The voice's presence abruptly retreated, as though it had severed the a connection between comm channels.
Eager shook his head to clear his mind, and hopefully get rid of the annoying ringing that kept bouncing around within it. Looking around wildly to gain understanding of what had happened, he saw that Dawn was nowhere to be found. Turning this way and that, his gaze finally landed upon a set of fingers gripping the edge of the arena, much like Scorch's had looked when she'd been hanging on to prevent herself from falling into the chasm. He rushed over to where she was, and peered over the precipice.
"Hey, mind giving me a hand?" grunted the Titan. Her legs swung wildly in the empty space, and without a proper grip, she was going to fall.
"Just hold on!" he called, and he began kneeling down reach out and grab her. Before he could however, the Vex-stone she was holding began to crumble under her fingers, and she fell out of his reach. He lunged wildly for her, but she had already fallen down to the next outcrop roughly ten feet below. Her hands moved fanatically to grab something, and managed to grasp the second ledge, preventing her from falling further. Eager waved at her to get her attention.
"Okay, just hang in there, I'm gonna grab Scorch, and then come back for you alright?" Without waiting for an answer, he stood up and jogged back over to the top of the staircase.
He looked down to where Scorch lay on the steps, dazed but alive. He immediately began firing at the Templar, trying to take its attention away from her. He knew that it was shielded, but maybe it would ignore her for the time being, and he could buy her some time to ready herself. The Templar screeched at him and began to disappear in a cloud of pixel-like sparks. He wildly looked around for where it was before he saw it reappear behind him, and charge up again.
Scorch groaned as she lifted her head, and attempted to sit up. Lights kept dancing in and out of her vision, and she blinked at a rapid pace in an attempt to get rid of them. Hearing loud noises behind her, she looked to see Eager engaging the Templar, which had apparently teleported behind them. Its body was pulsating with blue light again, as it prepared to unleash another wave of energy.
Suddenly, she became aware once more of the warm feeling in her arm. Glancing down, she saw that the shield, or the Aegis as the voice had called it, was lit up. Out of instinct, she held it towards the Templar, and thought of some way it could attack the being. In an instant, a bluish-white orb of light ejected itself from the center of the Aegis, and traveled the ten or so meters through the air to the Templar, where it impacted against the shield.
Immediately, the shield disappeared, or did for the most part, flickering in and out of existence as it did. The Templar's charge was halted in a single moment, and it faced her, its roars full of malice. Eager, who was still up above, took the time to begin raining fire upon the massive Vex, both with his gun and with his fusion grenades. Flames licked the side of the Templar, beginning to melt some of the metal that made up the outer shells of its body. Most of the bullets ricocheted off the hard surfaces of its form, but some managed to penetrate its plating, and found targets within its mechanisms.
The Templar screamed in rage, and teleported once more. This time, it appeared at the door again, where it had originally come into play. Scorch turned and locked gazes with Eager. Tiredly, she waved her arm in a dismissive fashion. "Go get Dawn, wherever she is," she groaned, her voice hoarse. He nodded, and began running back towards the ledge where Dawn had fallen.
The female Exo was still holding on, when she came across an idea. All Titans and Warlocks had stabilizers built into their armor systems, jump packs of sorts. If she could simply kick off the wall and grab the edge above…
Eager's helmeted head appeared, leaning over the cliff. "Dawn, I'm gonna try to get to you!" She shook her head, and grunted with the exertion. "No need, just get ready to catch me!"
He muttered questioningly, "Catch me…?" before she brought her right leg up, and used it to push herself upwards, even the slightest bit. As soon as she had momentum, she activated her stabilizers, and they boosted her another eight feet or so. She was right there at the edge, but still too short. She stretched out her arm, and…
Eager's fingers closed around her wrist. He lifted himself back from the edge, pulling her up alongside him. Shaking slightly, Dawn collapsed on the ground next to him. "Thanks," she panted. He nodded once in acknowledgement, then spun around to gaze at where Scorch was, currently investigating the Templar.
As the Hunter looked on, green lights began to wink on on its body as opposed to the blue ones. She wondered for a moment what this meant, before a musical note sounded somewhere behind her. Jerking her head in surprise, she tried to find the source, only to see that some kind of cubic green orb had appeared behind her, between her and her companions.
"Spectre, what is that?"
