Chapter 6

Miniks-Fel, House of Light Ketch flagship, Moon's orbit

A day after the fight with the House of Whirlwinds hunting squad, Jason had assembled a fireteam to for the Strike mission. He got two of his closest friends for the job; Grace, a female Awoken Hunter who would gladly jump into danger feet first, and Jack-10, a male Exo Warlock who will always aid his friends in any situation they find themselves in. They have accomplished countlkess strike missions together and accomplished a few Raids with three other Guardians. The three of them had assembled in the Ketch's war room with the Vanguard, Eris Morn, and Solix. They were discussing on how to enter the Hive fortress without meeting any opposition. The only way in was through the front door, which has an army of Eliksni from the House of Whirlwind in front of it.

Cayde-6: My scouts are still looking for another way in. They haven't found anything yet.

Zavala: We can't send an army in. We don't know how the Hive could retaliate.

Solix: We're running out of time House Whirlwind could attack at any moment.

Alarms go off.

Ikora: What's going on?

Eliksni over the intercom: The House of Whirlwind has already begun their attack!

A screen shows the House of Whirlwind attacking the fortress and engaging an army of Hive.

Hunter on the comm.: Cayde we found an entrance that leads into the fortress. The strike team can go through it.

Cayde-6: Good work. (To the Fireteam) You the music, time to dance.

The group gets to the hanger to enter their jumpships and fly to the location.

Hive Fortress, Mare Crisium, the Moon

The team makes it to the entrance that the scout team had found and goes through it and finds themselves walking through a hallway reminiscent of gothic cathedrals.

Cayde (Voice only): Alright Guardians, today me and Eris will be guiding you. Ikora, Zavala, and Solix are putting teams together to mop up any stranglers and to capture the House of Whirlwinds Ketches. And on a side note, it feels good to finally get out of the Tower.

Jack-10: Cayde? How safe is this passage?

Cayde: Most of the Hive will be dealing with the army at their doorstep. But, the Hive will still have some guards in other parts of the fortress.

Grace: Good to know.

Jason: Eris, are you getting anything from that Tomb Husk you have with you? Like who this Worm God is?

Eris Morn (Voice only): Yes. His name is Yul, the Honest Worm. It was thanks to him that Oryx and his sisters made the deal with the Worms for power that created the Hive. Do not trust anything he says, despite his name he is just a liar like the rest of his brothers.

Cayde: Yeah, way to lighten the mood their Eris.

The group makes it to another room where they come under attack from a swarm of Thralls. Grace throws a Voidwall Grenade that hits the Thralls with a horizontal wall of burning Void Light. Soon six Acolytes, two Knights, and two Wizards enter the room. Jack-10 throws in a Storm grenade that takes out three of the Acolytes. The remaining Acolytes start fire their Shredders (Energy guns that fire Void energies), while one of the two Knights fires a Boomer (A gun that fires explosive Arc blasts), and the Wizards attack by firing Darkness Blasts at the group. Grace and Jack take cover while Jason charges in and guns down the Acolytes with his shotgun causing them to turn into ash and sticks the Boomer wielding Knight with a fusion grenade making it explode. Jason takes cover behind a pillar when the Wizards begin firing on him, then Grace charges in and starts firing her Hunting Rifle at them, this forces one of the Wizards to cast a poison cloud on her forcing her to move out of the. But this gives the last Knight to charge at her with his Cleaver, but Grace had anticipated this and had began charging up her Fusion Rifle in the cloud and when the Knight got close she fired it causing the Knight to disintegrate. Jack then charges at the Wizards and fires at them with his Pulse Rifle, he kills one of the Wizards with a headshot causing her to burst into embers, and when he caught close to the last Wizard he hits her with a Thunderstrike instantly killing her.

Jason: Good work.

Grace: No problem.

Jack: They're either weak or we're just that good.

Cayde (Voice only): Fair warning, some of the House of Whirlwind got in. They're being led by a huge Baroness.

