Aria sat in silence. Fastened in place in each of their respective places on the Javelin, her fireteam said not a word as they flew through warp-space. Blue lights and dancing waves passed by the exterior of the ship in a beautiful display, but she wasn't paying attention, nor would she have cared even if she had been.
Though the trip was only estimated to last around twelve minutes for them to reach the moon, it felt like hours. Hours of time to dwell on their mission and imagine all the possible horrors that awaited them, to think of every possible outcome that could go wrong. She thought back to the conversation they'd had with Ikora Rey…
"Alright, so we journey to the moon? And then what, link up with the Guardian you stationed there?" The Vanguards gave their signature 'turn and look at each other in understanding', and then she faced them again, her eyes filled with worry. She spoke in the manner that a doctor did when delivering terrible news to a patient; "Not quite. He was stationed on the moon, until we lost contact with him nearly a week ago. These recent events in such close alignment can't be a coincidence. If you happen to find him, it will be a miracle. But I fear the worst may have happened to him…"
Aria wondered if that would happen to them if something were to go wrong; would they lose contact, only to be forgotten and isolated on the moon, turned into a frightening tale to scare other Guardians? She shuddered at the thought of becoming a legend of death.
"Aaaaaand, we're here. Welcome to the moon." None of the three Guardians onboard celebrated this momentous occasion, and instead stared out at the massive white rock, split down the side with a crack that covered nearly half of it, giving it the appearance of an broken nut. "Whip, transfer controls to manual." Ash gripped her pilot's controls, and began to enter the terraformed atmosphere of the moon that gave it its normal feeling gravity. Whip and Seraph had attempted to introduce their Guardian companions to the world of flight, and though all three were now learned in the art of aviation, Ash had shown a real knack for it, picking up the aerial piloting with ease.
Their descent was fast and efficient. Ash saw the ground rushing up to meet her, and she pulled out of her dive in an upward arc, losing her momentum. She circled around the general area for a bit, until what they were looking for showed up on one of the external cameras; to their starboard side, nearly a mile away in distance, was an enormous hole in the side of the moon. Green, noxious gases rose out of the pit, before dissolving in the oxygen-lacking atmosphere. Whether they were from flames or toxic fumes, Ash didn't care. The sight was a creepy one, and that was all she cared about. But unfortunately, their risky plan involved the hellish pit if they were going to enter the Hive fortress undetected.
She moved the ship over until it hovered around twenty feet above the ground, and a few hundred yards from the edge of the Hellmouth. "Alright, you can take them." Seraph assumed control of the ship, with Echo watching the external monitors. Whip would be the Ghost accompanying them down. After they'd discussed the plan with the young Ghost, she'd agreed on the condition that, 'the next time you're on a mission, I'm coming with. I still haven't gotten to be in on any of the action!'
"Prepare for Transmat in 3…2…1…" Ash readied herself in a standing position, and was prepared by the sudden foot high drop that she faced when Seraph teleported her and the other two. She watched Matt check his gear, and give a thumbs up. Aria nodded as well, to signal that she had her things as well. As for Ash, well she had what they needed wrapped in loops around her shoulder and forearm.
They walked in silence to the cliff, occasionally kicking a rock to break the silence, though no reprieve came. Upon reaching the Hellmouth, Matt peered over the edge of the pit, and stared into the depths below. He couldn't see any kind of ground from up on the ledge, and the glowing green mist blocked any kind of visibility he may have had if the height hadn't been so great. He turned to his friends.
"Well, there's no telling how far down that fall is, other than it'll likely kill us if we slip. Are we ready to go through with this?" Aria nodded, and Ash patted the grappling cables slung around her arm. Matt nodded, and held open his hand to take the hooks of the cables that Ash had passed him. Whip pointed out a cluster of rocks that would be very hard to shake loose, and with some effort, Matt wedged the tri-hooked metal pieces into the cracks. He gripped the ropes and tugged at them one by one, to test their durability. They did not budge.
"Alright, it's showtime people. I'll head down first, then Aria, then Ash. Whip, you give me updates on everyone's status, and just fly around to check and make sure none of us are in trouble. Try not to attract any attention if you can." The Ghost silently nodded, as the seriousness of the task they were about to perform weighed down even on him, and forced him to repress his usual jokes. Matt hooked himself up to the rope end of his grappling line, then walked over to the very edge of the pit. He saw a promising trail of hand and foot-holds, and began to climb down the side of the Hellmouth's inner walls.
