Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny
Chapter 4: The Devourer
Luna, Sol System
Hellmouth
Revival + 117 Earth Years
A sleek Reef made ship, a Hildian Seeker starfighter, came in low over the north ridge surrounding the Hive fortress, retro thrusters slowing it to a crawl just beyond the main surface entrance of the Hellmouth. There was no anti aircraft fire, no visible scurry of Hive infantry deploying, and almost no sound at all given the minuscule trace atmosphere up here. As it came to a stop, two figures appeared on the ground beneath the ship, a guardian and a ghost.
Louise touched down back on the surface of Luna with barely enough force to kick up dust. She looked around at the familiar grey surroundings, and felt a pang of nostalgia. She remembered the good old days, back when everything was full of mystery and wonder; when she was a brand new guardian having just clawed her way out of death's grasp. Now, it was death that fled from her grasp.
The strangest warlock in the Tower, Louise was a true oddity among the guardian community. The power of Solar Light and Arc Light refused to grace her, and every attempt to master them ended in utter failure, even after a century of trying. She would have been the laughing stock of guardians everywhere, except for one thing: Louise was by far and away the most powerful voidwalker in the history of the Tower. Nay, she was the most powerful wielder of Void Light to ever live, class or discipline be damned.
To most warlocks, even to most guardians, the power of Void Light was that of a hungry beast. You had to dominate it to command its power. But lose that control, and it would consume you instead. Louise was the clear exception to that rule.
The vicious power of Void Light gathered around Louise as if she were the true alpha of the pack. She did not need to enforce her will upon it, the power simply accepted her authority as if it were an undisputed law of the universe. It obeyed her will as its own. She wielded the power of the void with a mastery that no other living guardian could match, eventually becoming known across the Sol system as Louise the Devourer, after her favored voidwalker techniques.
That reputation extended beyond just the city and its guardians, however. As Louise walked forward toward the entrance to the Hellmouth, she did so at ease. She tread the path openly, not even bothering to draw the menacing Thorn that hung at her waist. She would not need it here.
The mysteries of how she ended up in this star system, and as a guardian, had never been fully solved. She had learned much of the Hive and their rituals, having spent decades tracking down every source of information she could find on them. Often this meant travelling where few guardians dared, to the farthest reaches and the deepest depths, and when she found what she wanted, she took it by whatever means were most persuasive. This most often ended with extreme violence, as everyone and everything spoke nova bomb.
But the summoning pits of the Hellmouth, the place where her new life began all those years ago, never truly left her. She returned to this place often, sometimes seeking answers, other times just to think. Her origin point in this star system was a beacon she could not resist visiting. As she did so over the years, she inadvertently accomplished something no guardian ever had before: she taught the Hive the meaning of fear.
For the first few decades, she had to fight her way back down to the bottom, killing hundreds, sometimes thousands of Hive on each trip. Over time, those that survived remembered her, the guardian whose void light could devour even the mightiest knights, and most brutal ogres. The guardian that could erase legions of thrall with a wave of her hand. The guardian that openly carried a Weapon of Sorrow in her hand as she did so, bending the Hive's own power to her will.
Eventually, the Hive stopped challenging her approach, for they knew that every such battle had only one destined outcome. Like light trying to flee from a black hole, every path led to failure. They retreated from view, and let the Devourer pass unharried.
Saito, her every loyal ghost, thought it was the most amazing thing ever. He constantly bragged about it to other guardians when they were in the Tower. It only fueled her legend. The Hive feared nothing, until they met nothing herself, the living embodiment of the void. Even to this day, they did not hesitate to face fireteams of the Tower's strongest guardians in combat, all except for one. After all, other guardians were just mere immortals.
This time, like the last thousand before, Louise descended into the Hellmouth in peace. The Hive continued their tradition of leaving her in alone, and she did the same. It made the whole experience easier for everyone if she didn't have to fight her way in. Even the knights at the entrance to the summoning pits, some of the very few that did not shrink from her presence as they stood guard, dared not raise their mighty boomers. She walked right between them as if she owned the place. In a sense, she did.
Louise's reputation among the Hive spoke for itself. She had descended into the deepest reaches of the Hellmouth, and murdered Crota on his own throne, in his own ascendant realm. When Oryx, the Taken King, came to Sol commanding a three and a half thousand kilometer long dreadnought, home to billions of Hive and Taken, Louise went to face him. Instead of exacting vengeance on his son's murderer, Oryx found only ruin and defeat before the Devourer's power. Even the mighty worm god Xol on Mars had tried and failed to defeat her. Not to mention the thousands of other great knights and wizards that had died in her presence. And that was just among the Hive, to say nothing of the countless other powerful beings she had felled in her endless quest for knowledge.
The two knights watched the slayer of gods and kings pass in silence. Louise looked up at them as she did, her small physical stature contrasted against her unfathomable power, and smiled beneath her Obsidian Mind. At least these two could face their fear. She could respect that. Maybe they would be leaders of the Hive someday, by default if nothing else.
