Chapter 2: The Causeway

"Now I really regret telling you about the Sparroooow!" Tikva's Ghost cried telepathically within the Hunter's mind as the two of them continued to barrel over the desolate steppes of the Cosmodrome.

The Ghost had been warned.

When this new Ghost had been created due to the influx of new Light into the Traveler after the Black Garden, it had been told by the Speaker that not only might it take centuries to find a compatible Guardian, but that this Guardian, like all newborns, might be...off kilter. Almost like a child, who would do anything the minute they were told it was off limits.

Fortunately, it hadn't taken centuries to find the Guardian. But perhaps it should have. And this was what the Ghost got for not listening.

"Too late! Now try to enjoy yourself for once!" Tikva laughed. As she said this, she made a game of skidding the foot straps of her Sparrow in any bare snow she could find, and so far she was winning.

So far she hadn't found any interesting missions or other heroic things to do, but it didn't matter for right now. Making death defying turns, feeling the wind pushed aside by her helmet, and closing her eyes and realizing she could pilot the craft simply by trusting an instinct that guided her every move was incredible. Even more intoxicating to her, in fact, than the distilled spirit blooms served by Eris Morn when she tended bar in the Shipyards on weekends for extra glimmer. And this experience wouldn't give her a headache in the morning, unlike the alcohol or Eris's gloomy stories about the horrifying death of her entire Raid Group that she told repeatedly as black goop streaked down her eyes.

Spinmetal had always been fascinating to the young Dreg. It always shimmered in the light in a way that he found appealing. If only he had something more than the bone of one of the local animals dipped in a plant based ink to write with and a flat rock to write on at this moment. But he knew he had to make do as he set to work. He had found drawing instruments on a dead Awoken during that nasty business with the Reef, and considered wearing them on his ears until he realized what they were for. Then he slowly gained an appreciation for the peculiar purplish glow of the sun filtered through the asteroids and drifting ships in the Reef, and felt a need to draw it.

However, once he proudly showed the other Dregs in his group his drawing, they laughed at him for it and devoured it like barbarians. Then they placed a human helmet on him while he was sleeping and had a ball as a shank attempted to shoot him.

He'd only barely made it out alive by jamming his instruments into the weak points in the shank's armor, and then his Captain made him put all 57,683 parts of the machine back together by hand. He'd missed the next day's battle. Served them right when they fought against the Prince of the Reef's Crows without him and were found in various pieces minutes later.

His new squad actually treated him pretty nicely by comparison. The young Dreg suspected that maybe the reason for this was that, other than fighting roaming Guardians and packs of Hive here and there, there wasn't much if anything to do, so they could afford to relax. There had been all that excitement of infighting between the Houses of the Fallen, but that died down the minute the Wolves were hunted to exinction. As of this moment, they were looting the Rocketyards looking for old devices that they could play (and likely shock each other for laughs) with. He'd declined, and they understood without asking why. However, he still looked over his shoulder as he started drawing a still life of the spinmetal bush, not wanting them to look at him differently.

As he did so, he noticed a human hurtling down the slope on one of those ridiculous two horned beasts they were so fond of riding at unreasonable speeds. He managed to jump out of the way, and then suddenly the human and its beast went flying through the air as they both screamed.

What captured his immediate attention, though, was that the spinmetal bush was gone, and what's more, a thick, ugly black line was drawn through his still life from when his hand was knocked back, so it was unusable.

The Dreg ripped up his drawing and sobbed into the snow at the injustice of this world.

It took several minutes for Tikva to open her eyes after she hit the spinmetal plant and her Sparrow flipped. When she did, her helmet's visor was entirely obscured by snow and bits of the silver bush. Every muscle in the young Hunter's body wanted to murder her from the inside out, and she suspected that her bones were now made of toothpicks. Broken ones, to be precise.

The first thing she saw when she flipped over onto her back was the flaming wreckage of her Sparrow, followed by her Ghost looking down at her. For a robot with one eye that always eerily stared into the distance, it seemed pretty smug.

"Mmph mmph mmph mmph," Tikva said with a muffled anger as the voice processor for her helmet started slowly repairing itself while her shield attended to her wounds. "And furthermore, don't you dare say you told me so!"