Her Ghost's response sounded puzzled. "I don't know, I suppose it could be an outlet-"
Scorch fell to the ground, and clutched at her head. Spectre now sounded alarmed. "Scorch?! What's going on… your vitals are flatlining!" Indeed, it certainly felt that way. Every muscle in her body was contracting, and felt as though a giant fist was squeezing them tighter until they would burst. Her head alone was enduring a pain not unlike being crushed by bricks.
Lifting her head, she saw that despite not having organic bodies like her, Dawn and Eager were similarly afflicted with the sickness she was experiencing. Somewhere in the back of her head, she could hear a sort of chanting, but as quiet as a whisper… Marked, marked, marked, marked, marked, marked…
She began crawling to the thing with every intention to destroy it. Fortunately, it seemed that while whatever-the-orb-was was active, the Templar was incapable of creating the pulse it normally did. Now dragging herself forward, Scorch's knees were scraping the ground every time she gained distance. Eager had already fallen, and now only she and Dawn were trying to reach the orb.
Within a few more seconds, Dawn began to fail as well. She continued to reach out towards the orb, determined not to give up. Her hand was shaking from the experience, and after several more seconds of paralyzed pain, she collapsed on the ground, convulsing in many fits and spasms.
Scorch continued to pull herself forward, inch by inch. The only thing driving her now was pure tenacity. Once she believed she was close enough, she pulled the Last Word from her belt, and began unloading hell into the orb until the magazine ran empty. Small pixelated bits of it began to disappear, as though they were being erased. Red spots were now taking up the majority of her vision, and she knew it was now or never. Instead of reloading, she simply drew back her fist as far as she could, and with as much force as she could muster, drove it through the orb and destroyed it.
The feeling lifted in less than a second, and she inhaled deeply, gasping for air. Dawn's convulsions ceased, and the Titan stood back up shakily. Eager pushed himself off the floor with his hands, and looked around confusedly. "What the hell was that thing?!"
Scorch shook her head. "I don't know, but it's obviously not good." Facing about, she hefted the Aegis up again, and took aim at the Templar, whose green lights had disappeared. "As soon as that shield goes down, take it!" Without waiting for a response, she fired another beam of light into the shield, and watched as the Templar became vulnerable again.
Eager and Dawn wasted no time in opening fire, and soon the air was filled with the sound of whizzing bullets and denting metal. In response to this, the Templar teleported to another corner in the left of the arena, and began to glow green again. Its shield was still down however, and Scorch quickly barked out several orders.
"You two keep you sights trained on it, and don't let up! I'm gonna find that orb!" She sprinted off hurriedly, and began to search for that signature yellowish-green glow. Eventually, she spied it coming into existence near the right side of the arena, on an extended platform. The feeling began to come back, but before it could grip her in full, Scorch had sprinted forward and sliced the Aegis through the air, effectively splitting the orb in 2. It began to depixelate, quickly fading from existence.
"Scorch, need a hand!" Answering Eager's call, she began to run back towards her two companions. Coming into position, she saw that the Templar had teleported once again near the doorway. She motioned to Dawn and Eager.
"This is it, last one! Get ready!" She was quick to hold the Aegis steady, and release one last burst of energy. The shield went down for hopefully the last time, and the Seekers began letting loose everything they had on it. It was visibly smoking from all the gunfire, but it wasn't going to be enough. Scorch could see that blue lights were beginning to charge all along its body…
"Oh no you don't!" In a movement quick as a viper, she swung her arm forward and sent the Aegis spinning like a boomerang through the air. Like a ninja star, it sank deep into the Templar's torso area, and embedded itself there. Evidently it had penetrated something vital, because the blue lights began to wink out. A second or two later, a red glow could be seen emanating from the vicinity of the Aegis' impalement, and before anyone could react, the torso exploded, and spewed chunks of flaming metal everywhere.
The Seekers stood frozen, save for Dawn casually wiping a burning piece of debris off of her shoulder. Eager slowly bent forward to look at both of them. "So… is that it?"
Scorch brought up her right hand, now holding the Last Word, and reloaded it with a shell cartridge. "Not even close."
The door began to open, shaking the arena floor as it did so. Spectre materialized, and flew over to it. "For all the advanced tech the Vex uses, you'd think that they'd have higher thinking recognition software. But no, kill the big bad Templar of the Vault, and the mechanisms think it's safe. Stupid computers."
She pointed at the door behind the Templar's smoldering corpse. "Through there is where we need to go. We still don't know who the hell that voice was, and we need to get the Heroes out of here. Ready?"
Dawn patted her weapon assuringly, and Eager sighed in exasperation. "Let's do this."
