Chapter Fifteen
My eyes fell on an Unggoy, with deep burns on his chest and neck. Like something hot had drilled into his skin. A laser, maybe?
I staggered back. "What…?"
"Sentinels." John's voice was dark with hatred.
"I can't believe…" My voice was suddenly serious. "This means the Covenant is trying to get into the tower. They're trying to reach the terminus."
"Can you feel any more?"
"Just the Hunters," I assured him.
"How far up?"
I tapped into the tower's system. "There's an access point for the terminus that's pretty close. About...three more floors; it's an elevator."
He pulled his rifle down from his back. "Let's move."
I followed him along the pathway, which had a paperclip turn at the top leading to another ramp. My limp was growing progressively worse - the pain harder to ignore, too - but I forced myself to keep up with John.
He was walking up the ramp slowly, with his rifle out and ready to shoot. He'd even nabbed some extra ammo for it, so that he wouldn't have to find a new weapon so quickly.
The ramp was at an awkward angle, further aggravating my ankle. I pushed on. Like John had said earlier, we had a job to do. I would have to be okay.
We were two floors up. The Hunters were right above us.
My ankle gave out. I staggered, catching my footing with no small amount of pinwheeling. There was an adamant complaint from my ankle; it would give out again soon if I didn't take a rest.
But I couldn't rest now.
John was staring at me. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah." I straightened up. "I-I'm good."
"Tawny-"
"Oh, the Sentinels killed one of the Hunters." I'd felt its death above us. Thousands of deaths, yet at the same time only one.
"Good. I was about to tell you; you're sitting this fight out."
"What? John, I can-"
"I'm not letting you fight." He crossed the room in two strides, gripping my shoulders. "That's final."
I could feel his conviction. He really wouldn't let me.
I relented. "Okay. But if you're in trouble, I-I'm going to help you."
He didn't respond. He just let go of me, trailing his hand down my arm, and resumed our track for the terminus.
We were on the third level up. To our right was a drop off, cliffs and nature visible from the balcony ledge. To our left was another platform with a large doorway. Covenant corpses surrounded us, including one massive, limp Hunter on the platform.
One Hunter was still alive and trying to defend itself from the barrage of Sentinels.
John turned to me. "Find somewhere secure. Do not engage unless you have to."
"Okay. Please be safe."
He pulled a grenade out. "Don't worry about me."
I slid down against a Covenant barricade. My right leg was out in front of me.
I tried to twist the ankle, but that caused a particularly painful reaction that lanced up my leg. So I held it still.
Some garbled noise filled my helmet. It was a voice. A comm. From Song of the East!
I heard a massive explosion above me. Plasma fire. Some sort of inhuman screeching.
One last explosion.
John walked down the ramp, wiping pink goo off of his arm. "Secure."
"Oh, John, check this out. A-another comm came through; I'll play it for you."
I held up my hand. A hologram appeared over my palm; a blue square. The video feed was still completely static, but some of the audio was understandable.
"...Forerunner shield world reported...is...the artifact…"
John held a hand out to help me up. "Sounded like he said 'artifact'."
"It did." I pulled myself up and refused to acknowledge my ankle's complaints. "Maybe the Covenant isn't after a fleet. Maybe they're looking for something else."
"Where's the terminus?"
"It should be right through that door." I nodded to the doorway that the Sentinels had been protecting from the Covenant.
John led the way through the door. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the low lighting inside.
We walked through a large room with metal folds hanging down above us on either side. I could feel the ancient, hallowed history that had taken place in this room; on this planet.
Everything here was older than any of our history.
Humans had been around for longer than this, but the Halo array had wiped most of them out. Not this place, though. It remained unaffected by the array, since it wasn't alive or sentient.
This place was older than the entirety of modern human history. That knowledge was incredibly disorienting to me.
We walked onto the elevator, and I set it to take us up to the terminus.
"You're sure you're okay?" John looked down at me.
I was leaning heavily against John, trying to take the weight off of my ankle. It was unintentional.
When I realized what I was doing I straightened up. "Yeah, I'm fine."
His doubt was almost physically tangible.
The elevator stopped. We walked out onto a narrow metal bridge. On either side of the bridge was a host of strange pillars. At the end of the bridge was a console.
John looked down at the pillars, more curious than anything.
My eyes, however, fell on the steep cavern beneath the walkway. It seemed to go down forever. On this walkway, both narrow and without rails, my fear was that one of us would fall.
Theoretically we could both fly, of course, but no one said fear had to be rational.
I walked up to the console, pressing my hand against it. As soon as my mind entered it, our platform separated from the bridge.
It rose up and away from the bridge, taking us towards the center of the massive room.
"Okay, I need to find the right place. There are portal terminuses all over the planet, on several different layers, so it's hard to find...what?" I pulled my hand away from the console.
John shifted. "What is it?"
"I-I'm trying to get to the Song's location." I pulled up a hologram. "When I touched the closest terminus to it, the symbol for 'Reclaimer' popped up."
"Humanity. That's got to be the Song." John looked at the round symbol.
I nodded. "Probably."
"Can you get us there?"
"Y-yeah, I think so." I messed with a few controls.
Metal began moving and shrieking. The pillars were rising up around us.
John turned, his rifle out. "Tawny?"
