"Soon, you will come to know, when the bullet hits the bone..."
'Twilight Zone', by Golden Earring
Honestly, she was glad for the interruption. The tension in the air could choke a Kell, and she didn't know if she'd be able to play shrink at the moment, much less to someone as rude as Asher Mir. The obvious internal crisis he was experiencing, and the near inhuman appetite for bleeding flesh not withstanding, there was obviously much more going on here than met the eye.
The salt thing? Okay, she could accept that. That was something she could help with; Jolder had had a preference for raw beef, 'eating it like the ancient French did', and Allison had picked up more than a few ways to serve bloody food from the culinary buff of a Titan. She only hoped the rules for beef applied to war beast; if not, the Warlock wouldn't be in a good state later, especially considering the way he'd inhaled the first half of his portion.
The silent suffering? The focus on scientific distraction? An aversion to human touch like he thought everyone was disgusting(which she'd seen on the day they met, when she was helping him with the bigger jumps), and a personality likened to an angry parrot? She wasn't sure what to do about that. She wasn't even sure what to do with herself, even after nearly two months. Did one ever really get over losing so much?
Besides; if all her attempts to get cheery, talkative, open-hearted Timur to talk about 'it' were any indication, she doubted she could convince this cantankerous, closed Warlock to open up either. When they got back to civilization, she was going to find whatever singular, unlucky soul he was close to and make them deal with it.
The ground pitched, and she nearly fell into the fire. Asher made an odd yelping sound, and she herself swore colorfully. The sky lit up, and a roar filled the air.
"What's that?" she demanded, looking up. There were ships in the sky, ones of a design she'd never seen before but bearing the unmistakable markings of the Red Legion. A beam of white energy was flowing up into Io's atmosphere, from the direction of the main drill site.
"Anti-umbral energy! Seismic event! Those ignorami released a pocket of unstable post-terraformation energy!" Asher yelled. The ground had stopped shaking, but the ships were still roaring as they exited the atmosphere, and the sky was still bright. The Warlock was rushing about now, food on the ground and forgotten, tending to his equipment.
"Will this cause any more problems?" she asked, picking herself up.
"No! But... THRALL SPIT!" he snapped suddenly, checking his computers and tapping out multiple commands. "I'm picking up massive, scattered neutrino readings!"
"And that would qualify as a problem." she nodded. "Because... what does that mean, exactly?"
"There are Taken on Io." She raised an eyebrow. He'd mentioned the Taken before. She'd gotten the general vibe that they were bad news.
"Doing what?" she inquired, striding over to look over his shoulder.
"I don't know!" he snapped. "I can't tell what they're doing, just that they're concentrated near the drill site! They must have been attracted to the pulse!"
"I should go check it out." she said, backing off. "If they're as big a problem as you made them out to be, this could be bigger than just a few of them and some running Cabal."
"Yes." he said. But before she could get far, he shouted quite suddenly. "Wait!"
"What?"she twisted to look at him.
"Stay here; I'll get you an earpiece." she rolled her eyes.
Why do I get the feeling he's worked with Nightstalkers before? As Allison crept along the old paths, she looked at the timed release device Asher had given her. It seemed as if the technique of making smoke with one's Light lived on, but these were a bit more advanced than the old glass bottles she had used as catalysts in the old days; back then, she'd fill them with compressed void-smoke and throw them at the enemy, shattering the glass and releasing the gas.
These? Asher had given her three of these oval-shaped smoke bomb catalysts, one of them even designed to latch on to a wall or the target before exploding. He'd built all three very quickly, and with a practiced efficiency that made her wonder how many Hunters he'd worked with before her, or if he'd been part of one of those 'fireteams'. He's proven he's a proficient sniper. A sniper, a genius, who knew how to supply a Nightstalker so quickly? Maybe he was part of some sort of Guardian spec ops group or something.
Theories on Asher Mir's past aside, there was clearly more to the sick Warlock than a rude personality and a high IQ. Kind of how there'd been more to Timur than a dorky grin and a penchant for bad ideas.
"What are you DOING!?" she screamed. He was on the monastery roof.
During a thunderstorm.
With a metal rod.
"TESTING A THEORY!" he screamed back down over the blast of thunder and the roar of wind and rain.
"That you WON'T get struck by lightning if you stand on the roof with a metal poll!?" Okay, his ideas had gotten stupider and stupider ever since he'd suddenly woke up one morning and finally got hit with the realization that he couldn't actually die. While she was happy not to have to deal with his insecurity or night terrors anymore, this was getting ridiculous.
