My discontent with the last chapter kept me up, so I came up with this to ease my troubled writing mind...and hopefully any spite generated from the awfulness of the last chapter. Here's another flashback!
Year: approximately 1052 Current Human Era; Location: Central Right Arm of Milky Way Galaxy
"Alright, Courage; you can open your eyes now." A strong male voice spoke over the Forerunner's head, and she blearily opened her tired eyes. They stung from sweat that had dripped down from her brow during the entire process, but she stared up into the face of the older Lifeworker above her, and she smiled faintly.
"It's not like I haven't done this before, Gentle Heartbeat of Fate," she assured her mentor. "I HAVE had five sons before this."
"Well, this child should be a pleasant change," the grey-haired Lifeworker chuckled. "Do you want to wash up first? I don't think you want your daughter's first memory to be that of her mother looking like she just had sex." Courage through Eternal Night blushed furiously and hurriedly agreed, using her bare hands to splash clean water across her face.
She took a moment to gaze at her reflection in the water: long, blonde hair was coming out in lazy curls around her face, and brilliant green eyes nearly glowing in the faint light of the private room. Tan fur had long ago receded with further mutations and Imprints, so that only the pigment from her "baby fur" was left on her sleek, flawless skin. Having had enough of gazing at herself in the makeshift mirror, Courage used a towel to rub her face clean and wipe her hands, not willing to spread any form of germ to her sixth child. A daughter?
"Here she is," Fate said happily as he handed a thickly wrapped bundle gently to the waiting arms of the experienced mother. "And she's a pretty little thing. I'd say that this was a success."
Courage through Eternal Night pulled the covers away to gaze at the sleeping baby's face, and she could not suppress a smile from illuminating her own beautiful features. The child indeed WAS beautiful; fur of a silvery-gold sheen spread across the smooth-featured face, with thin, flawless crescents of white fur on the outer corners of the closed eyes. The child was deep in sleep, but near translucent eyelids (which would later gain pigment and thickness) revealed a silver iris surrounding a slit pupil of pitch black. A healthy, perfect specimen of a female Forerunner baby.
"Courage," Gentle Heartbeat of Fate whispered so as not to wake the baby, and Courage looked up at the call of her name. "I hate to interrupt, but Ascendant Destiny is waiting." The smile that had graced Courage's face fell slightly. Her husband was here to see her? So soon after the birth? She nodded her consent, and her mentor opened the door to admit Courage's mate.
It was not immediately clear that this Forerunner was the baby's father. Pale skin made way for two "sideburns" of pitch black fur that encompassed gleaming red eyes. A proud face was surrounded with a gleaming mass of long, straight black hair. Red robes outlined with black and white patterns adorned the tall, muscular frame of the Warrior. The only resemblance that could be made between War for Ascendant Destiny and the baby in Courage's arms was the midnight black, slit pupil of their eyes; it was a common trait in the Warriors, while the gentle features were more befitting of Courage's Lifeworker blood.
"May I see our child?" Ascendant Destiny asked in a forced loving voice. Well, Courage thought wryly as she tilted the baby to where her husband could see, at least he was honest about not truly loving her.
"Where are our sons?" she asked as her mate examined the child curiously. He gave a noncommittal grunt, and Courage sighed. For some strange reason, War for Ascendant Destiny did not much like it when his wife asked about their five sons. Forerunner traditions had shifted since the Great Cataclysm so that the father took on more the duties of raising the sons, while mothers focused on the daughters.
"Courage, did something happen to this child while she was in your womb?" Ascendant Destiny asked slowly and in a measured tone. The change in her husband's attitude had Courage drawing the baby closer to her, and her body tensed as if to flee. Her husband was raising his six claws in a threatening manner.
"…" The Forerunner mother refused to answer, and a clawed hand came down across her face. Blue blood ran down from three scratches that ran diagonally across one cheek, and stained the baby's face. The infant opened her eyes, and they flickered around in confusion in fright. Bless her little heart, though, the babe made no noise.
"What did you DO to this creature?" Ascendant Destiny snarled, and Courage slid closer to the edge of the bed.
"It was MY decision as to what had to be done, Ascendant Destiny," Courage growled lowly, sliding one foot off the bed, then the other. "A solution was found amidst the wreckage of Charum Hakkor, and my mother and I took action."
"Without my consent?!" the Forerunner male yelled angrily, but this did not daunt his wife. She rubbed her bleeding cheek against her pristine white hospital robes, staining them royal blue.
"The humans and the San'Shyuum had the solution, and they put it where they KNEW someone would find it. They provided us with the blueprints to stop the Flood, Ascendant Destiny. Isn't that what we work towards in the Mantle? To protect all life?"
"Do NOT use the Mantle to justify mutilating that…that THING!" Ascendant Destiny screamed, and his daughter whimpered.
"She is NOT a thing," Courage through Eternal Night growled, maternal instincts causing her hackles to rise and her face to contort into a snarl. "She is our daughter, and she will know of her rightful fate."
"I won't give you the chance," Ascendant Destiny growled, and he moved to block Courage's path. "Give me the thing. I will kill it."
"No!" Courage protested, and she charged so that her shoulder slammed into Ascendant Destiny's chest and sent him flying into the door, breaking it and allowing for a brief passage to freedom. Holding her infant daughter close, Courage through Eternal Night hopped over her ex-husband's (let's face it, there's no way that they were still a couple after this) unmoving body, and sprinted down the deserted hallway.