"You said it, not me," the Ghost chirped in what Tikva swore, especially with the Ghost's feminine tone, was the same "mother knows best" attitude as those of organic mothers.

"Well, you know what? Maybe you're right, and I'm just too stupid and reckless to really be a Guardian- or much of anything really," Tikva groaned.

"I never said that," the Ghost tried to reassure her. But once the robot said, "Besides, every great Guardian was once an awkward newborn who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn," Tikva glowered at it, thinking that this was a strange way of comforting her.

"Oh, but you've always thought that every time you nag me for doing something completely stupid, haven't you? I'm not like the others, and you know it. I'll never be anything other than a newborn, or even a mediocre newborn at that. They made a mistake assigning you to me."

Suddenly, a rogue awkward pause attacked and took the two of them hostage.

"So, how about that weather? Clear blue skies with a 100% chance of murderous aliens," the Ghost said, attempting to inject the kind of humor her Guardian liked into the situation.

"Good, good," Tikva smiled. "Look, that- what I said earlier- that was uncalled for. You're the only thing that really cares about me right now. It's just been a long couple of weeks and I've been hitting my head against a wall this whole time."

"I understand. Well, maybe I don't entirely, since I don't have a head nor do I tend to hit it against walls. It's what you call a figure of speech, so never mind," the Ghost whispered. The attempt at empathy was appreciated and earned a smile.

Then it continued, "So you're not good at the Crucible, or driving a Sparrow, or putting one foot in front of the other, or..."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I know the Traveler picked you, picked us, for a reason. You may not think much of yourself, Tikva, but I do think you have it within you to do great things. You just have to start with the small things first. And maybe focus on one train of thought for more than five minutes."

"Thank you," Tikva sighed as she laid back on the snow as she absorbed what the Ghost was saying. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted something that might be helpful.

"Speaking of small things," she murmured after trying to decipher the meaning of the small cylinder with a green blinking light at the end of it for the better part of five minutes, "what exactly is that?"

After the Ghost scanned the mysterious item, it replied, "This is a Tower beacon. Sometimes people will need you to complete small missions for them."

"Is this something that you have to be an established Guardian to do?" she wondered.

"Not necessarily."

"So, this could be a way for me to build up some reputation? To finally...do something right? Maybe if I do enough of these, I won't have to go into the Crucible any more!"

"Perhaps. But there's only one way to find out," the Ghost said. "Go on, pick it up!"

What Tikva heard upon picking up this beacon was an automated recording. To her, it sounded like, "Greetings, Guardian. The Future War Cult needs you to blah blah blah blah blah, then yadda yadda yadda, and finally blah. Got it? Good. We'll be in touch."

"What was all that, in English?" Tikva wondered as she struggled not to fall asleep.

"They need you to go to a place, and then have me scan a thing," her Ghost said. "I wasn't paying much attention either."

"Then why didn't they just say that from the start?"

"You can take that question up with them back at the Tower, I suppose."

Tikva raised her hand to summon another Sparrow, but the Ghost admonished her, "You got lucky that the explosion from the first Sparrow didn't send a whole army of Fallen or Hive on your scent. Do you really want to take your chances with driving again?"

"Fair enough," Tikva said. "Never fear, future something or other! I will help you in your time of dire need!"

Fifteen minutes of wandering around Old Russia later...

"Oh, I'm sure this thing someone wants us to scan for no clear reason is around here somewhere," Tikva muttered as she attempted to study a crude map she drew on her armor.

Thirty more minutes of wandering around Old Russia later...

"Is this the Lunar Complex or the Terrestrial Complex?"

"Lunar."

"Again?! Why do I keep ending up here? What is this, the second time I've gotten lost?"

"Third."

"That was a rhetorical question!"

One more hour of wandering Old Russia later...

"I will do anything..." Tikva groaned and sank to her knees in the snow, "just PLEASE let me find a goddamned map of Old Russia! How am I supposed to find anything when every rusted building and snow capped cliff looks exactly the same?!"

"Well, there is something new nearby," her Ghost chirped.

"Oh, you're right. I still haven't searched this place. If I can't find anything that looks interesting enough to scan on a giant ship that somehow ended up in the middle of Russia, then I'll just give up and stay in the Crucible forever."

