"No. The mission you propose is too dangerous, unreliable, and most of all, has no proof of any reason to consider. Besides, the Ash has already been cast out towards the Void for over twenty hours, and the pod only supports life for five. I apologize, but the risk far outweighs the reward; assuming there even is a reward. You are dismissed, Tenno." The Clan General said flatly, his grey irises piercing straight through Antheia.
"Bu-"Ilene began to argue.
"Dismissed." He repeated, this time it came out as an order.
Antheia felt the last dregs of hope leave her system and be replaced by tongues of hot fury as the Frost finished. The sick feeling of disbelief and betrayal rose immediately to her throat once more, making her choke back a spiteful insult. She wanted to scream at the expressionless face of the General for reasons she could not find; she felt she had to let the emotions pent up inside her gush out like free waters from a floodgate, uncaring for any of the consequences that might follow. Her amaranth eyes seemed to glow for a moment and small wisps of pale green smoke clutched at her trembling fingers. But, out of the few small shreds of respect that she had for the man stood before her, she kept her wicked tongue and her powers at bay.
She grabbed Ilene by the arm and marched out of the cold quarters of the General, leaving him only an infuriated glare before the doors hissed shut. The Nephthys shook off Antheia's hand and leaned against the opposite wall, sinking down to the floor and burying her face in her hands. She let out an exasperated sigh and looked up at her.
"What do we do now?" She seemed to plead more than ask.
Antheia simply did not know how to answer her, so she kept her stormed silence and dwelled on a plan. The Clan General was the highest authority in the entire Forward Attack division of the Clan, so there was no asking anyone of higher authority to help them on a minor mission such as this one. She thought of turning to any of her friends, but a sharp stab of hurt intruded upon her thoughts when she realized, with a horrible sinking feeling, that there was no one to turn to apart from the young Nyx before her.
"Ilene," She began suddenly, the Nephthys raising her head from her folded knees. "I have a plan. But it involves someone you might not want to see."
"I don't follow." She replied with a confused expression on her face.
"Have you spoken to your sister in a while?" Antheia asked, dreading the answer.
"Why would I ever do that?" Ilene looked more offended than anything.
"Well, it's been so long since I've seen either of you talk, let alone be in the same room as each other."
"That bitch is the reason why I've been grounded in this dojo for nearly a year. She's always stealing contracts and being recommended for promotions, whereas I stay here and collect dust in my chamber!" She raised her voice, becoming angrier as she spoke.
Antheia kept her calmness and simply asked:
"Do you want Ash back, or not?"
"Well, o-of course." Her cheeks flushed red as she stammered. "This wing would be boring without someone to talk to."
"I know how you feel, but you two need to set aside your childish, petty differences if you want your mentor back." Antheia scolded. They might have all been through a hellish experience in the Void before they had donned these suits, but extensive mental wiping of such awful memories really managed to show the human before the war, she noticed; Ilene was still just an adolescent.
"Whatever. Let's go." Ilene murmured, defeated, as she placed a delicate hand on Antheia's shoulder and the ground fell away before them.
"Well, this certainly wasn't something I was expecting." Umbra smirked as she turned her head to the two visitors by the doors.
After getting up and turning to face the pair, the easy look on her face to one of irritation and abhorrence. Immediately, the rims of her warframe started to glow faintly green, with small tails of psychic energy whisking round her arms. She jabbed her finger straight at Ilene and stared Antheia straight in the eyes.
"Care to explain?" Umbra demanded, only just restraining the anger in her voice.
"Umbra, I need you to listen to me. I can only do this if you calm down and listen to me." Antheia pleaded.
The tendrils that had circled around her arms before now slowed and faded, but the pulsating psychic energy around her helm still thrashed and kicked violently.
"Fine. What was so important that you had to bring her into it?" She spat.
Antheia let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding and took a step closer, creating some space between the two siblings.
"As you probably know already, Ash is supposedly dead. I say supposedly, because your very kind sister," she smiled briefly to Ilene as she said this, "managed to find life traces in a ship nearby to where we last tracked him. The trace is coming from an Ash warframe, and there isn't anything for hundreds of miles that comes close. He still might make it if we hurry."
