A/N: just a quick reminder, remember I write left of canon just as a usual practice, but more so here. Destiny and Destiny 2 has so many great characters and enemies and lore that without some level of consolidation or creative license, I don't know that my fic would ever, ever, ever be done. I've already taken quite a few departures- for example, in this story, the Ghosts were not all created at once. They continue to be created in rare spurts and fits, and ones that don't find their Guardians eventually go back to the Traveler and may even be 'recycled', as Lev suspects he might have been. Also, Guardians are plentiful in this story, whereas at the beginning of Destiny there were canonically very few left after the Great Disaster. There is always some lore basis for what I do, but they are only the threads by which I weave this tale.
Thank you.
All Min could hear was her breath, the thundering of her heart. Silence had fallen, as thick as the darkness around her. Curled in a ball, her arms still cradling her head, she waited.
No sound. No light. She could feel no pain, no crushing weight of rock. Slowly, carefully, she shifted. Sand and dust slid with a low hiss around her as it spilled away. A few smaller bits of stone clacked and rattled off into the dark.
"Lev," she said softly. There was a twinkle in the air, then a light beam. For a moment, the beam was all she could see. Then rock, piles of rock all around.
"I'm here," he said, and the beam played over her, making her wince from the sudden brightness. "Sorry. Are you hurt?"
"No, I don't think so," she said, and carefully got to her feet. Pushing herself up woke sharp pains in her hand, and she remembered the crack of her fingers as she'd punched that Hive. "My fingers…"
"No problem," he said, and as he played his beam over her hand, she looked around.
Behind her, the cavern had come down. What had been the tunnel mouth was now a clog of stones, dirt, and debris. Looking the other way, she realized that most of the tunnel had come down ahead of her as well.
"Can you reach the others?" she asked as the pain vanished, and she flexed her hand.
"No, I've been trying," he said. "I'm getting a few weak signals, but that's it. I think it's this place- maybe due to that weird light, or those strange pods everywhere. Something is interfering with my signals."
"We didn't have that happen before," she said.
"No," he replied thoughtfully. "It may be something to do with distance. Or perhaps the Hive have some kind of device they can use to block us from talking to each other."
"Can you tell anything from the signals?"
"Not really. It's like the one we were tracking for Tychon's Ghost. They seem to be over in roughly that direction."
His light turned toward her right, and she nodded slowly. The rockfall ahead of her looked incomplete. It blocked most of the tunnel, but there were clear gaps, places she could reach up and grab hold. She pulled down a few of the larger rocks, wincing at the sound as they clacked and crashed together, tumbling over to the ground. In the pervasive silence, they sounded as loud as gunshots.
Lev shed light on her efforts for a moment, until she had cleared a bit of a gap. "There's enough room for me to squeeze through, I think. Let me go first."
"Are you the Titan now?" she asked with weary teasing. He turned his light back at her, tilting in such a way that leant the impression of an exasperated look. It truly was amazing how much expression could be had with something that was little more than a floating ball in a geometric shell.
She watched anxiously as he squeezed through one of the gaps, his light glimmering and then dimming. She continued to pull down a few rocks, digging as far up as she was able. A few moments later, light began to blossom through the gap again, and Lev passed back to her side.
"It's no good this way, you may as well stop. The rockfall goes for a good ten meters. Probably more, but there were no more gaps to continue through. How does this side look?"
"Worse," she said, turning back the way they'd come. He scanned the deadfall there as well.
"Well, this is wonderful," he said, turning as if contemplating the small bubble of cavern she'd been trapped in. "No way forward, no way back."
"Could I get through one of the walls somehow?"
"I don't know with what," he said. "Anything strong enough to break open one of the walls would bring the rest of the ceiling down on you."
"You can revive me?"
"Sure, but you'd be crushed under tons of rock I couldn't- wait a moment."
He looked back and forth between the two deadfalls and gave an exasperated sound. "I am an idiot. You don't need to shift the rock. I can."
"You can?"
"Of course I can," he said. "Stand back a little, I'm going to need a bit of space. No, the other way. There's less rock this way."
She had started to back toward the blockage behind her, the one that covered the entrance she'd come through. At his direction, she turned and instead backed toward the other side.
He scanned the blockage again quickly, and then moved to the top. Rock started to shimmer and vanish from view, only a few chunks, before he turned back toward her. Another shimmer, and the rocks he'd taken digitally reappeared to the left of her feet.
