Chapter 2: Echtra

— a shape a vortex a tunnel a rabbit-hole a path a road a trail a river a current —

Jaxson shook the Vex geometry from his eyes and splayed out his hand. The blades of his Splicer gauntlet whirred. "I've almost got it."

Quantis's bow twanged. A Goblin limply fell beside them, an arrow lodged in its milk-pack. Radiolaria leaked out of the ragged hole. "Yeah yeah, great! Can you hurry it up?!"

Another shape, a bigger shape, loomed over them. Arthur's three-burst cannon barked. Paracausal rounds ripped through the Minotaur's shield and burrowed into its brassy hull. The construct shrieked and stumbled. A follow-up Solar swipe brought it down; Arthur moved on, flicking jets of hungry soulfire with one hand and firing his outlawed gun with the other. The Dark moved in him, as it moved in Jaxson, but so did the Light — and it was a startlingly perplexing sensation. He could hardly concentrate with it so close. But he did. He had to.

Mithrax's voice, husky and urgent, filled his ears. "Yes! The Network dances — and the Vex swarm to still it! They come for you, Guardians! Ready yourselves!"

"On it!" The blades retracted. Jaxson tore his Recluse out of his Peacekeeper holster and unloaded half a mag's worth of Void-rounds into a Hobgoblin's face. Metal burned and melted down over the construct's front. The single red optic shattered. Its chassis came apart at the seams. Radiolaria splashed. Beautiful. Righteous. Just.

A Harpy shrieked and came for him, tentacles lashing. Quantis disassembled it with a few lazy flicks of her slim sword, separating hull from core and cabling from pseudo-organs. It was spectacular to behold. Another pair of constructs, Goblins both, marched with slap rifles firing. Omnibull lashed out and cracked each of them beneath the weight of his huge, slab-shaped and purple-edged sword. He carried on, charge continuing, and threw himself into a regiment that had only just asserted itself into the present.

The steady buzz of Avaris's slug-thrower killed in plenty and, as a result, drew attention. Vex came for her. Pyrrhic stalked them in turn, tearing them apart with inhuman savagery. Nothing escaped his all-seeing gaze. Not with all those eyes on him.

The Vex kept attacking. Kept pressing. Kept drawing closer. Jaxson emptied the rest of his submachine gun's mag and shoved it back into its holster. Ghost dropped him his axe and he caught it, gripping the haft in both hands. Flames wreathed the blades. He set to work.

Finally, finally, after a quick surge in slaughter, they caught a brief lull in activity. Jaxson used it to crack into the imperfect Vex node with his gauntlet, breaking past firewalls and mindtraps. He could feel things, bigger and meaner than him, swimming all around. The Vex were watching. Calculating.

Ailing.

Quantis was right. They were on edge. Something was driving them into a frenzy. Him rifling through their brainspace didn't help matters. Not that he cared; he had a job to do. The gauntlet around his wrist whirred, constricted, thrummed, and buzzed. It had caught a handhold: a stray signal trailing behind the tapestry of the Vex network like a loose thread. Jaxson tightened his hold on it, visualized the connection between HERE and THERE and flushed it into the reality. A portal yawned open, splitting rock and soil as if it wasn't even there.

"What the hell?!" Quantis yelped and skipped away. A Minotaur rushed her, only to find itself pinned down by three armour-piercing arrows. She glanced at Jaxson. "That for us?!"

"Yeah!" Jaxson crashed a fist into a Harpy's optic and beheaded a teleporting Goblin. He raised his battleaxe into the air. "Everyone! To me!"

The air within was stale — no, it wasn't just that, it was artificial and simulated. Not true air. Just as the network wasn't truly a space of material existence.

"Weird," Arthur said, pushing a floating blue cube out of the way. Their path ahead was a discordant thing of perfect geometry. Nothing struck out at them. Everything was unusually calm.

Jaxson strode ahead. "We need to hurry."

"Yes!" Mithrax said hastily. His voice filtered through the speakers of their helms in a crackling manner. Their connection to the real world was fractured and imperfect. "Please, Guardians, hurry! My people cannot fend against the Vex forever!"