"That wasn't me." I pressed my back against the console.
"What is it?"
"I-I don't know. It's like-"
On the pillars that had risen to our level, huge bug-like constructs appeared. They looked familiar. And they seemed agitated.
John's voice was tense. "Set a waypoint out of the tower."
I turned back to the console. My hands were shaking; I could feel the malicious intent radiating off of the beings. A sick desire to rip our bodies apart.
A portal opened to my left.
I shuffled away from it, my eyes wide. "That wasn't me either."
"Let's move." John grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the portal.
I got a closer look at one of the beings. It looked like Warden, I realized. He'd told me what he was...what was the word?
Oh, yeah, I remembered.
"Prometheans?" I couldn't keep the incredulous tone out of my voice.
"Jump!" John pushed me towards the portal. I all but fell into it.
My vision reappeared as I landed harshly on the ground on my stomach.
We were in a metal hallway. Forerunner in design.
John landed behind me. "Tawny?"
"I'm okay." I pushed up to my hands and knees, then my feet.
My ankle tried to roll again, but I was quick to catch it and take some weight off.
"What were those things?" John ghosted a hand across the back of my shoulders to make sure I was alright. "They looked like the Warden."
"He-he said he was a Promethean. I think those are the same thing."
"They didn't act like the Warden."
I shook my head. "No, they didn't. They were so twisted; full of anger."
John put a comforting hand on my head. "Let's find out where we are."
"I...yeah, let's go."
I'd almost asked if we could take a break. Then I remembered; the Covenant was here. They were after something. We had to stop them; I wasn't about to let my ankle doom humanity.
We walked down the short hall. The door opened automatically for us, revealing an inexplicably massive room.
Not a room...a core. The core of the planet.
And in the center, a huge floating orb. Two purple beams of light converged from either side, covering the orb.
That orb filled me with inexplicable dread.
There was a ramp ahead of us, leading up to a platform. At the very end of the platform was a console.
I walked up to it, tentatively brushing against it with my mind.
John glanced around. "Where's the Song?"
"I...I don't know. This is where the cartographer said it was."
"So what happened?"
I closed my eyes and delved into the console. Maybe it would hold some answers.
I pointed up to the orb in the center of the core, the one that filled me with dread. "That's a satellite...and it's streaming the Song's transmissions, m-making them louder. What we've been hearing all this time, it wasn't a direct signal. It was this."
I immediately felt out into the satellite.
"B-but it's not strong enough for us to respond. Not with...there are two beam pylons blocking an-any outgoing transmissions." I pointed to the twin beams of purple light that erupted from opposite sides of the core and interlocked around the satellite.
John looked from one end of the core to the other. The beams were directly across from each other, and both of them were ninety degrees from us.
"We could take them out. Can you get us there?" he asked.
"I can try to open a portal. I-it's worth a shot."
He nodded. "Do it."
I closed my eyes and entered the system with my mind; I didn't know how to open a portal manually.
"Okay." My eyes opened as a portal appeared to our left. "I can't get us to the beams, b-but I can get us close."
"Let's move."
He jumped down from the platform. I followed, floating myself down in a bubble of ultrasound. I flew through the portal just ahead of him.
We were in another hallway. There was no door opposite us; it was open. A slanting pathway. I could see the metal of the floor turning into rocky ground.
John took in our surroundings. "How close are we to the first pylon?"
I started walking for the end of the hallway. "I don't know. I know how to get there, though."
"Lead the way." He moved his rifle to point me forward.
We walked together out of the hallway. I looked up, seeing the massive beam pylon. "Wow. There it is."
"That's not very far," John noted. "Let's go."
We were surrounded on either side by rocky canyon walls. Ahead of us was a clearing of sorts, with a few small buttes in the center.
As we walked towards the clearing I grabbed John's elbow. "There's something there."
"What?" He pushed me behind him and began scanning our surroundings with his rifle.
"They just went away. They...it was almost like they were Prometheans. But-but they were different. More primitive."
And more bloodthirsty.
"Keep an eye out." John continued forward, his head on a swivel.
He led the way through the clearing and into another narrow pathway. I could feel how tense he was; we were vulnerable here. Someone could fire down on us from the tops of the canyon walls and we would be all but helpless.
There was another clearing ahead.
My eyes widened. "They're back."
"Stay behind me." John moved into the mouth of the clearing.
A host of large four-legged constructs slinked towards us. Like Prometheans, but animalistic.
One of them screeched, opening its four-jawed mouth like a demented flower, and pounced towards us. John took it out in a single shot, reducing it to scrap metal.
There were several more crawling down the canyon walls on the far end of the clearing. Two were already on the ground, firing guns from their rear hips.
I threw a hand out and took hold of the ones still slinking down the wall. I threw them across the clearing. Their bodies broke against the ground, weapons falling from their carcasses.
But more replaced them. As if they were springing up from the ground.
oOOOOo
Author's Note: Hi guys! I know I updated on Wednesday, but the gap between then and now feels like much longer than three days for some reason.
Anywho I'm writing a collection of short stories about Tawny, but some of them contain characters and plot points that haven't been introduced yet so I may not be posting them for a while.
In the meantime, if any of you have a request for a short story about Tawny, something from her backstory or anything, let me know!
And as always, I love you guys! :)
