Min sat, slumped against the wall in a puddle of filth. Her pistol was still in her hand, the muzzle pointed at the ground. In front of her, the body of the Hive was a heap of ichor and tattered cloth.

The only sound was the constant chewing of the walls, and the thin squeaks and squeals of the maggot-thing still moving weakly nearby.

Lev appeared in front of his Guardian, scanning her quickly. She didn't move, save to close her eyes as the beam passed over them. There was the vaguest burn as whatever cut or scratch the Hive had torn into her shoulder was healed.

"There, there. Nothing bad, you're not badly hurt," he said quickly. "Min, speak to me. What happened? What's wrong?"

Her head throbbed and ached in a way it never had before. She shifted carefully, drawing her knees up and lowering her head until her helmet touched them.

"I just need a moment," she said weakly.

His chunky spikes spun in agitation, and he looked around nervously. He fixated on the worm thing, and drifted closer to it. As he scanned it, Min slowly got to her feet.

Her whole body ached, her legs weak and shaking. She stretched her jaw, thumping her free hand over her chest plate, as if her heart were dancing out of rhythm and she needed to settle it. She looked around a little, as if just seeing the room for the first time, then noticed the weakly writhing worm. Dispassionately, she shot it and it popped in a flash of green pus.

"I don't think there are any more of those coming," Lev said, indicating the dead Hive. Min's pistol lifted and fired again, and he whirled around just in time to see another of those big pods pop. Then another. With each pod destroyed, Min seemed to get more animated, more clear-headed. When she reached the last two, she was gritting her teeth and nearly growling.

Then she lowered the pistol again, and Lev hovered up to be eye to eye with her.

"Min," he said gently, and the worry in his voice touched her. "Are you all right?"

"I'm ok," she said. "Everything hurts."

He scanned her again, then let out a huff. "I'm not seeing anything wrong with you. No injuries. There's nothing else to heal. What happened, Min? You went all strange for a moment, acted like you couldn't hear me. You kept staring at that thing, swaying with it. Then you started laughing."

When she said nothing he tilted forward a little. "Please, talk to me," he said.

"I don't know what happened," she said. "Everything got kind of dark and slow. The music made me feel giddy and stupid and like I was being torn apart all at the same time. She kept saying she loved me."

"She?" he asked, looking over at the dead Hive. "You mean that thing?"

She nodded slowly.

"You heard it speak to you? Music? All I heard was a sort of whining sound."

She shrugged weakly. "I don't know what to say. That's what happened."

"Well, we can figure that out later. Are you still in pain?"

She thought a moment, looking down at her body and giving her limbs little shakes. "No. It's stopped. My legs are burning a bit and I feel like there's a thirty-pound weight on my shoulders, but that's it."

"That's just overused muscles and exhaustion from being healed and using your Sol too much. We should get going. We still need to find Kalina and Gen, and find a way back to Tychon. I saw Kalina go for his Ghost in that big chamber, but I don't know if she managed to grab it."

"What about him?" Min looked back up at the dismembered Guardian. "I can't leave him, Lev."

"We don't have much choice. Even if we could get him down- which I don't think we can with that stuff holding him up-you wouldn't be able to carry him. If you tried your engram, it'd just take his armor."

Frowning, she moved closer to the body on the wall, pausing only to pick up her rifle as she did. Lev took her pistol back, and she slung the rifle over her shoulder, contemplating.

Finally she reached up, stretching on her toes as far as she was able, and managed to unhook the chain link Titan mark, peeling it away from the body and the mess locking it into place.

Bundling it in her fists, she put it in the pouch at her waist, snapping it closed again. "It's the best I can do. Maybe later we can come back here and get him down somehow."

Finally tearing her eyes away from the dead Guardian, she ducked through the doorway, rifle in her hands again, and continued on.


They worked their way upward, Lev guiding her as best he could toward Gen and Kalina's signals. The tunnels that they had come down through didn't seem to exist in this part of the complex; they had been replaced by almost ornate corridors and sculpted rooms that more matched the information Zavala had sent them from Eris regarding the Hellmouth.

More Hive were here too, which slowed their going. One Titan on her own, exhausted and unable to make even a spark of Sol between her fingers was not nearly as efficient at taking down these beasts as a full fire team.