"I can't do many at a time," he said, repeating the process. "I have very little in the way of digital storage of this nature, and most of that is taken up with your weapons, but it's something."
"Would my engram help?" she asked.
"No," he said as a few more pieces of rock appeared beside her, and he bobbed back over to the blockage. "They're great for clothes and weapons and tech, but they're not tuned for certain things. Like rock, or trees, or water, or big chunks of dirt. That way, when you salvage something, you don't take half the landscape along with it."
Min imagined her jump ship appearing in Amanda Holliday's hanger with half the concrete and dirt floor it had been resting on appearing with it, and could see the wisdom in such a move.
The pile of rocks beside her started to grow as the blockage in front began to shrink. Surprisingly quickly, Lev had a gap big enough for him to sail up and over without issue. He was back almost immediately. "We're in luck. Most of the collapse fell into that ravine. Stay back, just for a moment, and I should have this out of your way. I just need to create a slide."
"The Hive?"
"I don't see any out there anymore. Either the rockfall took that creature with it, or it's gone back to join its friends."
She nodded, and he vanished through the gap again. A few moments later, there was a rattle, and the debris in front of her began to sag and shift. The Ghost had removed a few key stones that were holding the mess up.
With a groan and a rumble, the rest shifted and began to fall into the ravine. The tunnel mouth, now broken and ragged, began to open up.
Taking care, Min began to push at the debris, shifting more over the ledge until she had room to get past it. Lev's light glimmered down from above as he descended toward her.
"The bridge isn't there any more, but there's another way just above you. You're going to have to climb a little. I think it's out of reach of your jump jets, and the angle is bad. If you try, I'm afraid you're just going to end up falling. I don't know how far down this ravine goes, but it's a sure bet it'll be even harder to get you out from way down there."
Following his direction, Min carefully eased out of the tunnel and took hold of the rock wall. Her muscles felt shaky and unsure. Being healed from having been cut in half, their long walk down the winding maze, and then her furious charge into the Hive chamber, had taken a lot out of her. Inch by inch, her arms and legs shaking, she scaled up the wall.
The broken remnants of what looked like a balcony, or what had been another bridge, jutted like a crumbling gray tongue above her. It was only about ten or fifteen feet, but it looked like miles, and she didn't dare look up at it much in fear the motion would make her slip.
Lev floated up with her, indicating the best hand holds and giving encouragement. When her right hand finally grabbed onto the edge of the balcony, and it seemed to support her weight, she ignited her jump jets.
Flames spat out from below her boots in roaring blue streams and she lifted upward, throwing her weight onto the ledge and then letting them die. Rolling to her back she lay there a moment and caught her breath. She only gave herself that moment, however. She had no idea where Gen and Kalina were, or if they had gotten separated from each other the same as she had. If they were to have any hope at all, they needed to find one another.
The new tunnel was taller, somehow more elegant than the others had been. A few scans, and Lev had enough information to lay the route back toward the surface on her HUD again. As she followed it, rifle in hand, he did periodic scans for those weak signals, directing her into unexpected turns or altering the HUD path as needed to intercept them.
"Life signs ahead," Lev suddenly warned in a whisper, and vanished into the data tag. Lifting her rifle to her shoulder, Min carefully kept on.
The tunnel she'd been moving through- though corridor probably was a more fitting name for it- opened up into a big room with a vaulted ceiling. The luminescent pods had started appearing again some time back, and that wet chewing sound had been growing stronger. No matter how long it went on she could not seem to grow used to it, or to tune it out.
In this room, the pods were now the size of foot lockers, overwhelming the walls. Inside them, she could see shadows shifting and moving, the slimy outer membranes stretching and then falling slack, as if some unseen creature was pressing a limb against them.
Could that be what these are? she wondered. Some sort of growing sac for Hive young?
Her eyes kept darting around, looking for Lev's life signs and half expecting those pods to start erupting, teeth and claws tearing through them. The path continued on toward a door at the far end, and she made for it as quickly as she dared while trying to not to make a sound. A strange type of ornament or carving was above this door, but it wasn't until she got much closer that she abruptly realized what she was seeing.
"Oh my God!"
The words spilled out of her mouth in an involuntary gasp. It was no ornament, no carving.
It was a Guardian.
They had been dismembered, and then hung up like some abstract piece of artwork. A gray skull still in its helmet hung at the apex of arms and legs and torso in a spread-eagle position and in improper order. Its jaw had been stretched wide around what looked like a hunk of rock.
