Chapter 15: Chamber of Night
"The Swarm Princes are dead, and the Sword of Crota is gone. Though many still believe Crota's return is inevitable, that thousands of weapons will be forged in His name, I have faith that we are now one step closer to ending the Hive's reign over the Moon."
- Master Rahool
"Eris, can you hear me now?"
Whisper, Vistrek, and Alice stood on the surface, watching their surroundings warily, but very much relieved to be out of the tunnels.
"You return. The sword?"
"Destroyed," replied Whisper. "We've done our part. If this Crota ever returns, he won't have a sword. Now, about saving the Traveler?"
"Very well," sniffed Eris. "I am sending your ghost the sensor readings given off by a Hive ritual. Normally you must be very close to detect it, but given the scope of this ritual, you should be able to detect it from the entrance of tunnels. Start with the Hellmouth and work your way outwards."
The connection died, and Whisper sighed. Eris might have been right, but that didn't mean she liked the woman. Assuming she was a woman. "Alright, back to the Hellmouth. Hopefully with all of the fighting down here, they won't be all worked up at the Hellmouth."
"Unless it just put them all onto high alert," observed Vistrek.
"We shall see," said Alice quietly.
They transmatted their sparrows and got to work. Fortunately, the surface remained relatively quiet, aside from small roving packs of Hive they easily wiped out. They got few hundred feet from the edge of the Hellmouth when Whisper called a halt. "This is as close as I want to get. Blabber, will it work?"
The ghost burst back into being with a nervous, but excited, hum. Yes. This ritual could be happening in any one of their thousands of chambers, but if we locate cracks deep enough, with Eris' sensor signature, I can find it. And maybe map out the entire Hive fortress!
"Good, Blabber, good. But let's get a move on."
The ghost got to work, expanding the edges of his shell to expose the glowing ball of Light within, that scanned deep into a fissure in the fractured moon. It took only a very few minutes before he snapped his shell back together. Okay, good scan, but not enough to locate the ritual yet. Let's keep looking.
They continued, spiraling away from the Hellmouth. Their fifth scan took place at a particularly deep fissure near the ruins of an old colony base. While the other two watched Vistrek's ghost, whose turn it was to make the scan, Whisper picked her way through the facility curiously. They had been the site of a battle during the Collapse, and the Fallen had picked over it since then, leaving little behind. Yet while the external computer systems were long gone, the monitors ripped out, the systems built into the walls themselves remained intact, and Blabber was able to pull at least a little data from them.
This place… it had once been Lunar Station: First Light, the first off-world colony humanity had ever made. Whisper rubbed her fingers along the edge of the airlock, wondering who the last living human being was to have touched them, what their lives had been like in that distant, different time.
I found something. A record that is partially intact.
"What kind of record?" asked Whisper curiously.
A voice record.
"From the Great Disaster?"
No, before that. I think… I think it's from the Collapse.
"Play it."
A moment of static echoed in her skull, followed by the sound of labored breathing. Strange, distant shrieks prompted a moan. Then a voice spoke, distorted from his helmet pickup. He spoke quickly, words almost starting to slur, caught between rambling and panicked raving.
The tunnels were geologic in nature, or had to be. That's what we thought until twelve hours into the second sub-lunar expedition, when we found the bones. A single long rib cage, the size of an aircraft fuselage. The living creatures themselves, we found a hundred meters down. They might have been worms, if worms had scales and teeth and moved more quickly than a man could run.
Jun died first. And then Luli. Bad deaths. Deaths not worth thinking about, and so I don't, as I wander these tunnels, lost, waiting to run out of oxygen.
Will it hurt, I wonder? That final sleep, when it comes. The sleep that isn't sleep.
But then everything on the Moon is named for what it's not. Have you noticed? The Sea of Serenity. Ocean of Storms. The Sea of Rains. It's only fitting. In the tunnels though, we found things that were exactly what they were, and so now I name them thus. Mark them well, if this recording is found.
