Jayesh launched himself into the air in a warlock glide.
His leap carried him above the thatched roofs and walls. He directed the Light like a spotlight beam, and illuminated the floating figure of the wizard as it flew over the wall. It was a big one, twice as tall as a human, with flowing, robe-like filaments around it, two arms, and horns growing from its head. Its three green eyes glinted in the darkness. It glared at Jayesh in pure hate.
He lifted his pulse rifle and fired.
The bullets sparked off a bubble shield around the wizard, making it glow purple. A void-powered shield. It would soak up a whole magazine's worth of bullets before breaking, unless Shane shattered it with his void super.
The wizard flew down toward a single house, dissolved into black mist, and passed through the thatched roof. Jayesh dropped to the ground and ran for the door. "Shane! In here!"
But the Exo was back up the street, battling the two Taken men. They had escaped their prison and were trying to join the wizard, sliding and creeping around Shane's defenses. Shane was reluctant to fire his rifle at street level - the bullets would pierce the thin wooden walls of the houses. He fought the Taken hand to hand instead, unable to land a killing blow on the glowing blob that obscured their faces.
Jayesh yanked Natasha's door open.
It was pitch black inside. Screams and thumps reached his ears - a struggle was going on. He raised his handful of Light, but it couldn't penetrate the shadow. So he drew on his connection with the Traveler and summoned his super charge.
Fiery Light engulfed him, appearing in his hand as a molten golden sword. Wings of Light spread from his shoulders. He sprang into the darkness like an avenging angel.
The darkness gave way slowly, as if he'd plunged into a thick fog. The wizard's presence filled the main room, its robe filaments touching all four walls. It grasped Natasha by the throat in one hand. With its other hand, it pointed at the wall, muttering in its guttural language.
Natasha's terrified eyes reflected Jayesh's Light. Her lips formed the words, "Help me!"
Jayesh slashed his sword through the wizard's shield. The horned head turned toward him, and the mouth widened in a smile, exposing jagged teeth. It smiled as he slashed its body in half, and it smiled as it died.
The alien's black essence swirled around the room, then dove into a patch of darkness impervious to Jayesh's fiery glow. As he caught Natasha halfway through collapsing, Jayesh realized what he was seeing.
The wizard had opened one of those black tears in reality. The wall had become a portal, hissing as the room's atmosphere drifted through in a brisk breeze. The Light billowed off Jayesh, the portal drinking up the sword, the wings, the Light, until his power was gone.
"Jay," Phoenix said in his head, "I feel strange."
Natasha rose and took a step toward the portal, then another, staring as if entranced. Jayesh grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the door. "No! It'll Take you!"
His own strength flagged as the super charge was dragged from him. How had it done that? Those portals had never affected him before. Cold crept through him. This was how humans were Taken - they simply walked through the portal and into the embrace of the Darkness, itself.
Voices mumbled from inside the portal. Human voices. "Natasha!" one called. "Help us, please!"
"They're inside," Natasha whispered. "Paul! Hiram!" She fought Jayesh, struggling to break his grip.
"It's a trick," Jayesh said, his head beginning to spin. "It's not them."
"Jay," Phoenix whimpered in his head. "Jay, I'm losing you. Don't go!"
Natasha dragged Jayesh a step closer to the portal, then another. The voices grew louder. "Just one step inside," a man's voice begged. "Give me your hand, Natasha! Save me!"
Jayesh suddenly had a blinding moment of realization. Natasha was being drawn through that portal, and she would take him with her. He might have to release her in order to save himself.
"No!" He tried to haul her toward the house's open door.
But she resisted, struggling, kicking and clawing at him. "Let me go! I can save them!"
"It's not them!" he cried. How was she so strong? He was a Guardian, and a human woman was fighting him with the strength of a disarmed Fallen.
Her fingernails raked his face, scoring his eyelids. She twisted her wrist out of his hand. Jayesh recoiled. She'd nearly clawed his eyes out. He reached after her, but it was too late. Natasha sprinted across the room and hurled herself into the portal.
