Min screamed in horror as the blade carved through Lev in a tiny flash of sparks, the light of his oculus snuffing out as his two halves clattered away across the floor.
That was it. That was all there was to it. Lev was dead. Gone. And whether or not Min won this fight, that was it for her, too. She was as mortal now as she had been in her first life, as any poor soul who lived in the City. She was no longer a Lightbearer, no longer a Guardian.
Her little friend was dead.
She wondered if Crota would carve her into pieces and pin her up over his door as a demented sort of trophy, as Verok had done. She wondered if he'd take Lev's two halves and jam them in her mouth as well, a warning and a reminder of what happened to foolishly stupid Guardians who tried to contend with the Hive.
She backed up slowly, step by step, and just as slowly Crota moved toward her. He seemed in no rush now, and why should he be? She'd never been more than an irritation to him, a particularly pesky little bug that had run out of places to hide.
She'd been a fool to come here. She could resist the Deathsong- so what? What had that earned her, except this? Everyone had seemed to have such faith in her, such an idea that she was something special. At the end, for a few moments at the beginning of her fight with Crota, she'd almost started to believe them. Just a little bit. But it was a false idea; false faith and false hope. Those far greater than she had tried and failed. It was nothing but pure pride and hubris that she ever dared to think she might succeed in their wake.
Her poor little Lev was dead, and soon she would be too. Then Kalina, and Gen, and the Vanguard, and Eris, and-
-…Eris.
Eris had been stuck on the moon, her Ghost dead, for five years. She'd fought against all odds, survived things Min couldn't imagine, and had returned to them. She wasn't a Guardian any more, just as Lightless as those in the City, but look at what she'd done. She'd accomplished more, Lightless and mortal, than Toland and the others put together.
Lev might be dead, and Min very well may shortly be dead, but she wasn't going to die because she'd given up hope.
No. If she was going to die, she was going to die fighting.
She was going to die messing this bastard up.
She darted forward. Surprised by the sudden motion, the Hive Prince fumbled a swing of his Sword at her that was far too slow. Min dove and rolled between his legs, then bounded up, arm already swinging. She was furious- more furious than she could ever remember being- but the rage behind her eyes was not red.
It was white.
Crota had just started to turn as Min leapt into the air, her fist cocked back. As she drove it into his lower back, it was once again preceded by a blade of white.
He bellowed as he was skewered, the ghostly sword severing his spine and tearing through his abdomen. Black ichor waterfalled out of his belly, chased by a corpse-gray coil of something that might have been intestines. He half hunched, trying to catch that coil with his free hand, but he'd forgotten that hand was across the room. His stump did little more than splash through the ichor as he stumbled, twisting to block her or smack her away again with his other arm.
The great Sword he held clattered once more to the ground as her white blade slashed through his elbow. His defensive motion turned into a twisted fall, and he crashed to the ground, landing on his back.
Min stepped up onto Crota's chest, ignoring the nasty wound in his gut, and the way that black ichor spat over her as he lifted his fresh stump toward her. Stomping down with one foot on his belly, she drove her bladed fist into his chest. White mist billowed around her head and shoulders, floating around her in the air, as Crota arched and bellowed.
He tried to roll, to knock her to the ground again, but the motion was spastic and weak. Min pulled her arm back, then swept her fist down again. This time, the ghost-blade parted his head from his shoulders, and with a flick of her arm, she tumbled it away across the room.
Crota tried to bellow again. At least, his chest hitched up and then down, and the head now resting on its side a dozen yards away opened its mouth and gurgled in a sputter of gore. Flicking some of the ichor away from her faceplate with her only remaining hand, Min stepped off of his weakly writhing body, then bent and picked up his Sword.
Crota's three eldritch eyes were fixed on her as she came, dragging the tip of his Sword on the ground behind her. Sparks flashed up from the marble as it went, the tip skreeeeeeeing as it traced a carved path behind her. His mouth opened again, worked and tried to bare its teeth, but if this was an attempt to talk to her it was ineffective.
Drawing to a halt, she looked down in weary disgust at those eyes, now rolling and darting in a way she really hoped was fear. Behind her, Crota's body gave a weak and sickly flop. She ignored it.
Calling on all of her strength, she hauled the huge sword up into the air, and let its weight drive it back down. It skewered Crota's head with a sickening, wet-thud sound that split it in half just as he had split poor Lev in two. The same corpse-gray stuff that had flopped out of his gut spilled like old spoiled milk from the broken skull, and those swamp-fire eyes flared once, and then faded out.
The weight of the sword had driven its tip not only through the head but also into the marble again. When she released the handle, and took a shaking step back, it remained where it was, sticking out of the ground and surrounded by the brains of its former master.
The sickly wet sounds of his body behind her had ceased.
It was done.
Crota was dead.
Min took another step backward, this one stumbling, and fell to her knees. Reaching up she tore off her helmet and dropped it aside without care. The white was gone again, nothing but that tiny little flicker deep in her mind. She felt heavy and sick and mortal. So painfully mortal.
Ignoring the blood and mess on it, her hand went to her face as she bent forward on her knees. A wailing cry broke free, and with it some kind of dam inside her gave way. She began to sob hopelessly, helplessly.
Lev. Her poor little friend.
She bowed forward until her forehead touched the marble, and cried, the sobs wracking her. Her chest ached and burned with the force of her grief; her head felt as if it might split open. Her physical wounds, her severed wrist, throbbed at her.