-X-
The Vault of Glass seemed to be forcing them to trek more often than actually fight anything. Not that Scorch was complaining, but one would expect what was supposedly the lair of the Vex's most powerful evil to be a bit more… aggressive. In any matter, the Seekers had been traversing this most recent cave system for a nearly twenty minutes now. Only in the last few seconds did they finally see an opening, and were reinvigorated by the sight of progress.
Upon reaching the opening, they found that it widened out and became just a small hole in a phenomenally large cavern. Peering over the ledge of Vex-stone they stood upon, Scorch could just barely make out the bend of some sort of liquid flow, almost like a small river of Venus-mineral deposits. They glowed bright blue, and sparkled with what chemicals lay within them. What startled her the most was that these miniature rivers among the rock were easily a mile or more down from where they stood.
"Well, shit." Eager peered over the edge as he remarked on it. "That's quite the drop, huh?"
Dawn shrugged. "We'll be fine. We've got jump-packs, remember?"
"What are we waiting for then? No time like the present." Before Scorch could even take two steps after what was supposed to be her badass one-liner, she felt Dawn's hand on her shoulder.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you. See, I said that we've got jump-packs. You, on the other hand, are a Hunter, and your armor isn't really equipped with one of those."
Scorch gulped and looked down at the massive drop which she'd just about to plunge herself into. "Thanks for the tip. So how do I get down?"
Dawn held her hand up to the chin of her helmet, and contemplated for a moment. After a few seconds, she started slowly, "Well, there is a way, but you're not going to like it at all."
Just judging from the tone of her voice, Scorch could already tell that Dawn was right. "Alright, what is it?"
The Titan turned toward Spectre. "You've still got reviving capabilities, right? Assuming you have enough light on hand?"
The Ghost moved through the air cautiously, curious as to where this was going. "Well, yes. But why would we-" Suddenly, his eye narrowed, and he vibrated angrily. "No. That is not happening."
"What is it?" asked Scorch, though she was beginning to suspect the answer.
Dawn's response confirmed it; "If we can't get you down there alive, then we're going to get you down there a different way."
Eager held his hands up to stop Dawn's line of thought. "Okay, you've had some crazy ideas before, but this is a bit too crazy. I'm with Spectre on this one, it's too risky."
Dawn glared at him. "Look, we've got to rescue the Heroes, right? This is the fastest way to get to them, and besides, there's something… familiar about this idea, I just don't…" The guidance came to Scorch for yet another time in the Vault, and she could almost see a thin white trail leading down through the air to the ground far below.
Scorch noted Dawn's deja vu, and realized what it meant. "If you're feeling a familiarity with the idea… then maybe that's how Ash, the Hero that you came from originally, managed to get their Hunter down as well. I mean, it's worth a shot."
Spectre tried to protest. "Scorch, please think rationally here. We're talking about death here. It's not something to be trifled with, and is usually something one prefers to avoid." Scorch paid him no mind, and rotated her head questioningly to Dawn.
"Just jump off?" she inquired.
Dawn nodded in confirmation. "Just jump off." S
corch waved at Eager and Spectre. "Well, see you guys at the bottom!"
Before either could stop her, she took a running leap off the side of the ledge, and disappeared into the darkness of the depths below.
Spectre peered over the cliff, watching Scorch's thinking figure, and then turned to Dawn. "You better hope this pays off, because if it doesn't, then you're responsible." With that, the Ghost hovered over the edge and flew off to find where Scorch would impact. Eager just shook his head.
"Look, I understand where you're coming from. You're experienced, a split personality from one of the Heroes, albeit without any memories of before. You probably don't have many qualms about something like this." He held a hand up before she could object. "Don't argue, you know it's true. And it probably helps in a lot of ways. But Scorch and I? I was just a city task force member a few weeks ago. Scorch? She wasn't even a Guardian."
He pointed to her. "What you've got to understand is that you're not just Ash; you're Dawn now too. This isn't you and Aria and Matt anymore; it's you, Scorch, and me. We're a team, and we do things together or not at all. Understood?"
Dawn was mollified by what he'd said, and she silently nodded her head in submission. "Good." With that, Eager leapt off the ledge, intent on following Spectre and Scorch. After a moment alone on the top of the cliff, Dawn jumped as well.
