I came here for sanctuary
Away from the winds and the sounds of the city
I came here to get some peace
Way down deep where the shadows are heavy
I can't help but think of you
In these four walls my thoughts seem to wander
To some distant century
When everyone we know is six feet under
Skulls – Bastille
The Vault of Glass, Venus:
Five Guardians crept silently between the stone structures. The enormity of the Templar's Well swallowed up the sound of their footsteps. All was quiet, save for the soft whirs of some Vex frames as they went about their work.
In the lead was a Warlock with purple robes, flanked by a black-clad Titan. They paused momentarily in the cover of a stone obelisk, double-checking their guns and signaling their three teammates to be ready.
The Warlock and the Titan looked at each other briefly. The Titan nodded resolutely. The Warlock nodded back and spun out of cover. A Void grenade appeared in her hand, drowning out the dim gray ambiance with deep purple light. The Warlock lobbed the grenade overhand, shattering an unsuspecting Minotaur to pieces and scattering the Goblins around it.
The chamber erupted into a cacophony of laser fire and Torch Hammer bolts. The Guardians answered with their guns. They mowed down the waves of Fanatics and Goblins that attempted to swarm them. One of the Titans punched a Goblin so hard it flew backwards. She summoned a flaming Hammer and sent it smashing into a Minotaur several paces away.
The purple-robed Warlock leapt high, a cascade of purple light coalescing in her hands.
An Oracle chimed quietly.
The Warlock slowed and then paused, caught frozen in midair, a half-formed Nova Bomb still glowing in her palm. The lasers and bullets froze in their arcs. Everything was still.
Then, a triangular portal opened and a figure stepped through. He took in the scene for a second, cataloguing the chaos with a practiced eye.
Five Guardians assaulting the Vault of Glass. The Vex chose to run this simulation again and again, always with the same Guardians, and always ending with the Guardians failing. Obviously they were missing some key factor- the Vault of Glass had been conquered, almost eight years ago. The Vex were trying to figure out how, but either they were missing data or had their parameters configured incorrectly.
Osiris was not interested in helping them figure it out.
He strode confidently through the maze of munitions fire. Sagira trailed behind him, complaining. This simulation was messy and held no useful information to him. But the Vex were frozen, locked in their own temporal routines, and there was something here he needed to use.
The Oracle sat half-constructed, ignored by the Guardians assaulting the Templar's Well. Perhaps that was the missing data bit- the Oracles were powerful Vex constructs. They would have to be destroyed if the fireteam had any hope of surviving the Vex onslaught.
Osiris grumbled to himself and produced a trio of glowing bronze cubes. He had no time for pondering the past. He fiddled with his triad urgently, trying to ignore his Ghost's smug offers for help.
He found the correct configuration soon enough. A window opened right over the dim Oracle. A gateway to the future.
At the same time, on Earth:
Cayde was enjoying the gun range a little too much.
Except for the occasions where he could sneak out of the Tower or wheedle Shaxx into letting him into an exhibition match, this was all the practice he could get. He could spend hours down here, seeking that place of perfect calm, where the only things in existence were him, his gun, and his target.
The setup was pretty elaborate. The Vanguard had invested well in updated range facilities. Tracks crisscrossed the ceiling and floor. The wall panels hid mechanisms to obscure and reveal targets. There were even sections of floor that could be raised to create artificial cover. There was a dizzying list of programs covering everything from slow, precision sharpshooting to messy close-range combat. Cayde had spent the year putting them through their paces (and then some).
He was in the zone. Targets whizzed around the room, popped out from the walls, zig-zagged and spun. Cayde laid about himself systematically. Fieldwork was always messy, but here there was nothing to distract him. A hole marked the exact center of every target, a testament to Cayde's razor reflexes and perfect aim.
Near-perfect aim. At the end of his program, something threw him off. He wasn't exactly sure what it was. His instincts were open to the world around him, almost meditatively, and for a second there was an odd feeling in the air that made him hesitate. It reminded him, somehow, of his time trapped in the Nessus gate network. There was the aftertaste in his mouth like he'd just been sent for another loop.