The group continued through the fortress coming across Hive and enemy Eliksni at every turn. As they continued they realized something they couldn't hear the battle anymore.

Jason: Cayde, is the battle outside the fortress over?

Cayde (Voice only and solemn): Yeah. The Hive and House of Whirlwind Eliksni outside obliterated each other. Strike teams were sent to capture the Ketches that weren't shot down. Continue with the mission Guardians.

Jason: On it.

Grace (Solemnly): I know both sides are our enemies, but I feel so sad for them.

Jack: Yeah, it was a battle that quickly turned into a slaughter.

Jason: We may have to deal with something like this again and I'm sure none of us will sleep well again.

The group came to a large gate were they see an 11 foot tall Baroness fighting an Ogre with only one Shock Blade. The Baroness was losing and was quickly killed when the Ogre punched her into a wall. The Ogre then noticed the group and fired an Eye Blast stream (Ogres don't have any visible eyes) at them forcing them into cover. Jason makes some hand motions to Grace, she then runs out of the cover and takes out a Machine Gun and fires at the Ogre while running. This causes the Ogre to turn its attention to her allowing Jack to charge in with an Arc sword and slashes it in half causing it to be disintegrated by the Arc's lighting energy.

Grace's Ghost (Voice only, has a male voice): That Baroness has a Tomb Husk; we can use it to open the gate.

Jason goes up to her and finds a green orb with a black stone in its center that he puts into the gate's lock. The gate opens and they find a large room with four Wizards in the center of it floating back to back. They were chanting some sort of spell and then they stopped chanting it and looked at the group.

Wizards: You fail.

They disappear and a green portal appears from their spot.

Eris (Voice only): Guardians you must stop Yul from leaving the Sword World! You must go through the portal!

They go through it and they find themselves in an Ascendant Realm. The Ascendant Realm is basically another dimension and there are several different Ascendant Realms. Each Realm was ruled by a Hive god and whenever they die in our universe they are sent back top their Realm. The only way to kill a Hive god permanently is to kill them in their own Realm making their own home their greatest weakness. The sky of this Ascendant Realm was green and the group found themselves in an area with a nearby rocky mountain and several rocky outcroppings were on the ground. They turned around to see a cave with the portal back to their universe. Suddenly they heard a roar and they saw a draconic creature flying through the sky and land right in front of them. It had the body of a western dragon, its wings were covered in feathers, and it had three glowing green eyes. Aside from the three glowing green eyes it resembled an Ahamkara based on the descriptions given by veteran Guardians.

Eris (Voice only) Behold! Yul, the Honest Worm!

Cayde (Voice Only) Worm my shiny metal but! That thing looks like an Ahamkara! Guardians you need to kill it now! Try to stay alive!

Jason: Already working on it!

The group begins firing at Yul; he then fires a swarm of Axiom Darts (A tracking blast) from his mouth at them forcing them to get to cover and to shoot at the following balls of dark energy.

Yul, the Honest Worm: You are the Traveler's champions? The ones who slew Oryx? You are nothing but dead things made by a dead power in the shape of the dead.

Jack-10 (Throws a Storm Grenade at Yul): Maybe. But we're alive and kicking.

Jack comes out of cover and fires his Pulse Rifle at Yul's head. Yul then turns to Jack, stands on his hind legs, and flaps his wings at Jack causing him to be pushed back toward the edge of the cliff. Jason fires his rocket launcher at Yul to keep him from knocking Jack off the cliff. Yul then turns his attention to Jason and exhales a green fire at him forcing him to duck behind a bolder.

Yul: All you ever do is kill. You do not belong out there in the world of the living. It is a place of life.

Jason: What are you then!? Some sort of righteous crusader trying to protect the universe! You're not protecting it your destroying it!

Yul: The Deep once ruled the universe. Then the Light and its disciples overthrew it. My brothers and I were wounded and imprisoned by the disciples in the core of Fundament where we recuperated. But they died imprisoning us and we were freed making their efforts fruitless.