The rocky outcrops were somewhat slippery from the green mist, and he had to hold even tighter onto the rocks to prevent his grip from slipping. Though they had the ropes, there weren't any stopping mechanisms, meaning that they were mostly for psychological comfort and from stopping them from falling into the pit. But even if the ropes did stop their fall, a fall of nearly one hundred and fifty feet, the length of their lines, might snap their backs or even kill them without slowing restraints. Ignoring the horrendous possibilities which threatened to consume his mind with fear, he reached over to grab the next handhold, and began his descent of nearly two hundred feet to the first physically stable platforms below.
As Matt moved down further, Aria too began to climb down the side of the Hellmouth, and eventually as did Ash, until finally all three Guardians were making their way silently and stealthily toward the Circle of Bones below. The wall Matt held onto, having at first remained completely vertical for the first forty feet or so down into the pit, now began to angle in, leaving him in an incline where he hung onto the side rather than stood on it. Cursing, he continued his slow but sure progress into the depths.
He could hear Aria breathing heavily from behind and above him, straining her muscles to keep her grip on the slippery outcrops. Whip hovered down to Matt's side and whispered to him, "Both Ash and Aria have a death grip on the wall, though they as well as yourself, seem to be tiring." Matt nodded, unable to waste any breath to respond. Indeed, his muscles were burning from the effort required to stay on the small hand and foot-holds. He remembered a few TV shows from his earlier life where people had to use their strength and muscular skills to overcome incredible feats like hand only rock-climbing, hanging from bars and ladders, and generally keep their stamina up so that they could keep moving across obstacle courses. If there was ever a contestant to win one of those shows, Matt was sure he was one-upping them with his current operation.
Suddenly, he heard a gravelly noise, and turned to his left to see a small rock come falling off the side of the wall, nearly fifteen feet away. He glanced up to see Aria's right leg searching wildly for another foothold as her previous one had just crumbled under her weight. Eventually she found one, and took a few seconds to catch her breath. He admired the way she'd refrained from making any kind of sound, from screaming or crying out in shock. The girl had guts, that was for sure. He looked back to his right and below as he continued to climb. There was only another thirty feet between him and the platform below, and he gritted his teeth, pushing his strength to the maximum and keeping his hold on the wall as he descended.
After another five minutes, Matt finally extended his foot to the right and touched ground. Heaving himself onto the platform, he felt his legs give out from under him, and he laid on the ground, forcing oxygen into his lungs so that his muscle stamina could return. Another few minutes passed, and he heard Aria make a grunting noise as she leapt onto the platform where Matt began to stand up again, having regained most of the feeling in his legs and arms. He watched her fall onto the ground in exhaustion, mimicking his earlier action. Now only Ash needed to reach the ground, and he gazed up above to track her progress down the upward slope.
Suddenly as she hung onto the edge of a particularly slippery outcrop, Matt watched Ash lose her grip and begin to fall into the depths below, his heart catching in his throat. Lukcily, she'd only had around fifteen feet of slack left, and she reached the end of her tether, and began to swing back like a pendulum. She was still a good twenty feet above the platform, her line having been tangled on some other rocks that extended out the side of the wall, and she swung back and forth in the air, nothing for her to hold onto, or to slow her movement with.
Aria now watched at Matt's side in worry as well. If Ash didn't do something, she was going to lose her momentum, and she'd be stuck out in the air, unable to move. Quickly Matt waved at her, grabbing her attention, and made a cutting motion, implying she slice the cable. She threw her empty hands up in a hopeless gesture, showing she didn't have one. Pulling his knife from his sheath, Matt gripped it by the blade, and aimed at Ash. She understood, and made her arms available to catch it. Reading off a silent prayer in his mind, Matt tossed the knife up the twenty feet, and watched it begin to arc down under gravity's influence-
Ash caught it by the handle, and waved at Matt showing she was ready. Matt got ready to give her the command, seeing that any momentum she had was quickly waning. On her next swing towards the platform, Matt made a swipe with his hand, and Ash cut the line in one motion.
