Chapter 7: Oh my God I see how everything is torn in the river deep
"Fuck Calus." - Norovoi Farso
Norovoi made the night last. She'd already slept enough, had already wavered over death's edge, and now she was making the most of what remainder of life the universe had seen fit to spare her. Azirim played along; he must have been ecstatic. All the want and greed and desire she freely exposed, drawing on him to meet - and he answered her every demand with a bounding eagerness. It was a scandalous affair, one where Norovoi tested the edges, the limits of herself in every conceivable manner - driving Azirim to physically change over and over, to remind her exactly what he was and what he was capable of.
A whole lot, it turned out.
First he was the snake-eyed Corsair, slender and beautiful and his every movement an awe-inspiring thing of pure grace - and then he was another man, larger, more powerfully built, a baseline human but one she knew, one she remembered from half-forgotten memories, of a time spent in the gutter of a burnt-out ruin, some Golden Age government building. She did exactly to him right then as she had before - exulting in the cheap distraction, the hollow illusion of BEFORE, swaying above the free-feeding shapeshifter and pretending everything was alright. Everything was fine. Don't worry, Earth still stands, life still persists, the universe isn't ending.
For a long, loooong time, her universe consisted only of the both of them.
It came crashing down suddenly, without warning - because she recalled, in one idly wandering thought, what had happened to Persaeus a hundred years after their last, final parting: killed for his savage hubris. Murdered twofold, first his Ghost by a brother, then himself beneath the blazing shadow of a dark gunman.
And for the longest time afterwards, after hearing the news and searching him out only to find ashes and shell fragments, she'd imagined she was next to die. It had taken Erratz years to console her, to reassure her.
Who was going to do that now?
Norovoi fell over Azirim, fingers dragging through the sheets and teeth clenching hard. "Change," she hissed, voice sharp with dread and horror. He became someone else, and then someone else, and then someone else, each time she asked, never with any specifications. Those she left up to him. He was the retired Peacekeeper she'd met in a club one night, his hands calloused but so gentle, then the svelte Exo with the sensitive audials and soft voice, her synthetic leg curling around Norovoi's own, and then the Paladin who'd arrested her for trespassing back in the Reef long after they'd banished her - banished for the crime of existing, of having dared to live beyond a shattered spine and broken neck at the bottom of a nameless, idyllic cliff, the rocks below painted forevermore with her first life's blood.
At that point she stopped, breathed in and out, her heart in her throat and her blood pounding in her ears. Sweat glistened on her skin, sparkling as her aura of light traveled by and splayed over it. At last she whispered, "How did you kill me?"
Azirim panted below her, once more becoming the dragon-blooded Corsair he so adored. "I led you singing," he murmured back, eyes twinkling, "to a cliff."
An easy guess. Creatures like him knew more than they ever should have. No reason to lend his words any credence.
"Why would I-"
"I sang to you, with you, Esila."
Norovoi stiffened, stalling, freezing in place. "What did you call me?"
Azirim's smile was soft, slight, and in all ways knowing. "Esila. Daughter of Sila."
"Shut up."
"Your name-"
"I don't care." Norovoi silenced him with a wicked motion of her hips, plunging his claim into the backdrop of her mind - focusing instead on the sensory pleasure and bodily exertion brought on by pure unthinking action. There was something to cherish in the simplicity of instinct; it didn't care for the complicated particulars of everyday sapient life.
Better that way, really.
A couple of hours after, as the heated throes of not-quite-passion ebbed and cooled, Norovoi said as firmly as she could manage, "I'm not Esila."
"You underestimate yourself," Azirim whispered by her ear. His fingers trailed across her back, leaving delicious tingling sensations in their wake.
"Who the hell was she?"
"A fair, soft-spoken lady with the kindest heart and a desire to hear the grandest of tales. Many times did I speak with her, my head upon her lap as we regaled one another with stories beneath the shadow of a cherry tree. Many times did she scold me for my misdeeds and my vain acts of little-trickeries. She was the poet, and I her dragon-muse."
"That's not me," Norovoi murmured sleepily - even if her mind was wide-awake, awhirl and hanging onto his every word. "I'm a fighter. I don't... tell stories."
It was that which gave her reason to doubt. Anyone looking her way would have agreed; she was tall and fair-faced like most Reefborn, yes, and her hair was nice, or so some of the City-folk had told her in the past, but she was a fighter. Her shoulders, her arms, her legs and abdomen - they bore muscle, hard muscle, and she looked every part the brawny Titan.
