Chapter 16: The Hidden
"Your discovery is perhaps the greatest of our time. If the Hive were able to infect the Traveler through this long-lost shard of its battered shell, Ulan-Tan's theory may be true - all Light remains connected, across space and time. We cannot let our enemies use this power against us." - Ikora Rey
The Tower buzzed with activity – fireteams assembled in pubs, planning their next moves, squads of Redjacks marched in neat formations, and vendors called out loudly, explaining how their wares were absolutely necessary for any fireteam to be prepared.
Above them in the Speaker's office the mood was… cautiously optimistic. The Speaker turned from his packed bookshelves and looked over the assembled fireteam. "Excellent work, Fireteam Guardian. Word has already spread of the great victory on the moon. You, and the other fireteams who participated, are being praised across the City. Yet our victory was less than total." He sighed and stepped over to the window where he looked up at the Traveler, hovering silently over them. "The immediate threat has been removed, but the Traveler remains as it was. Broken and flawed… much as we are." He paused for a moment, then continued with a deliberately brighter tone, speaking more briskly. "But today, for a brief time, the Traveler's Light glows a little brighter. You have stoked the ember of our hope. Your legend grows. And with it comes my thanks." He nodded to each of them in turn. "And now, I believe the Vanguard wishes to speak to you."
They turned and saw all three of the Vanguard members standing near the doorway. Zavala jerked his head, and they fallowed behind him making the short walk to the Vanguard's headquarters. "Excellent work you three. You may not have struck the final blow, but you found us the target we needed. Unfortunately, however, our work is not yet finished."
"As the Commander said, there are some lingering concerns," Ikora continued. "We suspect that the Hive were waiting to mount their invasion until the ritual was complete, but with the ritual complete, there is a chance that they will launch it anyways. Something dark stirs in the depths of the Hellmouth; we can feel it. A Hive abomination bred for unthinkable evil."
"And," jumped in Cayde-6, "the best way to prevent them from attacking us is to shoot them in the face. Their leadership, I mean – shoot their leader in the face."
Zavala rolled his eyes. "From your reports, combined with what we've pulled from the World's Grave, it appears that the Hive were preparing a massive ogre to be the point of the spear for their invasion. Even now, it is being prepared in the Summoning Pits deep in the Hellmouth."
Vistrek cleared his throat. "Does this mean that the interdiction on Luna is being lifted, Commander?" he asked carefully.
"No, but it will be soon. The interdiction was put in place to avoid provoking the Hive into attacking Earth. With the knowledge that they were preparing to invade anyway, the interdiction no longer serves its purpose. Now, here's what I want to have happen. If you lead the assault from the south…"
Cayde-6 quietly put a hand on Whisper's shoulder guided her off to the side. "Hey, nice work out there, kid," he said softly. "You've done great. Zavala's right that this, and a handful of other strikes, need to go down, but the time-critical element is over. You've had what, a week off since you woke up? You're too important to burn out on us, so take a few days, or even a few weeks. Get to know the City and what you're fighting for. We'll handle things here."
…
"Whisper, Whisper did you hear!?" Emilia waved with the frantic energy of youth as she darted over while a half-glimpsed parent hurried off to work in stained overalls. Emilia threw herself into the swing next to Whisper, making the chains squeak. "The guardians saved the Traveler! Did you hear?"
"Uh," mumbled Whisper, taken aback by the child's enthusiasm. "I guess I did hear something about it. But what have you heard?"
"It was amazing," exclaimed Emilia dreamily, leaning back on the swing to look up into the sky through the narrow, ivy-covered walls. Far above, a single jumpship soared clear of the Traveler's shadow and raced upwards towards the stars. "A whole bunch of guardians attacked the monsters that watch us from the sky while we sleep and saved the Traveler!"
Whisper stared at Emilia, perplexed. Part of her wondered how in the world the rumors had spread this fast, but another part of her winced at that description. What would it be like as a child to look up into the night sky and be able to point and say there, that is where the monsters that want to kill us all live. It probably wouldn't do good things for their psychology, to say the least. Whisper considered the girl, rocking back and forth with a dreamy expression on her face while she imagined guardians laying waste to Hive. "Emilia, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
The girl blinked, coming back to the present. "A guardian, duh. Only papa says I can't be one." She grimaced. "My second choice is a fighter pilot. I heard that the best pilot in the whole City is a girl just like me!"
Whisper smiled at her infectious energy. "I heard that, too."