Luna, Sol System
Hellmouth, The Summoning Pits
Revival + 117 Earth Years
The Summoning Pits were exactly as Louise remembered them: cold, dark, and ominous. Louise felt relaxed as she ventured back into the cavern, a feeling a bit like home. This was her point of origin, both where she had entered this world, where she had first died, and had been reborn as a voidwalker. She had even more or less claimed the side chamber in which the latter two of those events had occurred.
Few guardians ventured here anymore, not after the vanguard put a stop to strike operations on Luna following the Red War. After the devastation of the Red Legion's assault on the City, little care had been given to the Hellmouth. The Hive on Luna were, if not weak, certainly lacking strong leadership. They were disorganized, and wouldn't be conducting any meaningful attacks beyond the surface of this moon anytime soon. With the Fallen House of Exile also gone, the Vanguard had no pressing need to be here.
That left Louise with a bit of peace when she was here. If the Hive dared not challenge her, and no other guardians invaded their fortress, the place was strangely calm and quiet. While she was not alone, there were a few Hive in the chamber with her, they kept their distance and did their best to ignore her. She could focus her mind on the problems at hand.
Or rather, Louise would have been able to focus, if she did not feel the distinct flare of a sterile neutrino spike. A very, very big spike. The local Hive were not to blame, that she knew from experience. The sterile neutrinos, as Asher Mir loved to go on about, were a byproduct of tearing brute force ruptures in spacetime, and only forces in the system that used such methods were the Taken. The foul spawn of Oryx had located her here, and they were coming in force.
Louise barely had time to draw the Thorn from her belt before the first blights began to appear in the room. Around the spheres of darkness, reality itself began rip open, torn asunder by the Taken. Vile, twitching Taken infantry began to pour into the cavern, and Louise immediately had to find some cover as a storm of projectiles converged on her position.
The Taken were easily the strangest, most nightmarish creatures she had ever encountered, stolen souls of all species, still wielding the same weapons they held in life, now corrupted and infused with pure darkness.
Louise popped out from behind her pillar and brought up her Thorn. In quick succession a pack of Taken thralls went down to rapid headshots, their essence remnants slowly drifting toward the cursed hand cannon. As they reached it, Thorn consumed the energy, feeding on the souls of its victims to amplify its own power and produce more ammunition. Louise used this to full effect, slaying dozens of attackers before she had to manually reload, stopping only to throw scatter grenades or disintegrate a closer thrall.
As the next wave of Taken began to warp into the space in front of her, Louise jumped up, and floated ten meters above the ground. As the rift opened, and a dozen former fallen emerged, she pooled her void light into her left hand and dropped a devastating nova bomb right on their heads. The blast of energy vaporized everything it hit, erasing the threat in one shot. The problem was, she needed a lot more than one shot.
All around her, more and more rifts were forming. The Taken were undoubtedly drawn here by her enormous void energy, and the more she used it the more Taken would come. She threw another nova bomb, and another, and three more in quick succession. Over a hundred taken fell to her bombardment, however most of them were weaker types that moved in packs. A violet streak lanced past her head, and she noticed that twisted versions of Vex hobgoblin snipers were appearing on the far ledge, their corrupted line rifles beginning to flare.
From in front, the steady attacks of thralls and scions were soon joined by Taken knights and captains, drastically increasing the threat coming at her.
Beneath her helmet, Louise smiled. They were committing so many to their attempt to overwhelm her, and she knew why. The Taken didn't want to kill her, they wanted to Take her, to corrupt her mind, body, and soul, turning her into what would probably end up being their new queen. With Oryx dead, the Taken had no central leadership. They were simply drawn to points of strong energy, hoping to consume it, of which Louise just happened to be the strongest beyond earth.
Her Thorn sang as ever more dark spikes reached out to punch holes in twitching heads. The power of the weapon was wasted on the lesser Taken, who fell by the kinetic impact of single shots. The knights were tougher. Louise shot one charging knight six times, and watched as burning green lines traced across its body as the curse consumed him.
Louise reached deep into her power, searching for an answer as the overwhelming numbers kept coming. She began to float as void light filled her body in dangerous amounts, yet she kept increasing the power. Then, with enormous violence, the power erupted from her. Everything within five meters disintegrated, the ground burned to glass, and Louise charged the power even more as she floated toward the enemy. Nova Warp was a technique she had only recently discovered, but given her unique situation she could get more out of it than any of her peers. She floated around the room, incinerating Taken with increasingly powerful explosions until she could sustain it no longer.
Hundreds of the abominations fell, but the Taken kept coming. They knew no fear, no mercy, held no sense of self preservation, just the endless hunger to feed on more power. The attack wasn't relenting, or even slowing. For the first time she began to worry. There were just too damn many of them. Even if she killed them at a rate of a thousand to one, they would still overwhelm one single guardian. Louise didn't fear death, but what the Taken had on offer was much worse than death.
Then, directly behind her, came the feeling of another portal. This one was structured, organized, more of a gateway than a tear in the universe. It wasn't Taken, and it wasn't Hive. It was familiar though, even if she couldn't place how or why. With the room filling with ravenous Taken, and no other way out, Louise threw another nova bomb, the slower cataclysm variant, to cover her retreat as she turned and sprinted toward the black and green portal. Wherever it went, it was better than dying here again. Probably. It was a bet she was willing to make. She dove into it.