The Circle of Bones. The Chamber of Night. One does not walk amid those dark tunnels and not lose something. They say that to look out upon the ocean is to feel small. But to walk in these caverns is to feel your grasp on reality slipping.
There is no returning to what you were before: a believer of science, and the fundamental rationality of the universe. Not after seeing those worms.
But here now, at the bottom I have found the other side of the nightmare. Like waking from a dream only to realize you were still asleep. Perhaps my oxygen is getting low. Yes, I can see it is. Hypoxia already setting in. The thing before me is like myself—partly alive, and partly not. An ossified afterbirth. A pulsating tumor.
It lays in a crater of its own making. Dark and jagged. So here I'll sit, and lay me down. I see a doorway, and within, the death-white egg cases of nightmares yet to come.
And glad I am to miss it.
Whisper frowned. That sounded extremely… unpleasant, to say the least. And yet… "This was recorded down in the tunnels below. How did we pick it up here?"
I don't know. It's possible that he transmitted it, but nobody on this end picked it up.
"Hey!" called Vistrek. "We might have something!" Whisper set her thoughts aside and returned quickly to the team while Vistrek continued. "Guldor finished the scan," he said, gesturing to his ghost which hovered quietly in a thick, reinforced plasteel shell, "and he picked up the signal Eris sent over. Alice's ghost confirmed it. Apparently it is beneath something called the Temple of Crota. Does that mean anything to you?"
Whisper couldn't quite help but wince. "Yes, I've been there. Lots of Hive, which fits. Let's send this back. Switching channels." She switched her com over to the Vanguard frequency, bouncing the signal off her orbiting ship's more powerful com systems. "This is Whisper-0, is anyone there?"
"This is Blake in the Tower, what—hold on. Uh, it says here you're a priority signal, to be transferred to… woah. Okay, one second."
Whisper blinked, mystified, as her call was transferred to a single dedicated line from the Vanguard's channel and a deeper voice came on. "This is the Speaker." She didn't see the surprised look between Vistrek and Alice. "Yes, Speaker, this is Whisper. With Eris' help, we have located what we believe to be the source of the ritual draining the Traveler's Light. Transferring now."
"Good. Data received. Standby."
A moment later her com pinged with another incoming signal, this one on the Vanguard channel. Urgent message coming through on the Vanguard channel… from the Speaker.
They all switched over as the Speaker began to speak once more. "Fireteams in orbit over Luna. I know you have wondered why you have been called here; now, I can reveal it. We believe the Hive are engaged in a ritual that is draining the Traveler of its Light. The Vanguard and I have asked you here because we trust your discretion, your ability not to panic, and your commitment to the Light. Nothing is more important now. Whatever power they wield must be understood… and destroyed. Follow the coordinates down and the scout fireteam will lead you to the site. The fate of the Traveler and the City lies in your hands, now."
The Speaker switched back to their dedicated line. "You have done well, very well. I ask now that you guide the others to the target, and return. Stay safe, and may be Traveler protect you."
The line went dead, while far above the fiery streaks of jumpships cut through atmosphere as the fireteams descended towards them. A scan few minutes later they had descended and formed up around the trio. Whisper took a moment to look them over. For the Speaker's chosen, they made for a motley bunch.
A male exo, his skull lined with what looked like sensor stalks, took a half-step forward, though his eyes kept a careful watch on their surroundings. "Good to meet you. I'm Crimiq-5. This is Katake, and this is Sola Scath," he said, gesturing to a short, quiet male and an intense female warlock in turn. "We're Fireteam: Family. And don't worry, we'll pick up the dead weight of these slackers." For a moment his attention focused on the next trio standing besides them with a grin.
The next fireteam leader, a tall woman with fiery red hair, rolled her eyes. "I'm Trestin. This is Sadhij Khuruf," she said, pointing over her shoulder at a massive titan, "and I forget what her name is," she said pointing to a short, bubbly warlock. "You're a goober, Trestin," she said, sticking her tongue out. Trestin grinned. "Oh yeah, Yara Croy. Of course. We're Fireteam: Elite, and we'll get the job done when this sad little family over here gets lost."