A tense silence followed, neither parties saying a word. Ilene was the first to break it.
"She's tells the truth, sister. Look inside my mind. Tell me I'm lying." She said bravely as she placed two fingers on her temple. After some hesitation, Umbra reluctantly did the same. The two sisters stood in silence for several moments before opening their eyes and resuming their psychic duel.
"She speaks the truth, for once." Umbra spat the last part with particular revulsion, as if it were poison on her tongue.
"Shut your mouth, you're the liar here, you, you-!" Rage began to take over as Ilene shouted straight back at her sister. Before she could finish her sentence, her mouth immediately clapped shut and her hands went to her throat.
"What is it, Ilene? Can't think of something to say? Having trouble breathing?" Umbra grinned with giddy glee as Ilene collapsed.
"Let. Me. GO!" Ilene screamed as a wave of air streaked at blinding speed towards Umbra, throwing her like a ragdoll against the wall and into the shallow water, which released the grip on her throat. The force knocked Antheia back as she tried to stand between them, knocking the air out of her lungs and sending her tumbling into a corner.
The air seemed to shake as the two minds struggled and fought with equal force. Four-legged lilac forms began to take shape on the water while transparent green daggers streaked towards Ilene. The forms ducked under the daggers and ran straight towards Umbra, claws beginning to form from their smoky legs. The daggers dissipated like sand when they hit Ilene, as did the familiars with Umbra.
The two sisters rose to face each other once again. Psychic energy trailed from their eyes, which now glowed with fury. Their warframes pulsated and throbbed with newfound strength, both forming smoking, rune-painted weapons. Ilene's grew a pair of huge serrated blades running from the forearms and well over a meter past her fingertips, whereas Umbra's revealed a fan of deadly throwing knives.
A single, silent moment passed before the two sisters broke loose, unbound of their psychic chains. Energy bled across the room, making the air shake every few seconds as they fought. Umbra let loose her endless streams of daggers at Ilene, who sliced and hacked them apart until both of them were left catching their breath, exhausted. Then, after gulping down their tiredness, they continued with new strength, found only through some demonic fury.
Ilene side-stepped as the first dagger flew towards her and leaped across the chamber at Umbra, who barely managed to continue with her constant stream of psychic fire. Ilene landed not a foot in front of her, one of the blades barely touching her throat. Umbra stared down at the huge sword extended at her with wide eyes, making Ilene smirk. The blade grew ever so slightly; burning a small incision in Umbra's throat with a sick, sizzling sound that made Umbra wince slightly at first, then cry out in pain.
"You may have your fancy mind-control, but remember that I can do things which even the mighty Nyx warframe can't. Think about that next time you try to choke me, you good-for-nothing bi-"
"What the hell is going on in here?!" demanded a furious voice from the other side of the room.
Ilene turned her head to the approaching Ember by the door as she lowered her sword. Umbra saw her chance and swatted away Ilene's sword before sending an almighty kick into her solar plexus. The gap in between her ribs and her abdomen amplified the force, leaving her sprawled across the stone-cobbled pathway. Umbra instantly summoned a knife to her hand and lifted her arm to throw it, only for the knife to explode into a ball of white flame. She gasped as the flame ate through her armour, leaving only bare skin as it went out. Cradling her hand she looked up at the Ember, arms crossed and a furious flame glowing in her eyes.
The warframes clawed feet scraped across the wet cobblestone as she advanced slowly toward Umbra, never averting her searing gaze. The Ember stopped right before Umbra, barely over her height but still managing to extinguish her bravado and bow her head in submission. The Ember's dark skin smelled of burning coal as she came close and her amber irises burned holes through her.
It was this hardened exterior that came with the rank of Lead Exarch; a position which was earned through extensive mastery of multiple warframes and, indeed, acts of incredible bravery. She was well known, however, for being very impulsive, which had often been somewhat of a mystery to everyone in the wing.
"Well? Are you going to answer my question, or do I need to burn your hand off completely to get an answer?" The Ember's voice was laced with hot fury, which still had not died down since she had entered.
Umbra knew anything she said would be to the detriment of her and, as much as she hated to admit it, her sister. She instead tried to reach into the Ember's mind, but at the lightest psychic touch she recoiled, burned by the flaming barrier that rippled, unseen, across her form.