She vanished without a sound. No scream. No voice. Nothing. And the portal remained open.
"No!" Jayesh cried, blinking his torn eyelids. "Shane! She jumped!"
"Busy!" his friend's voice replied from just outside. He was still battling the Taken, which had forced him backward.
"Get away from it, Jay," Phoenix whispered in his head. "The Darkness ... it's isolating this whole area. We're cut off."
Jayesh reached for his connection with the Traveler and felt nothing. The Light was gone. He struggled to the door, struggling to breathe, drawing his sidearm.
Outside, Shane had managed to destroy one of the Taken men using only his fists. He fought the remaining one hand to hand, his metal fists glancing off the semi-solid form. The Taken protected its vulnerable head and hit back with shocking strength, keeping up a guttural mutter of syllables that might have been human language at some point.
Jayesh aimed at the glowing spot on the forehead. As it delivered a stunning blow to Shane's breastplate, Jay fired three times in quick succession.
The Taken shrieked, collapsed into formless black, and disappeared in a spiral in the air.
Shane turned to Jayesh with a relieved grin. Jay opened his mouth to explain what had happened. But a new voice spoke from the portal - a voice shaped by thought and malice, a voice that could never be produced by human vocal chords.
YOU
HAVE
NO
LIGHT
The words beat into their brains, flaying away sanity. Jayesh and Shane clutched their heads. Their ghosts screamed. The night around them seemed to deepen.
COME
TO
US
GUAR
DI
ANS
The command dragged both of them, step by staggering step, back through the doorway of that accursed house. Back toward the gaping maw of the waiting portal.
Jayesh struggled for control, seeking the shreds of his own mind. He grabbed Shane's arm. They managed to halt in the middle of the room.
"It can't take Guardians," he panted. The thought seemed to come from long ago and far away.
"The Light," Shane said hoarsely, his green eyes flickering. "It protects us. But without it-"
The black portal crept wider, eating the wall and stretching across the ceiling. The Darkness wanted them, reaching out, seeking to engulf them.
Jayesh had reached a place beyond terror. Somewhere, his body was screaming at him to run, or fight, or do anything but stagger into that blackness. But his mind wouldn't work. Darkness filled him. He couldn't think.
"The Worms," Shane whispered, clutching his head. "That's them."
"I can't find the Light," Jayesh gasped. "It took my super charge." All gone, all extinguished. If he passed through that portal, it would quench him and remake him out of Darkness, bent forever to its will. He flailed in the dark, reaching for an anchor, a rope, anything.
Then he found Phoenix.
His ghost was still phased inside him, his spark the only Light Jayesh still felt. But he was unconscious, silenced by the voice of Darkness.
"Find your ghost," Jayesh whispered to Shane. "Mine - he's hurt."
"Mine, too," Shane panted. "I can almost - almost reach my super through him. Can you - Jay, can you loan me your Light?"
The only Light Jayesh had was Phoenix. In his mind, he cupped the little spark in both hands, breathing on it like kindling that wouldn't quite catch fire.
Phoenix, I named you that for a reason. Do you remember?
A memory drifted to the surface of both their minds - Phoenix's sacrificing of his own shell to save his Guardian. The way Phoenix had protected his dead Guardian's spark until it was safe to resurrect him.
Phoenix, you thought I wouldn't remember that, but I do.
The ghost's consciousness seeped back into him, his spark brightening.
YOUR
LIGHT
IS
DEAD
The voice of the Worms beat into Jayesh and Phoenix like armored fists, infinitely cruel. Phoenix's Light waned. Jayesh forgot what he had been thinking, his focus shattered by the onslaught of Darkness.
But it didn't crush him as it had before. Like a balloon shoved underwater, Jayesh didn't sink as deep as the Darkness wanted. He bobbed back to the surface, orienting himself to Phoenix's spark. He wrapped his consciousness around it, protecting it with his whole being.
Phoenix, the Darkness can't touch the Light.
The ghost's spark brightened again. His voice brushed Jayesh's awareness, faint and small. "The Light shone in the Darkness, and the Darkness didn't understand it."
