in the Vault of Glass. "
"Something out of place," Dellander said, "We're exploring a crystal tower made by alien automatons from the future, and we're supposed to look for 'something out of place.' Got it."
Elva shot him a glare and continued walking. They continued from hall to hall. She started to think she was going crazy again. Every room started looked the same. The glass floors made it feel like she was floating at times. And the whispers filled the air, drawing her deeper.
"Just how big is this thing?" she wondered aloud, "It makes the Ishtar Citadel look like a garden shed."
"It could take days to explore the whole thing," Linvana observed. She sounded hesitant.
They passed through a chamber with a stack of floating metal discs stretched between the walls. Another hall had a grid of filaments set in the floor.
Several hours later, they turned a corner and finally reached their destination.
The chamber itself was smaller than the previous ones, and square in shape. Sunlight shone through a row of notches in the back wall, filling the space with a warm glow. This chamber was adorned with a single inactive gate in the center. The only entrance was the one they had came through.
"Another portal?" Linvana asked, "I'm starting to think this is all a wild goose chase."
The gate burst to life as they approached. Sparks popped across the metal and into the glass ground.
"Someone knows we're coming," Elva said. Of course we know you're coming, the whispers said, now clear and distinct. They came from the portal. We've been waiting for you your entire life.
"I don't trust these portals anymore," Linvana said, "not after that other one left us in…Traveler knows what that place was. Polaris, see if you can map out where it goes. The last one shut off after we went through. I don't want to end up stranded half way across the universe."
Why have you come here? the whispers accused, You were cast out of the pattern by your own touch.
A single voice rose above the rest.
Don't listen to them. I know you're worried, and rightfully so.
Elva closed her eyes and concentrated on the voice. It was strangely familiar, but she couldn't place it.
"Whatever you do, do not step through that portal," Linvana's Ghost was saying, "It is all over the place. It loops back to various parts of the monolith in spatial dimensions, but I think…the other end is drifting freely through time!"
There is great danger here, danger they wish to keep hidden. I can also offer you answers, and the power that comes with them. Incredible power.
"That's it," Linvana said, "This mission is scrubbed. Whatever's going on here, we aren't equipped for it. If there's anything to be found, we'll come back a full fireteam. Polaris, see if you can lock us for transmat."
Lock for transmat? Wasn't she listening? The voice…
Only then did it occur to her that the others didn't hear the whispers.
I've seen their future, and I've seen their past. I've glimpsed their pattern, their final shape. You can stop them, but I need to show you.
Elva stepped forward, cocking her head, listening.
"Elva, what are you doing?" Linvana asked.
I can guide you. I just need you to step through.
"Elva, stand back now. That's an order."
I just need you to step through.
Praedyth. The voice was Praedyth, and he was waiting on the other side.
Elva smiled and walked into the light.
"No!" Linvana shouted. The Titan lunged for the Warlock, but she was already gone. Linvana hesitated for only a moment, and threw herself into the vortex after her.
That left Dellander, for the second time that day, alone in front of a Vex gate, with his team on the other side.
"So uh, what just happened?" Silla asked.
"I'm fairly certain my two friends just went insane," Dellander replied. He shuffled his feet and hooked his thumbs through his belt. What had Lin's Ghost just said? The other end was sliding through time? What the hell did that even mean? Was he supposed to just wait here and hope they came back through?
"What do we do now?" Silla asked. She fidgeted nervously over his shoulder.
"The only thing we can do," Dellander replied.
He stepped through the portal.