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Location: Ash Coves, Ishtar Sink, Venus

Time: 15th January 3246. 3 months after the death of Crota.

"I have one message to send before I get down to taking out Skolas," I said to Petra over the comm system. Spark began to record a message for me as I piloted my ship down towards the coordinates of the Ash Coves that Variks theorised Skolas would be. "Dreske," I say, calling on my best friend for help, "I've got a mission on Venus and I need your help. Meet me at the Ash Coves in the Ishtar Sink. Sending coordinates." On the end of the message my Ghost added the data of the location of where I would be landing.

I flew low over Venus, low enough to see individual Fallen in their crews scavenging on the surface. I considered taking potshots at them with my ship's weapon system but it would just cause unnecessary attention to myself. Besides, only one or two irritated Vandals actually fired off a few shots at me which either missed or dissipated against my ship's shields.

As I reached the Ash Coves my ship's radar detected a new ship entering the atmosphere near mine and accelerating towards my ship at breakneck speeds. "What is that…" I followed the ship's course on my radar and realised it was taking a direct path that could make it collide into my ship with me in it. I screeched and Spark transmatted me out of it very quickly.

I materialised on the ground and looked up just in time to see Dreske throw his ship into a tight donut, narrowly missing colliding with my own ship, and stopping right next to it. He materialised next to me and immediately started to laugh.

"Oh man," he chuckled, "you left your comm open to public, nice scream when you saw I was coming," he was bent over with his hands on his knees, laughing extremely hard, "you sounded like such a girl!"

"Yeah very funny," I grumbled, feeling very humiliated, "but I've been ripped to pieces by your attempts at stunts before so I think I have earned the right to be at least a little afraid when you pull that shit."

"Still funny though." He had stopped laughing by now, and we looked at our surroundings. Petra's voice came through the comm system into my head,

"Your Ghost is feeding me telemetry; I see what he sees. Guardians, those heavy pikes are beasts! Why not take them for a spin?"

I saw them at exactly the same time as Dreske. We turned our heads to look at each other and I think the exact same thing was going through our heads.

"RACE YOU THERE!" I yelled and ran to the nearest pike to me, jumping on it and accelerating ahead. I could hear his pike close behind mine as we sped along the surface of Venus.

"Those heavy pikes come standard with mines," Petra said over the comms, "but I never figured out how to deploy them though." I felt with my foot around the pedal for anything that could mean a mine deployment. I found a small lever thing and kicked it with my foot. My pike juddered to the side and one of the mines I had become so used to coming out of Spider Tanks was ejected from the side of my pike.

I am happy to say that I got my revenge on Dreske, as I saw his heavy pike suddenly get launched overhead and I heard a string of curses from my Titan friend. And yes, I did get a good hearty laugh out of it.

"If you two are done messing around, you do need to kill Skolas quickly and off-guard." Petra told us, "the Queen is counting on you, Lukas, to get this job done well."

Despite the jokey vibes Dreske and I shared I straightened up on my pike, knowing that this is a serious mission. I sped ahead of Dreske on my merry way, thinking about meaningless drivel. I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I didn't even notice that I was speeding right towards a Spider Tank's main turret. I violently swerved, panicking, and got out of the blast radius. I saw a few blue bolts hit it's legs and I knew Dreske was on the offensive on his pike. I joined it, round after round of heavy arc energy slamming into the tank's front leg until it broke and exposed its engine. We shot into it however I soon had to back up as the engine cover slid back over the engine and the tank decided to target me with its secondary turret. Its arc blasts forced me to retreat and take cover. I could feel the current of each shot rack my body despite my armour insulating most of the electricity. I got over the annoyance of having to retreat by firing at some of the Fallen who were deciding to attack me whilst I was distracted by the Tank.

"The Wolves have gained control over Winter's artillery!" Petra stated the obvious. I resisted the urge to make a sarcastic quip about it, "destroy it before they dig in!"

The front of my pike was on fire and the heat was making me somewhat uncomfortable so I was eager to move on when I saw the Tank explode and the wreckage of it collapse on itself after mine and Dreske's repeated bombardment of it. The trick was mobility. We knew that if the Tank got a bead on us we would probably be killed in a matter of seconds but if we could use our speed to our advantage and keep moving around it and firing then it didn't have a chance.

That's one of the two ways to take out a Spider Tank. I heard Kevin, Prime's Bane, took out the one guarding the Devil's Layer by finding a blind spot in its targeting and sitting back and sniping it until he destroyed it. But that method takes time and time is something that we don't have.

