Step 11: Leave It All Behind You

"My officialdesignation is Ghost 33056, but my Guardian just calls me Padfoot. Despite the fact she was kicked by a Cabal the other day and should be resting her shoulder-ahem, Sierra, stop practicing with your knife-, we're heading to the Reef early to help with the Skolas problem. We're to enter discretely, so as not to alert the Fallen that live there. According to her, the earlier we go, the quicker we can leave when they find out about her so-called 'disability'. Don't give me that look, young lady! You're a pessimist and you know it!"- Ghost Des.33056 personal log, approximately three weeks after the Della Tay incident.


It was like the same sensation he'd felt when stepping through the Gate. But this was slightly different. Not only were they displaced in regards to what dimension they were in… they were suddenly someplace else! What the void?!

Ethan stood up, feeling sick, as he suddenly found himself out on a stair-like cliff. Down below was a platform with a half-broken Vex Gate at one end. Black ash rained from the sky, and sat in large piles all along the ground on the platform. Alfie gasped with shock, and the Queen jerked awake, looking around wildly.

The sky seemed to be wizzing past before slowing down, turning the reddish color of Mars' atmosphere. No longer was it laced with eirry light, but the bright, shining light of the sun. The suffocating Darkness was replaced with stiffling desert heat, warm and welcome in place of the cold and dark of the Vex home realm.

Suddenly, it occurred to Ethan where they might be, and his eyes scanned the platform tensely. Please don't let them be dead, please don't let them have fallen…

Suddenly, a pile near the broken gate stirred, and an ash-covered head popped out, coughing. He caught a glint of scarlet, and saw that they were wearing glasses. Martin. Loud coughing from somewhere along the left side of the platform. Coughing, mixed with a lot of swearing. Definitely the Prince.

Suddenly, a fedora-donning Huntress bounded into sight towards Martin, confirming that Silverhawk, as well, was okay. The Prince limped into view from the left, he, too, covered in black soot, and glaring venomously at everything.

"Dude that was totally blazing!" Silverhawk screamed, skidding to a halt beside Martin on her knees, and hugging him. "Blazing! Frabjous! Awesome! TOTALLY THE MOST EPIC THING YOU'VE EVER DONE EVER!"

Beside him, the Queen staggered to her feet.

"Hey!" Ethan yelled down at them. All three heads turned in their direction. "Anyone want to explain the sudden teleportation?!"

"Well, it probably has something to do with the fact the Garden is condensed within normal space/time; where you're at in the Garden isn't where you're at in the – you know what, never mind, I'm losing you. I'll just write it up the Vanguard report." Martin yelled up at them from beside Silverhawk.

Ethan chuckled. Warlocks.


The stupid black sand was everywhere and Uldren hated it. He hated it with a passion. The slap rifle blast that had grazed his leg stung horribly, and that screeching the Heart had done had renewed his headache with a vengeance.

Silverhawk attempted to pull Martin to his feet after the Warlock's attempt to explain dimensional space/time to Ethan, but the young Guardian let out a pained yelp as she did so.

"Leg! Leg! Watch the leg!" he yelped, lifting his left leg in an attempt to keep the weight off of it. He ended up leaning on Silverhawk for support, which was almost comical, considering Martin was so much taller than she was. "I just had to say 'sprain', didn't I? It's like I cursed myself or something!"

"Well, what did you expect, getting thrown by a Minotaur? Reckless Warlock." Silverhawk huffed.

"Worrisome Hunter." He countered. Silverhawk grinned broadly at Uldren.

"You know, we make an awesome team! That's two problems the three of us have bagged together! Fireteam Dysfunctional 2, Darkness 0." She chirped braggingly.

"Get this through your thick little idiot skull; there is no 'we'. I hate you, unless I haven't made it clear enough by now." He snarled. He was so through with this woman. "This was shear convenience, Subject Zero, and if you dare show your face to me again after this, I will pull the trigger."

Cruel satisfaction shot through him when their expressions dropped at the name he called her.