"What can we expect?" Quantis asked. "Wyverns? Gorgons? Gatelords?"

"I do not know. The Vex are hiding themselves from me — just as they hide Irxan from me."

"What's Irxan?"

"She is of my Sacred Splicers. I sent her to meet with this crew after they pledged themselves to House Light."

"We'll find her," Jaxson vowed. A light cut through the twilight colours of the network from ahead of them. "We're almost through. Ready up!"

Omnibull charged ahead, wreathed in Solar flames. The rest of them followed suit, amassing their Light for a burst onto the battlefield.

The last time Jaxson had visited the Simiks-Fel, it had been up in the air and fully functional. Then again, the reason for the visit had been an assassination attempt on Draksis, Kell of Winter. Now he was running a mission to the ruined Ketch not to fight Eliksni, but to save them. The irony was not lost on him.

The Vex had the mountain trail down to the Ketch lined with troops and weapon platforms. There were Wyverns and Gorgons both, and in heavy numbers too, all spitting heavy rounds and blunting his team's charge. Minotaurs backed up the fearsome defense with aggressive counterattacks that could have been meant solely to waste the Guardians' Light and ammunition. It was tough going from there on out.

Jaxson slid behind a boulder and held out his gauntlet. He could feel the threads of the network moving — ever shifting, ever transforming — and desperately searched for something useful. He found the conflux streaming visual data back to the network, feeding it statistics and observations, and he crushed it in his palm. The defending Vex constructs buckled under the sudden confusion. Omnibull and Avaris pressed forth, one alight with Solar and the other with Arc. They crashed and hammered at brass hulls, scattering Goblin ranks and pulverizing Gorgon positions. Arthur was right behind them, weaving towards the Wyverns and setting forth his dark Hive magic. Soulfire greedily ate into the dedicated combat units like a fast-acting rot.

Quantis covered them. She struck at high-ranking Vex units, those marked by gold plating and pronounced head crests; she sought to further disrupt order within the collective.

Pyrrhic watched. He drew a grenade launcher out of transmat. Jaxson almost told him to get stuck in, to help out, but something stopped him. The weapon was weird. The chamber was transparent and there was something inside, something with moving insectoid limbs. The Exo fired — right at the ground. Jaxson lifted his hand in a vain attempt to take cover from the blast, but there was no blast — just explosives skittering past on spider-legs.

"The hell?!" He heard himself yell.

The little explosives swarmed past Quantis, past Arthur, and right into the mass of Vex metal barring their way down. Pyrrhic strode forward, uncaring of the danger. A ray of Vex plasma kissed his cheek, ripping the paint from his steel. He didn't react in the slightest.

Jaxson cursed, leapt out of cover in front of the suicidal Hunter and planted a Light-formed barricade down in front of them. His grip on the Vex datastreams slipped; what constructs remained discovered they could see again. Their guns became uncannily accurate once more. Jaxson stood to his full height, held out his gauntlet, and forced their shots to freeze in the air. The Vex kept firing; he struggled to contain it all.

Omnibal smashed his dissipating maul into a Wyvern's head. A Hobgoblin's needle-shot lanced through his skull the moment his Super ended. Avaris yelled into their comms, "Guardian down!" and set up covering fire with her monstrous slug-thrower. Quantis tossed down a smoke bomb and reappeared by Omnibull's Ghost, flushing it with her own Light for a rez.

Pyrrhic almost walked out of cover. Jaxson caught him with his free hand and growled, "Stay!"

"The Vex are too numerous," the Exo said with not a shred of emotion. "Direct assault will provide only limited success."

"Shut up and stay here!" Jaxson looked over the battlefield. "Give us covering fire. You know how to do that, right?"

Pyrrhic didn't nod, didn't even blink — not with his primary optics anyways. His seven other eyes did plenty of that. His grenade de-materialized. A barebones linear fusion rifle of Ikelos design took its place. With a reluctant nod, Jaxson tightened his hold on his axe and sprinted out into the open. He leapt up and extended his time in the air with a burst of propelling Light, then crashed down over Quantis's and the recently rezzed Omnibull's position with a Ward of Dawn arrayed around them.