Scorch felt cold air all around her as she fell fast through the air to the ground below. The only indications of how close she was to the ground were the glowing liquid rivers she'd spotted before. Their sparkling blue light steadily grew bigger in her field of view as she fast approached them. It was only then that she started getting second thoughts, and wondered how badly this was going to hurt. Would she feel it much? Every bone in her body shattering at once? Or would her consciousness immediately disappear until she was revived?
What if she wasn't revived? That thought came to her as a shock. But it was true, they were deep in Darkness territory. There was a possibility that Spectre didn't have enough light to revive someone. Either way, she'd have to live with the consequences. She was only about fifty feet before ground now, and she extended her hands purely out of instinct to prevent-
-X-
She was standing on some kind of rocky surface, just like the caves she'd just been in. But this was different, it wasn't in some cavern, it was outside, almost like she were on the outer edges of some volcanic region. The rocks jutted from the ground into the air, sharp and rough. Looking around, Scorch could see that for miles, there was nothing but patches of these volcanic-like rocky instances and relatively flat sandy dunes in all directions. Cold dry air blew through the land, causing her to shiver and draw her arms in for warmth as grains of sand flew through the air, pushed onward by the whims of weather.
She wondered where the hell she was. First she'd been falling, and then- wait, was this the afterlife? If it was, it certainly wasn't impressive, unless she was supposed to be in awe over the raw emptiness of it. Indeed, the sheer vastness of it without any sign of life or otherwise was actually quite unsettling to her. She looked around once more for anything that could tell her where she was.
This is the Balance. The voice, the same one from before came to her. She spun quickly around reaching for her holster, but found that her weapon wasn't there. "What do you mean?" she called, buying time for… hopefully something to get her out of here.
What you see before you, is what you will have wrought if you truly do bring about the Balance. Is this what you want?
Scorch gasped slightly as she realized what it meant. Her destiny to activate the Balance was going to come to… this? This wasteland of destruction?
"Where am I?" She feared the answer, yet the voice only vaguely hinted, Does it matter when this reality is true for everywhere?
Scorch sank to her knees in anguish. If this had happened, or would happen everywhere… why was the Balance even remotely considered a good thing? How could something held in so bright a light come crashing down to something so… desolate?
"Who are you? Really?" She tried to get an answer out of the voice that plagued her. Surprisingly, it was unusually cooperative, though avoided specifics. I take no name other than the one I give myself, and reject what fate had in store for me. I was the last before you, though we are different in our reactions to finding out about our pre-determined destiny.
"The last… hang on, are you…?" The name was on the tip of her tongue, yet refused to yield an answer. She racked her brains for the information, but it seemed to slip farther and farther out of her reach.
It is of no concern, all you need to know is my proposition. The voice's tone had taken on a more seductive tone, as thought it were trying to persuade her. Neither you nor I has any desire to see the world end like this. Join me, and together we can halt this, undo what fate has set in motion. It is the only way to prevent what will occur in future times.
Stopping this from happening definitely looked like a good offer. But there was something off about it, something she wasn't getting yet…
"Look, I don't mean to be rude. But I have a mission, and that mission is to save the Heroes, whether you like it or not." The voice snarled. They will interrupt what we would seek to do, and perceive it as an act of war rather than one of mercy. They must not be allowed to interfere!
She asked curiously, "So under no circumstances should I free them?"
Correct.
"Well then," she muttered, shrugging. "Looks like it's no deal from me. Better luck next time."
The voice screamed in fury, and she could feel it resonating within her skull, reverberating like a ball bouncing around the inside. She fell to her knees and watched as her vision went darker, darker…
-X-
"Scorch? Scorch, c'mon answer!"
She felt a warmth. Some kind of… sensation, much like there was liquid lava flowing through her veins. She felt powerful, strong…
Suddenly, the good feeling disappeared, and was replaced with a violent aching that she could feel everywhere on her body. It definitely wasn't still hurting, but it was more the memory of the impact that hurt. She can't have hit the ground longer than half a second, but it was still vivid in her mind, as was the pain apparently.
"You're lucky. Luckier than most." This all came from Spectre, who was floating over her face. The living polyhedron definitely had a tone of relief in his voice, likely due to the fact that she hadn't been stuck dead permanently. "I had enough reserves of light within me to revive you." Now, the Ghost turned to Eager. "I do apologize as well, but I had to use most of your spinmetal reserves to repair her armor…"
Eager sighed. "Better it than her, I suppose."
Dawn merely stood a few yards away, keeping an eye out for any signs of trouble. Scorch called to her, "Where are we?"