"If you excuse me, I have an assassin to kill." He spat, turning away from them, ignoring the pain in his leg. If he was fast enough, he might still be able to catch Tay—

Mara stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. She'd climbed down the cliff somehow, while he was snarling at the idiots. How much had she heard?

"You will not go after Della Tay." This was not an order. It was law. Her eyes were tired, and they flickered towards his wounds briefly before meeting his gaze again. "We are returning to the Reef. You will have yourself tended to. And then we will address the problem further."

He clenched his fists. Tay was so close. She'd gone a step too far when she killed their mother. And there was always a part of him that thought her responsible for the death of his father. This… what she'd done this time went beyond everything, all of that. She'd tried to take his sister; the only family he had left. His worst nightmare was being put on the throne, because that would mean she was dead. He could watch the whole Reef destroyed, every solder under his command killed, he could watch his home burn, but he could not lose Mara.

This could be my only chance… This could be the day he claimed revenge. But the look in Mara's eyes was adamant. He would obey.

"Fine." He spat. But if they were to return home without killing Tay, he might as well stay by her side the whole time; no way was he leaving her alone after this. Della Tay always finished her bounties. Always.

Mara looked over his shoulder at the Martin and Silverhawk.

"Should you need tending, our doctors may be able to help you." She offered. He seriously hoped they declined.

"With all do respect, your genetics are very different from ours; your doctors may not have what they need to properly treat humans." Martin said. "The Tower will take care of us; Earth's closer anyway."

"Very well." The Queen relented, though her gaze lingered on his leg. Above them, in the red sky of mars, the sound of a ship breaking atmosphere boomed through the air. Uldren reached to his belt, pulling out a Crow beacon, and activated it. It was only a few minutes of awkward silence before the sight of an Awoken Assault ship greeted them; a rather familiar one, at that. And the Awoken extracted the Royal family swiftly, not daring to linger where Tay's people could be so close by.

The Cirrus? Wait… hadn't that ship been at the Royal docks? How had Petra gotten it out?

It lowered itself near the platform, and the ramp descended. Several Reef soldiers stormed out, Petra Venj at their head. Upon spotting Uldren, she ran forwards, yelling for her people to secure the area.

"How did you get through the barrier?" he asked as she approached, yelling over the wind from the Cirrus's engines.

"We used the brute force method." She told him. Aka, she blew it up. He read between the lines. No matter; the doors could be repaired. You had to give her credit for loyalty. Her one eye looked him and the Queen over.

"Tay was wounded, we managed to get out of the Black Garden; you can read in my report Venj. Set the course for home, keep an eye on the radars in case Tay decides to come after us." He told her. She nodded, and then looked at Silverhawk and Martin, and then at the Price twins, still on the cliffs. She regarded Martin.

"What happened to your face?" she yelled. He started turning a bit of a rosy color.

"Velociraptors." He said. At her raised eyebrow, the Queen spoke up.

"I do believe I will be adding information to that aforementioned report, Venj." She informed her.

"Do the Guardians need medical assistance? It looks like you've taken some heavy hits." Petra, after acknowledging the Queen asked, directing her gaze at Martin once more, her eye lingering on his bad leg.

"The Tower doctors will look us over!" Silverhawk told her, grinning. As she spoke, a roar from above heralded the arrival of the Wibbly-Wobbly. "We were totally blazing, by the way; you just missed it! Martin blew a thing up, and I was running circles around another thing, and then Uldren was doing a thing, too, but I didn't exactly see it but I'm sure it was blazing as well."

"Okay." Petra relented, still looking skeptical. Raising her voice, she addressed the Reef warriors she'd brought with her. "Let the Guardians clear out, sweep the area for any lingering threats, return to the Cirrus and prep the Galiots for fighter escort. Move!"

Uldren, supporting his sister and still ignoring the sting from his wounds, followed Petra aboard the Cirrus, not sparing a glance at the Guardians, though Mara nodded towards them in acknowledgment.