"Thanks!" Quantis called to him. Her quiver was near empty. Omnibull afforded them both a mute nod of acknowledgement before popping out of the bubble with his sword in hand. Avaris briefly passed through to the other side, her weapon coated in empowering Void energy. A shrill, heated shriek marked the odd shot from Pyrrhic. His rifle's high-powered rounds bounced as they hit, tearing through multiple Vex constructs. It was fast becoming a mess of metal and radiolaria.

But the Vex were not helpless. They fearlessly met the onslaught with ruthless offensives of their own. More Wyverns were popping into existence, covering the lesser units with their energy wings and peppering Jaxson's team with dendritically-patterned Void blasts. They were too large, too aggressive, and too powerful for his liking. They soaked up punishment better than any other unit would and kept on going.

Jaxson despaired. And his despair was answered with a pulse from within — from something separate from his Light. It was wrong. It was Dark. He hated it.

He hated the Vex more.

He shot out of the Ward and cracked a crystal-coated fist into a Wyvern's front. The metal buckled beneath his touch. The construct froze and shattered within an instant. Jaxson turned his charge into an avalanche. When he struck ground, his power spread outwards, freezing entire formations. An accompanying Chaos Reach from somewhere behind — Arthur, he somehow knew — finished off the weakened army. But it still wasn't enough.

The network surged with purpose. It had no choice.

Their secured comms channel pinged with a forced connection. A frenzy of new, alien chatter met them — only for Jaxson to realize, a second later, that an Eliksni voice was speaking to him. "-bearers, we see you! Hold your position, we will open the way for you!"

Jaxson tossed down a shard of Stasis and let it grow into a thick wall of cold crystal. "Everyone back!"

Half a minute later and scorch rounds ripped up the mountainside, tossing Vex and rock in all directions. All bar Pyrrhic took cover from the cascading debris within the deteriorating Ward of Dawn. The last member of their team was still up the trail some ways, casually firing into clouds of fire and dust right ahead.

"Those are Walker rounds," Arthur noted aloud. Jaxson grimly extinguished the Dark in his hands; he had come to the same conclusion. "Our refugees aren't quite so helpless."

Omnibull was staring at them both, optics hard and metal jaw clenched. He'd seen the Stasis at work.

Dammit.

The Eliksni barrage was not long lasting, but it did the trick; it opened the way to them. A couple of Vex still persisted here and there, yet at large they were broken. Jaxson felt the network growl. It was gearing up to rectify its loss with another army.

"We need to get down there!" Jaxson announced. "Now! Avaris, cover us! Quantis, get Pyrrhic!"

"Right."

"On it!"

Quantis disappeared. Avaris stomped ahead of them and shot down every red-eyed thing she saw. Jaxson ran even further ahead, flicking his axe to crush a Hobgoblin on the way. He caught a glimpse of the three Walkers from which the hazy missile-trails emanated. They were at the bottom of the valley, weathering a Vex assault of their own. Wire rifle rounds and shrapnel fire flicked past the legs of the automated tanks from loose wreckage that was once part of the larger Ketch. The Eliksni were under siege. A few bodies were already scattered around the valley basin.

Arthur darted past him, Solar wings forming. The Warlock took off and sent careening blades of pure flame down on the machines. Jaxson onlined his communicator. "We're here! Mithrax?!"

There was no answer. At least not from that end.

"Lightbearers!" The other Eliksni chimed in. "Did Misraaks send you?"

"Yeah. Gather your people."

"It is already done. Come, quickly; our war machines will shield us for now."

Jaxson turned about, hefted his axe, and waited. Arthur, Avarivs, and Omnibull passed him. The Exo slowed and blinked at the sight of Walkers and armed Vandals. Quantis and Pyrrhic-12 arrived only moments later, right out of thin air. The former stopped beside Jaxson, following his line of sight up the mountain. Flashes of lightning dotted the slope. Soulless machines of silver and brass marched out, guns at the ready. There were more Wyverns too. Why was it always Wyverns?