The tank soon went down in an explosive wreck. The Fallen around us only seemed to get more angry and upped their fire on Dreske and I. "Last week I was delivering court messages, today we're delivering explosions! I love fieldwork!" Petra exclaimed happily over the comms, "Get after them, you two!"

I hopped off of my pike, which had taken a lot of damage in the skirmish, and summoned my sparrow. I sped in front of Dreske, my light, nimble sparrow outperforming his heavy and slow pike in every way bar one. And of course it came as no surprise to me when Dreske started to target me jokingly. I managed to avoid giving Holliday a hard time with repairing by unpredictable swerving to throw Dreske's aim off.

"Your Ghost is detecting a faint stasis field. Skolas was in a pod for years, it could be him." Petra said, and Spark gave what I take to be an indignant bleep of sorts. It's hard to guess at the emotion of a mechanical noise,

"I could've said it myself," he replies. Annoyance is evident in his tone.

I inwardly chuckled at Spark's attitude. Ghosts like to talk, I know some Guardians who barely speak at all and their Ghost does all the talking for them. They're a weird bunch, to be sure. It just so happens that one show-off Guardian who took out the Heart of the Black Garden and put Crota down is one of them.

Petra started to explain the background as we rode. "The House Of Winter, and Devils, and Kings… they all hate Skolas. They think he betrayed the Fallen during their attack at Twilight Gap when my Queen interfered. It's funny, really."

We soon came across a small cliff that we couldn't get neither the pike or my sparrow over, no matter how many times we tried accelerating at it, or Dreske shooting at my sparrow to try and make it move up and over. I sighed and dismounted, looking at the crumpled bumper of my Sparrow and wondering if I could find a legitimate excuse to give Amanda about it for repairs that isn't, "See, Dreske and I got lazy and we started to ram a cliff to see if we could get my Sparrow up it." I shook my head, letting out a quiet chuckle.

We walked on past the cliff. We came to a corner and round it was a clearing and I spotted a Servitor with Fallen accompaniment. Luckily they hadn't noticed us, giving us the advantage. I double jumped around the corner and fired at the Servitor, then threw a vortex grenade at it and focussed on the other Fallen as my grenade downed the Servitor. Before I could get off a shot at the Fallen bullets whizzed passed me as Dreske erratically fired at them, taking them all down before I could kill any of them for myself. He was enjoying himself, laughing as he gunned them down.

"Man this is great!" He said enthusiastically and we shared a high five at our destruction of the Fallen. Only way it could be better would be if Ellena was here, but she's busy investigating the Nine's involvement with Draksis with Ikora and the Warlocks. They've been on it for months and honestly I don't think they're going to make any more progress, but Ellena is determined.

I can hear Petra take a breath in preparation to speak but Spark cuts her off, "The stasis field is getting stronger. We've got to be close to Skolas now," he says, beating Petra to it. She responds with a slight huff over the comms.

"Hey Lukas," Dreske said to me. I turned my head to look at him as we walked.

"Yeah?"

"I bet you that I get the killing shot on Skolas," he grinned. He knew I, like most Hunters, couldn't resist a good bet. It's in our nature. It's how our order was formed. To blow off or refuse a bet was unthinkable.

"Oh you're on," I grinned, "but I take the word 'shot' very seriously. No fists of havoc. And if I win you get no cut from our engram market for the next week." I set the terms of my side of the bet.

"Fair enough," he agreed, "but if I win then you have to go to Zavala's next 'inspiring' Tower speech and listen to it all with no other source of entertainment."

I shuddered, Zavala's speeches were notorious for being incredibly boring. "Fine, but you better have enough glimmer to get by, you insane murderbot," I laughed, determined to win our bet. Friendly competition is the best motivator there is as we soon found ourselves racing towards where our Ghosts and Petra believed Skolas to be.

We found ourselves by a large door, definitely Fallen architecture. It raised open automatically and there he was. Skolas. He was huge! Taller than Draksis, to be sure. He had a very unique shaped helmet with massive decorative horns coming out the back of it. He was giving some sort of speech but we didn't stop to listen. Dreske and I charged, his fusion rifle firing into him and me popping off shots with my hand cannon. Skolas roared at us and fired back, before teleporting to the side. I cursed, spinning around to continue shooting as Skolas barked out something at us.

"Variks get on the comms! What did he say?" Petra said urgently and Dreske and I shot everything we had into Skolas to no avail. He roared at us before teleporting away. He is clearly not interested in a gunfight and that is bad news for us. If he doesn't die here the whole system could be in trouble with a rogue Kell on the loose.