Soon, Tikva double jumped up on to the top deck. On the side of a nearby wall was a drawing of a male figure with X's over its eyes surrounded by a semicircle of some kind. Below that was a series of scrawled characters, possibly Fallen in origin, from what Tikva remembered from a book she'd read about the subject before falling asleep in the Tower's library.

"OK, close enough," Tikva sighed before sending the Ghost floating from her outstretched hand towards the graffiti.

"Hmmm..." the machine murmured.

"What does it say?"

"You may not want to know precisely, as this phrase contains...very uncouth language. Basically, it's a threat to Guardians not to come here. That's not surprising. But why write this here? And why refer to a Defender Titan in the picture?"

"This is a trap! R-run while you still can!" a hoarse cough called out to her, echoing from the inside of the ship.

"Where are you? I'll come and get you!" Tikva cried without a moment's hesitation, looking around the ship as the Ghost also attempted to scan through the walls for signs of life.

Without any warning, an alien that Tikva had never seen before rushed towards the ship, wielding two swords, a shock rifle and shrapnel launcher strapped to its back. It was wielding Fallen armor, albeit more ornate, and she could definitely confirm it was Fallen once dozens of Dregs and Vandals charged her position on its command.

"It's a Fallen Captain!" the Ghost squeaked.

"What the hell is that?"

"Something you really don't want to mess with by yourself!"

"I'm not leaving until we've searched this entire ship. Keep looking, I'll hold him off," Tikva said. However, when se unloaded an entire magazine of auto rifle ammo at the Captain's head, he barely flinched. It only seemed to make him madder, actually!

"Then you're in luck, Guardian. A Titan's chained up in a deck below ground. I've marked his location on your HUD," the Ghost replied as it disappeared into her armor.

The Captain chortled as it aimed its shrapnel launcher at her head and a bevy of Fallen grenades and shock rifle blasts kept the Hunter suppressed. Tikva quickly ducked behind the only piece of cover available a transmitter of some kind that was located in the middle of the deck and putting out a broadcast in often garbled Russian as the spot where she'd been standing was obliterated. But that gave Tikva an evil idea.

"Why are you strapping that grenade to the bottom of that transmitter?" the Ghost whispered nervously in her head.

"Oh, you'll see," Tikva said. Then she yelled, "You'll never take me alive!" and pulled the pin on her grenade.

The Ghost would have told her the probabilities for what happened next. A 33% chance of being blown to bits instantly, a 33% chance of being found mostly intact by the Fallen and then killed, a 30% chance of being horribly flame-broiled if the transmitter contained explosive elements, and a meager 4% chance of survival.

But as she was coming to learn as the last parts of the floor the transmitter stood on crumbled away, if its Guardian could find a way of surviving, she would also find a way to make escape even more risky than was absolutely necessary, thus narrowing what little odds she had in her favor. Then down came the transmitter, the Hunter riding it through several decks to the underground floor.

"You...should have...turned back. Now we'll both be- ACK- consumed by the Darkness," the Exo Titan wheezed through its damaged voice processor.

Tikva's flashlight shined on his prone bright blue metallic body, full of bullet holes and chained up as bait for any other Guardians that would attempt to rescue him. Then she told him defiantly, "Not a chance."

She tried to drag him, but realized that his chassis weighed as much as three of her put together.

He mumbled, "They tried to get me to- hurk- tell them where the Causeway was. I know nothing of a Causeway. So I told them nothing..."

"Good, good. Just keep talking," Tikva said, confused about what the Causeway might mean while looking for a doorway or structural weakness.

"What's your name, Guardian?" Tikva's Ghost wondered.

A second, reddish Ghost appeared in front of the Exo and said to Tikva in a deep animatronic voice, "His name is Calore, and he doesn't have much time. Hurry, Guardian."

"At this rate, I'll need something with a lot of explosive power to punch through the wall to safety, and my grenade is still recharging. Can one of you give me a hand?"

"How about a fist?" Calore wryly chuckled. He then became a Striker Titan before unleashing his Fist of Havoc super ability, turning his hands blue with the Traveler's Light and then leaping forward and punching much of the hull off of the ship with a furious cry.