Immediately she began to fall, and he saw that she hadn't had enough inertia to reach the platform. Out of sheer hope, he sprinted to the edge and slid forward on his stomach, reaching out his arm as she fell in front of him, and closing his grasp around her wrist with an unyielding grip.
Her weight instantly began to drag him over the edge with her, but he spread his legs, increasing his drag on the ground to slow himself before he went completely over. It was enough, and though his torso and arms hung off the edge, pulled down by Ash's body, his waist and below remained firmly planted on the platform. Ash looked at him with wide eyes, trying not to make any kind of noise, but completely and utterly terrified at the thought of falling, and Matt suddenly knew in his mind that he was not going to let her fall, no matter what. He reached his other arm above him to grab the ledge of the platform, and began to pull himself up into a better position to retrieve Ash.
Aria grabbed his legs and assisted in pulling him away from the edge. Once his chest was again on the platform, he gave his last burst of strength to pull Ash up until she too gripped the ledge and heaved herself onto solid ground. He fell back onto the ground as she collapsed next to him, and shook silently in terror at the ordeal. The whole event had lasted no more than fifteen seconds, but it felt as though time itself had stopped when she fell.
Without thinking, he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes to look at him, appreciative of the comfort he was providing her. Her face probably looked as though she wanted to cry, but of course she couldn't as an Exo. She could only look at Matt and silently mouth, thank you, as she embraced the feel of his hand reassuringly on her shoulder.
Matt hated to break her out of her recovery, but they had to get moving. He looked at her and gave her a questioning thumbs up with his other hand, asking if she was ready to go. She took only a moment's hesitation, and nodded, perhaps a bit forcefully.
He stood up and extended his hand to her. She took it gratefully, and allowed him to help her back up on her feet. He glanced over at Aria who had been conversing quietly with Whip. The Ghost flew over, and told Matt what they'd been talking about. "Right now, we're in the Circle of Bones. We need to make our way around the Forgotten Swarm to a chamber called the World's Grave. That's where the library is, according to the last known records of the previous Guardian. If the Hive catch us, they'll raise an alarm, and you're going to need a lot more than your exit strategy to get out of here alive."
Matt nodded, showing he understood the gravity of their predicament. "Which way?" Instead of responding, Whip simply began to fly towards a large twelve foot doorway on the far left side of the Circle. The three Guardians followed him as quietly as they could, stopping every now and then to evade a patrolling pair or two of Acolytes, the main soldiers of the Hive. They made slow progress, but eventually reached Whip at the doorway, and entered through it.
After traversing a series of tunnels and hallways, the fireteam found themselves in a fairly large room, with a pool of dark water-like liquid situated on the ground, and a staircase leading up to an organ-looking device. It was golden, and looked more like some kind of instrument than a library of the Hive's records. Still, he supposed their architecture was likely different from that of his own, the reason being that their species consisted of goddamn sorcerers and sadistic religious freaks who worshipped an entity bent on humanity's destruction.
Whip looked at the console of gadgets and machinery in that made up the control board of the library. "I can start to rip files whenever you want, but be warned; this thing looks like its important, and that usually means that alarms are likely going to go off as soon as I touch this thing." The three looked at each other once, and then Matt turned to the Ghost, determination in his voice; "Do it."
A blue beam shot from Whip's eye, penetrating the outer shell of the library and reaching the mysterious files inside. The Ghost began to absorb information, expanding slightly as he did so. Matt had expected some kind of alarm to start ringing, but he didn't hear anything at all. Silence didn't mean that there weren't any alarms though, it just meant he couldn't hear them, and hopefully that if something was hearing them, that they would take a long time before reaching the three Guardians who stood ready to face off against whatever opponents the Hive had to throw at them.
He still didn't see or hear anything coming from the doorway that they'd entered from, but that didn't stop him from detecting motion to his lower left. He turned his head to stare at the pond of dark, blackish water. He wondered what had caught his attention before he saw a thrall rising from below the depths, its body forming as it began to step out from the pool and land on the ground with a wet, muddy smack.
"They're coming out of the pool!" he yelled, and he turned to his left to face down the many thrall who were beginning to appear from the black liquid and move in to attack.