Azirim nuzzled his face against her neck, perhaps trying to rouse more out of her, but she was done, she was finished - she was basking in the afterglow, content to leave it as it was. "Death has changed you, noble lady."
"Yeah," Norovoi quietly drawled, "it does that."
"You're alive."
Norovoi flinched as Gaelin tossed his arms around her, constricting her, keeping her from escaping with a tight, warm grip. Vynriis chittered by his shoulder, who would have likely done the same and perhaps have even joined in if not for the trying task of physically keeping Castus back lest he bowl them over. The warbeast yipped and snorted, as excited as his master, and his fangs flashed in the dimmed orange light as he inched closer and closer - the Vandal's arms around his thick neck barely managing to keep him in check.
"Thank you," Gaelin whispered. "For keeping them alive."
Vynriis and Klyfiks, he meant. Offering up her life for theirs. "Better the dead weight than the engineers you need," Norovoi murmured.
Gaelin jerked back. Something like horror swam in his violet optics. "I didn't mean it like that."
"I did."
"This is why you don't have any friends."
Norovoi snorted. "Wow, yeah. Not because everything else is dead. Surely not."
"Nor, please." Gaelin-4 grimaced. He let go and retreated a single pace - forced to lift his chin up and straighten his back to even approach looking her in the eye. "We're not dead. We, us, we're still alive. In some ways, we have you to thank for that. That's not me saying... y'know, I'm..."
Norovoi shrugged. "Sure. I know. I just-"
"Don't care, yeah, we know. That's getting a little long-winded, I hope you know." Gaelin grinned weakly.
She grunted wordlessly and looked around the corridor. Azirim was back inside her room, apparently following a wish to stand guard or something, but otherwise the coast was clear. "What's the damage?"
Gaelin-4 exchanged a look with Vynriis. "The 'Spurs weren't able to inflict anything, but, uh... they howled. Hive have caught our scent."
"Then we're being chased."
"Yeah."
Norovoi glanced away. "Dunraven is trying to lose them, right? Or are we letting them follow us out?"
"The former."
"We're going to lose fuel."
"Yeah." Gaelin huffed. "Yeah, that's our number one problem right now, and always has been."
"What now?"
"We go on," Vynriis offered. Gaelin nodded in agreement. It didn't reassure Norovoi at all.
"Yeah, no, we gotta stop and stop soon," Dunraven-9 reported. They were all in the bridge, or, rather, most of them. The Senator was meditating, apparently, though Ueru'uxo was there in her stead. "We have the fuel reserves to dart around Sol all we want, but not enough for leaving. Not unless we hit a mineral-rich asteroid."
"Hive will hunger for them too," Nivviks realized. "To carve new warmoons."
"That, or they're in Vex clutches."
Norovoi frowned. "The Vex? I thought War broke them?"
"The Vex cannot be defeated," Grayris murmured. "Not truly."
"But Quria-"
"Is lost."
Norovoi exhaled. "Yeah, I heard. But Quria's assault sent the Vex scurrying. They never recovered from the Endless Night. Drained as they are, we might as well head to one of their installations and mine what we can."
"Better than trying a Hive shipyard," Dunraven agreed. "Do we-"
"I know of a number of Vex installations," Grayris tiredly rumbled. "All were well-guarded."
"Then-"
"Nessus."
Norovoi looked up at her. "You can't be serious."
Grayris didn't meet her gaze. Her eyes were trained on the miasma of colours outside the frontal viewport, the flashing corridor of warp-speed. "We need not mine. This ship was fitted with technology to hijack Vex systems. We need only siphon power from the centaur. It is quicker."
"And riskier," Therin murmured. "Last I heard, Nessus was a three-way no-man's-land. Imperial Cabal, Sol Collective, Wrathborn forces. And, hell, where is it now?"
"Nessus isn't that far, actually," Dunraven-9 announced. He was looking over a holomap of the system. "We're on the right side of the sun for starters, and its orbit is taking it back to the Kuiper Belt. We could reach it in another jump, easy."
"Getting there was never going to be an issue," Gaelin interjected. "It's the ground team that has it bad. Only Therin, Gray and I are in any shape or form okay to cross Vex. Or Wrathborn. Hell, there could be more 'Spurs there too."
"I can help," Norovoi announced. All heads turned to look at her - but her focus was solely on Grayris. "Arm me."
Grayris said nothing.
"I'm useless as is, but if you teach me how to use it, I can cover you."
"Woah, now, what're we talking about?" Gaelin looked between them.