"You have my thanks, as do the twins. Should your travels take you to the Reef, know that you are welcome." She told them as they passed. Uldren didn't notice the wide, green, bespectacled eyes following him up the ramp, studying him, evaluating him. He didn't know that Martin Anton was currently trying to think of a way to get Uldren Sov to spill the beans on his source… because only Martin Anton had ever been told what Silverhawk had been called by Certech.

She had told him, one terrible night. Him, and only him. Uldren Sov had a source that he needed.

Not that the Prince knew this. All he knew was that his sister was at his side again; she was safe, for now. They were going home. Maybe he would sleep, or maybe the doctors would have to inject him with a sedative to get him to rest. His grip on her tightened. Nobody would take her away from him.

I swear it by our parent's blood.


Three Weeks Later…

Martin took the binoculars from Silverhawk in exasperation, rolling his eyes as he did so. He was really just tired of listening to her insist that he watch these 'looser Fallen bickering like an old married couple'.

He peered at them, zooming in, while Silverhawk added words to their conversation.

"'But Daniel, you said you loved me!'"

"'How could I love a beast like you? You never shave your armpits! You smell like rotten mayonnaise that's been left in the sun!'"

"'But, I thought you liked my perfume!'"

"'Perfume!?'"

Martin was barely able to control his giggles, trying to keep the binoculars steady. Suddenly, his eyes caught something branded onto the shoulder pad of one of the Fallen; a Vandal, who was arguing with a Baron. Both of them were from the re-made House of Wolves… or so it appeared at first.

He sucked in a sharp gasp of air. It—it can't be! He clapped a free, gloved hand over Silverhawk's mouth.

"Silverhawk, shush!" he hissed. He zoomed in farther. It is! Horror slammed into him at every angle. He looked up at his best friend, terror pounding through him.

"Silverhawk, that Vandal is wearing the Awoken Royal Crest! He's one of the Queen's personal Guards!" it had been a little over three weeks since their plunge into the Black Garden, which had nearly ended in disaster when they discovered that the Queen of the Awoken had been thrown into the Garden by the notorious assassin, Della Tay.

Him and Silverhawk had been in the Garden on a mission to kill its Heart. Though they didn't know it at the time, Della Tay had thrown a wrench in their plans; that wrench being the Queen of the Reef, whom Tay had kidnapped, according to sources, earlier that morning. Meanwhile, her brother, Prince Uldren Sov, had followed after Tay with a vengeance, and had met up with two other Guardians, the Prince brothers, who were most famous for killing Crota.

One brother had been wounded in the attack, the other guarding him and the Queen while Martin, Silverhawk, and, later, Uldren, attacked and killed the Heart. The Awoken arrived soon after, with Petra Venj at their head, hastily evacuating the royal siblings with extreme prejudice.

Martin had treated the wounded Alfie Price on board the Wibbly-Wobbly, and the Hunter had been treated further by the head Tower Doctor, Terra-27. His own leg and face wounds had long since healed, as had Silverhawk's shoulder, and after being confined to the Tower infirmary for so long, and enduring high praise and celebrations, they had both decided a sortie into the wilds of Venus was in order. Of course, they had run into something-or rather, someone-rather strange while they were in the hangar, getting ready to leave…

"So, then I told Andal, I said; 'kid, if you put whip cream into your father's boots, you'll be my hero. And if he does find out', I told him, ' I'll take credit. And there'll be pie in it for you if you do it.' So that's how I got revenge on Tevis for dyeing my cloak pink." Silverhawk was saying. Martin rolled his eyes, and then froze, catching sight of someone on the launch deck. He grabbed Silverhawk's shoulder. The height looked the same, the outline of their shape… could it be?

"Silverhawk." He alerted her, pointing towards the figure. She looked, and grinned.

"Is that who I think it is?" she asked out loud.

"Let's go check." He said. He would be lying if he said this strange woman didn't unnerve him. On Venus, she'd been speaking to both of them, but her gaze had been locked on him the whole time, as if trying to peel back the layers of his mind with the power of mere eyesight.

