All she saw was white. There was no difference wherever she looked; everything was little more than a solid wall of white. Even if she closed her eyes, the light still shone through, as if her eyelids weren't there. And then, as soon as she had appeared in this dimension, she began to fall. The whiteness had begun to wash away from her eyes and the world started to blur past her, filling with colour once more. Air returned to her lungs, making her gasp, half in fear and half in shock from the adrenaline flooding through every fibre of her body. She tumbled down in freefall, her hands grabbing at thin air in futile search of grip onto anything to slow her descent
Pain coursed through her as she hit the ground. The force that kicked the air from her lungs was akin to a grenade exploding by her chest. Her warframe had absorbed some of the force, but the lights still blurred and flickered and her head still swam with a pounding ache in her right temple. Sharp waves of fresh pain shot through her as she placed a trembling hand on the ground in a vain attempt to ease her dizziness. Standing up on shaky legs, Antheia looked round to at least try and figure out where she was. The Ember seemed to have the same problem as she, though her dizziness seemed to have gotten worse, making her lean against a marble pillar for support. Ilene sat cross-legged on the floor, looking round intently at the high ceilings and archaic decorations that hung about the walls; she looked more confused and dazed than anything. Her sister, on the other hand, was stood calmly by a glass pillar, seemingly unfazed by the fall.
Antheia groggily studied the rest of her surroundings; she needed to take her mind off the racking headache that was tightening around her head every few moments.
The place she stood in which she stood reminded her of the churches of the Old Earth, although those faded memories were nothing compared to this. Tall archways of gold reached for the impossibly high ceilings, which were linked with strange, geometric patterns that twisted and intertwined into a web of somehow archaic artwork. Fine decorations stretched throughout the room and into others, which were closed off with revolving cylindrical doors. Antheia regarded the immaculate state of the place, but somehow the extravagant patterns and golden trims hid an aura of some definite antiquity; it was as if this 'room', and most likely this entire structure, had not remained untouched for millennia.
"Where are we?"The words barely whispered past her lips, almost indiscernible, but her mind her mind was racing with questions
"To answer your question, Antheia," Umbra killed the silence, studying her fingernails without much interest as she spoke. "We are not where we are meant to be, thanks to my fool of a sister."
"Bite me! I'm not used to travelling long distances like that, so you shouldn't have expected anything spectacular." Ilene retorted.
"Hmmph."
Antheia suppressed a sigh as the two began their quarrels; they may have had their brain patterns altered, but sibling rivalry appeared to be something beyond the grasp of science.
"Ladies, this isn't the time for fighting. More pressing matters are at hand, like how in the world we're going to get to Ash." The Ember snapped.
"Any suggestions, then?" Silence answered her, before being abruptly interrupted by a low growl that crackled over what sounded like a radio from around the corner.
The four were instantly at their feet, guns and swords drawn without a moment's hesitation. The growl rose again from behind the wall, this time louder and stronger. It was joined by other warped, crackling noises that seemed to grow and grow into one huge primal beast, a single otherworldly entity. And still, it grew. Closer, and closer as Antheia gripped her Sybaris lever rifle with white knuckles, the all too familiar feeling of sinking dread and fear dragging her down as the growls grew louder. They started to echo off the walls, splitting through the air and burrowing themselves in her ears like parasites, freezing her on her own two feet out of insufferable terror. Her heart pounded in her ears. She felt the blood rushing through her head, making it swim and weaken her grip. Sweat dripped in cold beads down her forehead as the terrible sound still grew to an impossible volume. She tried to slow her increasingly rapid breathing, but her throat was dry and her breaths came raggedly. The anticipation of the threat was driving her superhuman senses to madness. She feared neither foe nor death, but fear itself was another matter entirely; it grasped her, it possessed her with malevolence unlike anything else.
Then, as if to answer her silent prayers, the growls stopped. The silence that followed afterward was a sweet bliss, but only for a few seconds, before an entirely new horror stalked round the corner and into the striking light of the room. Antheia's breath immediately was strangled from her throat as her eyes fell upon this damnable atrocity before her. It took her several seconds to fully drink in its horrific, diseased features out of pure and utter shock. She did not fear death, but the thing before her was far more terrible than death could ever be.
It seemed to be the decomposed, grotesque result of mutation upon the unlucky host of a Grineer marine, which was only clear because of a pallid mass of flesh bearing huge, cerulean pauldrons, along with the ruined helmet between them. Only one eye-lens remained, gleaming a bloody crimson. Staring out from where the second lens had once been there was an unremarkable, brown eye, cold, unblinking, and dead. The rest of the body was simply decayed tissue that hung loosely from the creature's bones and the revolting additional "limbs" that stuck out irregularly from the dead marine's body. It dragged its four biomechanical limbs across the ground with a sick grinding sound, which sent cold shivers creeping up Antheia's back with every step. Despite its necrotic appearance, Antheia knew at once that that dead brown eye could see her.
It stopped, silent, but for only a moment before it jerked the "head" straight at Antheia, its dead eye shooting a piercing gaze straight through her. It then jerked its head sideways, inspecting her closer, before rearing on its hind legs and letting out an inhuman, horrible screech. A shotgun's roar cracked through the air the next moment, the monstrosity flopping down on the ground as its body filled with holes. The still-smoking shell clattered down on the floor next to the Ember's clawed feet as she pumped the next shell into the chamber. The silence was kept for a short moment, leaving the four Tenno tense and nervous with anticipation. Then, as if called from the very same depths of whatever hell the beast had come from, a million voices cried out as one, creating a terrific cacophony of harsh static and warped wails. The grinding returned, this time being made by many instead of one. Sharp clicking filled the air to compliment the terrible din. Antheia's pounding heart beat like a drum, pounding out a beat for the terrible shrieks. She found herself paralyzed in fear, though she could have sworn that someone was calling to her amidst all this-
"SARYN!" The Ember screamed over the ever-increasing drone of the approaching horde, shaking Saryn from her terror-induced trance.