"Yes, in your tongue he said; The Wolves stand strong! Cower before the Kell of Kells!" Variks replied, causing me to raise an eyebrow under my helmet.

"What? Kell of Kells? Did he give himself a promotion?" Petra asked incredulously, echoing my own thoughts. This Fallen must have a bigger head than most.

"A Fallen prophecy," Variks explained, "he sees himself as a prophet, or he has gone quite mad, yes,"

Dreske and I continued up the hill, I remembered the place from outside the massive Ketch where Draksis was and to my surprise the Ketch was still there, nobody had dared to move it despite the Vanguard and most Guardians knowing about it now. Strange.

Modified Shanks attacked us. I'd never seen these kind of variants before. Some had rapid firing turrets on them and others, which were giving me a hard time, had snipers mounted to them and keeping away from my shots. Still, they weren't invincible and Dreske and I picked them off one by one until we could advance.

The next surprises the Wolves had for us were mines. I didn't notice them until I heard the beeping and by the time I had processed it I was caught in this web-like energy that had dazed me and slowed me down. Another Servitor then started firing at me and if I was alone I could've been killed there and then. Luckily Dreske had managed to avoid the mine and destroyed the Servitor whilst the effects of the mine wore off on me.

We fought through more Shanks and another Servitor until we reached the exit to Winter's Lair which was blocked off by lasers. I then noticed a strange flashing on my radar and whirled around to see a Fallen Captain materialise out of thin air next to Dreske and start shooting him. It was so sudden I didn't even raise my gun for a few seconds, but soon got it up and helped Dreske, who was looking pretty beat up after receiving quite a few shrapnel launcher rounds to the face at close range. Thank goodness our Ghosts can heal any damage done to us.

The lasers deactivated and Dreske and I walked in, "cryo trace is getting stronger," Spark noted as we walked and soon we were face to face with Skolas. Dreske ran forward to shoulder charge him and I started to fire however he had already teleported away, a Skiff behind where he was de-materialising. I watched as Dreske plummeted down to the bottom of the cave, unable to stop his shoulder charge momentum.

"And he's gone, that Skiff has already broken orbit," Petra announced, sounding very annoyed, "don't worry, Guardians, we'll get him. There's still plenty of Fallen in there. Best clear them out."

From what I could hear, Dreske had already committed to that after his fall and I got to it myself, taking the path down and coming across a Captain with an extremely powerful cannon. I wish I got to see more of it against me but Dreske had tossed a magnetic grenade at the Captain and significantly lowered is heath. Since it's shield was down I soon finished it off without it firing many shots at me.

"Impressive weaponry, what is it, Variks?" Petra asked and I fired it. An explosive solar round shot out of it and let out a boom as it hit the wall, erupting in flames.

"Scorch Cannon. Powerful and very rare indeed," he said. I grinned. There were still Fallen coming at us and using this was going to be extremely fun. Using our enemies own weapons against them feels like a dickish thing to do but it's so fun. I guess they deserve it.

And then we killed Fallen. Not much more to say then that, really. We were all in a bad mood since Skolas got away so it felt good to take it out on the remaining Wolves. After killing another of the Captains who had a Scorch Cannon we were fairly sure that we had them all. We left the planet and prepared ourselves for a very angry debriefing with the Queen. I doubt she's going to be pleased that Skolas got away. Not at all.

A/N: Sorry for the late upload! I've had three essays to write since the last upload and fitting in time to write has been harder than expected. I promise you all that I will have another chapter out next Monday. You can hold me to that.

I've been grinding Forsaken a lot. Only exotic I've had drop is the Two Tailed Fox and that's been really fun to use with the two rockets.

If anyone is willing to edit and spellcheck characters please let me know as I do miss errors as I go along and, whilst I will take a day to go through and clean up ones I find, I might not get them all so if you're up for it just let me know. You'll get a shout out and mention in both the description and each A/N.

Please leave a follow as updates may not have a regular schedule although I will try to get at least one out every week in schooltime. Holidays will have sporadic updates as I cannot predict in advance as to when I will and will not be doing something. Leave a review if you want, tell me if you're enjoying this fic or leave some criticism to help me improve.

I'll also be down to play Destiny or Destiny 2 with you guys. I play on Xbone. Pm me if you want my gamertag. Maybe if enough people would be up for it I'll create a clan for the fans of this fic. I am also setting up a discord server as this is getting more popular and so it is taking more space to include the favs and reviews at the top.

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Have a good day/night

MrLongSurname