A/N: Just remember, if y'all kill me, I can never finish this story!
Thought seemed distant, somehow 'high', as if it floated, light as air, just above her head. A thousand miles away in a misty, gauzy place, part of her wondered if this isn't what it felt like to be a Ghost; light and free and…
…and blithe. Yes, that was the word. She felt blithe.
Her rifle dazzled back into her hand and she both opened fire and watched herself open fire, the bullets singing and flashing over Crota's chest. Some-most-ricocheted away into the shadows. A few opened cracks or kicked chips out of his insectile armor. Only one or two seemed to penetrate any further, sending small spouts or spits of blood out in their wake.
If Crota felt them, he did not react.
She had no doubt the Swarm Prince could talk; Ir Yût and Verok had possessed that ability, after all, even if Min could not understand what they said. Crota, however, seemed to feel no pressing need to speak to her, not even to gloat. His motions seemed irritated, frustrated, and oddly curious. Whenever she was able to hurt him, he would tilt his head in that strange manner as he regarded her, like a quizzical dog trying to understand the lifted tail of a skunk, right before it sprayed him.
She felt that he regarded her as a puzzling nuisance- something that was irritating but no true danger.
After all, who could truly hurt him? Him? He was the Hive Prince! His people had broken the moon, had broken worlds! His people had sailed dark wastes and crooned on soft and whispery tides as entire systems burned. His was the power of the Sword. He was made strong by it, great by it, and she…
Well, she was just like all the other Lightbearers- little more than a biting fly.
Min knew better, however. Somewhere, in the floating, white effervescence she had become, she was certain of it.
He might have the Sword Logic, but the Logic of the Bomb blazed inside of her.
That unseen and watching presence lingered like an eavesdropper in the shadows at the edges of the throne room.
What are you? it said.
How is this? it wondered.
And in frustration, you must take his Sword, goddamn you!
Crota swung that very Sword at her and she danced back, the tip of the blade carving a hungry path over her chest plate but just missing her skin. She aimed her next bullets at his eyes, and Crota turned his head away with sneering grunt. She dove away from his return swing, and felt a slight tug as it whipped past her. Somersaulting, she came back up to her feet and then blinked.
Her rifle had been cleaved in half.
She tossed it aside and trotted easily back another few feet as the beast stepped toward her.
"More fire," she said, her hand reaching out to her side. She was a bit surprised to hear the laugh in her voice.
Her rocket launcher materialized in her grip and carelessly, dazed and giddy and wavering in a dream, she aimed it and fired.
She was much too close. The rocket hit the demon Hive directly in the chest and exploded with bone-shattering force. The Ascendent Realm may not share the same physics as the normal realm did, however when it came to explosions, it seemed they were identical. She saw the momentarily ripple of the blast wave in the air, something that felt like a tank hit her, and her world became pain and fire.
When things solidified again she was spread-eagle on her back. Pain was aching through her at a dozen points, the smell of scorched metal and ozone filtered through the cracks in her helmet and hung in her nose.
That feathery feeling of floating above her body was gone. She was very solidly- and very uncomfortably- back in it. Ribs grated and stabbed like knives as they shifted and snapped back into place, and she looked up at Lev floating above her.
"Lev," she said, tasting blood in her throat, and swallowing it down.
"I've got you," he said, and his voice was nervous, breathless. "I've always got you, Min."
The moment that broken-metal-and-glass feeling was out of her chest, she lifted her head and looked. Her eyes first caught on her chest, out of surprise more than anything else. A shard, at least six inches long, jutted out of the front of her armor. She took hold of it and yanked it, realizing it was a piece of carapace from Crota's armor. She dropped it aside, then looked for her enemy.
He was at the far end of the room, one knee and both fists on the ground, hanging his head like a frat boy after a serious bender. Two dozen yards away from him, a black scorch marked where he had been standing when the rocket had struck him. Beside it, lay the Sword.
I suppose it was too much to hope the rocket would kill him, she thought.
Yes, that unseen observer seemed to say, wryly. Were you so unprepared? Did no one explain? He can only be killed by his own Sword.
Getting to her feet, gently shifting Lev to the side and out of her way, Min ran for the blade. She no longer felt so light and strange, but that white in her head was still there. She could see thin trails, like mist, licking along her arms as she ran.
What it was, she did not know, nor could she spare the time to wonder. There would be time for such things later.
Crota's head seemed to steady, and he heaved himself up to his feet, looking this way and that for his blade. As he spotted it and turned toward her, she could see the damage the rocket had caused.
His chest-plate looked like broken ceramic, charred dark in the center, gaping holes where the chitin had been blown away completely. The flesh beneath was as pink and slick as newborn mouse-skin.