"Don't try any of your psychic bullshit with me, Umbra. I want a straight answer." The Ember said sternly.
"It's alright, Ember, I can explain." Antheia winced as she got up from the corner.
She turned her head towards Antheia with raised eyebrows, gesturing her free hand outward.
"Go ahead. Make my day." She replied with a shark grin.
"So it's Ash we're trying to find then, huh?" The Ember spoke up after Antheia finished.
"Yes. But now that you know, I guess it doesn't matter now, does it?" Ilene huffed from the edge of the water pool.
"Actually, it does." She replied, somehow sounding surprised at herself.
"What do you mean?" Ilene asked, puzzled.
"That bastard owes me over twenty thousand in credits, and if he thinks he can fake his death to get away, then he has another thing coming for him." She laughed.
"That's all and good, but we don't have official approval. There isn't any sort of transport we could take there, either. So unless any of you have any bright ideas, we're well and truly grounded here." Umbra grumbled from atop a ledge on the other side of the room, as far as she could get from her sister.
Antheia Maybe it had been the blind grief, or perhaps the naïveté when she had formulated the plan, but she had never considered what would happen if their idea was rejected. This invited the common, poisonous jealousy that all the Tenno had for each other into her heart; the envy of each other's powers. Antheia often, in extreme cases, resented the Nyx for her manipulation of the mind and superior intellect.
To her, it was unfair that the Nyx was able to so powerfully use her mind as a weapon, and the Nepthys to conjure things into existence and manipulate the very fabric of space-time itself to teleport through the void of space in seconds.
"Wait a second…" Antheia's eyes widened in realization and her lips began to curl into a devious smile.
"Umbra, how far is your effective range for any sort of psynapse connection?" She called out from her corner.
"Huh? Umm… I can travel about a kilometer; anything further takes too much power. Why, exactly?" Ilene sat up with a confused look on her face.
"And Umbra, how far can you reach out for with psynapse?" Antheia ignored her question and turned her attention to the Nyx sat on the ledge.
"Well, about 15 kilometers, but that can be extended if I use the Beacon atop the Dojo to about half the system. Why is that important?" Umbra replied with equal puzzlement.
Antheia's smile simply grew into a grin, after which she asked rather too proudly: "What if you both used your abilities at the Beacon to get there? Psychic symbiosis, if I'm not mistaken."
The Ember looked at her somewhat blankly before she came to the same realization, with the same smirk coming to her.
"I like your thinking, Antheia. I forgot that siblings could do that." She praised.
The sisters, however, reacted less fondly to this news. Umbra blew away a drifting lock of hair as she looked round to her sister, who faced in the other direction and sulked. Antheia sighed.
"Both of you, come here. I don't care if you don't like each other, but this is for the best."
They both exchanged uneasy looks before returning to their sulking expressions. Ilene disintegrated and re-formed right of Antheia, whereas Umbra, rather reluctantly, jumped down and sat by her left. Pleased with at least some kind of response, Antheia closed her eyes and took a deep breath before she let the gas hiss from her collar outward. The Ember immediately shut her air vents, and took a tenacious step backward.
The sisters' reaction was unsurprising; their faces turned to ones of shock, and for a moment Antheia was reminded of the flash of despair she saw on the captive's face, back on the Grineer ship. But as soon as they took the slightest of breaths, their expressions went blank, staring a thousand yards into the distance, no emotion. Antheia chuckled to herself and placed a finger on Ilene's forehead, then Umbra's.
"I hate to ask, Antheia, but what did you do to them?" The Ember broke her taut silence, not quite wanting to hear the answer.
"A simple alternative to chloroform; instead of knocking you out, your mind goes blank, as do your memories; perfect against someone with mind barriers as thick as these."
"And what good does that do you?"
"My warframe can specifically engineer gases to my needs, so this one makes people come under my control if they breathe this in. Something I wanted to mention, actually: you might not want to breathe for the next thirty seconds or so."
And with that, Antheia continued with her work. Her hands passed over the eyes of the sisters, making them cloud over with a grey film. Satisfied, she leaned their heads in close to hers and whispered slowly but clearly.