"THAT IF I GET STRUCK BY LIGHTNING I'LL BE ABLE TO USE IT!" he called back down excitedly. She buried her face in her hands, as he was struck not moments after speaking. Still pinching the bridge of her nose, she strode back inside. One of the nuns looked at her sympathetically.
"That poor boy up to it again? All this can't possibly be good for him." Allison looked at her, feeling tired.
"He'll learn better; most of them do. Well, the sensible ones. Ugh... do me a favor? Pray for me; my patience is this close to snapping." with that, she strode through the halls until she came to the stairs that led to the roof. Timur was already there, dripping wet and grinning like an idiot. His hair was spiked up all over the place, and Kitty hadn't replaced his eyebrows yet.
"I almost did it!" he practically squealed. She only glared at him. And he kept beaming at her like the stupid young chosen that he was.
She nearly laughed at the memory. Now, Asher didn't seem like the type to stand on rooftops with a metal poll(during a thunderstorm). If anything, he was the type to make someone else to it for him while he took notes.
Feeling just a little lighter, and a little sadder, she continued on the road.
"Asher, It looks like they're doing some kind of... ritual." there was no other way to describe it. And the dark orb in the middle of it all looked like something out of a nightmare, not to mention the shadowy figures surrounding it, seeming to feed it. She felt the air itself chill as she approached, and recognized the weight of Darkness in the area.
"Well? Stop them! I've put out a looped Skyshock alert, but I doubt anyone will hear it." Asher grumbled from the other end of the comm.
"Won't the Cabal hear that?" she asked.
"No; they'll be well out of range by now." he assured her. "Now, stop the ritual! Target the wizards first, they usually lead things like this. Remove them!"
"Wizards are the floating ones, right?"
"Yes! Now hurry; I've been monitoring the energy they're pumping, and I hypothesis that if you don't stop them, the planet may implode!"
Well, that's bad. Even she knew what 'implode' meant, and she didn't feel like dying today.
"Any tips?" she flexed her fingers, imagining the arrows rolling through her hand. Distantly, she felt the void tug an pull, her and her Light responded in kind.
"Taken are slightly more susceptible to smoke disorientation. Even more so if you make the smoke toxic." Yes, he had definitely worked with Nightstalkers before. "But they have a tendency to use arc shielding and flame shielding, and likewise weaponry."
That might be more of an issue. No matter; she would find a work around... somehow.
"Okay. I'm going in." time to put a stop to this. Summoning a spike of void in one hand, she threw it at the nearest wizard while it's back was turned. It let out an unholy scream as her Light ate it's shield in a small explosion. It was a sound that made her very bones rattle, and she suddenly understood what Asher had meant when he called the Taken 'pure entropy'; that scream made even the air feel empty in it's wake.
Lifting her hand cannon, she put three bullets in the wizard's head before it could do more than screech at her and raise a claw. Scanning the area over with a sharp gaze, Allison turned her attention towards the next participant in the ritual; this one, thankfully, behind sever pillars of rock. A perfect opportunity for an ambush.
Stalking quietly along the rocks and wrecked metal, she rolled past a Taken cabal with a shimmering arc shield around it before it could spot her, and turned into smoke and shadows, becoming invisible to the naked eye. Now mere particles of void held together only by training and immense force of will, she snuck up behind the second wizard.
The thing about a shield, was that it was only useful against certain things. A Hunter landing on your back, and slicing your head nearly clean off your shoulders was one thing the Taken wizard's shields couldn't protect it against. Hands stinging from brief contact with the solar energy, Allison jumped off the corpse's back before it could collapse in on itself, the dead thing not even having time to loose another one of those awful shrieks. The taken cabal roared as if sensing the death of it's superior, and she rolled back into a shadestep state, running towards the third and final wizard. Now that two participants in the ritual were dead, the third would no doubt be noticing.
Her little assassination quest would have to end, and fast. There were more Taken gathering beneath the ball of dark energy, and none of them looked too friendly.
Sure enough, the third wizard wasn't as clueless as the first two, and it raised it's claws even as Allison approached. Shadowy figures were summoned out of thin air and began stalking around their master.
Allison returned to solid form, and threw a smoke bomb. The wizard shrieked, as did the shadow figures, as toxic smoke engulfed them all. Summoning a ball of void in one hand, she threw a vortex grenade into the cluster of confused enemies, and shot the wizard twice more just to be certain.
It dissipated in an eerie, final shriek.
"Asher, I killed them!" the ball of dark energy was lowering... and the Taken were angry at her. With screams and roars, all the black weapons were turning towards her, ans she barely managed to hide behind a crate in time to avoid being shot. "I also made the locals angry!"