But everything was as it should be. The lights stayed steady, the whir of motors and the muffled sounds of gunfire from other rooms hadn't changed. Maybe he was just going stir-crazy from being cooped up so long.
Frustratingly, his flinch had cost him a perfect run. The target in front of him had a bullet hole, but it was through the outer edge of the bullseye, not perfect-in-center.
"Reset, Sundance," he growled, reloading his gun with a frustrated flourish. "I'm getting this right."
At the same time, on Mars:
"Oh. You look… occupied," Veera said as she leaned her rifle against the wall. She slid off her helmet and undid some fasteners on her cloak, too. The cold-weather gear proved worse than useless in the insulated halls of Rasputin's Mindlab.
"Oh, hi," Ana Bray responded. She was indeed occupied, hastily tapping away at a keyboard and scowling at whatever results were displaying themselves on her screen. "Big Red is in a tizzy about something, but he won't tell me what."
"May I look?" Veera offered. She was no expert on AI systems, but she had become familiar with Rasputin's routines over the past months of work here.
The Hunter obligingly moved to the side. Veera scanned through the activity logs, trying to parse some meaning from Rasputin's motions. Her Ghost hovered over her shoulder, fascinated as well.
"He has activated a lot of Warsats in Inner System space," Veera commented.
"He sees a threat somewhere," Ana said. "But I don't know what. Every time I ask, he spits a bunch of nonsense at me and then blocks the communication channel."
"He has more urgent things to do than entertain your curiosity," Veera mused. "Or at the least, he thinks he does. But these deployments make no sense- Mercury, Venus, only a handful directed towards Mars, while leaving the Cosmodrome, Earth, and Luna undefended? And the Reef- he practically ignores the population centers."
"I'm about to go do a check on the central mainframe," Ana said. "Make sure there's no damage to his core or sensor systems that might be causing errors."
"That area is still infested with Hive," Veera said, picking her rifle back up. "I will come with you."
At the same time, on Earth:
Praedyth walked above the abyss with no fear.
A luminous net stretched beneath him, skeins of Light woven to keep out the Darkness. He balanced on a thread, giddily weightless with arms out for stability. He picked his way, stepping carefully, winding a random path out of the knots and intersections.
Vibrations trembled through the net. Praedyth paused to catch his balance as the rope beneath him swayed lightly. Then, with a sickening creak and boom, the net slackened. The threads began bleeding off luminescence, scattering sparks like grains of sand in the wind.
The rope turned to dust beneath him, leaving him drifting, falling, trapped again in the Darkness completely without direction.
The only point of reference he had was a single glowing red eye. It stared down at him, unblinking and malevolent.
Praedyth woke in a cold sweat. He was disoriented. Where was he? What time was it?
The questions answered themselves as he pushed himself into awareness. It was October 12, 2958. He was in his apartment in the City. Light bled through the curtains. A glance at the clock on his nightstand told him his nap had lasted almost three hours.
Rubbing the sand from his eyes, he tottered over to his desk and opened his journal.
He tapped the pen against his chin for a second and gathered his memories.
Then, he wrote. 'I walk on a network of ropes suspended above an abyss. The ropes are Light and the space around me is Darkness…'
At the same time, on Nessus:
"I'm not so sure about this."
Azra swiped through the datapad in her hands, double-checking that everything seemed correct. "The War Cult's paying pretty good Glimmer for this data."
Spark clicked a few times, still unsettled. "Maybe next time they can pay someone else."
Azra looked up from her pad. They were deep underneath Nessus's surface. The cavern was small by Nessus standards but still large enough to echo. Prediction engines ringed the room, connected to a central conflux Spark was busy manipulating. It had taken solid hours of traversal to get here, not to mention the skills required to hack the network and the effort needed to clear out the Vex. (In Azra's personal opinion, the piles of bronze parts made the place more… homey.) "Who else could they get to do this?"
"I just don't like the way Lakshmi looks at you," Spark muttered. Fair, Azra had to admit. She herself could never get a good read on the War Cult's leader. Too old, too stoic.
"Maybe we'll lay off the data collection for a while," Azra conceded. "Take up a patrol route. Something nice and exciting."
"Did you hear that?" Spark interrupted in an urgent whisper.