"The Infested will be here any second now and we need to move." The Ember said as she slung her shotgun round her back.
Antheia snapped awake and nodded, slotting the Sybaris into the sheath on her back and turning to run after her squad mates. After they ran several corners and through a few revolving cylinders, they arrived at what seemed to be a grand hall. A long table stretched out from one end of the room to the other, encircled with high-backed chairs and all illuminated by small orbs of glowing energy along the sides.
"It's beautiful…" Antheia breathed as she slowed to a jog.
Unsurprisingly, the Ember immediately put a halt to her momentary admiration and grabbed her attention with a curt "Ahem." She looked round one last time before following the rest of her squad, who were hastily making their way up the marble staircase.
The world flung her forward as a sharp hiss, a great fist of air and an almighty crash erupted from behind her. Antheia rolled over, her Viper pistol drawn to face her attacker. In front of her stood what looked like a corrupted Corpus crewman, glowing fluorescent, sickly green and spewing forth diseased clouds of yellow gas. She shrieked and planted her stiletto into its torso, sending immense pressure onto a tiny point and making it fly back down to the depths below, where it joined the writhing mass of its own kind. Antheia ascended the staircase with utmost urgency to join her squad, who had now taken up firing positions along the banisters and behind a swirling energy barrier. The Zauber energy rifle in Ilene's hands awoke, lilac smoke trailing from its ribs and a small white sun growing rapidly at its mouth. Wild energy crackled around the spinning electromagnetic coils at its back, accompanied by a slow, droning whine. It belched the orb at the oncoming horde, streaking down the staircase in moments and passing through the mass of dead flesh without hindrance, singing its lethal song as it cauterized the very wounds it made.
But even with the supporting fire and the fury of her own shredding apart wave after wave of the approaching monstrosities, they advanced, if not in literal leaps and bounds. Antheia glanced back towards the door behind her, and tapped along the communications link for confirmation.
With what sounded like disappointment and an unerring calm, Umbra sighed over the voice-link as she slammed another magazine home.
"We can't outrun them. They use the vents and power tubes to get around, so trying to run out there is useless."
"But we can't just stay here!" exclaimed Antheia.
"Calm down, ladies, I've got it under control." The Ember rose from her position, leaving her shotgun to clatter to the floor.
"This place looks nice and all, but you what they say..." Her eyes lit up as a huge flame burst from her hand, trembling with furious power.
"Ashes to ashes…" She giggled.
"Wait, what are you-"Ilene turned to the Ember, wide-eyed.
"Dust to dust." Were the last words that Antheia heard over the cacophony before the Ember's hand flashed white and the world was consumed by fire.
It took several seconds for the white flash to slowly fade from Antheia's vision, but the blistering heat that spread itself across her body made it known in moments. The warframe AI instantly engaged the helmet locks and the fire retardant armour as the roaring flames grew in number and size, though no amount of protection would guard her against the scorching heat. As the world warped and twisted round her from the hot fury of the fire, she tried to look for any chance to get away, for any place that the flames would not be able to touch her.
Everything burned. The flames consumed everything, an intractable beast that twisted and turned into every small fissure, purging everything in its path and reducing it to cinders. The Infested themselves had no safety from the fire; they burned just the same as the others. But what Antheia came to realize, and it scared her still whenever her mind brought her back to that moment, was that they still ran, uncaring for the horrendous damage being done to their flesh; as long as they reached their target, it seemed that casualties were redundant.
Something grabbed her. An arm, with patterns up and down that she had not seen before, ones that were very geometric and straight, ones that seemed to have no start or end, just a mass of… circuitry. The arm pulsed light blue before fading to black once more. Somewhere in the structure an ominous groan rumbled through the floor, growling louder than the burning horde of Infested that had, to some relief, slowed their advance to shuffling and pained groans as the flames began to eat into their remnants of vital organs and letting them drop, one by one, to the floor.
The sick crackling of the flames had died down, but the heat still bled through the air all the same. The arm gave another pull on the mass of her warframe surrounding her collar, jerking her into the canopy of a darkened overhang. Her savior stepped out in front of her and hastily hurried towards the rest of the squad, who were doing their best to shield themselves from the explosions and angry flames that licked their tongues closer every second. One by one, they were dragged by the scruffs of their collars into the overhang before the doors hissed shut and Antheia felt the circular floor they lay on rising, away from the flames and the Infested which they consumed.
The Ember was on her feet at once with her heavy-caliber Lex pistol drawn, aimed with no hesitation at the figure's face.
"Identify yourself, stranger." She growled through ragged, smoke filled breaths.
The mysterious warframe-bearer turned to the Ember, unflinching at the menacing mouth of a pistol being shoved in his face. Its helmet, which had a tinted black visor remarkably reminiscent to that of a Mag's flickered on, sending small light-blue pulses of light across the front and illuminating a small patchwork of intertwining glowing circuitry. Its eyes could barely be seen behind the tinted front of the helmet, but the more attentive eye could see that they had crinkled up with an obscured, crooked smile.
The colorful display on the visor faded abruptly and immediately opened down the middle of the stranger's face, accompanied by a tiny whirr. The man, who looked to be about Antheia's age, stuck out a gloved hand towards the Ember, who looked even more ready to fire at this point.
"Tosh. Pleased to meet you." He said with a fetching smirk.