Tikva raised her hands in front of her face as the way out to the surface presented itself and light streamed in. The Captain raised his swords, let out a earthshaking roar, and charged into the gap. Without even realizing what they were, Tikva picked up a series of shimmering blue Orbs of Light, and was suddenly filled to the brim with energy. Also without much, if any, conscious input from her, this energy burst forth, becoming a thin armor made of blinding golden sunlight that forced the Fallen to stagger backwards a few steps.

"TIKVAAAA TIIIIME!" Tikva yelled as, at the ends of her fingers, almost an extension of herself, a pistol appeared out of thin air. Before the Captain realized what was happening, his head exploded from the force of three Golden Gun bullets and his soul lifted up and away like a wisp. The rest of the Fallen scattered for the hills without their Captain.

"Thank you, Guardian," Calore said as Tikva helped him up and he regained his vitality. "You saved my life, yet I don't know your name."

"Tikva. Glad I could help, Calore," Tikva replied with a smile and a handshake, then jumped back when the ship disappeared into a ball of enraged fire.

"They definitely heard that. We should probably get out of here before they come back," Calore said and then summoned his Sparrow and got on.

"Where do we need to go?" Tikva asked while also summoning her Sparrow.

"To find the rest of my Fireteam. They need my help!"

"Who are they?"

"Our Hunter is named Dakar and our Warlock is named Ayiana," Calore replied. "We were just finished patrolling the Moon and making our way back to Earth when we were shot down by Fallen ships. I have no idea how the Fallen managed to get into our jumpspace coordinates, only that they did, and now here I am."

"Alright, then there's no time to waste. Let's goooo!" Tikva yelled as she kicked her Sparrow into high gear, then almost immediately glanced off a rock and fell down a cliff to her death.

"We're doomed," Calore sighed just before she reappeared next to him.

The young Dreg had had a very hard time locating the rest of his squad. In the past few hours, he'd lost his crude drawing instruments, narrowly run away from several Fireteams worth of Guardians, almost gotten eaten by the Hive (and had the bite marks from a Thrall on his leg to prove it), been nicked by several shock rifle blasts from a sadistic Captain when the Dreg had tried to ask him for directions, and been stared at uncomfortably by several Servitors.

And all so that he could find his squadmates stumbling around idiotically, wearing blinking multicolored lights on their heads (likely ripped from old human panels) and laughing at each other. Of course, he would take a stupid but nice squad over a smart but evil squad any day of hte week. But the Dreg didn't even know why he bothered getting himself into so much trouble.

The distinctive clarion call of their Captain snapped them all back to their senses and they raced back to a position where a Fallen ship was appearing from jumpspace.

"You! Get those ugly trinkets off of your head," the Captain snarled. The young Dreg got in line with the rest, but in his rebellious mind he was thinking that the Captain had no right to judge given how the necklace of Guardian helmets clashed with the rest of his outfit.

"Anyway, what was I saying?" the Fallen squad leader murmured. "Ah, yes! Today is the beginning of a new dawn for the Fallen! The Wolves and all other Houses are dead! The Hive will obey us! The Vex are withering away as we speak! The Cabal will kneel before our wrath! The Reef will burn! And the Traveler! Will! FALL!"

Everyone cheered on what he was saying, but the young Dreg didn't do so with as much vigor.

"We have begun a Great Crusade this day. The Darkness is on our side, and with its help, the universe will cower at the power of the Archon Order!"

Several of the Fallen were astonished even as they were cheering. It hadn't been many cycles since Skolas and the House of Wolves had failed to claim the title of Kell of Kells of the entire Fallen race as the Prophecy stated before they were destroyed by the Guardians the Queen of the Reef, despite having wreaked havoc on all the other Houses and even the Vex. After this happened, some of the Archons, the warrior priest caste of the Fallen, had expressed misgivings at the truth of the Prophecy and the purpose of the House system in the first place when it lead to so much division and weakness.

But nothing more than rumor had substantiated the undercurrent of rebellion and the call for a unified Fallen race. Now this was a formal declaration of war by the Archons against the Kells of all the Houses.

They would probably be too weak to put up much of a fight. But it was also a war on multiple fronts against all of the other races of the universe as the Fallen knew it, and an attempt to reclaim the Empire of old. There was no turning back now.