"Yes, well... I found backup." the Warlock smarted back; she could hear him preening, good grief. "Even if it is a Titan. And if you stopped them, how come I'm still getting scattered neutrino readings?"
"Well, obviously, the rest of the team isn't dead." she told him dryly. "As I said; the locals are angry. You were saying about backup?"
"Ikora Rey." a new, feminine voice introduced. "And who is this, Asher?"
"Unimportant; I suggest we stop the Taken before we begin small talk." A deep, machanical baritone interjected.
"You!"Asher hissed, with a deep rage she'd never heard before. "What are you doing here!?"
"And this is why you should've let me do the talking." a lighter male voice sighed.
"Kill Taken now, bicker like babies later!" Allison snapped. She didn't have time to referee old grudges. At least, it sounded like an old grudge.
"Just don't turn your back on him!" Asher warned. Yup; definitely an old grudge. She ducked out of cover, pulling her bow, and fired a tethering arrow at the dark mass of Taken energy. The void trap activated, eating away at the black, liquid-like ball and casting it in a purple glow as the enemies around it found themselves suddenly hooked in place by strings of void Light.
Suddenly, what looked like an electric cannon ball shot out from the balcony entrance of the Cabal drill base, and a Titan came rocketing down, smashing into the Taken she'd trapped. Huh. Looks like I'm not the only one who still has powers.
"Ikora; our new friend is a Nightstalker." informed the lighter voice from before. "She still has powers!"
"What?!"
"Thanks for stating the obvious." Allison commented dryly as her new ally continued smashing his way through their enemies towards her. "I'll refrain from exclaiming 'oh look, that Titan still has powers'!"
"I'm getting a massive reading!" Asher warned. The ball of dark energy fluxed and exploded, throwing the Titan into her with the force of a rocket. She hit the ground, winded, as a bubble of black energy surrounded the pit that had been there moments before.
"I'm going to guess there's a massive, ugly Taken or other miscellaneous dangers in that bubble?" she coughed. The Titan, in red armor, didn't offer to help her up. Ahhh, chivalry! Where's Silimar when you need him?
"According to my hypothesis-"
"Yes."
"You, Hunter; distract it." the Titan ordered as she pulled herself up. Okay, he's a pushy one.
"Don't trust him!" Asher countered immediately.
"Here's a plan; lets just kill it." Allison suggested, charging into the bubble.
It was like going underwater. Immediately, she felt her Light suppressed, and knew that any wounds she got here would take a long time to heal now that D'Art was gone. There, in the center, just as she predicted, was a massive Taken cabal.
She didn't waste any time. Rolling into a shadestep state, she wove around the enemies it had summoned, the bullets that were fired phasing through her void-and-smoke form harmlessly. Ducking behind the champion, she jumped up on it's shoulders, before phasing back into solid form and firing a wide-anchor shadowshot at the ground several paces in front of the massive enemy.
The strings of void Light caught nearly every attacker in the pit, and the champion stagger, as she predicted, unable to throw her off because of the distraction. She took out her kukri and slammed it into the champion's head, and with her other hand, threw a spike of void light at a Taken psion, it's death causing a chain reaction of void explosions as the slower Titan finally joined the fight and began mopping up the leftovers. Meanwhile, both hands free, she worked the blade until the thrashing cabal stopped struggling, and collapsed with a reality-shuddering groan.
Allison suddenly found herself on the ground as it dissipated. Pain lanced through her shoulder as she caught herself, and when she looked, it was to find her armor burned through. Huh. Not all all the bullets had missed as she thought. It didn't look serious, though.
"And you are?" The Titan asked, taking off his helmet. He was an Exo, red and white plated with blue eyes. He eyed her suspiciously. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"No. And just call me Darkrose." she managed to stand, and offered her hand. He didn't shake it. Again; yay for manners. "Asher, I think we're done here."
"Yes. Ikora, we must talk. Darkrose... 8... so must we." She raised an eyebrow in the Exo's direction.
"Alder-8." he shrugged. His Ghost appeared over his shoulder, and he jerked his thumb at it. "Hotel. Where's base camp?"
Well, he certainly didn't waste time with small talk, did he?
"This way." she waved him over in the direction she'd come from.
"How did you use your Light like that? I've never seen anything like it before!" Hotel asked, in the same light voice she'd heard earlier.
"What do you mean?" she raised an eyebrow. "Have Guardians forgotten how to fight in less than two months? I've always fought like that, I don't see what's so amazing about it."