They descended the stairs. It was definitely her, there was no mistaking it now. Why didn't anybody else see her? Silverhawk winked at Martin, and stalked forwards with an exaggerated "I am sneaking" motion. However, the stranger turned her head, looking at the Huntress, before she could execute her plan.

"What are you doing?" she asked in her English lilt.

"Sneaking." Silverhawk responded in a perfect impression of Sméagol. Martin came up next to her, rolling his eyes. The stranger was roughly seven feet, and eight inches from them now.

"What are you doing?" Martin inquired, pointing a little.

She looked back at the Traveler, hanging silently over the City. It was brighter than normal… or maybe it was normal for the first time in centuries. It certainly looked different than it had when Martin was growing up. Aside from that, the air felt… warmer, somehow. Like something had gone right.

And something had. The Traveler was still here; they would endure. Survive. Perhaps, someday, though perhaps not in Martin's lifetime or many a century, they would thrive.

"You stopped one part of the story, Guardians. Started a new chapter." The stranger said, walking forwards a little towards the edge. "This isn't the end. More will come, wave by wave, crashing against the City's Light. Even the strongest cliff will sometimes crumble, wear with age as the water presses on. What matters, is how the raven flies when the time comes, what it swipes its talons at."

Martin and Silverhawk shared a confused look. Raven? What do birds have to do with anything? Perhaps it was some kind of metaphor, or riddle; a puzzle for him to solve later.

"What do ravens have to do with the City?" Silverhawk asked confusedly. The stranger looked at her.

"More than you know. More than your meant to know, right now." Her gaze turned to Martin, piercing him. "You're strange."

"I'd say the same thing about you." Martin replied, shifting his weight off his bad leg, which still got occasional pains in it, uneasily.

"You know more than you think, but you never dare to look." She pondered, almost to herself. "I suppose the broken compass will guide you when you need it the most."

Martin's hand shot to his belt, to the small pouch near his father's knife. How does she know about that!? There were special compasses, made and carried usually by Hunters, that always pointed towards the Traveler. Martin had obtained one from his father, moments before his death—

Smooth glass in his palm, smoke choking the air, voice calling his name. He forced the memories back.

"Wha-what do you mean by that? How do you know my compass is broken!?" he demanded, a thorn of fear in his spine.

"I know a lot of things that shouldn't be known. Like how mountains can fall. How a crow's wings can be broken. How living fire can bring life and death." She told them, turning towards the edge. "There is another wave coming. There is always another wave coming, another part of the story. The end of one chapter marks the start of another. An end, starts a beginning. I wish I had an end."

With that, she walked off the edge, evaporating like smoke in mirrors. Martin shuttered. What could it mean?

"OH, THANK YOU FOR BEHING SO CRYPTIC AND HELPFUL! DON'T BE A STRANGER!" Silverhawk yelled.

That aside, Silverhawk's wild-longing had to be satiated, and Martin just wanted to escape the impressed looks people got whenever they saw him. Nobody had ever thought he was all that extraordinary before. The other Warlocks always said he was too much like a Hunter, and most Hunter's said he was too much a Warlock. His biggest problem was going off into scientific rants whenever things got awkward, which only furthered his social problems.

So far, Variks, a Fallen from the Reef, was the only one who hadn't minded his rants; actually stopped him from leaving after cutting himself off from a long rant about an old experiment gone wrong, actually asked him to tell him more about it. He wondered if Variks was in on this Wolf plan.

No, he betrayed Skolas. If anything, Variks would be in an incredible amount of danger. He hated the Wolves, and was a prime source of Fallen intelligence. He would be a prime target.

"We have to warn the Reef!" he told her, putting the binoculars down. Petra Venj was a Reef War hero... she'd taken down the Silent Fang. Terrible images flashed through his head. They'll go after her for sure!

"Right!" Silverhawk agreed, seeming gung-ho, hopping from one foot to the other in anticipation. "You go warn the Reef, I'll follow the big guy and see where the bigger guys are, and maybe I'll set Tevis loose on em! Cayde did say he was here on Venus somewhere!"