Emilia looked back up at the moon, making jumpship sounds as she imagined doing battle and defeating the terrible things that had threatened her every moment since her birth.
…
Vistrek looked down at the edge of the Hellmouth and swallowed nervously. This had seemed a lot safer with twelve guardians – now he found himself attached to a single fireteam. "Come on," said Crimiq-5 confidently. The exo gave Vistrek's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. The guardian nodded and joined Sola Scath and Katake as the readied themselves and approached the Gatehouse, weapons drawn. He hoped Alice was having a better time of it.
…
On the other side of the Hellmouth, Alice was also distinctly nervous, though not for the same reasons. Aunor Mahal glared daggers at her, then wrenched her gaze away and went back to pretending Alice didn't exist. The Praxic leader looked at the other two members of her fireteam. "While the other fireteam breaks the Hive's blade, we move against the hand that wields it. Before his disappearance, the warlock Osiris learned something of this place. Bahagari," she said, gesturing to her ghost.
Bahagari hummed and played an old, scratchy voice recording that must have been made centuries ago. "Every end crawls from the same pit, rising from the schism to swallow matter, Light, and life. It will not be stopped, but here it can be slowed. The Shrines of Oryx must be destroyed."
Aunor shrugged. "We know little of what this Shrine of Oryx might be, but our analysis of data recovered from the World's Grave gives us a location. Our… associate here," she added, her voice turning bone dry, "has some slightly greater experience on Luna than we have, and will be accompanying us on our journey."
Taeko-3 and Marlenx-3 each nodded in understanding. Taeko cast a surreptitious glance at Alice, but neither was fool enough to ask any questions of Aunor in her present mood.
"We will accompany the others as far as we can, then split off to our own objectives. Let's go."
…
Whisper sat in her favorite spot high on the Tower overlooking the Last City when her thoughts were interrupted by quiet footsteps. Ikora Ray stopped beside Whisper and stood silently, hands clasped behind her back, joining her observation. The quiet lasted for several minutes before the Vanguard member finally spoke.
"Beautiful, isn't it? So many people, so many lives, each one so previous, so easily lost. They need to be protected… watched over."
Whisper nodded cautiously. "It's a good thing the guardians are around, then."
Ikora smiled minutely at her deflection. "Guardians are a force to be reckoned with, certainly. But for most their reach is limited to effective rifle range. First they have to know where they need to be before they can do any guarding."
"And this is where your Hidden come in, right?"
Ikora nodded. "Yes, this is where the Hidden come in. Have you given any more thought to it?"
Whisper shrugged uncomfortably. She had thought about it, some, but she was still distinctly uneasy about it. "Tell me more about the Hidden. Did you make them? And why do you need them?"
Ikora thought for a moment, composing her words carefully. "I… organized them, yes. As for why they are needed, some of the reasons should be self-evident. Most obviously, perhaps, is that knowing what your enemy is doing is half the battle in defeating them. There were sensor networks operating before you reactivated the primary array, but we can't place too much trust in them. Rasputin is connected to everything from the Golden Age, and he has always been hard to predict. He may be reduced to little more than an automatic response shell, or he may be at full capacity and simply changed his objectives. We know little about him, even now, and he hasn't responded to any efforts to reach out to him. So we need our own eyes out there."
The Vanguard Warlock took a slow breath, then pressed on. "The second reason for the Hidden is the need for… accountability. A long time ago, I was a student of the warlock Osiris. He was… he was many things, but perhaps most of all he was focused. Everything else faded away while he was focused, even obsessed, on an interest. And that focus left aspects of his job as the Commander of the Vanguard unfilled. He began to rely more and more heavily on me, more even than I realized at the time. Many on the Consensus wanted Osiris removed from his position, but the last straw was The Great Disaster. The Vanguard had no idea what we would face on Luna. With something so important, I had assumed that Osiris was covering it, and he had assumed that I was… assuming he thought about it at all," she said with a hint of bitterness. "And that failure of intelligence turned the battle into a disaster, and gave Osiris' enemies on the Concordat the ammunition they needed. They argued that intelligence gathering was the Warlock Vanguard's responsibility, and with the friction between Osiris and the Speaker, no one was willing to point out that they'd made that up on the spot. And they had a point – he was the Commander. And they exiled him for it."