The war carrier that Courage was on, Path of Righteous Violence was long and hard to navigate without practice. However, Courage through Eternal Night had plenty of practice wandering these halls when carrying her six children, and she used her knowledge and practice to speed through an innumerable amount of hallways, creating less of a patch for the angry Forerunner behind her to follow. A metallic Promethean attempted to block her path, but suddenly fell back into the hallway from whence it had come, and she continued to run. The rocking movements of her mother's body lulled the infant's whimpers to silence, and she was mercifully mute so as not to draw attention to the retreating pair.
A set of hands closed around Courage's upper arms, and she gasped as a strong force pulled her into a side room before the door shielded her and her assailant in darkness. A furred hand closed around her mouth, prompting her to fall silent. Faint shouting could be heard from the hallway outside, and she gave a silent breath of relief as the voice of her angry husband and his robotic troops faded into nothingness. The hand removed itself from her mouth, and a lantern illuminated the owner of the hand.
"Starlight of Blessed Victory," Courage sighed at the sight of her adolescent son that she had not seen for quite some time, but whose image she carried in her memory. The young male towered over his mother already in his first-rate of mutation, with pitch black fur receding into his hairline of long, straight black hair. Green eyes glimmered in the faint light of the lantern, showing worry.
"Mother, is everything-" the adolescent began to speak in his smooth voice, but stopped at the sight of the blood on his baby sister's face. "Did Father do something to her?" he snarled, but Courage shook her head in denial.
"No, he attacked me," she said hurriedly, gripping her son's forearm. "Blessed Victory, your father wishes to kill your sister. No, listen!" she pleaded as her son's face contorted in barely suppressed rage. "I need a means to escape. Do you think that you can help me?" she whispered fervently, accompanied by one tiny squeak from her daughter.
"No doubt about it, Mother," Blessed Victory assured his parent, and he took her by a free hand a little ways into the dark room. He knocked a wall panel aside to show a smooth, shallow slide leading downwards. "This chute will take you down to one of the landing bays. It should be where Gentle Heartbeat of Fate is right now. I think he knows more about this than I do, and I'm sure he's ready. I'll lead off Father and my brothers."
"You're a dear," Courage leaned up and kissed her son on the cheek before setting a foot into the chute. "Won't you come with us?"
Starlight of Blessed Victory shook his head. "I can't. I'll buy you about ten minutes, but then I'll bring Father and the Prometheans in this direction. You need to be out of here by then, or we'll both be in trouble."
"Starlight of Blessed Victory, I wish you well on your path to inheriting the Mantle," Courage through Eternal Night spoke the traditional words of farewell between a parent and their offspring, and she grasped her son's hand in a farewell gesture before nimbly sliding down the chute into pitch black.
Starlight of Blessed Victory counted the seconds in his head as he rearranged the dark room to make it look like a struggle had occurred, and he scratched himself to appear more disheveled. Not quite ten minutes had passed before a gut feeling had Blessed Victory open the door and shout to catch the attention of some searching Prometheans. The gut feeling had told him that his mother had successfully escaped the Path of Righteous Violence, and the feeling proved to be true. The enraged roar of his father that rang through the ship confirmed that Courage through Eternal Night, her daughter, and Gentle Heartbeat of Fate had escaped.
"Where can we go, do you think?" Fate asked as he adjusted some of the controls on the sizeable shuttle that he and Courage had "borrowed" from her former husband. Courage tried to think as she sank onto a soft bed, her daughter held close to her chest.
"Erde- Tyrene," she said after a moment. "He'll never think to look for us there."
"A Monitor recently updated that now might NOT be the best time to land on Erde," Fate put the control screen away and sat next to his charge. "The environment and the culture are not well suited for our retreat there."
"It'll take us a long time to relocate there without War for Ascendant Destiny being able to track us, right?" the Forerunner female pointed out, tucking some of her daughter's silvery-white hair out of her sleeping face. Fate paused, then nodded as he readjusted the settings of their trajectory. "Hopefully, we'll get there at a time where the technology is a bit more advanced, and the humans might know a little bit about the Forerunners."
"Knowledge is dangerous," Fate pointed out, but Courage shook her head.
"IDEAS have the potential for being dangerous, not the knowledge that forms the basis for all ideas."
Not willing to enter an argument with her, Gentle Heartbeat of Fate looked at the sleeping child. "Have you decided on a name for her yet?"
"I don't think so," Courage through Eternal Night spoke softly, looking at her daughter thoughtfully. "Mother and I made her with the specifics that the humans and San'Shyuum of the past laid out, so that we may have a means to combat the Flood forms that still exist out there. I knew that she would survive, but I haven't come up with a name for her yet."
"Well, we have time to think on it," Fate smiled, his facial skin crinkling the amount of graying hair on the edges of his face. "She's not going out to attack a Gravemind right now, is she?"
Courage through Eternal Night laughed at the notion, but her heart gripped with fear. Her nameless daughter was fated for likely death at the jaws of a creature that all beings in the universe should fear. Why was she failing to give her daughter a name when it would be one of the few things that she could hold dear before an untimely death?
Because the name that Courage through Eternal Night wanted to name her child, but could not bring herself to do, would inspire a false hope that there was a "light at the end of the tunnel." Still, it was better than calling her daughter an "it."
"Song of Rising Sky. Her name shall be Song of Rising Sky."
Aahhh, much better. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter a bit more than the last, and it should have explained some more for you. I'm liking where this is going, and I hope that you do as well. As always, please read, review, and no flames! I love hearing from you guys!
Sincerely,
anna1795