"Silverhawk, please, please don't do anything crazy!" he begged. "You've heard the rumors about Skolas coming back, don't try to take on a Kell, please!"

"Pft, take on a Kell? Dude, I'd only go after a Kell if I was really, really angry." she reassured him with the usual air of Hunter cockiness. He could feel his hands shaking. He didn't want to leave her to her own devices. Aside from being her best friend and brother, he was Silverhawk's voice of reason. How many times, over the years, had he talked her out of doing something that was borderline suicidal?

He stood up, shaking slightly. "P-please, Heather. D-d-don't do anything you know I would disapprove o-of. Don't g-get yourself killed, a-a-alright?"

"Roger that, sir!" she gave him a tiny solute, sticking her tongue out as she did so. Hesitating, Martin Peregrine Anton turned and ran back towards where they had landed their ships. Leaves lashed at his robes, his face. Water splashed onto him, obscuring his vison when it collected in droplets on his glasses.

Have to warn them. He didn't want Petra or Variks to die. He might actually be able to summon up a little bit of sadness if Uldren was killed, and not just because the Prince seemed to have another piece to the puzzle of a cure to Certech's monstrous experiments. And the Queen had seemed fairly nice in the Garden, a bit of a change from the benevolent lady staring him down in the Awoken palace. Not to mention, her death would spark chaos; he could only imagine what things in the Reef had been like when she was taken by Tay.

He was suddenly assaulted by the image of Petra Venj getting skewered by one of the Fallen guards, and he tripped, barely recovering himself in time, his heart pounding in his chest, screaming out against the gruesome thought.

Have to warn them. He thought again. I have to stop them being killed!

And if they didn't believe him? Well, Martin Anton was a terrible fighter. He didn't think he was particularly brave; the whole Minotaur thing had been sort of 'spur of the moment', and he's been more focused on scientific execution than the physical danger part of his plan, right up until he realized he was falling, and the tendons in his knee had made an unhealthy popping sound as he hit the ground.

The only things he was any good at was getting in the way, thinking, solving puzzles, and keeping Silverhawk from doing something crazy. But if the Reef didn't believe him, there was another thing Martin Anton was good at, aside from giving convincing evidence.

Sounding scared.


Whew, exciting weekend, eh? I was going to post on Saturday, but that horrible, stupid storm kept making the lights flicker, and killing my internet, and doing all kinds of horrible things and being generally creepy. Glad it's over now(mostly). I was going to make this chapter longer, I swear, but I just kind of... bleh. I hope you guys enjoyed that first glimpse at Padfoot; I'm writing Wolfsbane right now, and I'm pouring my heart into the little guy. I think you guys are totally going to love him; he's just precious. Amberstar made "awwwww" sounds when she read him, so you know he's good.

Order and Chaos: Actually, remember when I mentioned in chapter nine, they were fighting the second Progeny when Uldren arrived. The third one died when the Heart blew up.

UlktamateGaming: Hold on-*checks Fever reviews* Dang, you haven't reviewed this series since, like, chapter one of Fever! Glad to have you back with us, sir.

alienraptor: I don't really do legacy crucible much.

Matteoarts: Hehe, I love writing them. That line at the beginning was actually a reference to N.C.I.S., when one of the characters kicks a malfunctioning printer and tells it to die.

Wow, only four reviews. Actually, it's not surprising; the storms/hurricanes everywhere is getting recently was probably fussing up everyone's internet. Anyway, hope to see a lot of reviews before I post the epilogue. Aka, the juiciest epilogue you have ever read. I really can't wait to kick it off; I've had it written up for weeks, and I can't wait to see you guys' reaction to it. It's going to be great, it's going to start everything, it's going to be frabjous; just you see.

And here we have Martin going into hero mode again. Next stop for him, is Wolfsbane!

Next Time: Fire is coming. There's a storm on the horizon...

Cheers!^^