Everything was in motion. Her head echoed and wavered as the very thoughts within it ricocheted like dazed birds smashing out their life against the window-pane of her own skull.

Remembering she had an arm, she tried to push herself up, but the lurching grew into a roil and she slumped back down. It felt like it took her entire will just to keep existing.

The ground on which she lay sparkled like stars. She heard a rasp-rustle, the dry sound of cloth or flesh sliding on stone. There was a gurgling, and a droning sound that wavered in and out of her perception. She tried to focus on it.

Hand. She had a hand. It was around…the rifle. The rifle. She had her hand around her rifle, and the droning-

{Min! Min, you need to snap out of it! Can you hear me? Min, she's getting closer!}

She tried to lift her head and it was a little better this time. The huge room slowly rocked like the deck of a ship on a sea, but the sea it was on was no longer lashed by storms. Her fingers finally obeyed her, and gripped the rifle.

The dazed and suicidal birds in her head slowed and settled into actual thoughts, and memory began to return in cold, sluggish waves.

Ir Yût. The Song.

The Song!

Min heaved herself up by the strings of sheer will, and the room gave another lurch. Bleeding black ichor, the Choir Mistress was scraping her way across the floor toward Minerva much as her sister once had. The bottom half of her face was gone, and she was gurgling around a black waterfall that spilled from it.

Min didn't know if Ir Yût had somehow sensed her passage through the portal, or heard her coming as she wove her way carefully through the dark and featureless labyrinth she'd arrived in, following the almost light and sleepy Singing. Whichever the case, the moment the Guardian had stepped into the grand room the Singing had instantly transformed into a sonic blast that rang through reality and seemed to shake her very bones. She was consumed in a hot-cold tidal wave of raw power, one that threatened to tear every molecule of her inner self apart.

Min had fired at the same moment, almost out of instinct, her body directing her to disarm her opponent in the only way she knew how.

The beast's jaw had ripped off under the barrage of fire. Min had a very clear image of it sailing to the side in a fan of ebony spray.

After that, things got a bit hazy. She had only vague and tottering dream-like images. She remembered swaying. She remembered a hot, fetid voice in her mind that cooed at how much she loved her. She heard a name, and felt that tiny white little twinkle in her head again. It seemed somehow insistent, needful, eager and desperately wanting release but she didn't know how to grant it.

She'd clearly fired more than just the one barrage, for the Mistress's body had been ravaged beyond the loss of her jaw. Grounded and crawling, Ir Yût's long and steely claws drew up sparks on the glittering floor.

Having gotten her feet back under her- both physically and mentally- Min staggered back a few steps and opened fire again.

Another spray of black ichor fountained out of the thing's ruined face as it tried to shriek. Its hand lashed out and Min found she wasn't far enough away for its impossible reach. Claws burned like fire as they sank into her leg, tearing it out from under her and sending her slamming back to the ground again.

Even with the armor, she felt the pain as her shoulders and back crashed to stone. She fired, and the bullets tore through her own ankle and foot even as they crashed into carapace, bone, and then brain. The pain was incredible, searing up her leg and into her body like a river of lava, but she did not stop firing until she could tear the ruin of her own leg out of the twitching grip of those dead claws.

She shoved herself backward, then again, dragging a smear of red blood behind.

Then she fired again. She fired until there was nothing left but a clotted mess of brain and bone where the Hive's head had been, until even the twitching had stopped.

The moment she dropped the rifle, Lev was there, appearing in a haze of transmat energy and focusing his beam on her leg. Sighing in relief, Min flopped back and just laid a moment.

"Min?"

"I'm all right," she said, though the room was still wobbling slightly and her entire body ached. Then she let out a slight laugh. "That actually wasn't too bad. Not as bad as I was expecting-"

She broke off as something shifted in the air. She became aware that there had been a deep and constant hum since she'd entered the chamber, and now that hum was rising in tone. Her leg now mended, Lev turned slowly around, away from her.

"You probably shouldn't have said that," he said softly.

Min sat up, and for the first time really looked at her surroundings.

The chamber was massive. The floor had the texture of polished marble but glinted like the inside of a geode. The walls sailed up in arcs that seemed to defy physics, vanishing into shadow. A set of grand windows a mile in height showed a view of a yellowed landscape and tortured sky. She wasn't sure but she thought she saw rocks suspended in the air in that lurid sky, floating as lazily as soap bubbles.

A great throne of lapis and obsidian stood beneath those windows, twenty feet tall. Before it, an enormous amethyst crystal hung much as the rocks did outside, in utter ignorance of gravity. The crystal was lousy with slow moving shadow, shifting in subtle tides.

Next to the throne was a stand holding a great sword.

The blade looked as if it were made of crystalline bone, the handle and guard had a ropy, sinewy look to it. Were she to stand next to it, Min had no doubt the blade was as long she was tall, the handle adding another four or five feet in length even beyond that.

It seemed to be the crystal that was making the humming sound.

Since entering this Realm, Min had felt oddly like someone had been watching her. Only to be expected, she supposed, when one was alone in a dark and malevolent place. That sensation had been lost as she had entered this chamber, but now it was back, and very strong. She felt quite certain that someone stood just behind her. So certain, she actually twisted around expecting to see some monstrosity ready to strike.

Nothing was there.

She got carefully to her feet. Lev, inching forward as if terrified it would pounce, slowly drifted toward the crystal a foot or two.

A thought came into her mind, almost as if it had been whispered there. Goosebumps erupted over her as she could have sworn her invisible observer put their hand on her shoulder.

Her Singing was keeping him bound to his resting place. Now, he is waking.

As she looked back at the crystal, she saw the shadows shift again, swirling.

Three glowing eyes suddenly beamed out of it at her.