"Jaxson!"

He turned around. Arthur was waving him over. There were a pair of Vandals and a Captain standing beside him, all taller than the Warlock — and the Warlock was not a short guy. The Captain raised one of its upper arms. "Velask, Lightbearers! Come save Eliksni? For Misraakskel?"

"That's us." Jaxson walked over, keeping a hand by his gun and an eye on the mountain. The Vex had stopped moving. They were just staring down at them with hundreds of blood-red optics. It was mildly concerning. He touched Omnibull's shoulder as he passed him, as the Exo was halfway in a battle stance. It only caused the Sunbreaker to bristle ever further.

At least it took his attention off the Eliksni.

The Captain drew two knives and performed a... oh, the word was on the tip of his tongue. It was a...

"That's an irellis," Arthur whispered to him. Yes. That. "It means an armistice. Neither he nor his crew will attack us. They are honour-bound not to."

"Good to know," Jaxson murmured. He raised his voice. "We're here to get you out. How many of your people are there?"

The Captain raised a lower arm. His — didn't Arthur say it was a him? — lipless mouthparts were unsuited for speaking English, but he made the effort all the same. "Slow, huuuman. Devrek no hear."

Was Devrek his name? He wasn't the one who spoke to them on comms, that much was clear. The other one had spoken fluently. Jaxson looked around, but none of the gathered Vandals or Dregs were talking to him. Focusing instead on the matter at hand, he held up one finger, then two, then three. "How many Eliksni?"

"Ta'da bo?" Arthur helpfully translated.

The Captain, who bore old Winter armour cast in sloppy Dusk colours, perked up. His eyes brightened. "Ah. Seven-seven-seven-three."

Jaxson frowned.

"Is that multiplication," Avaris asked, "or addition?" She still stood with her Cabal weapon at the ready, trained on the Vex lurking above their position.

"Sweet Traveler help us if it's multiplication," Quantis muttered.

Arthur laughed uneasily. "It's addition. Twenty-four."

Jaxson looked around. There were hardly even ten Eliksni present. "Where's the rest?"

Devrek narrowed his inner eyes. Jaxson didn't know what it meant. The big Eliksni cast an upper hand behind him. "No-fight."

"Civilians," Arthur reported. "They have civilians with them."

"Much-machines!"

"And they got Shanks. Awesome."

"Et kelekh'i."

"And... children? They have children."

Jaxson grimaced. He couldn't help glancing back up at the silent ranks of Vex. After a pause, he turned back and looked around again. "What about... Where's Mithrax's guy? The Splicer?"

Arthur nodded and translated, saying, "Da Irxan?"

The Captain pointed past them.

"What the fu-!" Omnibull shouted from somewhere behind them. Jaxson twirled around, axe afire. On the hull of one of the Walkers crouched a towering Eliksni Captain, of height or maybe even bigger than Devrek, but it wasn't just the size of it that caught their attention. The alien had four black horns sprouting from its dark helmet. Its four eyes were red and the skin around was deathly pale. Piping along the back of its neck and on one shoulder filtered a grainy red-and-black substance.

It was a Splicer. A Devil Splicer.

"Holy shit!" Quantis recoiled, arrow already fitted to her bow.

The Splicer lowered its wire rifle and held up its upper arms. "Nama da'hu! Peace, Lightbearers!"

Omnibull raised his auto rifle all the same. The watching Eliksni snarled. Jaxson, acting on automatic, put himself between the Exo Titan and the Devil. His eyes never left the cyborg creature. Its augments looked surface level only, but he knew — he knew — that the SIVA was there for more than for decoration.

Jaxson clutched his axe ever tighter. The Devil noticed and glanced at his weapon. Its four eyes narrowed. "Iron Lord? You... You are Young Wolf."

Its voice crackled more than what was the Eliksni norm. He found himself nodding. "And you're a-"

"Splicer," it said quickly, "of House Light, eia?" It added as an afterthought: "The Light provides."