"Shhh." Dawn held a hand up to quiet Scorch. "Not so loud, we're not alone down here." Now the Hunter listened carefully, and true to Dawn's word, she could hear the sounds of something dwelling down here in the deepest recesses of the cavern. It sounded like light squeals and electronic beeps, echoing around the walls of the chamber.
Spectre vibrated as usual when he was looking for information. "According to the tales of legend that the Vanguards told us about, there were several stages to the Vault. One, as we saw, was the Templar and its Oracles. I guess we know what those green things were now." He sorted through the data faster. "The next was the Gorgon's…Gorgons' Labryinth.
"Wait, Gorgon's as in possessive, like one? Or as in plural Gorgons?" Spectre spun quickly to narrow his eye at Eager's question of proper grammar.
"How the hell should I know? For that matter, I don't even know what a single Gorgon is, let alone if there are multiple!"
"Guys." Dawn's small request for attention sounded wary. "Can we continue this later? Those sounds are getting closer."
Scorch pointed at the Titan, and looked at the other two. "I agree with this girl's plan. Let's move!"
Quickly but stealthily, the trio and Ghost began to jog as quietly as possible toward a wall of rocks they saw between two rivers of liquid-flow. Scorch turned to Spectre. "Can you use some echolocation or something to point us in the right direction?"
The Ghost bobbed in the air, and then hovered up and over the rock for roughly a minute. When he came back, he bobbed again. "I've got some decent pings of the place, and I think I can get us through here." Scorch waved her arm forward to show that he was allowed to lead them.
Cautiously, he maneuvered himself to look around the corner of the rock wall. "Alright… follow me!"
Silently, the three Guardians trailed behind the Ghost as he sped towards a large rock structure that was protruding from the ground at an incline. Reaching frantically for grips and footholds, they scrambled their way up to the top of it. The beeps and screeches sounded close, but whatever it was was still out of sight.
"Alright, get to the top of the next rock!" said Spectre, indicating another massive chunk of rock that was shunted into the ground.
"Why are we staying off the ground?" whispered Eager.
The Ghost faced him. "Because whatever a 'Gorgon' is, I think it's meandering around the passages of the cave, looking for us." Spectre's answer wasn't reassuring in the slightest, but it definitely answered the male Exo's question. Quietly, he took the first leap across the nearly four yard gap. With his built-in stabilizers, the Warlock made it safely across.
Scorch jumped next, using her momentum to propel her. She reached out and grabbed Eager's waiting arm as she began to fall down to the ground below, and he pulled her to the side of the rock. Clean and efficient. She waved backwards for Dawn to join them.
The Titan took a running leap, but apparently stood on too weak an outcrop of rock. The piece she'd stepped on crumbled under her weight, and she tripped. She fell down the twenty or so feet to the rocky ground, and landed hard on her front. Groaning, she began to push herself back up onto her knees using her hands, but stopped when she heard the electronic beeps and squeals alarmingly close. Very carefully, she slowly lifted her head to see what was in front of her.
It looked like a harpy, but much more disturbing. It was black and turquoise in color, with a whitish glow towards the rear that almost looked like moving fire. The colors of its body shifted constantly, like a chameleon's camouflage. Little antennae sprouted from all along its body, searching every direction for some target to lock onto. Dawn knew that the Vex were inorganic, but she'd heard rumors that they had originally once been biological, and this thing seemed very… alive.
Its white eye spun around, still looking for her. She realized that it could not see her, and was likely either listening for sounds to pinpoint her, or was looking for signs of movement as some creatures' eyesight were based on. She held perfectly still as to avoid all chances of it becoming aware of her presence. As it slowly inched closer to her in its curious state, it took every ounce of willpower she had not to start sprinting to any place other than the one she was currently in.
It antennae reached forward, and began probing her helmet. She felt herself begin to shake slightly, but continued to endure. After a few moments or so, they retracted, and the Gorgon moved on back the way it had come, having not found anything to be of concern.
She waited at least ten seconds until it was out of sight to move again, and quickly ran to the side of the rock wall that Scorch and Eager sat upon up above. Once she'd climbed high enough, they reached down and helped her to the top.
"You have no idea how shot my nerves are…" whispered Eager concernedly, "I thought you were a goner."
Scorch said nothing at first, but simply grabbed Dawn's shoulder lightly to comfort her. "You alright?"
Dawn nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a bit shaken up. It doesn't matter, we're running out of time. Where to now, Spectre?" The Ghost paused for a second before answering, likely out of respect for Dawn's bravery.