Therin cleared his throat. He was leaning against one of the far terminals. "Stasis, right? Yeah, no - I'm not about to trust Nor with some Dark."
"But you'd trust Gray," Norovoi shot back.
The Hunter nodded, no hesitation. "Of course. You're a broken suicidal mess, she's not."
"At least let me die doing something worthwhile."
"How about not stabbing us in the back?"
Norovoi glowered. "Oh, fuck off. That's a stretch and you know it."
"Is it?" He turned his head. "Gray?"
The Baroness shifted uncomfortably. "The Dark can... mislead those distracted by emotion."
"See?"
"I told you I would consider it. Do not rush me, Norovoi."
"Wait, what? Consider?!" Therin pushed away from the terminal. "Gray, that's not-"
"Silence."
Therin, predictably, shut right up. He was a follower at his core, a runt who'd lost his pack, and Grayris - oh, she was the lead wolf and no one thought otherwise. Norovoi wasn't so sure where she herself stood in their strange sort of merged inter-species hierarchy, but it wasn't at the bottom. Just at the edge, one more push away from toppling over.
And wouldn't that be a relief?
Gaelin tapped, tapped, tapped at her pauldrons, her bracers, every plate over her arm - tapping away with a hammer, a chisel, a hydrotool and starting at the ice-cold energy running up and down the energy-dispersers coated in frigid crystal.
"This was not what I meant," Norovoi muttered.
"Y'know, I'm honestly surprised Gray even had these. Not common tech."
"It's not Stasis."
"It is."
"No, it's artificial."
"Nor, with all due respect, you're in no way, shape or form ready for the real thing." Gaelin straightened up. "This should add on another layer of shielding, though. Long enough for you to hit back."
"With what?"
"That Black Armoury fusion of yours-"
"Out of power," Norovoi grumbled. "I've got my sword and I've got my Mythoclast - and nothing else. If a Darkspur catches me off guard, I'm dead. Just... dead."
"Isn't that what you wanted?" Therin snarked from the doorway.
Norovoi ignored him. Outwardly, anyways. In truth, though, she was seriously considering his words - because maybe, the addled idiot he was, he might have been onto something. She flexed her arms the moment Gaelin gave her room, stretching and testing the limits of her new shield-generators - Icefall Mantles, strung together with secondhand Eventide Bray tech. "This is ridiculous. I haven't got the power to do anything."
"And who's fault is tha-"
Norovoi moved so fast it was as if the Light had never left her, hand tightening around Therin's head and slamming his forehead against the edge of the doorframe. She let go as the action, the sound, the sight and smell of blood reached her brain, and she stepped back with honest surprise - at herself.
Then kicked the groaning Therin in the stomach, hard enough to crack a rib, and retreated back into the impromptu armoury. "Ass," she growled.
Gaelin-4 looked between them with visible bemusement. "That's why you're not getting the real thing," he murmured.
Maybe he was right. No, Norovoi knew he was right.
Didn't make it sting any less.
Although getting to hit Therin kinda helped.
There was a flash of light/Light behind her, and the sound of fast encroaching footfalls, but Gaelin stepped forward and said, "Get out."
"She-"
"You asked for it."
There was a long, looong pause, then the noise of Therin angrily retreating, and at long last the crash of the door slamming shut. Silence. Solitary existence. Blessed absence. It was wonderful. Hauntingly so; so full of yearning and pain, but it was unique, it was... something.
Gaelin slipped her a weapon - a sidearm, slim and tiny in her hand. The pistol bore all the vibrant colours and elegant neon patterns of Splicer-work. Frost emanated from a series of winding components built into the frame, as cold as the energy lining her arms. A Cryosthesia 77k model, from the emergency Deletion Protocol cache forged in the simulated shadows of the Endless Night.
The hardware, Norovoi would willingly admit, was beautiful. Even when they didn't try, the organic feel of genuine Eliksni scrapwork was plain nice, but this - a weapon designed with factory-sharpness for human hands - was something else entirely.
"There's your power," Gaelin-4 softly told her. "Call this a trial run, if you will."
"Does Gray know?"
"Not at all. But this... this won't get to your head. Well, not in the way we're all thinking."
"Thank you." Norovoi lifted her head, meeting his optics - meaning it. For the trust and acceptance he bore for her. It was... nice. Undeserved, but appreciated all the same.
Gaelin smiled tightly. "I'm really hoping you'll never have to use it."
"We'll see."
"Yeah," he whispered. "We'll see."