It slipped onto the ground beside them, standing at its full height. The Splicer stood a full metre higher than him. It looked terrifying. In that regard it was no different to the throngs of cyborgs he'd fought with in the Plaguelands almost half-a-decade previous. It tossed its rifle onto a magnetic lock on its back and indicated itself with an upper hand. "I am Irxan. You work for Misraakskel too?"

"With Mithrax usually," Avaris corrected. She didn't sound all that fazed by what she saw. She was so very alone in that. "But I guess you could say for Mithrax in this case." She turned around, ever vigilant where the Vex were concerned. Her slug-thrower looked comically oversized in her hands, having been designed with hulking Colossi in mind. But hey, to each their own.

Jaxson's own was trying very hard not to give into the instinct that said enemy. Eliksni was one thing, Devil Splicer quite another. He felt a hand at his elbow. Quantis. "Hey, uh, kid? Can we settle this later? The Vex are freaking me out."

It was the Splicer who was freaking him out, but... Jaxson exhaled. The Splicer, Irxan, stepped back. It mercifully gave him the space to breathe again. The sight of SIVA augments was giving him a visceral, animal reaction.

"Saladin's going to pissed," Arthur muttered.

Pyrrhic strolled forward. The Splicer froze up. As alien as her features were, the expression of distaste was universal.

"Huuuman?" Devrek questioned.

Jaxson turned around. "Get your people. We're leaving. Now."

The Winterling barked at one of his warriors. The Vandal took one of its friends with it as it scurried back into the half-buried wreckage of the Ketch's portside. A whole bunch of clicks emanated from the hole in the thick, scorched metal hull. Jaxson turned about and refocused on his gauntlet. The blades extended, working like nets to catch hold of slippery Vex signals.

Quantis's hand left him. She remained by his side, however. He was thankful for that.

It took him time to form a portal. The gauntlet drew in latent Light in the air all around, and through it he was able to manifest himself in the Vex network, but Eliksni were not Light. Removing them from the Vex trap necessitated a less smooth, and safe, process.

"We're going to enter a real-er version of the network," Jaxson told them — his team and whatever aliens understood English (which wasn't many). A collection of terrified Eliksni — plus two Servitors — had been gathered close to the Walkers. Some of them held squirming, chirping hatchlings. "Think of it like what pieces of reality the Vex chipped away to take for themselves. Islands of physical presence in the sea of non-matter."

"How dangerous?" Quantis asked.

Jaxson winced. "Worse than how we'd normally do it. The Vex can fight us in the network as data-given-form, but this... this'll be the real them." He cleared his throat. "We'll need transports at the end. Clear whatever cargoholds your ships have when we arrive, 'cause I wouldn't put it past the Vex to follow."

"What about while we're going through?" Arthur inquired. He had become the unofficial translator between them and the refugees. Unfortunately, the sight of his soulfire-wreathed bracers had earned him few friends among the Eliksni. They kept their distance from him and only ever spoke with short, curt sentences. "It's their domain."

"It's ours," Jaxson reasoned, "for while I'm in there at least. I'll be able to stop them from doing anything... weird."

"Good. What about the less-weird stuff? Like shooting at us?"

"Not much I can do there. Take the Walkers, I guess."

"Walkers?" Arthur asked incredulously. "Into the Vex network?"

"Uh, yeah? The armour'll protect the civilians. And the armaments..."

"Oh, I know. I just want you to realize how out-there it sounds." Arthur leaned back, shaking his head. "Traveler above..."

"Why not bring your ships here?" The Devil Splicer suddenly asked. Her voice was deep and unnatural, even for an Eliksni.

Quantis awkwardly twiddled with her bow's metal-weave string. "Can't get a signal out. Vex are blotting everything."

"I see." Irxan slowly nodded. It was strange to see one of her kind not in the midst of yelling alien obscenities at him. The casual body language looked wrong on her. He kept expecting her to open fire or to draw her sword and try to gut him. Neither happened. He couldn't say he was comfortable with the deceptive calm, however.