The armor pads were grimed thick with years of dirt and slime and filth. The broad chest plate had been cleaved in two, and tangles of that same purtrescent vine clogged it like a slowly writhing mass of worms. A Titan mark, like a skirt of tiny chain-link, glimmered sulkily in a clog of the same.
The body appeared to be stuck to the wall with a sort of resinous clot that bound in thick, snotty ropes here and there over each piece.
Minerva slowly moved toward it, staring in knife-edged horror. Lev appeared from out of the tag, moving up a little to scan the body in a soft beam.
Behind them, unseen and unheard, a set of long, clawed hands slipped away from rock.
"That…in his mouth," Lev said softly, his voice as full of nauseated horror as she was. "I-I think that's his Ghost…"
A shadow lifted silently behind her, soft tatters of cloth drifting like seaweed just above the dusty rock of the floor. A blind head wove this way and that languidly, slowly.
"I can't leave him here," Minerva whispered. "It's not right."
"I don't think we can get him down," Lev told her, as his beam focused on the clot. "Whatever is holding him on the wall is- Min! Behind-!"
Lev's warning came too late. Even as he shouted it, a hand sailed out of the gloom, striking the Ghost and swatting him out of the air with a raking sweep. Tumbling end over end, Lev cracked into the wall and went rattling away into the dark.
Min whirled and opened fire in the same motion. That same soul-splitting shriek tore through her ears and head, but instead of recoiling, the creature tore at her. Teeth like glints of broken metal snapped and scraped over her helmet, claws scrabbled madly at her plates. Her rifle was crushed against her as her arms were pinned, the weapon still spitting fire and driving pits across the floor.
Like the gong of a bell, something rang through her chest- a reflexive explosion riding on a spasm of terror and loathing. The floating Hive tore back away from her in a weak ball of flame, lashing and flailing and then skidding in a smoking cavalcade across the floor. Minerva slammed back into a sit, rifle spinning away from her with a final bullet or two roaring free of it. One sizzled past her faceplate.
Her body moved on pure reflex, on instinct, trying to surge her forward again, back up to her feet. Aching and burning, her legs refused to work, and she barked out a lungful of air as she instead crashed down onto her stomach.
She looked up, toward the Hive creature, expecting to see it lunging after her, but it wasn't. Claws gripped and pulled it forward, its triangular head lifting and seeming to scent the air in her direction like a dog, or a snake.
"Ssiiiyyyyyyfyaasssss…"
The sound spilled from between its teeth like a lover's purr. Cloth robes still smoking, trailing small tongues of fire, the Hive creature dug at the ground with is other hand, and slithered another foot or two forward.
"Haaaaalaaaaakkkk hooooooooool…vvvfffaaaaalkerrreeeee…yheeewww kkkkiiiiilllled-"
There was a grunt, a rasping sound. Min looked to her right and saw Lev. The Ghost had fallen into a crack in the floor and now was struggling to get out, caught up on his shell-spikes.
For a single heartbeat, both Min and the monster stared at Lev, then slowly looked toward each other.
Min's legs screamed as she surged frantically toward the Ghost, gaining her feet only to slip and crash back down again. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Hive creature slashing its way over the floor as well, the same goal in mind.
Lev started to twist more frantically, trying to free himself. Min's fist closed on a hunk of stone and she whipped it toward the wedgelike head of the other, then lunged toward Lev again.
Digging in the crack, her fist closed on the Ghost just as claws scrabbled again toward him just in front of Min's faceplate. Tearing Lev free of the crack she swung downward, smashing a fist now reinforced with the Ghost onto the back of the claws. Thin fingers snapped with a sound like twigs breaking, and there was another screech as the Hive recoiled.
Whipping her arm over her shoulder Min threw Lev away from the beast. He tumbled and spun in the air for a moment before disappearing back into her tag.
Barely had he left Min's fingers than the monster was on her. Once again, teeth grated and scraped over her face plate. Claws tangled around her helmet and shoulders, tearing and scraping and sending a rasp of sparks flaring into the distance. Min threw her weight to the side, trying to get on top of it, and the pair rolled over the floor.
"Min," Lev panted in her ear. "Min!"
She got a hand around the Hive's neck. It was like holding a thin bundle of live wire, sinews writhing hot in her grasp. She threw her fist up, intending to punch. A pistol appeared in the air just at the apex of her swing, and instead of punching she opened her hand and caught it, jamming it into the side of the thing's head and pulling the trigger.