She was seized suddenly with the idea that what remained of Lev was going to get mired in the pond of black nasty that was still seeping from the dead Hive Prince. Such a thing was so horrifying, so unthinkable- that he should be sullied in such a way- that she suddenly looked up and began to frantically crawl over the floor looking for him.
His first half was laying on the marble well away from any chance that it might get touched by that stuff, and she snatched it up, cradling it to her chest protectively. Sobs breaking out anew, she spotted his second half through a blur of her tears, near the foot of the dais. Shuffling forward on her knees, she fumblingly retrieved it too, cradling the two halves in her arms as if he was her own infant that had died in front of her.
She wept. For how long, she didn't know.
For how long, she didn't care.
Exhaustion took over, and when she had no more energy for tears, she lay down on her side on the floor of the throne room, gently setting Lev's two halves in front of her, shifting them until they were upright and what had been his oculus was turned toward her.
"I'm so sorry," she said weakly. "Lev, I'm so sorry. You always saved me, and I couldn't…"
The tears may have run dry, but the grief and pain had not abated.
Get on your feet, the unseen force shadowing her seemed to say. Take the Sword. Take the Throne.
She ignored it. Whatever it was, it had not helped her. It had not saved Lev. If she touched that damn Sword again it would be too soon. And the throne was in pieces on the ground somewhere…over there. What did she want with it? It was rubble. It was broken, and her poor little Ghost…
Numbly, her fingers moved out again and she touched Lev's shell gingerly. Then, she blinked.
The little white light in her head, almost gone now, had suddenly flickered.
It had to be her imagination. She touched the shell again, and…no. No, not her imagination. The white had definitely flickered. More, a tiny little thread of white, as fine as spider silk, had appeared between the Ghost's two halves.
Shoving herself up into a sit, she grabbed hold of Lev's halves again, fumbling awkwardly with her hand and her aching stump. Every time she touched him, that white in her head flared a little brighter, and those thin gossamer threads appeared.
"Lev? Lev?" she could hear herself saying, distantly, as she worked in frustration to get his two halves together again. She nearly had it once, and in that moment those gossamer threads had thickened to yarn, and his oculus…had his oculus-?
"It's ok, it's ok," she sobbed like a mantra, then cursed as her fumbling knocked the two halves apart again. She caught one before it could tumble off her lap and tried again. "Shh…it's ok. I've got you, Lev. This time, I've got you..."
Finally she was able to get the two halves fitted together, and the moment they touched the seam where they had been cleaved flashed with a light so brilliant she instinctively recoiled, throwing her arm up to shield her eyes.
She was still blinking away that light when she heard a humming, clicking sound, and then a groggy, confused voice.
"Min? Min! Where are…? What happened, you- you're hurt! Here, here, I've got you!"
Her stump began that familiar heal-tingle as a warm light started to play over it. She gaped at him.
"There, there, it'll just be a moment. Is he down? Is he- Min!"
This last was bleated in surprise as Min suddenly grabbed him with her good hand and all but crushed him against her.
It seemed she was not out of tears just yet, after all.
"It just isn't possible."
Min sat on the step of the dais, bone-weary, one hand tangled in her hair as if she had to physically hold her head up. Lev, once he'd calmed her down enough to half-understand her frantic words, had been baffled. When he was sure she wasn't going to break down again, he'd gently slipped away from her and went over to scan what remained of Crota.
She looked up as he came back to her, the smile she gave him damp and tired but relieved all the same.
"Min?"
"I'm sorry, I'm just…I'm so happy to see you," she said, resisting the urge to haul him in again. "Lev, I'm so sorry-"
"Hey, it's ok. I'm ok," he said gently, bobbing a little closer. "But what you're saying just isn't possible, Min. I must have been knocked out again, but-"
"You were in two pieces, Lev," she said. "Twenty feet between them. You were dead. You were dead, and it was my-"
She ducked her head again, sniffling.
"Hey, no. No, it's ok," he said. "I'm all right. I'm all right, and you're all right, and that's what matters. Hey…"
She wiped a hand briefly under her nose and nodded weakly. "I'm sorry, I just…"
"No, no more apologizing. Min, you killed Crota! You did it! I knew you could do it! All we need to do now is get out of here, get back to-"
"The others!" Min felt a jolt as she suddenly remembered, getting to her feet. "They're still fighting on the moon. Kalina-"
"Let's get back to them," he said. "Get back to where we belong."
He had taken her helmet and her broken rifle back as he'd passed it on his way to the dead Hive. Now, at her nod, he materialized the helmet back around her head, clean and repaired.
Min started toward the way they had come in, then paused and looked around. The Sword still stuck out of the ground.
"As you already know, Crota must be slain with his own blade. When that is done, you must take the blade and use it to touch the portal."
Eris's words from the Well came back to her, and as loathe as she was to ever touch that thing again, it was the only key to getting back to her friends.
Grimacing, she got hold of the handle of the blade, trying to ignore that her boots were sunk in the Hive Prince's brains. The Sword did not come loose easily, but after a few moments of wrenching and straining, she finally broke it free.
Good. Good, now take the Throne. You must take the Throne.
Balancing the weight of the massive blade on her shoulder, Min headed for the door of the grand throne room without a single backward look. A chunk of the shattered throne rattled away to the side as she kicked it from her path, and then she was gone into the dark again.
Crota and his Throne could rot. She was going home.