If this didn't work out, it could mean the extinction of all the Fallen. The young Dreg remained silent although he pantomimed cheering on the Captain as he announced the news, wondering what all of this death would amount to, in the end.

"Catch!"

One of their squadron's Servitors, which had only just started repairing itself, caught a Guardian grenade in its eye and then fled, bumping into the young Dreg and his squadmates as it went. When it exploded, his friends took the brunt of the damage, but the shockwave sent him flying through the air as well.

Just his luck, he mused as he fell down the cliffside. At that same moment, his own name, a mark that every Fallen had stripped from them before joining the ranks, came back to him. Kolee.

He certainly sounded like a Kolee, Kolee thought when he ended up in the water and his vision faded completely to black.

"Catch!" Tikva yelled while hurling her grenade at a previously damaged Servitor that then exploded, killing several Dregs and tossing one of them into the water. She chuckled at the sight.

"Tikva, I thought we said we were going to flank them, quietly, then throw grenades," Calore said. This woman had rescued him from the Darkness, and he would always be grateful for that, but her impulsiveness was aggravating him and he had made her acquaintance for a little less than an hour.

"Sorry, I mixed that up," Tikva shouted while they took cover from a wild barrage of enemy fire.

"How could you possibly-?" the Exo harrumphed in utter disbelief. "Never mind. New plan. I think I see Ayiana in that cage over there! I'll distract them with my Ward of Dawn, and you sneak around and open the cage. Then get her out of here."

As soon as Tikva nodded and started working her way through yet another abandoned building to try to get to Ayiana, Calore threw down his Ward of Dawn and soon the shield made of pure light encompassed him and allowed him to pop out in between waves of fire to shoot down Fallen with lethal precision, then go back in to the safety of his Ward.

Tikva crouched, walked behind several enemies whose attention was focused elsewhere, and found a wire mesh ball of some kind with dark shadows surrounding it. In between strands of pure Darkness she could see a Guardian floating helplessly within it. Calore was right, Tikva realized; that must be Ayiana!

"No, wait!" Ayiana cried as Tikva tried to touch the cage.

The newborn Hunter's hand burned from the shadows and heated metal protecting the cage. Then a Shank found her and alerted the others, leading to Tikva's demise within seconds.

"Did you get Ayiana?" Calore demanded once Tikva revived underneath his shield.

"No."

"No?!"

"But I did find something out. We can't open her cage with our bare hands. But maybe we could use some weapons or explosions to break it open."

"That's a thought. My Ward is about to run out. Once it does, do everything exactly as I say, do you understand?"

"Got it," Tikva said, making more of an effort to actually listen this time.

"First, I'll strike the Captain. It probably won't kill him, but it will cause him to drop his Scorch Cannon. Pick that up immediately and then go nuts with it!"

"I like that idea," the Hunter almost cackled with glee behind her helmet.

"Now go!"

Tikva gave a rebel yell while Calore double jumped and then slammed down onto the Captain's head with his super, turning nearly half a dozen Dregs and Vandals into dust and making the Captain cartwheel through the air.

Then the Scorch Cannon, a rocket launcher nearly as big as Tikva herself, landed into her arms.

"Sorry in advance if this hurts at all," Tikva mumbled before pointing the cannon at Ayiana's cage and firing. However, she didn't account for recoil and the rocket instead flew upward and hit the ship, critically damaging it and sending it falling on top of a group of Vandals. The explosion also knocked the cage into the nearby abandoned building, breaking it into pieces.

The Captain grappled on to Calore and lowered his swords towards the Titan's neck plating. Calore blocked the swords with his machine gun while Tikva tossed auto rifle bullets, a grenade, and a throwing knife in the Captain's skull.

But finally, with a cry of "Get away from them, you ugly son of a..." Ayiana the Voidwalker Warlock hurled a Nova Bomb of pure Void energy in midair at the Captain, incinerating him and most of the remaining Fallen in the immediate vicinity with one blast.

"Are you alright, Calore?" Ayiana wondered as she floated back down to the ground.

"I'm fine. Where's Dakar?" Calore coughed once the Captain's body disappeared.