Ash and Aria shifted their aim to the thralls below, and opened fire. Bullets peppered their bodies and the water, shooting droplets of liquid mixed with thrall insides into the air. Now the sound came, as the thralls began to scream their tortured sounds of agony. "There's so much in here, they've broken the Bekenstein limit!" Matt heard Whip say from somewhere behind him. He ignored it before he began to wonder what the hell the Bekenstein limit was, and just focused on keeping the thralls at bay while the Ghost worked. There were too many popping up though, and he knew that if Whip didn't finish soon, that their position at the top of the stairs would be overwhelmed.
"Any day now!" he called, hoping to urge the Ghost to work a bit faster. "Hold on, I've almost… there! I've got all the data that was in there, let's get out of here!"
Matt didn't need to be told twice. He stopped firing just long enough for he and his two companions to break away, and escape through the doorway that they'd originally entered in. Thrall continued to pour out of the pool, and though there'd been a minute respite as the thralls tried to follow their movement, they now came at the Guardians in full force, forming a large horde of death and decay behind them.
The Guardians sprinted through the corridors, following their escape strategy toward an exit that the previously stationed Guardian's records marked as 'The Temple of Crota'. Though it wasn't the only way out, it was by far the closest and fastest, so it was where they headed.
They continued to run and sprint with the onslaught of thralls unrelentingly chasing them throughout the passageways. Finally, after jumping out of a small pit onto a ledge above, Matt saw that the exit was roughly only a hundred feet away, beckoning to them. He almost laughed at how close escape was.
Then the Acolytes and Knights that had been hidden behind all the pillars in the room stepped out of cover, and he felt his resolve dissolve faster than it had appeared.
Ash and Aria turned to the sound of the border of thralls rapidly approaching from the tunnels below. They too saw the unconquerable force that had gathered to ambush them, armed with large cannons and shredders. There weren't any odds to be calculated, there were no chances here. Aria raised her rifle, ready to fight to the end, while Ash placed her hand on Matt's shoulder. "Hey, thanks for saving me earlier, when it counted. It was nice while our luck lasted." There was a smile to her voice, and he could tell she had accepted their fate.
As for Matt, he'd done nothing of the sort. He felt his anger grow at his friends' helplessness, at the Hive and their armies preparing to invade Earth, at the fact that Whip would never be able to give the Hive's records over to the Vanguards, and that he, Ash, and Aria would be forgotten, their sacrifices unappreciated by anyone but each other. He felt his rage boil over, and suddenly he was calm. He looked at the Hive with nothing but contempt in his eyes, with an assurance that they were all going to pay for their mistake in thinking they could kill him. Blue sparks traveled up and down his arms, emitting tiny arcs of electricity wherever they appeared.
He didn't know if he was going to make it out of here, but one thing was for goddamn certain; every single Hive son-of-a-bitch that stood in this room was not going to leave it alive. He drew his knife, and charged into the chamber.
He weaved between the ranges of the Knights' swords, dodging every swing and swipe that came his way. Again and again, he drove his electrified knife into the bodies and heads of the Hive spawn that had tried to ambush them, willing his anger to seep into the blade and force the Hive soldiers to understand just how much he hated them before they crumbled away into ashes. Limbs were severed time and time again, and many Acolytes found themselves falling on their faces as their legs were literally ripped out from under them and thrown away. The fight passed around Matt in a blur, who barely even registered what he was doing except that he was showing the Hive who the hell they were dealing with.
Finally, he turned to face the pit that the thrall had finally reached behind Ash and Aria, and threw a grenade into it. Two seconds passed, and suddenly all of the thrall ceased to exist as the flaming explosion engulfed them and instantly vaporized them.
Suddenly, he felt the fight leave his body, and he fell to his knees, exhausted at his furious energy leaving his body in such a quick fashion. Ash rushed over to him, and gripped his shoulders. "Do you realize what you just did?!"
"Gave myself a headache?" guessed Matt, as bells rang inside his brain, threatening to shatter his eardrums. "Well maybe that, but you also just annihilated an entire group of Hive soldiers when we had almost no chance for survival. You saved us!" With a relieved and grateful laugh, Ash suddenly hugged Matt, pulling him closer to her in a tight squeeze that was probably meant to show him her gratitude, but ended up only threatening to break his ribs. "You're welcome, now please let go before you crush my spine!" Ash obliged as Aria watched on, laughing at both the spectacle in front of her, and from the sheer disbelief that they'd managed to survive. Matt turned to her.