"Just through that hole down there. From what I can gather, there's a network of tunnels through there that will lead to where we need to go. Just wait for my go." Dutifully, the Seekers sat silently on the rock, poised to make a break for it as soon as the Ghost gave the word.
The squeals and beeps became slightly fainter as the Gorgon moved farther away, and Spectre whispered, "Now!"
They were jolted into action, and vaulted over the rock face to the ground below. Absorbing the impact in their knees, they rolled and turned it into momentum, then continued to run through the hole that Spectre had told them about. The sounds they heard were nothing but the echoes of their armored feet hitting the ground repeatedly, bouncing off the cave walls. They did not stop running until they were absolutely sure that the Gorgon was not coming after them, at which point Scorch collapsed on the ground out of exhaustion, Eager aimed his gun at the hole where they'd come from to prevent any unwanted company, and Dawn walked through a man-sized crevice to see where they were going next.
"Whoa. Guys, come look at this." Dawn's voice came from the other side of the crevice, and Scorch and Eager looked at each other. Standing up from the ground, the Hunter jogged over to pass through the crack in wall, and Eager cautiously followed behind.
Upon exiting the crevice, Scorch found herself standing on a small ledge of Vex-stone overlooking yet another massive gorge. In front of them and across the chasm was a massive architectural marvel of Vex-stone that made up a series of peculiar structures, lining the entirety of the far wall.
"Well, that's probably where we need to go," muttered Eager, just now exiting the crevice. "But how do we get across?"
As if in response to his question, a large floating platform of cubic Vex-stone materialized in the air, appearing in a rapid wave of pixels. Scorch waved her companions forward. "C'mob, I'm pretty sure that thing's not gonna last forever!"
They leapt onto the platform just as another one began to come into existence slightly farther below, and in front of their current position. Before their eyes, the platform they were on began to dematerialize. "Run!" ordered Scorch, and the trio sprinted to the edge just in time to jump to the next stable ground.
They repeated the process several times until a platform brought them close enough to the far wall. "Alright, everyone get to that ledge!" Scorch pointed at an extended chunk of Vex-stone that stuck out from the wall like a landing pad. Heeding her advice, Dawn and Eager leapt off and used their stabilizers to boost them forward enough so that they made the distance to the ledge. Scorch followed them closely, pushing off with all the force she could muster in her legs.
Unlike previous times, she actually managed to stick the landing this time, and rolled forward with her momentum rather than coming up short on the jump. Standing back up, she looked to see the platform they'd just been standing on disappear in another pulse of pixels.
"I guess we just walk up there?" Eager indicated a passageway a few meters in front of them. Tentatively, they began walking through it. At the end of the hall, they could see a small staircase of broken, crumbling steps nearly ten feet in width, more than enough room for them to ascend together. Scorch took the lead, Dawn at her right and Eager at her left. From the age of this place, there was quite a bit of dust from the Vex-stone that had accumulated near the top. Dawn gasped, and beckoned for Scorch's attention.
"Look!" Gazing down to where Dawn was pointing in the dust, Scorch saw six sets of footprints. Three of them were old, old enough that the dust had literally formed solid around them, and their prints were now molds in the stone. But three of them were newer, and the set in the middle looked identical to the Hunter boot footprints they'd found on Venus.
"The Heroes," Scorch whispered, "they made it here."
Eager gestured at the older ones. "Those ones there are almost unrecognizable. If I had to guess, they belong to Kabr, Praedyth, and Pahanin, the three in the legend of the Vault. I guess they were real."
Scorch felt her skin crawling, This was likely the most dangerous place they could possibly be, not just at being in the Vex's stronghold, but because of how little they knew. Who was the voice that had been talking to them? If there Heroes were here for five years, how had they not died in that time? Were they the ones who sent the signal? What was the conflux of time, the one that the Hall of Whispers had spoken about? What did her being a Child of Light have to do with this? Was the Balance truly good, or would it cause the destruction the voice said it would? All of this swam in Scorch's mind, threatening to overwhelm her.
The Vault decided that she'd had enough time to think. Without warning, a symbol engraved on the wall in front of them and the stairs lit up, turning a bright blue that glowed in the darkness. The symbol was of three triangles, each one inside of the next consecutive one. The smallest one, the one in the center, was split in two vertically. As they watched, the wall split along this seam and revealed itself to actually be an entry way. It revealed a large chamber inside, a sight which they all gasped at. Spectre hovered closer to them, also in shock.
"We made it… we're inside the Vault of Glass."