The Kaliks-Fel broke out of warp with a flash of receding colour into the dark space surrounding the lonely, drifting centaur. The sensors picked up on nothing save for a couple of decaying signals, scrambled through with Vex-talk. A part of the tiny planetoid had been cracked open so long ago, partially devoured by a monster of a warship years on years ago. The centaur's bright, semi-converted core shone out despite the rigours of basic physics and deep-space cold - kept burning by the machinations of timeless architects.
"We're alone," Dunraven announced over the radio. "For now. Don't know how long that'll last, though. Hive patrols could be sweeping through every known scrap of land in the outer system for us. They know we're alive now."
"We won't be long," Grayris replied. "We need only siphon the power we need to propel our voyage to Alpha Centauri. We can work with more from there."
"How do you plan to make the Vex share?"
"I... have my methods of speaking with them."
Splicers, Norovoi mused, dropping the back of her head against the side of the Skiff's hold. "You're talking about your gauntlet."
"Eia," Grayris said at length.
"There's no way to actually make them listen, though."
"I can be persuasive."
Norovoi opened her mouth to scoff, to laugh at the absurd claim - but... yeah, actually. Grayris wasn't wrong. Although 'persuasive' may have been the wrong term... "Fair."
Therin boarded. Nivviks too, both of them talking, but the former fell quiet at the sight of her, and the latter picked up on the tension quick enough. Therin stopped, glared at her, then moved on with low, gruff scoff to the cockpit. Norovoi kept her eyes straight, right on the other side of the hold, and she tightened her fingers on the familiar feel of her sword's leather-bound hilt.
It was a hefty thing, her claymore, all sheening hadium steel beaten into a neat form and filled with a pissed-off sort of Void energy - like some Voidwalker on a murderous rampage had gotten it first, filling the blade's heart in with unthinking rage in place of simple function. Power fluctuated in the metal, and even without her Light, without Erratz, she could feel it - feel it tingle against her bare skin, traces of malevolent purple playing over her shimmering blue.
A shadow rose up and blotted out the light of the hangar. Norovoi glanced to the side; there she was, all her terrible ivory glory, all her resplendent Dark power and sheer fucking physical power - Grayris, sole remaining Baroness of House Winter, last of House Salvation's Stasis warriors and one of the only Sacred Splicers still alive. No Lightbearer, never had the luxury of the Traveler's crosshairs-attached blessings, but that would have been plain unfair for everyone else - 'cause she'd never needed it. Plenty of Guardian skulls in her corner as it was, back when the Hundred Years' Siege had been raging.
Funny how making amends with humanity's age-old enemy became so much more palatable when the apocalypse loomed overhead. Norovoi had always been of the opinion that people would have been their own undoing when extinction came swinging around, but it seemed she'd underestimated everyone. Basic reason and common sense weren't to be underrated - least of all in humanity's oh so soft little hearts.
Grayris looked Norovoi over, noticing the Mantle, undoubtedly spotting the sidearm, but whatever thoughtful, wary or outright displeased Eliksni expression she was wearing was covered over with her eight-eyed, great horned Archon helmet.
All she said, all she asked was, "You're coming?"
Norovoi shrugged. Grayris paused, perhaps waiting for a more vocal answer, and when she got none she moved on ahead. Gaelin was the last to board, and he was only just strapping himself in when the Skiff's entrance folded up and the dropship dipped out of the Ketch's hangar - emerging from the bladed frigate's belly out into the cold of dead space.
Once upon a time, Nessus had been beautiful. A hollow type of beautiful, sure, what with knowing exactly who and what its renovators were, but the fields of red flowers, pink blossoms and strange, soaring birds had been something special. Norovoi had loved it. Had loved painting the white pools of sparkling radiolaria with the black of Cabal oil - and blood. Revenge for the insult of having briefly relieved her of her Light, her immortality. They'd paid for it in spades, broken and shattered, a road of crumpled bodies lining the forests and caverns with a couple of dead Vex subminds scattered in to boot.
Now look where she was. Walking on a centaur burned right down to the rock and metal, radiolarian rivers all dried up, bodies cleared away or picked right to bone, right to marrow, all eaten up.
"Guardians warred with the Vex here first," Grayris said not long after they'd disembarked. "Then the Golden Emperor set his beast-ship to devour them. Caiatl followed in her father's footsteps and gave the Vex battle, all in the name of reclaiming glory lost to War's conquests. Finally, the Hive god herself arrived and set her sick-spawned armies to clearing away the Cabal and any other who resisted."
"The Vex lost, obviously," Therin said.