"Our ships crash landed together and he dragged me to safety while my armor healed my broken leg, but then he held them off while he told me to run and he was unsuccessful stopping them," Ayiana said, the Warlock struggling to keep her usual even keeled tone intact. "I don't know whether they captured him...or, or worse." She sighed before continuing. "I didn't manage to make it very far before I was captured and they demanded to know about something called a Causeway. When I couldn't tell them anything about it, they captured me as a trap for other Guardians."

"That same thing happened to me, as a matter of fact," Calore said. "What is going on here?"

"Well, perhaps you can explain who this Hunter is?" Ayiana wondered. Her tone seemed stern at first but then she simply cocked her helmeted head to the side quizzically, scanning Tikva with her eyes as Tikva also tried to figure out what to make of both the Titan and the Warlock.

"She's been...assisting me," Calore said, deciding to leave it at that. "Without her help, I probably wouldn't have been able to free myself or you from our mutual captivity."

"Well, you've been doing a good job. For a newborn, anyway," Ayiana said.

Tikva didn't know whether to be flattered by the first real sounding compliment anyone had given her for not completely messing up or be offended at the skeptical air the Warlock still had about her.

"So, what is this Causeway that they seem to be looking for?" Tikva wondered.

"I have no idea," said Calore. "But at least it doesn't appear as if the Fallen do either."

"And it's clearly connected to the Guardians somehow, otherwise they would have just killed us rather than interrogating us," Ayiana added. "But whatever it is, it would probably bode ill for the City if they found out. I should go to the Library and investigate further."

"We should probably get back to the Tower as soon as possible, and inform the Speaker of what we've learned."

Tikva's first instinct was to dissuade them against doing this for fear of punishment by Lord Shaxx for her willful truancy from the Crucible. But now she realized how petty that would sound, so she simply murmured, "Agreed. But how?"

The Hunter then attempted to lighten the mood by saying, "Unless anyone has a spare ship in their pocket."

"As a matter of fact, no, I do not," Ayiana said dryly. "I remember where my ship crashed, though. If you don't mind cutting through thousands of Hive, that is."

"It would be my pleasure," Calore said as he loaded his machine gun with heavy ammo.

"Ditto," Tikva said.

A bizarre sea creature with too many eyes and tentacles to be natural belched and sent Kolee and another Fallen flying out of the water in a wave of bluish liquid. They landed onto the Forgotten Shore with a wet thud, and then the creature gurgled before slinking back into the depths. The Dreg coughed up lake water, then hugged himself to a rock in front of him to try to dry off.

He'd just spent approximately four hours in the mouth of said sea creature after being sucked in by its beak, hanging with his knife to an equally strange appendage in the back of its throat in an attempt to prevent him from being swallowed.

Then a tongue as big as a ship got annoyed by his presence, then slapped the appendage to try and dislodge the irritant. Kolee had fired his shock rifle into the tongue, then inadvertently sliced off the part of the appendage he was clinging on to in the process, making him fall down the gullet of the creature.

He knew this was the end as he could see a vast pool of boiling acid where even large floating pieces of Walkers were broken down with ease. And would anybody care? It didn't appear that way to Kolee.

Then he landed on a spot of stomach lining that was just above the vile lake and blacked out.

When he came to, a Fallen Captain with two metallic appendages in place of his upper arms stood over him, then said, "Do not be alarmed. You wish to be free of this place, yes?"

Kolee barely understood what he was saying, but nodded anyway, not wanting to be shot for insubordination.

"I am Variks of House Judgement. And you are?"

"Kolee," Kolee squeaked.

"You wonder how I end up in belly of beast, yes? A tale for another time," the Captain muttered. "Take this. Throw it down to the acid. I will do the same, yes?"

Kolee nodded at that as well as he turned over the crude metal object in his hand.

"Then we will be free, you and I. Us two, working for us, yes?"

Kolee gulped, then threw the device into the green acid at the same time as the apparently insane Captain did the same. It turned blue, bubbled for a moment, and then erupted, sweeping up both of the Fallen, then carrying them out of the creature's mouth and onto the shoreline.

The last thing Kolee remembered before the Dreg blacked out was, "Variks will find you later, Kolee of House Nothing. If you survive."