HUMANS
EMBRACE
DARKNESS
The blows struck again, staggering Jayesh. But this time, he sheltered Phoenix from the onslaught.
The ghost's Light flared brighter in defiance. "Humans also have the Light! They've had it since antiquity! Jayesh is blessed of the Light and you can never touch that!"
SILENCE
FRAGMENT
OF
THE
DYING
MIND
It battered Jayesh until he had to kneel to keep himself from fainting. But he and Shane had moved no closer to the portal. Shane was doubled over, breathing heavily, fighting a similar battle.
Phoenix spoke from Jayesh's protection. "When we are weakest, then we are strong, for the Light shines brightest in deepest Darkness."
As he spoke, Jayesh felt the thinnest thread of connection to the Traveler once more. He seized it with all his might, grabbed Shane's arm, and pushed the Light into him.
Shane inhaled, lifting his head. "Not my strength ... but the Light in me!" He stood erect and threw his head back. Purple light sprang into being, rippling over his body and clothing. Like Jayesh's sword of Light, a round shield of Light appeared on Shane's arm. He flung it with all his strength straight into the black portal.
The purple shield spun away into the blackness and vanished. Then, impossibly far away in the dimension beyond the portal, something exploded in a burst of purple lightning. The inhuman voice roared until Jayesh's vision blurred and threatened to black out completely. Then the portal pulled inward, ripping away from the ceiling and walls, until it swirled together and vanished like a slain Taken.
Jayesh came to himself, still kneeling on the floor. Shane stood beside him, the last of his super charge fading away in glimmers.
"Well," Shane said to break the silence. "That was a hell of a thing."
Jayesh nodded and gently released his mental hold on his ghost. "Phoenix, are you all right?"
Phoenix phased into sight and scanned Jayesh. "Don't worry about me, Jay. Valor, if you're well enough, tend to your Guardian."
Phoenix opened his shell, expanding into a globe of Light with his core in the center, and poured extra healing into Jayesh. The distressed, half-melted feeling departed from Jayesh's muscles. He slowly stood up. His head still rang from the voice of the Darkness, but already the words it had spoken were fading like a half-remembered dream. He wasn't particularly afraid anymore, only sad - sad that he hadn't been able to save Natasha.
Nearby, Valor appeared, limping a little in midair, his eye flickering. Shane caught him as he dropped out of the air.
Jayesh jerked his head at his ghost, who flew over and healed Valor, too.
"Thanks," Valor said. "Shane, it was as bad as Mars. But at least it didn't separate us."
"You did fine, little light," Shane murmured, stroking his ghost's shell. "If not for you, I never could have reached my super."
Jayesh tried not to watch this private moment. Instead, he watched his own ghost close his shell, hiding the Light within. Phoenix flew up to Jayesh's face and gazed into his eyes. "I have the best Guardian," he whispered.
Jayesh smiled, then looked down. "I didn't save Natasha. I should have."
Shane looked at him. "The portal took her?"
"She jumped in!" Phoenix said indignantly, before Jayesh could respond. "It called to her with the voices of her family, saying she could save them. Jay tried to drag her back, but she wouldn't have it. She tore up Jayesh's face to break his hold. His eyes, even!"
Shane glanced from the angry ghost to the downcast Guardian. "Kid, don't be so hard on yourself. She made her choice."
"I should have tried harder," Jayesh said. "Knocked her out or something. But it happened so fast. I couldn't stop her."
Shane nodded. "That's how I lost Maxim to the snipers. They got him and his ghost a split second apart. I read my report I'd given on that mission. I don't remember it, and it still makes me sick. Things happen, and you can't control it. It's not your fault."
Jayesh nodded. "Maybe I'll believe that later. Right now, I feel like it is my fault."
"Let me do the talking, then," Shane said. "These people are going to be pissed that we didn't save her, even if we did kill the Taken and the wizard."
"I killed the wizard," Jayesh said in surprise. "With my Dawnblade."
Shane slapped him on the back. "See, you're a good fighter. For a warlock."