Crimiq-5 opened his mouth to retort when a cold, intense voice cut in, shutting both rival fireteams up. "I am Aunor Mahal." The speaker was small, almost as short as Whisper, but there was nothing small about her presence. The warlock radiated danger, and Whisper could almost feel her temper crackle in the air. "Taeko-3, Marlenx-3. We are Praxic Fireteam 37." The Praxic warlocks stared down the other guardians, daring them to comment, though Whisper did catch Aunor giving Alice a nod of recognition as fellows of the Praxic Order.
Nobody dared to break that silence for a few moments until the last fireteam leader spoke up. She was the polar opposite of Aunor, a giant of a woman with rippling muscles clearly visible even beneath thick armor. "I am Callisto Yin. I am accompanied by Elriq and Daimos-22." She nodded to her two titan companions, who were just barely smaller than she was, and towered over the assembled hunters and warlocks. "We are of the Firebreak Order. We are Fireteam: Firebreak."
An awkward silence fell as everyone looked at each other. Finally, Whisper sighed and spoke up. "Alright. I'm Whisper-0, and this is Vistrek and Alice. We're, uh…" she glanced at the others, who stared back blankly. "Fireteam: Guardian. As the Speaker said, we have sensor data that matches those provided by Er—" she cut off, glancing at the Praxic warlocks as she recalled Alice's reaction to Eris Morn's involvement. "Er, by a source recommended by the Vanguard, located below a location called the Temple of Crota. The entrance is not too far from where are now. We'll take the lead, the rest of you follow along behind us."
She transmatted out her sparrow and the rest of the guardians followed suit. And moments later she was leading a team of fifteen guardians onwards. For the first time on Luna, she wasn't the least bit nervous.
She led the small army of guardians across the lunar surface, sending the occasional House of Exile scavenger scampering away for cover, and down near the entrance of the Temple of Crota. Without so much as speaking, the Firebreak titans put themselves in front and advanced on the open Temple entrance. Whisper watched from well back. Something seemed to be moving in there, though she couldn't quite—
"Ogre!" called Callisto, and the titans scattered abruptly as a huge Hive monstrosity emerged from the depths of the temple with a roar. They didn't break, didn't run, but rather spread themselves to avoid all being focused on at once. The creature roared its hatred at the universe and turned its face, marked seared with glowing yellow runes of some sort, on one of the titans. A raging tempest of purple energy hurled from the runes and crashed into Daimos-22 like an avalanche, sending the massive titan staggering backwards and stripping his shields. He was about to go down when the guardians' response arrived.
Firepower from fifteen separate guardians all focused on the ogre which simply disintegrated under their fury.
Daimos-22 recovered, signaled to Callisto Yin once more, and the advance continued. Moments later the four assault fireteams had all entered the temple, and she could hear the thunder of weapons fire from below. She signaled her own fireteam, which gathered around her and prepared to follow in their wake.
"Fireteam Guardian? That's the best you could come up with?" asked Vistrek incredulously.
"Oh hush," responded Alice with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "She was put on the spot. I didn't see you volunteering to take charge."
"Of course not, she's the fireteam leader."
"Regardless," cut in Whisper, "I think we'll be a lot safer following them than waiting around up here." She lead the way towards the entrance, yet slowed to let the others go ahead as she felt that same feeling that she was being watched. What was it about this entrance? She followed the others inside, then paused at the entrance as her com crackled with static. Someone's trying to establish contact. Could be the Speaker. Let's get out in the open, where I'll have a better chance of locking the signal.
"Hold here for a second, I might be getting a call. I'll be right back." She stepped back outside once again, looking around warily.
Her com crackled once again, and this time a voice came through she had never heard before. "You're interesting. Not entirely interesting, but… you have promise. The first I've found in a long time."
"Who is that?" asked Whisper.
Blabber spun in place. I don't know. I'm losing the signal.