All Min could think about was those who had come down before. Those of Eris' fireteam who had been swallowed in this place. She wondered if Eris had felt this way, wandering around these gloomy halls in hiding for literally years.

No. She felt worse. At least I have Lev here with me.

When Min closed her eyes, however, it was not Eris she saw, but that dead Guardian, turned into some kind of macabre trophy or artwork. That dead Guardian, with its Ghost shoved in its mouth.

That could happen to Kalina, to Gen. Could already have happened to them.

She hoped that they were still together, that she was the only one who had gotten separated. The longer she was in this place the more desperately she wanted to see them again.

They had been going some hours, and had just finished taking down another cluster of those smaller Hive. Min, starving and exhausted, sat down after the last one had fallen. When Lev addressed her with concern, she waved him off gently.

"I just need a moment, I promise," she said. "Are we getting any closer?"

"Yes," he said. "The signals are still weak, but they seem to be close to each other. If it's Binky and Poet, at least they seem to be together."

Min had a terrible thought just then. Of course, the signals were coming from Binky and Poet, but…

…but what if Kalina and Gen were no longer with their Ghosts?

She tapped at the side of her head and Lev digitally removed her helmet. The tunnel air was cold and choked and musty-sour. She grimaced and wiped a hand over her face.

"Listen, I owe you an apology," Lev said after a long moment. Min blinked her eyes open, and realized she'd been dozing. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head a little.

"What? An apology? What for?"

"When I got stuck in that crack," he said. "When I realized I was stuck I just panicked. What I should have done was just go back into your tag the moment you were close enough. Instead, I struggled until you pulled me out."

"It's fine Lev," she said.

"If you hadn't reached me first that Hive would have destroyed me, and that would have been it. No one to heal you, no one to revive you. We both could have died, because I panicked."

"Lev," she said, and shook her head weakly. "C'mon. It's ok. You're new to all of this too. It was a mistake."

"I just keep thinking about that other Guardian, the one on the wall. All the ones that didn't come out of this place and…we are not ready for this."

Min felt a small smile on her face as she realized he had been afraid, that all the thoughts and fears and worries that kept ringing through her mind were on his mind too. Reaching out, she cupped a hand behind the Ghost, drawing him a bit closer.

"Now you listen to me, little Lion," she said gently, fixing him with a look. "We're still alive. We've come so far. We're going to find Kalina and Gen and we're going to get out of here. All right?"

"Yeah," he said, clicking self-consciously a moment. "I guess we have come pretty far, haven't we?"

"We have. And I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. We're a team, and you owe me no apologies my friend."

"Friend," he said softly, his tone pleased, and then bobbed in nod. "All right. Yes. We're going to take ass and kick names."

She laughed, weary but genuine, and got to her feet. "I think the saying is, 'we're going to kick ass and take names.'"

"Hey, you have your way of doing things, and I'll have mine," he said, and as she laughed again he put her helmet back around her head. "Come on, before we start growing moss."

They started toward the corridors again. Despite the momentary rest, Min felt like she was dragging weights with her, tied to her ankles and her shoulders. As they reached an archway, however, she and Lev both suddenly halted.

"Life signs," Lev said. Min could hear sounds-…voices!

And then, the sharp rattle of gunfire.

"It's them," she said with an explosive breath of relief, and broke into a run.


Kalina was in cover, her sniper resting on the top of a fallen column as she dropped the surging Hive. Gen was standing a few feet away, behind another column, leaning out every few moments and raking his machine pistol-fire over them.

The Hunter must have heard her coming because she suddenly snatched a knife from her belt and whirled toward Min, ready to throw it. The blade never left her fingers; as soon as she realized who it was, she gave a happy cry of relief.

There was no time for greetings. As soon as she had a clear shot Min's rifle was roaring to life, the Titan striding between the two columns where her friends huddled, tearing through the Hive. One leapt toward her shoulder only to crumple and fall as one of Kalina's shots took it out. Min didn't even look at it, keeping her focus. Her fireteam would watch her flank, of that she had no doubts.

As the last Hive fell she lowered her rifle to her hip, but kept moving forward until she was sure the corridor beyond was clear, that no more were coming. Only then did she turn and start back to them.