"Hey, Aria. You know about Guardians better than either me or Ash here. What the hell did I just do?" She returned his gaze and said thoughtfully, "Well, to me it looked like you drew enough power from your light that you were able to call upon the arc energy of the traveler, and enter a Bladedancer's trance. They're Hunters who wield their arc energy to devastate their opponents through electrified hand-to-hand combat, and it looks like you were able to kick some major ass with it."
Matt nodded, and then pointed toward the now unguarded exit. "Thanks. Now that we've got that out of the way, do we want to leave?"
The trio stepped over the ash piles of the Hive that Matt had killed, and walked back out into the sunlight surface of the moon. Their joy only lasted a moment before Matt pointed to something lying on the ground and said, "Look." Aria followed the direction of his finger to see the body of a Guardian at the doorstep of the temple.
Whip flew over to it, and analyzed it. "There's nothing left… not even the light… but his armor matches the description of the missing Guardian." Aria and the other two gave a moment of silence, in honor of their fallen comrade. "There's no point in trying to bring him back with us, it's just armor and ash that's left. But where's his Ghost? It may have additional data." Aria looked around the area surrounding the body, but saw no trace of it. Both Ash and Matt turned up empty-handed as well. Aria was about to turn and tell Matt and Ash to split up before she saw a figure standing on one of the lunar hills in front of them, gazing down at their search.
It was a female Exo, dressed in Hunter garb. Her face was white, and she wore a ripped cloak around her head and shoulders. She did nothing other than stare at the three Guardians down below. Aria lightly hit Matt with the back of her hand, and pointed at the mysterious stranger. He saw her, and immediately called out, "Hey, who are you? What are you doing here?"
The Exo stranger said nothing, but reached into a pocket of her cloak. She retracted it, and with it pulled out the missing Ghost in her hand. Before anyone could say anything, she brought her arm back, and tossed it to them. Ash caught it with an outstretched arm. The three turned to look at it. It had remnants of the same dark liquid that Matt had found in the wall on Earth, and its eye was cracked. The Ghost was obviously dead, though why the stranger had it in her pocket was a mystery. They turned back to ask, but by the time they'd found where the figure had stood before, she had vanished.
Whip saw the silent exchange, and hovered over to the Ghost. He may not have had any idea who the cloaked Exo was, but he knew how to extract date from deactivated Ghosts for sure, and that's precisely what he began to do. After a few moments, he stopped, and nodded to signal that he had finished. "We should take it back to the city, and reunite it with the traveler's light. With luck, it'll be absorbed and its light will be dispersed to create new Ghosts." Aria looked over towards the unnamed Guardian's body at Whip's suggestion, and whispered sadly, "You're right, Whip. And besides, it's probably what he would have wanted." With heavy hearts and a dead Ghost, they walked out into the lunar landscape, flagging down the Javelin to take them home.
-X-
"Ikora Rey was right, there was a lot of nonsense that was basically just religious text about the Darkness. A lot of the runes are foreign to me though, so maybe we should just give it to the Cryptarch, for him to decipher. He likes challenges like that." Whip debriefed the Guardians on all the info he'd retrieved from the library, as Seraph and Echo listened as well. The ship was on auto-pilot, having been placed into warp-space before the occupants of the Javelin had arranged the makeshift meeting.
"However, there are two big pieces of information that I feel need to be discussed here." He said the next sentence to the three in front of him with a sad, but unsurprised tone in his voice. "Our worst fears are confirmed; the hive are preparing to invade Earth." There was no intake of breath, no sudden gasp from their mouths; they just sat there with grim looks on their faces, and listened. "I got that from the dead Ghost. Most of its files were gone, erased as part of a fail-safe maneuver, but it managed to save key pieces of information until the bitter end. It had been tortured by a Wizard before its death, and I've got all the dialogue here. It's pretty gruesome stuff for a Ghost, and I'd rather not go into it in detail." Whip shuddered. "But basically, the Wizard asked continuous questions about our defenses, our weak points, possible areas of invasion to enter the City, that sort of stuff."
"Now, the second piece of info here is kind of big, but also very confusing. The library's records tell of some being, some entity that communicates between the Darkness and the Hive, issuing the Darkness's orders to the Hive army. There's no name here, but whoever it is, they're referred to as 'the Messenger'. This go-between apparently relays all of the Darkness's thoughts to the Hive, and they follow its orders without question. Our next priority should be tracking down this 'Messenger', and ending them."