Grace (Throws a grenade at Yul): You can play the innocent act all you want. But what you and the Hive are doing is wrong!

Yul swipes his tail at Grace which knocks her back into a rock outcropping. Jason and Jack both engage their Sunbreaker and Stormcaller subclass supers respectively. They both ran around in a circle that encompassed Yul while bombarding him with fiery hammers and bolts of Arc lighting. As soon as they ran out of energy for their supers they grabbed Grace and got behind the outcropping for cover.

Yul: The Hive has proven to be great disciples. When the fifty-two moons of Fundament were coming into alignment for the God-Wave to destroy all who lived on it's floating continents, Aurash, Xi Ro, and Sathona found us and we gave them power. They became the gods Oryx, Xivu Arath, and Savathûn founders of the Hive. Thanks to them we found the first species of a perfect universe.

Jack-10 (Replaces his sword for a Machine Gun): And what universe would that be!?

Yul: A universe where only the strongest survive by killing each other a consuming their power. This is what the universe once was thanks to the guidance of the Deep, a universe that followed the Sword-Logic, to kill your enemies and to take their power. This is a universe that the Sky chose to deny with its cancerous teachings of morality and the false hope of comfort!

Jason (Replaces his Rocket launcher with a Machine Gun): You're the real cancer! Not the Traveler!

Yul approached the outcropping and as he got close to it Grace climbed up and jumped onto Yul's head and used her Combat Knife to stab him repeatedly causing him to bleed green blood. Jason and Jack started to fire at Yul with their Machine Guns. Yul tries to shake Grace off but she hung on tightly by imbedding her knife into his head. Yul then slams the top of his head into a mountain multiple times which causes Grace to fall off. When she hit the ground she struggled to move but then Yul slams his right claw on her effectively killing her.

Jason and Jack-10: GRACE!

Yul: First the three of you then Eir's murderers.

Jason: Distract Yul I'll resurrect Grace.

Jack: Got it.

Jack fires at Yul to draw him away from Grace allowing Jason to get to her. When he got to Grace her Ghost appeared and was preparing her revival feature. Jason approached the floating drone and shared some of his power to resurrect Grace; first her body disappeared and then reappeared in a flash of light.

Grace: Ow.

Jason: Come on. Yul's almost dead.

They surrounded Yul from two different sides and drew out Machine Guns. Once Jack stopped firing Yul saw that his chances of winning were low. He was bleeding and some of his scales were falling off. He then decided to retreat and began to take off but Grace activated her Nightstalker subclass super Shadowshot. A purple bow made of Void energy appeared and she shot Yul with it. Normally one shot would destroy most of its targets and create gravity beams that tether others to it. But targets that are stronger, like Yul, can survive the hit but are still subjected to the gravity beams.

Grace: You're not going anywhere you pathetic excuse for a god!

Jack: Hit him with everything you got!

She shot two more arrows at Yul for good measure and depleted her super energy. Jason and Jack-10 activated their supers again and bombarded him with them while Grace used her Machine Gun on Yul. Yul tried to fly away as hard as he could but he couldn't break away from the gravity beams fast enough and when he was about to he fell back to the ground dead. His corpse then burst into white flames the group found this odd because when they read the Books of Sorrow they saw that Oryx had killed the Worm Akka and his body didn't burst into flames. Perhaps this was because it was the forces of the Light that killed Yul. Once his body was ashes the group then finds themselves transported back to the room that the Wizards were at.

Jack-10's Ghost (Voice only, has a female voice): Eris. Cayde. We did it! Yul is dead!

Cayde-6 (Voice only): Well done Guardians. Another disaster averted. Now all we have to do is deal with the House of Whirlwind.

Eris (Voice only): With another Worm God dead the Hive grow weaker. Thank you for your help Guardians.

Cayde-6 (Voice only): First rounds on me when we get back to the Tower.