It looked painful, tender, vulnerable; but Min knew better. It might be tender, it might even be hurtable, but it was not truly vulnerable. Not to anything but that Sword.
He stepped toward the Sword almost casually, and Min drew as much speed as she could out of her legs. She had to get to it first. If she wanted any hope of killing him, any hope of winning, she had to reach that blasted thing first.
Crota saw her coming and inexplicably stopped, fixing her with his three eyes. He made no noise, but his gaze was taunting, amused. He was at least five steps away from the blade, and Min was swiftly closing the distance.
She had nearly reached it when he moved again, taking a step forward. As she had somehow done earlier in the fight, there was a great rending crack! as Crota vanished from where he had been standing, reappearing in the same instant right beside the Sword. He kept his eyes on her as he bent and picked it up.
I know the laws of this place, too, those eyes said. I know the laws of this place far better than you do, little gnat. It is my place, after all.
Min grit her teeth, and rather than slow her charge, she urged even more speed out of her legs. Crota almost lackadaisically swung the blade just at the moment she leapt into the air. She felt the rush of displacement as it passed beneath her, her jump jets igniting with a hissing snarl.
Min's fist, preceded by a dazzling blade of white, drove into Crota's lower right eye. There seemed little to no resistance, as if she had punched through air, and her fist sank until she was up to the elbow in his skull.
Crota shrieked, and she felt his hand again as he tried to tear her away. Her side burned and bloodied as his talons sank through armor and scored flesh.
Something cold and foul within his skull seemed to coil around her wrist and forearm. Repulsed, she tore her hand back out of his head just as he pried her loose, and threw her back to the ground.
That great boney blade sailed in, and she rolled to the side just in time. The entire world seemed to jump as it hit the ground, cleaving into the stone. She bounced back up to her feet, Crota hauling on the blade to lift it again. It jerked, but did not come free of the floor. As he wrenched it again, she slammed a kick as hard as she could, aiming for his wrist. Like her fist had been, her foot seemed preceded by a ghostly blade.
His arm swung to the side with the strike, his hand spinning across the room in a spouting glut of blood. The blow wrested the Sword out of its bed in the floor and it clattered, ringing to the ground. Crota's bellow of pain-or anger- was deafening.
Min lunged at the blade, then was hit yet again as the monster backhanded her. Once more, she found herself flying backward. She skidded through the shards of glass that littered the floor from her trip through the windows, producing a sound much like tiny windchimes that sparkled merrily in the still echoing wake of the Sword's knell. The back of her helmet hit the step of the dais, and a hot flash of pain lanced through her head. Blinking against stars, her head throbbing fiercely, she looked up just in time to see that colossal Sword whipping through the air, on course to cut her in half.
The world was rocking and swaying, her arm lifting in an attempt to block the blade; an attempt she knew would be futile. Before she had felt light, and airy- even giddy. Now, the world was heavy and red and dragging at her. Everything seemed to slow, to thicken, as if time itself had become congealed. In that miasmic moment, the only thing perfectly clear in her mind was what would happen next.
The Sword would rend through her as easy as butter. Given that it was not a natural weapon, it may be that such a wound caused by it would be beyond even Lev's power to heal. Even if he could heal it, Crota would not allow it. The moment the Ghost tried to get near her to heal her back from death, the Hive Prince would crush him. It would be so easy, so careless. The Prince would give it no more thought than a Guardian would, stepping on a bug.
She was going to die, and it wasn't going to be a death she could come back from. Lev was also going to die, and then Crota would rape his way out of the Ascendent realm, just as he had raped his way out of that crystal.
The human race would be over.
Then time tore forward again, ripping its way into motion.
Lev darted in from the side, that tiny little beam he'd used to burn Nara an ice age ago spitting across Crota's bleeding wrist. The sudden pain added to what had to be an agonizing wound, caused even the Hive Prince to fumble. His swing was jarred just enough that the blade struck Min's arm rather than mid-body, severing it between elbow and hand. Rolling again, trying to shake the last of the stars, Min stumbled to her feet, feeling the gush of blood pulsing from her, jetting over the dark marble.
I took his hand and now he's taken mine, she thought, the world growing woozy once more. She stumbled back a pace or two, trying to put distance between her and the Prince.
Then she felt Lev. All but rattling in his fear, the small Ghost darted to her side and began to heal her stump, desperately trying to at least stop the bleeding so that she wouldn't pass out; so that she'd have a chance.
Crota was not going to give her that chance.
As she had kicked him, now he kicked her, sending her reeling back once again on the floor. She didn't slide nearly as far; the blow had not been done with his full power but amounted to little more than an impatient, almost condescending nudge.
Lev tried to go after her again, and with an almost careless flick of his wrist- his two remaining eyes never leaving Minerva's-Crota cut the little Ghost in half.