"What about the Exo stranger we saw?" piped up Aria, considering the possibility. "She had the dead Ghost on her, and gave no explanation for her appearance. Could she be the Messenger?" Whip was already shaking his body. "No, I thought about that. While I still wonder how she got that dead Ghost, it wouldn't make sense for her to immediately give it to us without us even asking, and let us see the Hive's plan for Earth if she was the architect behind the attack. She's definitely involved here, though in what way I'm unsure of, but she's not the one we're looking for." Aria sat back down in a slouch, back to square one on figuring out this new mystery that they'd been given.
Seraph glanced over at a winking light on the console. "Look, we've almost reached Earth. Let us Ghosts debrief the Vanguards, they'd more than understand your absence. You three should head back to your rooms and get some rest. You've all had a long, terrifying day."
-X-
Matt stood in the shower, his head pressed against the glass panes that surrounded him. He'd arrived home, and immediately set to work on washing himself vigorously, as though if he cleaned hard enough, he could wipe his memory clean of the terrifying images that bounced around his mind, opening doors into the dark recesses of his mind as the pictured the darkest scenarios that could have happened had he not managed to accidentally go into his Bladedancer's trance.
He turned off the water and grabbed a towel, shaking his head to clear his head of the aforementioned thoughts. He didn't want to think about his friends' broken bodies or light-drained Ghosts like the unnamed Guardian at the foot of the temple. All he wanted was to sleep and forget about all of this. But even then, he might not escape it if he became plagued with nightmares of the experience, and in a dream, one often couldn't tell the difference between reality and fiction. As he sat down on the bed, dry and dressed, he thought that perhaps sleep wasn't such a great idea.
Suddenly, he heard a knock on his door, and eagerly walked over to open it for the welcome distraction. He pulled it agape to see Ash standing in the shadow of the doorway. "Hey, can I come in? I just want to talk." "Yeah, no problem," he said, and turned back to sit back down on the bed, leaving the door open for her to enter. She was dressed in her black undersuit, and she walked over to sit down next to him on the bed.
"Look, when I first heard your plan to grapple down into the Hellmouth, I thought it was crazy. But I didn't mind, I figured that we needed some kind of stupid, insane plan for us to pull it off." She laughed slightly, though it was mirthless. "And then I slipped, and the only thing I could think of was, 'well great, this guy I've known for four days just got me killed'. But then you did something surprising." She looked him straight in the eyes at this, and her expression was serious, though the smile playing around her mouth said that whatever it was, the only words that would leave her mouth would be positive ones. "You kept trying to help me, even when you saw that I was going to fall short of the edge. You never once gave up, and even as I pulled you down with me into that hellish pit, you didn't even consider letting me go." Finally the smile presented itself. "I could see it in your eyes, your determination and will to not let me go, even as I dangled there threatening to drag us both down into the dark below. It was the same expression you had on your face when you stopped us from getting slaughtered by that ambush team."
She gazed down for a moment, furrowing her eyebrows as she tried to come up with words to express how she felt. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that, I think you're a good leader. I think you've got a great set of traits, one being that you put others lives before your own, and well I guess…" She leaned forward and wrapped him in an embrace. He hugged her back, unsure of how to respond. This hug was different than he relieved, 'in-the-moment' embrace that had left him gasping for air, this one had been thought out, was purposeful, was… gentle. "I just want to say thank you. Thank you for saving our lives, mine especially, and it's an honor to fight by your side."
She let him go slowly, and gave him another smile. Then, she stood up and exited his room, closing the door behind her. He watched her leave as his heart pounded in his chest, completely surprised at what had just happened. Why did he feel like following her, and telling her just as many compliments as she'd just graciously given him, for no apparent reason?
He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and laid back on the bed. He was just tired, that was all, and he needed some sleep, nightmares be damned. He stared at his ceiling as his consciousness slowly faded out, and the last thought he had on his mind before sleep took him was that of Ash's smiling face, and her warm embrace.
Author's Note: I understand that I said I would make this chapter longer, and technically it was planned to be. This chapter and the next chapter were going to just be one, but I realized that the transition was much nicer at this point than it was to simply go straight from here into the next jarringly different paragraph. I hope that my constant updates make up for this average sized chapter.