Alder and Hotel exchanged a look, and followed her.
"Just call me Darkrose." Those were the words that silenced Ikora Rey. She'd heard that name before.
"Well, you've been here for over a month, and didn't even think to look for survivors!?" She was also now playing host to a furious Asher Mir. He was pacing up and down her ship, with what was ostensibly one of her electrolyte drinks in one fist. Correction; it was now an empty plastic bottle, and he was already reaching for another one. At any other time, she would have thrown him out the airlock to teach him a lesson, but the gaunt, haggard, and obviously sickly Warlock was being given some leeway considering his needs.
The ones she'd been briefed about only a day before the attack. The day she signed off on his little project. The day storm warnings had grounded most ships, the day before she ran like a coward from her aflame city-
"I ATE A WAR BEAST THIS MORNING, DAMMIT!" was what snapped her out of her reverie. Asher's face was purple with fury, and he collapsed back into one of the emergency seats with a frustrated sigh, before throwing another now-empty plastic bottle across the small space. He used his vex arm to do this, resulting in an unnecessary amount of force behind the throw, leaving the bottle a pancake when it hit the wall behind her. She regarded him calmly as he buried his face in his good hand.
"Do you know who Darkrose is?" she asked quietly, trying to keep the excitement and terror out of her voice.
"I found her- near the Pyramidion." he was keeping something to himself. "She's from the Dark Age, got caught in a temporal loop on Venus before entering a vex gate that brought her here."
"I just saw footage from Alder's Ghost; she's incredibly powerful for a Nightstalker." her own Ghost commented. No duh.
"So what? She's from the Dark Age, she probably knows things about her Light that most Nightstalker don't." Asher said flippantly.
"She knows more about void Light than any Hunter because she's the first one to ever have touched the void in the first place." Ikora shot back. Asher looked at her like she'd sprouted eggplants out of her ears and started speaking lost Eliksni dialect.
"Again." Osiris commanded. Ikora tried again.
And again.
And again.
And Again.
"Stop." her mentor sighed. Panting, she scowled at him as he continued. "I was a fool to think a Warlock could master this technique."
"But... we can master anything!" She boldly protested. She could-and would- master this technique! If it took a hundred years for her to learn how to throw Light spikes, then so be it!
"Not if it was invented by a Hunter." the other Warlock said dryly. "Throwing spikes of void Light was a common move invented by Lady Darkrose; a sort of replacement for throwing knives, to escape the inconvenience of carrying too many blades around."
"I've never seen other Hunters do that." she commented, shaking her head.
"They've forgotten!" he snapped bitterly. "And Darkrose was the first Nightstalker; she warped her Light in ways you and I couldn't possibly imagine in order to achieve what she did. Having stretched the form of her limits so far, she could probably outfight every Guardian in the Tower with the exception of Tevis Larsen!"
"I fail to see any future where a Hunter could do that." she snorted arrogantly. Osiris' eyes narrowed.
"Then I see failure in your future."
"The... first?" Asher sounded a little dizzy.
"Yes." she swallowed, shaking off the last vestiges of the slightly bitter memory. "The first... and possibly the most dangerous Guardian who ever lived. Perun and Tevis both learned from her, and they passed the more well-known skills down to the Hunters who live today. And because she touched the void, Titans strove to summon fire, and we tried to call the storm. It was a chain reaction that still continues today. And now... she's back."
"Yes..." Asher murmured, eyes distant. She glanced away; she'd seen that look on Guardians like Eris and Saladin before. "Now I remember... Bear mentioned her."
Ah, Bernard-12. He could have been a Warlock for all anyone knew, the wise old thing. She had to admit, it had always peeved her a little that he never joined the Hidden; as a Nightstalker, he'd almost been as good as Tevis Larsen.
How he wound up in a fireteam with a new blood and Asher Mir of all people, though, had always been beyond her.
"They called her 'Darkrose the Lost', in the old stories." Ikora began. "A mission gone horribly wrong in the Vault of Glass. Three Iron Lords entered; only two came out, and neither of them was her. She was never seen or heard from again. But her skill remained legendary; they say she even tutored Timur when he endeavored to discover how a Warlock might wield arc energy."
"Asher; you found a legend." she pressed as the other Warlock began to look a little overwhelmed; likely by the fact something so important had slipped his memory and notice. "Not only that, but she still has her powers. Alder and Zavala might have helped spark the revolution... but Darkrose could win us the war."
"Well, shit." was all Allison could say when she was debriefed.
A cap on all Guardian powers except hers and Alders(because that was how life worked now, apparently)? Check.
