Min opened her eyes to find that she was laying on the ground. Her entire body ached but even as her eyes started to focus, she saw Lev appear out of a shimmer of transmat energy. She couldn't have been out more than a second.

"Min?"

She shifted gingerly, testing out her limbs, and shook her head a little. "Don't think anything is broken."

"I'll judge that," he said, already scanning her. "You're right. Just concussive trauma, soft tissue. Here, this will help."

As the warm healing beam did its work and the pain started to draw away, Min pushed herself up into a sit and looked around.

All around her, Guardians were stirring, sitting up groggily or getting to their feet and looking around in confusion. Ghosts could be seen beside each, scanning and healing their partners.

Of the Hive, a dozen or so were fleeing into tunnels at the far end of the cathedral. The rest appeared to be dead.

There was no sign of Omnighul.

For that matter, there was no sign of Nara, either.

A fan of broken rock, no piece larger than the ball of her thumb, marked where the Shard had been. Pushing herself up, Min moved toward this patch. Lev, his healing finished, trailed after her and then began to scan the debris.

Spotting the handle of the Sword, Min shifted some of the rock and took hold of it, but as she drew it out of the rubble she saw that the blade was nearly completely gone. A single sharp sliver, about five inches long, was all that remained.

Dropping the handle again, she turned as she heard her name called. A streak of dark blue was all she saw before Kalina was tackling her, flinging her arms around Min's neck and shoulders, her legs around Min's waist. Min staggered back a step, surprised, catching hold of the Hunter out of reflex. Kalina had removed her helmet, and Min couldn't help the laugh as the Hunter began to plant kisses all over Min's faceplate.

"Hey! Hey, what about your reputation?" she managed to ask, but then Lev made her own helmet disappear and the kisses were landing on her face and lips instead.

When Kalina finally paused for breath she immediately grabbed Min's face, an expression of disbelief on her own. "How? How did you do that?"

"Which part?" Lev asked dryly, as Min blinked at Kalina in confusion. "The part where she killed Ir Yût and Crota, or the part where she took out that big ugly eye-beam thing and used the Sword to blow up the ritual?"

"All of it," Gen said, reaching their side as Min lowered Kalina back to her feet. "But I think she may be referring to the part where you two got here so incredibly fast."

"Fast?" Min asked.

"Yes, fast," he said. "Min, we just now left that Well chamber. It didn't take us two minutes to run up a side passageway and here and the moment we ran in you came out of nothing and dropped onto that ogre. We three barely had a chance to lift our rifles when suddenly it was over."

"She was in the Ascendent Realm," Eris said, coming up behind him. Beyond her, Min could see some of the Guardians starting to cluster, including three very familiar faces. "Time there, like all, obeys its own rules. You have killed Crota, Guardian."

It was not a question, but Min didn't miss the way Eris's eyes went to the handle of the broken Sword, as she asked it.

"He's dead," Min said. "It was a hell of a fight. I thought I lost Lev but he put himself back together."

"I didn't-" Lev began, but was interrupted. Zavala had reached them, with Cayde, Ikora, and half the Guardians that had invaded the moon right behind him. Others were pursuing the Hive that had fled from the cathedral, or poking through the piles of dead Thralls in curiosity.

"Put himself back together?" Zavala asked.

"I didn't die," Lev said to him. "It was a hell of a fight. I was knocked out briefly and when I came back to, it was all over. Min thought that I-"

"Min knows," Minerva said, looking at him angrily. "You were split right in half, Lev. I'm not mistaken!"

"It just isn't possible," he said patiently.

"No, it's not," Ikora said. "It's not possible. Minerva, we'll need more details about that, and about the rest of what happened in the Ascendent Realm, but that can wait. There is too much to be done here."

"Agreed," Zavala, said. "This has been a victory but Omnighul is still out there somewhere. If we can find her she needs to be killed. I won't pretend that we can cleanse the entire moon of Hive, however with Crota gone, that Wizard is the only loose thread. With her left it is only a matter of time before she renews her efforts to invade Earth, or seeks to take vengeance on the City in some other way for what happened today."