Was this how people like Saint felt when they saw even normal Eliksni?

The Splicer spoke up again — but in her Low Speak language, not English. Devrek and his warriors listened, then shivered with discomfort. Eventually, the Winter Captain looked at Jaxson and resignedly said, "Eia. We go."

He wasn't much fond of it either, but it was either tunnel through the unknown or facing the unending army stationed around the valley — not to mention how many machines would be waiting for them in the Ember caves themselves.

Jaxson extended his gauntlet and set to work.

"Whoa, back!" Omnibull snarled. "I said back!"

"I can assist!" Irxan snapped back. Jaxson tensed as the Devil's shadow fell over him. A gauntlet not totally unlike his own had been attached to one of her lower hands. She still carried her wire rifle, clasped with her prominent arms, but at least the barrel was pointed away from him. "I can assist," she repeated, more slowly.

Jaxson reluctantly nodded. He returned to his task, sifting through signals like so many towering reeds. He was careful not to cut himself on them. He felt — more than saw or heard — the Splicer join him. Her presence was starkly different to his own, Lightless though nonetheless a defter hand at splicing than he was. It was like watching a dark shape flitting beneath open water, not knowing whether it could be a ravenous shark or something as harmless as a sunfish.

Then she surfaced, proving to be neither — or maybe a bit of both. The Splicer's harnessed Light-hooks swam right past him, saving its teeth for the Vex instead. Her presence with something of the more causal variety, something purposeful and hungry and

— consume enhance replicate —

Vex barbs shot at her. They gouged into her device's digitized attack with animalistic rage. The Devil didn't care. She ate them in turn, replenishing what she lost. Her teeth were black and edged with SIVA venom. She was a sea serpent, slithering past crashing ocean rocks and slinking into pools full of vulnerable eggs shaped like secrets.

Something else rose up. Something bigger than them both, something with sway. Jaxson acted on instinct, cutting off its charge and blunting its spear-shaped intent. It crackled and hissed, pulling away with inhuman surprise. It hadn't expected him. It still didn't. Irxan grabbed a fistful of Vex coding and changed it at a whim. Jaxson covered for her. A gaping portal opened up. The Vex on the mountains stayed still, what with the two of them feeding the masses false data.

Time leaked out. The temporal river of linear existence reached a distributary, pooling and settling in a way that didn't feel right.

Quantis entered first, half-cloaked with Voidsmoke. A Goblin wobbled out not a moment later, missing a head. Omnibull punched it down and followed her in. Solar flared in the impossible space of the network, signaling their brutal progress. Arthur barked to the Winter Captain in Low Speak, who in turn organized his people to embark upon their walkers. A small flock of whirring Shanks led the way as an expendable vanguard. Avaris took up the rear, slug-thrower spinning. Pyrrhic was with her, strolling along without a care in the world. He didn't seem to be aware of anything around him. All his many eyes did was looklooklook.

Irxan left, stalking inside. Jaxson entered after her and closed the opening behind him. They were effectively stranded — at least until they caught another signal and followed it back to the real world. He ran to get to the front of their makeshift convoy, stamping weeds underfoot. Abnormal life flourished all around, climbing around the landscape of Vex metal like creeping vines and crawling moss.

There was singing all around them. Single note songs, all of separate pitches. It was continuous. It was haunting. It was grating upon his ears. It drowned out all other sounds. It left him with sight, smell, touch, taste, and gauntlet. And it was with the gauntlet he could feel the motions of Vex. The machines marched to extinguish the intruders. Jaxson forced their paths elsewhere, keeping the warped tunnel through which they traveled clear of adversaries. It worked, for a time. Up until the hulking presence from earlier caught up. Its cold gaze settled on them; Jaxson shivered out of pure discomfort.

Massive Minotaurs lumbered out of nonexistence ahead of them. They were not the common field soldiers his team had crushed on Venus, but resplendent warriors of Vex myth, attendants to something even greater. Their hulls were of shining silver and their optics of bloodiest red. Splotches of green algae dotted their armour, the only flaw in their otherwise perfect forms.