Insane emperor bent on becoming an immortal demi-god? Check.
Sun-destroying dreadnought? Check.
Chosen one shtick? Check-a-mundo.
Oh, and don't forget the fact you're apparently a legend among Hunters. GREAT. Lord, just end it now! I get you have plans but WHY ME!?
Because that was DEFINITELY without a doubt the reason she was here. 'Hey, Allison; save humanity'. Yeah, I'll get right on that.
"Nicely summarized." Hotel commented dryly with a snicker. Alder shot him a glare.
Another person who was doing the glaring was Asher. He was fixing Alder with a look that could have frozen wine or caused a blackhole, like he was trying to melt the Exo just by looking at him. His vex hand was gripping the edge of the table the four of them had eaten at(more or less; Asher had spent the entire meal glaring at Alder) while going over the plan.
Whatever had gone down between these two Guardians hadn't been pretty; that much was obvious. Ikora cleared her throat.
"Anyway, Asher has doubts about Zavala's plan to blow up the Almighty." Lofty name. Ghaul is starting to sound like a narcissist.
"There is no doubt a fail safe." Asher said through grit teeth. "There is a warmind vault on Io. We could use it's systems to hack into the dormant NATO network, and triangulate the Almighty's position. After that, I will run several deep-scans of it's infrastructure and locate a weakness. With the help of Ikora's Ghost, we may be able to find a way to shut down the failsafes or bypass them entirely."
"We will also use this opportunity to scan the Cage. If there's a way to shut it down, even temporarily, we can use that." Ikora continued. "Even a minute of having our powers back full force could give us an edge. If we free the Traveler, remove the blockage, we might have a chance."
"Sounds like a plan." Hotel said, shell spinning. She felt her heart ache with loneliness. She hadn't felt the Ghost Link sever... but she could still feel a hole where D'Artagnan used to be. I never even got to say goodbye...
"When do we start?" Alder asked, standing ramrod straight. This man was all business; too much soldier. There didn't seem to be a person at all behind that stance.
"Tomorrow when we've slept, you myopic imbecile!" the fact that Ikora offered no admonishment, but only glanced at Asher witheringly, spoke volumes about how much she was used to dealing with him and his...
Attitude.
"Very well." Alder merely said. He turned heel and walked away. Allison raised an eyebrow in Asher's direction.
"Dare I ask what all that was about?" she inquired.
"He nearly got my-" he cut himself off, and took a deep breath before continuing. "He has a history of making poor tactical decisions, thereby nearly getting other Guardians killed irreparably."
"That was a long time ago, Asher." Ikora sighed. The Awoken man simply stood angrily, his chair scraping across the deck of Ikora's ship, and stormed off. He stopped halfway down the ramp.
"Darkrose... let's just say I wouldn't trust him with my life." He strode off, and she doubted anyone else heard what he added next. "Or anyone else's."
Asher intensifies, and Darkrose gets some internal wit going. I was originally going to make her much more serious, but I didn't want her to become too dry a character. A month and a half later, and she's still dealing with some stuff, but that pre-Timur personality is starting to rear it's head again. She's kind of making a full circle journey.
jsm1978: No, the last thing in-game Asher needs is more salt; he's already angry enough. More than anything, I think he needs his Ghost back. And a hug. The March update really saved face, though; I'm having a lot of fun!
alienrapto: Trust me, dude; I've done my research, I know everything about the vex at this point. I'm just sprinkling a little bit of head-canon speculation in-between the gaps.
Ahhh, if feels so good to be an Arcstrider and pulse rifle enthusiast right now. I can safely say, after the go faster update, I'm sitting pretty. So pretty, I wrote this chapter. I'm having a lot of fun with Darkrose and her powers; speculating on what Guardian's limits might be, how she might have broken those limits, the origins of some of the more mundane things in-game... Shadestep in particular. I was always a fan of the original D1 animation with that smoke effect, where your Guardian actually turns into shade... it always gave me a sense of 'wow, can those bullets even hit me'? And in D2, when Nightstalker dodge incorporated invisibility, I decided to combine those.
The void spike idea was born out of a personal epiphany I had one day while playing as a Gunslinger, actually; where the heck is my Guardian getting all these throwing knives from? And aren't they inconvenient to carry? Of course, in usual Sarcasm style, I began to overthink things, and soon decided that Allison, being the complacent woman she is and having no time at all to make a bunch of knives to carry around, would just invent a Light-based work-around to this problem.
Ahhh. Now that I got that out of my system, I'll just leave you all to wonder what Asher has against Alder.
Fare Thee Well!