Lev jolted back as if he'd been slapped, and cried out her name. She was already in motion, and as she sprinted past him he vanished back into his tag. The hum of the crystal ran up and up until it was almost nonsound, scraping along her nerves like nails on a chalkboard. As she sped past it, she could see tiny glowing cracks appearing in the surface, and picked up even more speed.

Her hand closed on the huge sword, and she tore it out of the stand. The weight of it immediately staggered her, the tip of the blade ringing like a bell as it hit the ground.

Then a great wharooomp! and she was flying through the air, hand ripped away from the sword handle. She hit the grand window, the glass shattering with a sound almost louder than the explosion. Shards the size of jumpships sailed downward, crashing around her as she hit the yellow dirt outside the chamber and slid, tearing a gouge that was more than twenty feet long.

Gasping for air, she staggered to her feet and ran, limping, back toward the window and the chamber beyond.

A great thing stood where the crystal had once been, swathed in darkness. She could see only it's shape, lousy with muscles like rock, huge spikes or horns upon its head.

And of course it's eyes. Those three glowing eldritch eyes.

It stood fifteen feet tall if it was an inch, and the ground seemed to tremble slightly with each step it took as it moved forward and then reached down.

A slow rasp filled the air as it took the sword handle and lifted the blade.

Min was frantic, putting on speed. This was Crota, of that she had no doubt. And now he had his sword again, the one thing she needed to get to kill him. She may have been a Titan but she felt so small and insignificant compared even to the blade, let alone the leviathan wielding it.

She couldn't fail. She couldn't. If she did, the Guardians were dead. If she did, the City and all of humanity was dead.

If she did…Kalina and Gen were dead.

She was barely aware of that little glimmer of white in her head again, that tiny twinkle just behind her eyes. As she reached the window and leapt back through it, she felt consumed in fear and desperation, and instinctively felt her Sol trying to light again. No fire came, but that twinkle became brighter and she seized hold of it, and the world lit up with white.

As her leading foot left the ground to make the leap through the window frame, she was nothing but a terrified and desperate Guardian. But as she seized hold of that glint in her head the one who landed back in the chamber was something different.

There was a sort of glaring burst. She saw something tumble away from her but had no idea that it was Lev, the force of the energy surging through her actually driving the little Ghost right out of the tag and back into physical form. Scintillating sheets of brilliance edged in smoke erupted from her shoulders and back, spreading wide. Silvery flame seared painlessly up her face and rippled from her forehead, wreathing her helmet and cresting in a jagged crown.

Her nostrils were filled with the scent of vanilla.

As her foot came down she felt the ground tremble again, as it had done with Crota's steps. Her weight came down with it and she leapt at the Hive Prince as his arm sailed up in an arc, and that horrible blade sailed in toward her.

There was a crack! and she was suddenly ten feet closer to him, the almost lumbering swing of his sword missing her by a good three feet as it whistled in the air. Her fist slammed into the carapace at Crota's throat and the great Hive staggered. The floor shattered where the sword blade hit it.

Then Min was past him, skidding to a halt. Crota turned toward her, a gouge carving out of the marble floor as the sword blade scraped around with him, sending a tail of sparks in its wake. He fixed her with his three eyes, and his head cocked ever so slightly.

Min, panting, felt light as a feather. Effervescence seemed to bubble through her chest, to tingle in her brain. Some part of her registered twin pale spots on Crota's face, but gave them no thought, nor did she give thought to the fact that they moved as her eyes did. Everything in the previously dark chamber, save the Prince himself, seemed to be bright and gleaming.

Hauling the blade up over his head again, Crota sent it screaming down toward her. It seemed to trail shadow behind it, its edge scintillating with the promise of death. She darted aside, and the world seemed to split as it hit the ground. Stone chips whizzed past her body, pinged on her armor.

She drove in, grabbing Crota's arm and wrist even as he went to haul the blade back up. Such was his size and strength that he hauled her up with it, and she ended up hanging from his arm. Gritting her teeth as she was lifted, she slammed the heel of her boot into one of his eyes, and something gave way.

The Prince bellowed in pain, whipping his arm and flinging her free. She caught the wall and jumped back off of it, catching hold of the sword's crossbars with her hands even as her legs wrapped around his forearm.

She twisted. Crota roared, the armor on his hand cracking as the blade was nearly torn out of his grip.

Nearly.

He whirled and attempted to fling her off again, but she was strong, and her legs were locked, one foot hooked under the other. She wrenched again, but Crota had remembered he had another hand. As he lost his grip on the sword and it fell with a calamity of sound to the floor, he had his other hand around her waist. Claws dug in to her gut, and she was torn loose, thrown. The back of her legs hit the throne and sent her into a spin, before she slid to a halt underneath the very windows she had just leapt through only moments before. She planted her hands on the floor, ignoring the glass and the hot blood spilling from her stomach, and looked up.

Crota was stooping to pick up his sword again.

For a moment, Min heard her name. She caught sight of Lev hovering nervously nearby, his oculus darting back and forth between her and the Prince, but there was no time to think. There was no time for anything.

She surged up as Crota heaved the sword off the ground, and she caught hold of the throne. Spinning with a wrench she could feel tearing the already wounded muscles of her stomach, she ripped the obsidian throne off the dias and threw it at the Prince, just as he swung.

The blade carved the throne in half, but Crota's swing was awkward, and the sword rang out like a death-knell as the tip hit the floor again. Shards and spears of marble sailed in all directions, and the broken throne smashed to pieces around his feet.

Then Min was in motion again, and the world had gone snowy white. Lev's voice shouting her name was gone, and all that existed was a dark morass in the shape of a Hive Prince, and the silver-dead edge of the sword once again cutting the air.