"We've been wandering around for nearly four hours now, Ayiana. It will be dark soon and if we don't make a fortified camp for the night, the Hive will swarm us," Calore said.

"I know what I saw," the Warlock stubbornly insisted. "It has to be around here somewhere. If we camp now, the ship might be picked for parts and then we'll be stranded here until we can flag another Fireteam to take us to jumpspace. That could take weeks."

"This is not your decision. I have to think about the group now. It is my duty to do so as the duly appointed Fireteam leader."

"Guys," Tikva said.

"I know you're worried about Dakar, Calore. I am too. But even though you are the Fireteam leader, that does not give you the right to treat me like an imbecile."

"Guys?"

"You are acting irrationally because of your attachment to the human, and it is very unbecoming of you," Calore said firmly, like the Warlock was a child who needed lecturing.

"Attachment? He's my Fireteam member and friend. I cannot, will not rest until we find him. You said yourself, we don't leave anyone behind!"

"Guys!"

"Do not forget that I found you both when you were reborn in this exact place. I have no desire to abandon Dakar either. But right now, we are camping here, and that's an order!"

"GAH-EYEEEES!" Tikva shouted at the top of her lungs and jumped up and down, seeing that they were all frustrated and tired.

"What?!" the other two Guardians snapped at her.

"Hi."

"Hi to you too. And? Do you have anything germane to add?" Ayiana grunted.

Calore joined her in staring down Tikva. The Hunter had been quiet for nearly the entirety of the search, aside from the periods where they'd been fighting Hive and had to coordinate.

"And, maybe we should do one last sweep of this area before we camp," Tikva said. "It probably won't take more than another hour. Then we'll camp and keep looking in the morning. And if we still don't find Ayiana's ship, I know where mine is."

"Then why didn't you tell us this before?" Ayiana yelled.

"Because it's a lot farther away, thank you very much," Tikva snipped.

"That's actually...fairly reasonable," the Exo sighed in defeat as he put up his hand to silence both bickering women. What was just said was the first thing out of his fellow Guardian's mouth that didn't sound even the slightest bit unhinged. "Fine, let's do tha-"

He was cut off by a rush of foul smelling blue liquid that crashed onto the shore and pushed them all into a cave. Apparently, two dead looking Fallen were caught up in the stream with the three Guardians, but they didn't have any time to contemplate this before they landed hard on a pile made of thousands of Hive bones and passed out.

One indeterminate amount of time spent unconscious later...

All the Guardians retched as the obnoxious blue liquid failed to be filtered out by their helmets' respirators and had entered their noses, making it difficult to breathe.

Once they coughed out as much as they could, Ayiana hacked out the words, "Where are we?"

"I think this is what many have referred to as the 'Holy Treasure Cave,' if I'm not mistaken," Calore said.

"Are there any Hive that still inhabit this place?" Tikva wondered.

"To my knowledge, they abandoned this place shortly before the Black Garden was destroyed and have avoided this Cave ever since. No one knows why just yet," Calore murmured.

"We really should get some sort of compensation for how many times we've had to bail our Guardians out of trouble," Tikva could hear her Ghost stating in her mind. It wasn't inside her armor, so it probably was talking to the other Ghosts. But why was that exactly?

"I fully agree," Calore's Ghost replied with the computerized equivalent of a laugh. Ayiana's Ghost was also floating alongside the other two at the moment, but the minute it caught sight of Ayiana it hid within its Guardian's armor.

"What's all this about?" Calore asked.

"Take a look outside and see for yourself," Calore's Ghost replied.

All three Guardians breathed a sigh of relief as they saw that Ayiana's ship was parked in front of them.

"While you were busy, the three of us repaired the ship," Tikva's Ghost stated.

"You're welcome," Calore's Ghost added.

"I've never been happier to go to orbit in my life," Ayiana sighed.

"Not even after that annoyingly tough strike?" Calore interjected.

"This is much better."

Tikva's curiosity was piqued and she started to ask what "that annoyingly tough strike" was, but reappeared in the hull of the ship before she could get any worse out of her mouth.

And then, more exhausted than she'd ever been in her entire life by today's events, Tikva fell asleep as Ayiana set the ship's coordinates for the Tower and it disappeared into jumpspace.