Ikora's face tightened marginally with remembered pain, but she pressed on. "I was made the Warlock Vanguard that day, and I promised myself I would never let something like that happen again. Someone needed to be responsible for keeping track of our enemies, to be the one clearly responsible. So yes, I organized the Hidden, adding them to the ghosts of the cover spectral network.
"The Vanguard does have scouts though, like Shiro-4," pointed out Whisper.
"That is true, and they provide a very valuable service. But if you have the insight and perspective I think you have, and that you must have to fill this role, you should already know what the difference between them is. So, you tell me," she challenged.
Whisper turned to look out over the City once more, thinking. "There are too many enemies out there," she said finally. "Knowing where they are, even what they're doing, will only get you so far if you can't do anything about it. You have to keep most of the guardians close to the City, able to respond to any threat, which means you have little reach beyond Earth itself. That means if the all the Fallen united, they would probably swarm us over. So you need to know not just what 'the Fallen' are doing, but what each faction, each House is doing, and why, so you can keep them fighting each other instead of focusing on us."
"Exactly," said Ikora with a tight smile. "The solar system is an island in the galaxy – even if we wanted to run, as Dead Orbit do, we are nowhere near prepared for it. So we must live here, surrounded by our enemies. Our existence depends on maintaining the fragile balance of power. Any of them, if they marshalled all their power, could destroy us, though at terrible cost, but they would be destroyed in turn by the others. The Hidden must see and understand that balance so it can be maintained. The times we have not have very nearly destroyed us – The Battle of Six Fronts, the Great Disaster, the Battle of Twilight Gap… in each of those pivotal moments we allowed our enemies to draw their entire focus onto us. We cannot let that happen again."
Whisper nodded slowly. That… made sense. Hopefully there would come a day when they could defend themselves effectively, when they weren't forced to play their enemies off against each other, but with a single surviving city they could afford no mistakes, and they couldn't run. And if Ikora was right, the Hidden would have a better idea of what was really happening than anyone else. "So… what, exactly, would I have to do?"
Ikora couldn't quite hide her sigh of relief. "There are two types of Hidden agents. The first are, in essence, spies. They volunteer to be broken down and molded into a new form, and inserted throughout the system, reporting what they find. It is more suited to lightless than the guardians, however – we have a harder time hiding who we are or sitting idle, which may be part of why ghosts choose us. Perhaps more importantly, we can't afford to take any guardian out of the field. So what I would ask of you is to be an analyst. Gather whatever information you can as you fulfill your normal duties as guardian, but you would have access to the reports from other agents and analyze them. Compare them to the reality you see out there beyond the walls."
Whisper thought about it for another few seconds, and at last, she nodded. "Alright, Ikora. I'll do it."
"Excellent. I'll put you in touch with Chalco Yong, who will give you access to our secured network and archives. And I already have your first assignment. This will be primarily for you to learn, but I am curious what insights you pick up."
"And that assignment is…"
"Rumors are flying thick and fast about Luna. The most prominent is that the interdiction will soon be lifted, and many guardians are preparing for the return. The most eager, however, is Lord Shaxx."
Whisper frowned. "Wasn't he the one most worried about invading the moon?"
"Yes, and his eagerness to establish a new crucible location has some on the Consensus worried. Tomorrow morning the Speaker is going to launch in inquiry into Lord Shaxx's intentions and, more broadly, his beliefs." She held up a hand to prevent Whisper's sudden burst of questions and continued. "I don't think the Speaker has any doubts about Lord Shaxx, but things have been… quiet for some time now, long enough that many of the members of the Consensus don't have any memories of Lord Shaxx. His hanging onto the 'Lord' title doesn't help in that regard, but he always was stubborn." She smiled at the thought, then grew serious once more. "I suspect the Speaker's goal is to… expose those on the Consensus to Shaxx and reassure them of his total reliability and trustworthiness. Still, we haven't survived this long by taking anything for granted, so I want you to learn about Shaxx, learn about who he is and where he came from, and listen to the hearings. That might sound boring compared to working in the field, but I promise you this, nothing is boring where Lord Shaxx is concerned."
…
Whisper didn't get quite as many side-eyed glances from robed warlocks under the high arched ceilings of the Fu'an Institute Library. She ignored them and sat down at a terminal in an out-of-the-way desk with privacy screens and got to work.