"I've already got several of my best heading down into the tunnels with Saladin, to try and find her," Cayde said. "I would have sent Kalina too, but she was lip-locked with a Titan at the time. So disgraceful."

He nudged Kalina with his elbow and gave her a wink.

"As many of you that are able," Zavala said, turning to look at the gathered Guardians behind him. "Please do the same. Omnighul needs to be taken down if she can be found, before she has a chance to recover and regroup."

Several of the Guardians began to disperse, heading in groups toward the various tunnels. Many of them gave Min strange looks- or at least, she imagined they did behind their helmets and masks and faceplates.

One, however, moved up to Zavala's side. She had removed her helmet, and the concerned expression on her face was plain to be seen. "Did anyone see where Nara went?"

"I lost track of her when the Shard exploded," Zavala said. "Minerva?"

As she shook her head, Kalina glowered. "I only saw her fighting Min for the Sword. God knows what for! She-"

"I know," Blayd said, and she looked so weary and worried that Min felt badly for her. "I'm not excusing what she did. I have no idea what she was thinking or why she tried to take the Sword, and I'm not saying she was right or had good motivations. I just-"

"No one blames you for your sister," Cayde told her. Ikora had moved past them with Eris, and was crouched down examining the rubble remains of Shard and Sword.

"No, we don't blame you," Zavala said to her, but his eyes were narrowed as he looked around. "However I am not convinced that the reason she wanted to come back here so badly was just to fight Hive. It could be that she's simply joined the others to track down Omnighul, but my gut tells me that is not the case. No. I think she's looking for something else here, and I don't think it will be good if, and when, she finds it."

Blayd nodded, and seemed to steel herself. "I will go and look for her, find out what she's doing."

"Blayd," Zavala's voice was remarkably gentle. "I admire your strength, and your tenacity in caring for your sister, but what she does is not your responsibility. It is certainly not your responsibility to bear alone."

"We'll go with her," Min told him. "Find Nara if we can, find Omnighul if we can. She doesn't have to do this alone."

Blayd blinked at her, but Zavala didn't look convinced. "Minerva, you have done the impossible today. At the very least you must be exhausted. No one expects you to-"

"I know, sir," Min said. "But truth be told, I don't feel exhausted at all. It may be adrenaline and maybe it'll wear off, but I'm doing all right. I'm happy to help Blayd try and find her sister. For a while, anyway."

"We barely had to do any fighting at all," Gen added. "Kalina and I. We barely got back up here when it was suddenly over. I'm fresh as a daisy, and happy to go along to help find Nara and Omnighul."

"Me too," Kalina said.

"That's not surprising," Cayde suddenly chimed in, eyeing her as he jabbed a thumb toward Minerva. "I thought I was going to need a hose to get you off of her. Min, will you be carrying my Hunter as a backpack? That might be easiest."

"Jealous, Cayde?" Kalina tsked, then smiled. "That's so sweet!"

"Damn right I'm jealous," he said. "Zavala never carries me like a backpack. Min-"

"I am not carrying you like a backpack," Minerva told him, and he laughed.

"All right. You four then, go and see if you can't find Nara, or find what she's up to," Zavala told them. "Min, we'll have a full debrief once we're back Earthside."

"Yes," Ikora said, straightening from where she had been picking over the ground. "I am curious to discuss what happened with Lev in greater detail, as well as the rest of it."

Reaching out, she took Minerva's hand and placed a small piece of the Shard on her palm, before gently closing her fingers around it. "We'll talk soon."

Min nodded, then slipped the pebble into the case with her engram. "Yes."

"We'll finish up here and see you back at the Tower," Zavala said, putting his hand briefly on Min's shoulder.

As the four of them headed across the Cathedral to the far tunnels, Blayd murmured a soft 'Thank you.'

"Of course," Min said to her. As Lev materialized her helmet around her head again, she looked back.