Azra paused, listening. Underneath the faint hum of the prediction engines, there was something. It was an old echo, already fading, like strings plucked and then muted. Azra eyed the stray Goblin arm by her foot suspiciously, waiting for it to re-activate.
But it didn't. Azra kicked it away and turned back to her work. "Let's get this done and get out of here."
"That seems like a good idea," Spark agreed.
At the same time, on Mercury:
Osiris stared through the window and saw the end of all things.
He despaired for a moment. The Vex had found an equation. The variables existed. It was only a matter of time now.
No, no. There had to be something he could do. There had to be. He had spent the past six and a half decades studying the Vex here, distracting them, gathering knowledge, and throwing their plans into disarray; all for the purpose of preventing this. He could not let it come to pass now. He closed the window abruptly and turned to leave.
Sagira tagged along behind him, still wheedling. "Well? Osiris? What did you see?" She had to weave through the chaotic air of the frozen battle. "Slow down!"
He ignored her, mostly, striding towards his portal spot in haste. The Vex must be stopped as soon as possible. There was no time to waste.
But an easy exit was not to be. Behind him, Sagira swore. There was the telltale whine of a Vex chassis moving.
Which should not have happened. The simulation was paused. How did they work around his safeguards so quickly? How could they even perceive his presence when their sensors were frozen?
The Goblins around him stirred, turning their glowing red optics towards him. He unslung his Scout Rifle and took a few shots, but there were simply too many for one gun to handle. The Vex ignored the Guardian-simulations frozen still and time and focused on Osiris. Sagira barked directions and orders in his ear as he ducked his way around laser fire and quantum explosions.
He needed to move. His programs were calibrated for the portal he'd come in through, all the way on the other side of the chamber. He had no time to reconfigure now. Yet the horde of Goblins blocked his way forward.
The solution was simple. He raised his fist in triumph and called upon his Solar Light. He propelled himself through the air on fiery wings while Blade cut down the Vex below. He landed, uppercut a Minotaur with a vicious swipe, drove his sword through the heart of a Hobgoblin, and extinguished his Flame with neat efficiency.
He took cover behind a block of stone for just a moment while he ran his program to open the portal out.
But something was wrong, more wrong than the Vex breaking out of their own simulation. A red hole tore itself in the air. A chill ran down Osiris's spine. He was familiar with the presence of the Vex Mind Panoptes, though he had managed to escape its attention until now.
Osiris, still, had escaped its attention. The spotlight focused instead on his Ghost.
"Sagira, it can see your Light," Osiris warned. The Ghost spun frantically, looking for a hiding place.
There was no hiding place here, deep in the Vex's domain. "You have to go," the Warlock said. If she were not here, he could move with more discretion. He configured the portal not to another simulation, but to the exit towards Mercury and realspace.
"Nope, not leaving you," Sagira protested. "Without me, there is no coming back!"
"If I don't stop the Vex, there won't be anything to come back to," Osiris retorted.
There was no time for arguments. Osiris grabbed Sagira's shell and looked her in the eye. "I'm doing this for the both of us," he promised. Out there, she'd be safe from Panoptes's attention. Without her, he could hide safely, find some way to fix all of this.
Still, she screamed protests as he threw her through the portal.
Osiris would have lied if he'd said he didn't regret it a little. But there was no time for regret. He readied his gun as the Vex closed in around him.
Note: Beep beep outta the way, Warmind. Curse of Osiris expansion coming through!
Though, an announcement: This fic will probably not be updating for the rest of this year. I'd like to get a bit ahead on writing it so hopefully I can provide a more consistent update schedule for it. My current outline does not have us staying here for too long before we careen headfirst into the glorious mess that is Forsaken. Between building a buffer and my plans for Destcember (btw please contact me if you've heard about any other 'official' plans for the December writing challenge- I don't want to step on any toes but as far as I know nobody else plans to run anything), I will definitely not be posting more here until January at the earliest. I will get around to updating the Reference Document of Doom's timeline and maybe posting the Titans portion, but that will not be here. As always, updates and news will be posted on poorlytunedukulele on Tumblr.
Hope you all have a good year!