Bullets roared out, striking the wedge shape and singing off into the dark, deflected. One or two managed to start cracking the carapace when the monstrosity revolted, twisting and clamping its teeth on her shoulder pad. Again they tumbled over, Min desperately hanging on to the handle of the pistol but forgetting to release the trigger. Shot sang out in a wild fan across the room. More than one of those bulging fungal pods was struck and exploded, sending fetid washes of some rancid gore across the floor.
Things flopped and writhed and squealed in those washes.
A burning sear tore through her as some of the Hive's claws found their way through the joint of her shoulder pad and into her shoulder. Leveraging, the thing tore the Guardian off of it and once more Min found herself tumbling over the floor. She hit the wall, feeling one of those great pods first cushion her impact, then rupture. Gore spilled over her, and something crashed into her side and then tumbled by with a slick, squirming thump. It looked like some kind of gigantic worm, or maggot. Oily white skin pulsed and writhed, and an orifice of some kind spasmed open and shut against her face plate.
In a thrill of revulsion Min recoiled upward, slapping at it with her free hand and finally flinging it away from her.
As she leveraged herself up onto her knees, her pistol aimed at the thrashing Hive creature on the ground. It seemed as if it were in its death throes at first, and Min fought to catch her breath, letting a pair of shots off toward it. One snapped past, tearing through the ragged cloth robe but catching no part of the beast. The other sang away near its head, which twisted around toward her.
For a moment, the Guardian and the Hive faced each other again; one sitting in a puddle of puslike ichor, the other as low to the ground as a serpent. Black filth spilled out of the Hive's head where the bullets had cracked it, and dripped over the metallic teeth.
"Ffffaaaaaalkeerrrreeeee," the thing said, the word like a hot spill of smoke from a forger's fire. Min's finger tightened on the trigger but not enough to fire. When the Hive made no immediate move toward her, the pressure loosened the slightest bit.
"I-I think it's speaking," Lev said in her ear. "I-I'm not sure what it means."
"Do you understand me?" Min said. Her every instinct was telling her to shoot, but something was staying her hand. The Hive, she realized, was making a low keening sound- soft and deep, almost inaudible. The muzzle of the pistol in Minerva's hand seemed to get slightly heavier, her arm aching to hold it up. Her finger shifted against the trigger but she could not seem to get purchase.
Scraping along the ground, the Hive stretched out a hand inch by inch toward her. Min could see every gleam and glisten of moisture on that hand, every break of light on the edges of its sharp claws. She watched as it stretched, streeeeetchhheddd. The sharp tips sunk down into the floor, and with a rustle of cloth, the Hive pulled itself slowly, slowly, toward her.
"Min? Min, what's wrong?" Lev's voice was tuning down, softening and echoing, and she couldn't understand the sounds.
That keening was growing, swirling and beautiful and haunted. The room stretched, and Min's head began to waver from side to side, matching the rhythm of the sway of the Hive's head.
Shoot it. Shoot it…!
She couldn't find the trigger. She knew the pistol was still in her hand, at the end of an arm that had grown to ten feet in length. The beat of her heart rang through her ears like a drum, the sound of the pulse lasting a year. Fumbling, she got her other hand up to the butt of the pistol. The weapon turned and moved in her hand and she still could not find the trigger.
The Hive's hands stretched out again, and again it pullllllllled its way closer to her. Its head swayed, and Min's head swayed. The keening was music, and the music was filling her ears and her eyes, dark and slow and comfortable and whispering, whispering softly.
She could hear another sound too, shouting in her ear, but it was soft and distant and unimportant. That music, that music…
Claws wrapped with all the gentleness of a lover's caress around her calf. Only distantly was there a tug, only an eternity away was the rasp of cloth as the Hive pulled itself closer.
Love, yes. She loves me. She loves me.
Min's own thoughts were soft, dark, swimming things that went spinning off into the room in lazy curlicues. She laughed, and the laugh ran and skipped like a young deer into all corners and all shadows.
She loves me….
The damaged head with its tears of ichor weaved back and forth, and Min weaved back and forth with it, and when the metal teeth grinned-
-Min opened fire.
A lash of flame from the end of the pistol chewed into the Hive's open mouth, exploding out the back of its head in a fan of spray. Thick wads of its malformed brain rained down and it sagged like a puppet with its strings cut.
Dropping the pistol, Min planted her boot to its shoulder and shoved the ruined body away from her.