"You are sisters. You will work together. You will activate this beacon, or so help me, this will be nerve gas next time." She said with a voice that couldn't have been warmer.
They collapsed into her arms. She caught them gently and set them down against the black stone wall.
They sleep so peacefully, like little children.
"Are they okay? What the hell did you do to them?!" The Ember exclaimed as she jumped from her ledge and rushed over to their bodies.
"Hush, sister. They're simply unconscious. Just don't go near them when they wake up; they're going to have a horrible headache."
The viewing gallery from the Beacon at the top of the dojo was something truly beautiful. Nowhere else, Antheia thought, could you stare out into the wide emptiness of space, seeing the marbles of planets slowly rolling by. The blanket that enveloped the Void was littered with stars; shining bright and clear like lighthouses upon a dark sea. Apart from the distant hum of the dojo's generators, it was perfectly quiet. Antheia breathed out, casting away the stresses and frustrations that the past few days had given her into the air.
The Beacon itself was something else entirely. The golden spire slanted towards the dark heavens above, reminiscent of the huge mountains of the Old Earth. It pulsed with wild energy at its peak. Three rings, held together by this unseen force, levitated around the Beacon and spun lazily. Four chairs sat facing towards the spire, each with their own mind uplink terminals with large cables winding and twisting into the golden obelisk in front of them.
A slow groan rose from the wall behind her. Her hand went to her hip for a sword that was not there as she turned round. She found herself relieved somehow, for it was merely Ilene stirring from her drug-induced sleep. The Nephthys' eyes fluttered open and her head lolled for a moment before her eyes snapped forward and she doubled over with another pained groan. Her sister started to wake as well, though her reaction was somewhat more controlled to low moans and coughs.
"Wha… Where are we?" Ilene finally managed to make out.
"Yeah, what are we doing here?" Umbra stirred.
"Wait, I think I remember." Ilene seemed almost drunk, much to the amusement that both the Ember and Antheia desperately tried to hide.
"Yes, it's all coming back. We're here to help get to Ash. That's…That's what we're here to do" Umbra nodded sleepily.
"Come on, you two, wake up. We don't have much time." The Ember snapped, losing her humorous mood instantly. Antheia sighed at this; it was hard to see the Ember in a good way, no matter how hard she tried.
The Umbra got up and helped her sister up before rubbing her head and grimacing. The two slowly made their way to the seats surrounding the Beacon and slumped into the ones sat opposite each other. Umbra straightened up and engaged the eye cover over her psynapse helmet, as did Ilene. The Nyx breathed out calmly before letting her fingers glide over a holographic keyboard, on which there were runes inscribed which Antheia failed to understand.
"Initiating psynapse uplink to Origin System mainframe. Scanning warframes present." The unnerving feminine voice of the dojo echoed from the vast walls of the viewing gallery. It paused every few seconds, sometimes between words, which unnerved Antheia even further.
A bright light flitted rapidly up and down Umbra, then Ilene. After more momentary clicks and whirrs from the Beacon, that had started to emit a low growl from its dark matter core, it spoke again..
"Nyx warframe detected. Nepthys warframe detected. Psychic symbiosis possible," It stopped abruptly mid-sentence.
"But not recommended." It finished.
The last sentence filled Antheia's heart with doubt, an uneasy pull that tempted her mind into veering back to the safe sanctuary of safety. But in life, as she perfectly knew, there had to be risks.
"Do it." She said with newfound confidence, catching the momentary turn of the head from the Ember and the two psychics sat at the golden spire.
"Please confirm."
Antheia let out a breath and paused. Was it really worth it?
Of course. She reassured herself.
"Do it." She said flatly.
"Affirmative. Nephthys, prepare for rift jump."
Ilene flexed her hands and grabbed onto the hand grips in front of her. The tower gave another rumble before a bright light shone from its peak. The light grew to the brightness of a small star, making Antheia cover her face and turn from the blinding, brilliant white orb that grew in size from atop the Beacon.
"Rift jump imminent. The Lotus protects, Tenno." Was the last thing that sounded across the chamber before the lights filled her vision and the ground fell into blackness.