Unfortunately, again, the records were far from complete. Still, as minutes turned to hours, she started to piece things together. The earliest mention she could find was an offhand reference to a mountain ruled by Lord Shaxx during the time of something called the Iron Lords. Then Zavala mentioned in his entry in the History of the Vanguard that when he first arrived at the mess of tents huddled beneath the Traveler that was the beginnings of the Last City, Lord Shaxx had already been there, though with two horns on his helmet. He was there during the Battle of Six Fronts, he argued against the invasion of the moon in the Great Disaster, and he was there again during the Battle of Twilight Gap, after which he formed the Crucible, lifting it up from a quasi-legitimate dueling ring into a formal training ground… or slaughterhouse, depending on how you looked at it.
Whisper sat back in her chair, unconsciously steepling her fingers in front of her in thought. The records told a little of his exploits, showing Lord Shaxx to be an incredible fighter, both one-on-one and in larger pitched battles. He had been a steadfast presence in the City literally for centuries. And yet… they said nothing about the man himself. From the basics (was a man? An exo?) to his personality (was he always that… energetic?) to his motivations, the records offered only hints, at best. She needed to get out there, talk to people. Wonderful.
…
"Lord Shaxx? He's… well, he's Lord Shaxx."
That precocious description had come from Cayde-6, and nobody else seemed to have more to say about the titan. He was so engrained in the minds of the people of the City that they didn't quite take him for granted—more they seemed to treat him as a force of nature, an unchanging presence, rather than a person. That meant, ultimately, she had no one else to go to but Shaxx himself.
Whisper walked cautiously into Shaxx's headquarters, stepping around large screens showing multiple battlefields preparing for upcoming matches, while the largest showed the ongoing battle. Whisper watched silently as it turned into a bloodbath. The guardians hurled themselves into the fray with reckless abandon, each side trying to push forward with raw momentum to gain control of the arena's central area. She winced as one of the guardians finally managed to secure ammunition for a rocket launcher.
The battle ended shortly after that and Shaxx turned away from the screen and finally stopped shouting. "Ah, Whisper! I knew you'd be back. I think we can squeeze you into the next—"
"I have some more questions for you, I'm afraid," Whisper half-shouted over his words before he could shove her into another shuttle.
The titan eyed her curiously for a moment, then nodded. "Arcite," he said, waving over a Redjack frame wrapped in furs, "prepare the next battlefield. Make it legendary!" The frame nodded jerkily as Shaxx motioned with his head towards a nearby balcony. Whisper trailed after him warily.
They looked over the City for a moment before Shaxx spoke in something approaching a normal conversational tone. "So, you're one of Ikora's. Interesting choice."
Whisper managed, barely, not to twitch in surprise. "What?"
Shaxx chuckled. "Ikora and I have played this game for a long time, guardian. She hasn't managed to sneak one past me yet. So, you've been sent to investigate me. What do you want to know?"
Whisper considered how to approach this. It didn't take long to conclude that with Shaxx, the direct approach was best. "I guess I won't bother to deny it, then. Why do you want to open a Crucible arena on the moon?"
"Hm. What do you know about me, Whisper?"
Whisper blinked at the non-sequitur, then decided to go with it. "You have been a guardian for a very long time. You ruled a mountain once. You fought during the Battle of Six Fronts, argued against what became the Great Disaster, and fought in the Battle of Twilight Gap, then turned the Crucible into… this," she said with a vague gesture towards his headquarters.
Shaxx shrugged. "That's what I've done. What do you know about me?"
"You are loud, confident, and enthusiastic. You seem driven, even obsessed, with training guardians in the Crucible. You have little patience for needless discussion."
"It's a start, at least. I will tell you what you want to know, but as before, in exchange for your answer to my question. Why are you afraid of the Crucible?" Whisper froze, but the titan pressed on relentlessly. "You are no coward, and you are not afraid of battle, not with your record, yet in the Crucible you shut down and hid. What is it that bothers you?"
Whisper stood there, stunned. "I… I don't know."
Lord Shaxx nodded. "Acknowledging your limitations is a noble trait, guardian, yet it remains a partial answer. So I offer you in turn a partial answer. Everything you need to know about me you can learn by studying the Battle of Twilight Gap. Now, I must return—the next battle begins."
A/N: A little shorter than I would like, but it made for a good break point before the next chapter. I'm really excited for what is coming next—we're really going to start diving into some of the deeper lore. Here are the lore items referenced in this chapter.
Chamber of Night (D1 Grimoire)
Ghost Stories: The Watchful Eye
Ghost Scan: in the Tower in the Hangar (mentioning books on the Vanguard's history)
The Dragon's Shadow