"Guardian. I know what you've done, what you're trying to do here. It's brave. But there are enemies out here you would not believe."
"Out where?" asked Whisper incredulously.
"Go down and face the Hive. And when you return, if you live, come find me."
Signal dropped. I got some broken coordinates—Venus, northern hemisphere, Ishtar region. Great. Now what do we do?
Whisper shrugged. "We go down." She tried to put the strange encounter behind her and focus on what lay ahead, and together they headed downwards, stepping over the remains of Hive acolytes, knights, and wizards. They moved briskly to keep up with the rampaging guardians, moving through chamber after chamber towards the signal from Eris. She paused in one of the larger chambers, looking up at a large black circular shape with a long tail leading up into the ceiling.
Hive Seeder Ship. Just like the ones invading Earth. If we don't finish this, there will be more of these hitting home. We may have finally found the launching ground for these things!
"Good thing we brought some friends, then."
They continued downwards, spiraling all the way down to the World's Grave and beyond. They caught up to the other fireteams at a single, massive door.
Here it is. The darkest of all the Hive's chambers.
"Breach!" shouted Callisto, and the titans triggered their explosive. The door blew inwards with a roar, exposing a large chamber bearing the symbol of Crota everywhere. A team of knights charged the entrance to meet the breach but were cut down by the swarm of guardians. They stormed inwards, and quickly saw what they had come for – a floating something maybe three times Whisper's height that writhed in darkness, surrounded by three Hive wizards gesticulating around the thing. The shadows pulsed with each of their synchronized gestures.
The three Hive turned to face the intruders and let out shrieks of rage followed by blasts of arc energy. The guardians scattered to present smaller targets and hurled their Light back at the Hive, who crumbled to dust under the torrent of firepower. With their defeat, Whisper cautiously approached and examined the slowly rotating object along with the Praxic warlocks, while the others took up defensive positions at the doorway to watch their back, and across the room at another sealed entrance.
Whatever it was, it was certainly ominous-looking, hovering in a containment field at the center of the room. Around it, the room was built like an amphitheater with small, raised platforms leading upwards, making the object visible everywhere in the room. The platforms were lined with pillars angled outward, as if leaning away in horror, though green lighting built into the edges shined up and illuminated the writhing black smoke.
On the top level was a meter-long round protrusion marked with Hive glyphs… a control panel?
"What do you think, Aunor?" asked Taeko-3 quietly.
"I don't' know, but I don't like it. The question is whether we try to infuse it, or simply—" She cut off as a thunderous roar echoed so powerfully it seemed to shake the very stone. Many of the humans and awoken clapped hands over their helmet audio pickups, and every eye turned to the unopened door as heavy the heavy steps of something massive lumbered towards them.
Whisper backed away without even realizing it, and her respect for the titans kicked up another notch as Callisto, without so much as a flinch, calmly began redeploying her fireteam into a looser defensive position for better firing arcs and more cover.
The next few seconds crept by slowly as those pounding footsteps drew nearer. Whisper forced herself to relax, and tried hard not to think about being stuck down here alone. Another roar, somehow even louder than the first, rocked the chamber, and the door burst open.
A flood of thrall sprinted in, racing in all directions, followed closely by acolytes with knights hard on their heels. Behind them Whisper could just make out the leg of a stupendous Hive ogre encased in thick bone armor.
A flight of three rockets slammed into the ogre, but it shrugged them off and ducked to enter the chamber. After that it was impossible to track what was happening beyond the sights of her scope as the chamber erupted into an endless deafening explosion of grenades, weapons fire, and violence.
With so many guardians it didn't take long to wipe out the smaller Hive, save for a few holdouts crouched behind cover, and Whisper turned her focus back to the Ogre. It was halfway into the chamber now, moving past the mangled corpses of Elriq, Daimos-22, and Sadhij Kjuruf. Even as she watched, a deceptively quick fist snatched out and plucked Yara Croy from the floor and crushed her.