Eris was rising to her feet, knees dusty. In her hands she was holding the handle of the broken Sword. As if sensing Min's backward glance, her eyes shifted up toward the Titan, and she gave a faint nod.

Seeing Eris holding Crota's blade gave Min a twinge of disquiet, though she couldn't have said why.


The twisting tunnels and close corridors had not increased their charm in the slightest. Barely had the four of them entered the maddening labyrinth than the questions started flying.

Min told them as best she could about what had happened in the Ascendent Realm, still astonished that what had seemed to her to take hours had passed so quickly for them. Gen seemed particularly interested in the crystal that Crota had broken out of, noting its similarity with the crystal that Omnighul had been using to drain the Shard.

"And what was that fight?" Blayd asked, speaking up for the first time in several minutes, as she looked at Kalina and Gen. "Have you two ever seen anything like that?"

"Like what?" Min asked. "With Crota?"

"No," Gen sounded slightly amused. "She's talking about the fight you had with Nara over the Sword."

"Oh. She just tried to take it from me, that's all," Min said. "She probably just wanted to kill Omnighul with it or something, but she surprised me and I guess I instinctively held on to it."

"Is that what you think happened?" Kalina asked her, incredulous. Min looked at her, then at the other two, and felt hesitation.

"Is…it not?" she asked.

"No," Blayd said. "I've seen paracausal power wielded by very strong Guardians before, but this was insane."

"I don't understand," Min told her. "I saw through the Portal, right before I jumped through. I saw Nara do some kind of hurricane of Arc energy, right before the Might-"

"Yeah, that's what I'm talking about," Blayd said. "Nara is strong, especially when it comes to Arc. I've seen her do things like that before, but afterward she's drained, and needs time to recover her energy before she can get even near to that again. But the two of you were something else. As soon as you started fighting over the Sword it was like…I don't even know how to describe it."

"I think Min said it best. It was like a hurricane," Gen said. "At first, you lit up as if someone had set you on fire, but by the end you couldn't even see 'you' anymore. There was just a huge swirling column of white-hot Sol energy."

"The same with Nara," Kalina said. "By the end it was like watching a maelstrom made of a thunderstorm and a solar flare. It was too bright to look at."

"Then the Sword went flying away and that was it. It all just…went. Switched off." Blayd snapped her fingers. "You two were just you two again, just a pair of Titans. Until the Shard suddenly went supernova and knocked us all on our asses."

Min blinked, thinking hard. She remembered seeing the flare of fire against her arms, and then thinking that the Arc energy flying away from Nara had looked like a cloak made out of a storm. But then…what was it, after then?

Everything became too bright to look at, she thought. Everything but Nara's helmet, which was like a black hole. She was like a demon, like a-

"A tempest," she said out-loud. The others looked at her.

"What's that?"

"Just a thought that kind of came into my head, when I was trying to get the Sword back. All the light, and that's what I thought. I thought Nara looked like a tempest."

"Tempest, I like that," Blayd said, but her tone suggested she didn't like it very much at all. "Powerful, chaotic, unpredictable, devestating. Sounds like Nara in a nutshell. Sounds like her since the moment we came back from the moon the first time."

"I'm sorry, Blayd," Kalina said softly. "I can't imagine how hard it must be for you to be back here, after all that. I can't imagine how hard all of this with Nara must be for you."

"She's not my sister anymore," Blayd said, then looked at Min. "Nara…you would have liked Nara, Minerva. You all would have. She had a sense of humor, could make you feel better with just a few words and a well-timed wink. She was always so strong, so assured, and she took care of everyone around her. She was a good person, she really was. And she fought so hard to do the right thing."

She shook her head, looking away, but the thickness in her voice betrayed her. "I don't know who came back from the moon with me those years ago. I really don't. All I do know is that whoever it is, they're wearing my sister's face, and I hate them for that. Whoever it is, whoever we're looking for now- it's not Nara. It hasn't been her in a long, long time."