They looked terrible. They were filthy with dust and ichor, Kalina's poor cloak torn in several places and stained with blood- red blood, not the black mess the Hive shed. She'd been hurt at some point, and was moving as if she were as heavy and exhausted as Minerva was.

Gen bore marks of damage as well, including what looked like a black scorch over the back of his long coat.

"Can you believe this?" Kalina said, planting the butt of her sniper on her hip and shaking her head as Min walked toward them. She was trying to joke, but there was a weak, gasping tremor in her voice. "We've been scared to death that you were dead somewhere, and here you are, strolling in as bold as brass and big as life."

Min didn't slow, and Kalina made a sound of surprise as the Titan grabbed her shoulder with her left hand, snagging the front of Gen's coat with her right. She hauled them both in, hugging them tightly.

"Don't you do that to us again," Gen scolded, giving her a solid thump to the back plate. "What the hell happened to you? You were right on our heels as we bolted out of that hellhole, and the next thing you were gone!"

"Hive happened," Lev answered for her. "We got turned around down another corridor, across a bridge, and then one of those floating shriekers took the whole place down around us."

"Wizard," Gen said as they broke their hug. When Min looked at him blankly, he said, "The floating ones, they're called Wizards. I read up a bit about the Hive after you told us Eris was insistent on you coming here. The Wizards are females, breeding females- "

"Can they sing?" Min asked, looking intently at Gen, as if he were a leg of lamb and she were starving.

"One of those things? Sing?" Kalina asked, baffled at the odd question.

Gen didn't look baffled; he looked just as intent as Min did. Gripping her arm he said, "Tell us what happened."

They moved back over to the broken columns they'd been sheltering behind, and while their Ghosts kept a close watch in each direction, the three Guardians sat down.

Min told them about the room with the pods, about the terrible trophy over the door. Kalina went pale as she described it. She described the creature-the Wizard- and how it had spoken to them, though words they didn't understand. He got very intent when she started to describe what had happened right before she'd killed the thing, but she only became frustrated. There were no sufficient words she could find that truly described how it had felt.

Lev, hearing her frustration, turned toward them. "All I heard was it making this high-pitched keening sound. Min seemed…hypnotized. She was following its movements, and started laughing…"

"Laughing?" Kalina asked. "Shit, Mini, when I said you should laugh at things when you're feeling tense, I didn't mean to do it when the tense things are about to kill you!"

"Were you in pain?" Gen asked. "When it was over, were you in pain, but with no cause?"

Min stared at him.

"How did you know that?" she asked. "Do you know what happened?"

"I think I might, but I'm hardly an expert. We should talk to Ikora, to Eris. I can speak with her if you're not comfortable- "

"What happened?" Min asked more firmly. "If you even have an idea, please tell me. What was it?"

"I really can't say for sure, Min," he said. "But I read a little about something similar. The Wizards…they can Sing. I mean Sing, with a capital S, not like you and I think of singing. There are a lot of Songs- they're sort of like paracausal spells; the Light has them as well as the Dark. In what I was reading, the Guardians that survived the Disaster- the war that lost us the moon- had learned some about these Songs. Some even claimed it was one of the Songs that actually cracked the lunar crust- not a weapon. The legend is, that a group of Wizards stole the Song of Life from some Lightbearers."

"Guardians?" Kalina asked.

"No, before there were Guardians. Before the Traveler even came to this system. The Wizards stole the Song of Life and twisted it, rewrote it, made it their own. If this new Song was Sung by those Wizards in harmony- in a choir I suppose you'd call it- the sheer power of it could wipe out armies, topple whole civilizations, even shatter planets. Sung individually, this Song was said to still be strong enough to kill, to completely destroy the one it was Sung to. Min, I think that's what was happening. I think the Wizard that attacked you in that chamber was one of the original 'choir' that corrupted the Song of Life. I think she was using that dark Song to try to corrupt you, or to destroy you. It was only to you, which is why Lev only heard that whine."

Gen shook his head, making a helpless gesture with his hands as he spoke almost to himself.

"Yes. I could be wrong. I could be but…I think she was Singing to you. I think she was Singing the Deathsong."