The surviving guardians turned all their fire on the ogre, detonating bombs of Light and pouring endless bullets into it. The beast roared as its armor cracked and boiled. It lanced out with a vicious streak of void energy from its bulbous face that cut Marlenx-3 in half.
Aunor Mahal didn't flinch as her fellow warlock died next to her. Instead, she leaped into the air, enveloping herself in rippling void Light, then thrust forward with her left hand, hurling a massive nova bomb at the weakened ogre. It soared through the air and crunched directly into the ogre's face, tearing through its skull before the incredibly tough hide absorbed the excess energy. The massive creature thudded to the stone floor, crushing Crimiq-5's legs beneath its corpse.
The weapons fire died down as the last few Hive holdouts were cleaned up, followed by a hum as ghosts revived and repair their fallen charges. "Well, we're clearly somewhere the Hive do not want us to be," muttered Aunor. "We must be on the right track. Bahagari?" Her ghost emerged and joined the ghosts of the other Praxics in scanning the floating mass above them.
Whisper glanced at Blabber, who had emerged from hiding once the fighting died down. "Well?"
Oh, right. He scurried off to join the impromptu ghost conference. It didn't take them long to reach a few conclusions.
It's a shard of the Traveler! The ghosts spun and bobbed in the air. Aunor frowned, and Whisper stepped closer to get a better look. That had been part of the Traveler? It didn't seem possible.
"Can it be counteracted?" demanded Aunor.
Yes, replied Bahagari confidently. The ritual is already fading with the death of those syphon witches. If we infuse it with Light, the process should accelerate and cleanse it, returning it to its underlying state.
"We can't leave the shard here," added Whisper.
Aunor glanced at the exo with a raised eyebrow. The warlock considered her for a moment, then nodded tersely. "Correct. It is big, but we should be able to transmat it and take it to the Tower." She turned away in a clear dismissal and began talking quietly with the other warlocks. To the side, Alice was torn, half of her longing to step in and join the others of her order, the other half making her keep her distance. I wonder why?
Whisper backed away as they began to clow with Light. Slowly they channeled it into the shard and drive the wisps of shadow began twitched and flickered, but slowly faded away from that Light. She thought while she watched their slow progress. This ritual, draining away the Light of the Traveler… somehow, like the Speaker had guessed, the Light connected things, and maybe even people, across space. Could this be replicated again? How many shards of the Traveler were out there now, vulnerable? It seemed every time she got the answer to a question, it raised ten more. Was this why the Traveler wasn't healing? Were there more of these rituals happening even now, each small leaks from the basin of the Traveler's light? One thing is for certain—we need to learn more about what the Light and Dark actually are if we're going to have any chance of making a difference.
The last of the shadows had faded away, leaving a glowing, silver-gray shard of what was unmistakably the Traveler itself slowly spinning above them. Even having seen it, it was hard to believe something so filled with Light had been under that swarm of smothering shadow. It hung for another moment then began to shimmer and vanished as Aunor transmatted it away. The Praxic Warlock nodded to Callisto, who signaled to the fireteam leaders, and they quickly reformed and started moving once more, retracing their steps back to the surface.
Nobody wanted to stay down there a moment longer than they had to. Fortunately, the journey back was uneventful, as the surviving Hive hid sullenly in the dark. And before long, they were once again on the surface of Luna, the immediate threat neutralized. That was the good news. The bad news was that they were only just realizing how little they knew about just how big that threat really was.
A/N: We're starting to get into everyone else's storylines now, which is exciting! I've expanded the role of this mission a bit, but I think justifiably. Canonically, it's awkward – the Speaker puts out a general call on all frequencies about this emergency mission to destroy this ritual, and not a single person responds aside from the Guardian, who was already there. That's just… weird. Yes, the Vanguard has few people it can reliably call upon, but it does have some, and this is the single most important thing happening at the moment. It's a direct threat to all guardians everywhere, so I expanded it a bit and included those who we know were either elite or had a good reason to be there. What did you think?
Grimoire: Sword of Crota,Ghost Fragment: The Ocean of Storms 2