Omnibull leapt, sword in hand. The Minotaur he was aiming for swatted him out of the air and stomped down. Quantis blinded it with a smoke grenade, allowing the Exo to slip away just as the construct's foot fell. A Shadowshot pierced the outer armour of the same Minotaur. Void anchors shot out and linked it with its two brethren; they struggled and bucked against the violet reigns. Jaxson summoned the Void in him, forming a shield on his arm. A wide barricade of energy spread out, guarding the Eliksni behind him from shrapnel and stray gunfire.

Then, inexplicably, the Light of both his Banner Shield and Quantis's Shadowshot choked and vanished. The Minotaurs shrieked. Behind the constructs, between their protective positions, an Axis Mind manifested. It was a Hydra, of course, and it was big. Perhaps not quite of size with Argos or Belmon, but it was a fearsome thing all the same. It had the same hues as its noble paladins, but its form wildly differed. It was like an upright centipede, with rib-like structures lining its spine. Two wings sprouted from its shoulders, trailing tendrils and tails not unlike those worn by Hobgoblins and Harpies. Below them were long skeletal arms, each ending with four bony fingers.

Jaxson activated his gauntlet, but the Axis Mind suffocated his efforts with a storm of viral coding, forcing onto him an oppressive weight. The Hydra roared. Its arms lashed and shields sparked into existence. It geared up to fight — then shuddered and screamed. The data tightening around Jaxson's wrist let go, and it was then that he felt it: another presence, older and stronger. Where the Hydra was cold, the other was actively malignant.

"Aw shit," Arthur said from beside him. The Warlock looked around, cannon held at the ready. "Sweet Traveler above, she was right..."

"What's going on?" Jaxson whispered. The four giant Vex constructs were ignoring them.

Arthur pointed ahead, past the machines. "That."

A wound was widening up in the flesh of the network. Green fire flashed. Taken essence poured. Something else, something massive stepped in. It was alien, that much was clear from a glance, and it looked very, very Hive-esque. The three small yellow eyes were a dead giveaway. It had a horizontal crest of chitin and bone not unlike that worn by dead-king Oryx, but the ends of both horns sharpened into blunt points sparkling with pale blue bioluminescence, not unlike that of a deepsea fish. Its mouth was a lipless, jagged thing set in a permanent grimace. The creature's chitinous armour was of pale ivory like bone, and where the armour ended tufts of feathery not-fur like those found on crustaceans bloomed out. A cloak of long draping feather-like growths cascaded down from its shoulders, covering most of its body save for its front. Two thick arms protruded out to clutch at something that resembled a Knight's Boomer, but of a smoother, paler material and with longer barrel-jaws. The weapon looked like it had been lovingly attended to for centuries on end.

The creature resembled a Hive Prince enjoying the best years of its life.

Dead starfire gathered in the not-Boomer's maw. The Hive creature pressed the tail of its weapon against its shoulder like it were a stock. It took aim — at the Hydra. The Minotaurs charged in front of the Hydra, taking the brunt of the blast in its stead. Everything came apart then. Conflicting, corrupting data crashed together. The network sparked and collapsed.

Something was tickling his nose. It felt like grass. And there was-

"Guardian?!"

Jaxson shot up, eyes wide. He regretted it immediately; everything was so bright. Ghost swung in front of him, blotting out the sun. "Thank the Light! I thought-"

"The hell happened?" Jaxson croaked. His throat was painfully dry. The warm summer air he heaved in wasn't helping matters.

Ghost swung his eye around. "I'm... not sure."

That wasn't good. Jaxson struggled to his feet and looked around. They were in a field. A field. With wild grass and flowers and a couple of weird buzzing insects. There was a treeline in one direction, complete with outrageously large trees, and a couple of marrah-grass-strewn sand dunes the other way. Jaxson squinted. Was that... yes, it was an ocean, far in the distance. The shore was still some distance away.

"Where's everyone else?" he asked.

Ghost turned back. "I'm not so sure about that either."

AN: As ever, thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!