Grayris shook her head. "The Vex survived. That is the only victory worth anything to them. Look around you, humans. Look at what remains. It is them. The rock, the brass, the very centaur - it is all them, now. It is all part of their hungry pattern."
Norovoi harrumphed. "Surviving, but how well? Back in the day, just walking out in the open was sure to get some units opening fire. I'm not seeing units. I'm not getting riddled with particle jets." She glanced around at the empty valleys, slagged mountainsides and lumps of what had once been receiver towers. Everything was barebones, scoured of all its worth. "Think there's still something to glean?"
"The core has life," Grayris replied with a nod. She motioned to the Skiff behind them. Nivviks disengaged the magnetic holds and dropped the massive Arc batteries down. Gaelin dropped out the back of the ship with a spool of cabling looped around his shoulder. "The Vex bask in its warmth. This is the only power they have left. We're going to take that from them."
"How?"
Grayris splayed out one of her upped hands - the one glad in a special kind of gauntlet, with green wires running over her three fingers and four transceiver blades holding and rotating around her wrist. Nets of data - visible as drifting Vex telemetry - caught between the invisible web of ambient Light gathered about the device, speaking to the very Vex-stuff around them. "They are summoning an exclusionary field around us - no longer. Here are my protocols, here are my mandates - obey. Obey."
The blades flashed.
"Some awareness remains," Grayris observed. "Some... consciousness. No matter. There... is a node nearby, seventy paces. There, that patch of steel. Therin, Gaelin, bring the cables there and inject the spikes within."
The Hunters raced to obey her words, Gaelin hovering by the indicated area and driving a wedge of sharpened metal into the infectious mechanical growths. Therin likewise hooked the cabling up the crate-sized batteries. A light flickered on - they were receiving some power at the very least.
"They are watching us," Grayris murmured.
Norovoi's finger played over her Mythoclast's trigger. "Think they're going to strike?"
"They... no."
"No combat units left?"
"No, there isn-" Grayris shifted. "There are."
"... But they aren't going to stop us?"
"They're calculating." Grayris looked her Splicer gauntlet over. "They're contemplating us - our need, our power, our... our allegiances?"
"What?"
"There's something here. Something not... not of the local collective. This-" Grayris staggered back. "A spectre."
Novoroi turned on her. "A spectre? Make sense."
"Endless Night..." Grayris gasped and dropped to her knees - as if collapsing beneath some unseen pressure. "This is Qu-"
"-zzzzssshit!" Norovoi's radio spat static. Dunraven's voice, laden with suspect panic, played through. "We've... we've got visitors! Hive signatures, Tombships, and... no, fuck fuck fuck, that's a Ketch, that's a Ketch!"
Norovoi's heart skipped a beat. "A Ke-... fuck." She turned back to Grayris. "We've got Scorn incoming. We don't have time, Gray, we have to get-"
"They're... they're making us an offer..." The Baroness shook her head, pale horns flashing in the dim light of the distant sun. "An offer. They... the Vex want survival. So do we. A mutually beneficial arrangement. They want-"
"Gray!"
Grayris jerked up. She took one look at Norovoi, listened to Dunraven yammer some more "shit, shit, that's... that's a jumpship, that's a Dark Guardian, we have to get out, we have to get out n-" and clicked her commlink off.
Norovoi blinked. "What are you doing?"
Grayris just swiveled about, Stasis crackling down her arms. "We aren't alone."
She was right.
There, slowly approaching from amidst the maze of melted piles of rock and steel, was the shielded form of a silvered Vex Hydra.
"Shit," Norovoi swore. She flicked her Mythoclast on - but then Grayris stepped in front of her.
"No," the Baroness coldly ordered, watching the approaching machine-thing with dark interest. Her form was tense, rigid - but her words still spoke volumes to Norovoi. "Not yet."
"Gray, it's-"
A shout came from somewhere behind. Therin, running, to warn them about Dunraven's findings, perhaps - and then spotting the Vex-unit and dragging out his Light and scout rifle.
"Nama!" Grayris roared, tossing up a barrier of solid crystal before his Golden Gun could go off.
"Gray..." Norovoi stepped back. "What deal? The fuck are they offering?"
Grayris said nothing. The Hydra stopped in place, and teleported in front them - just a few paces away, too close, close enough to pummel them into paste with its paired Aeon Mauls. But it didn't. It didn't. Groaned and sung in that strange, alien Vex manner and... just looked at them both with a singular optic of pale gold. Waiting. For an answer.
"Hail," Grayris gruffly hissed out, voice ridden with hostility and dismay, "oh daughter-subroutine of Quria."
AN: Big thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!
