Step 4: Get Lost
"Hey, Tev, Silverhawk was looking for you. What? No, no she didn't find out it was you who dyed her cloak pink-WHOA, HOLD ON: THAT WAS YOU!? SILVERHAWK'S GOING TO EAT YOU FOR BREAKFAST WHEN SHE FINDS OUT ABOUT THIS!"- Cayde-6 to Tevis Larsen, Private comm line Zed-90
Mara Sov, Queen of the awoken, didn't scare easily. It took something very major to shake her out of her royal shell and morph her into just a normal person. Standing in the aftermath of Twilight Gap, wanting to see the damage for herself, had been one of the hardest things for her to see.
Seeing the last bastion of humanity in ruins, dead Guardians and civilians everywhere, rubble and fire the only landscape for miles. She hadn't known it then, but it was the earthly embodiment of what the Reef would look like by the time her war ended. The worst thing she'd seen since then was Uldren crumpling to a heap right in front of her, gasping for breath with a knife in his throat.
She was glad to say she'd punch the man who'd done it, too. Her brother had barely pulled through, flatlined multiple times, and had been kept on medical leave for several months(one of which had been on her own order, which he had not been happy about at all). The very sight of the scar on his neck made her insides squirm, and made her want to throw something.
This...was nothing like that.
Strangley, she didn't feel at all paniced or afraid like most people would. Her initial rage, her struggles against her captors had ceased as a death-like calm overtook her. She had recognized Della Tay's seal. Nobody lived once Tay decided to kill them. Nobody... not even her.
Her confusion, brought on by Variks' behavior, had quickly been replaced by pain as the explosion sent her flying. Then came the panic, as she was grabbed and dragged off to who-knows-where. There had been an initial, faint spark of hope when Uldren appeared out of the dust, only to be replaced by panic and dread once more as he was struck from behind by non other than Della Tay herself.
For a few, horrible moments, she'd thought Tay was going to kill him, in his dazed state. That she would finish what the assassin from three years ago had started. But no, her brother lived.
"Normally, I would kill you, too. But my bounty only calls for one head this time."
She'd barely heard those words. But she'd heard them nonetheless. Stories about Tay's possible allegiances ranged from "she works for the Nine", clear to "she works for the Darkness, outright". Whomever Tay worked for, killing her was in the best interest to whomever had hired her.
"You should be proud." Tay seemed to pur as they sat together on the hovering transport vehicle that had driven them from her ship. Though Mara didn't know it, its design was similar to a flatbed truck. "Your death will spark a thousand wars. And it will be absolutely thrilling, too!"
Mara said nothing, keeping her back straight and her head held high, refusing to look at Tay, and the very image of benevolence. Her hands were bound tight, and the same, burly guard who had captured her earlier sat at her left side. Around her neck was some sort of collar that blocked her from reaching out, kept her from using the powers that most of the royal family was gifted with.
The sun flashed in her eyes constantly, and the heat pounded at her, the only relief available being the breeze that their movement in the vehicle caused. Her throat felt dry, and all she wished she could have was a little water.
"I realized that, I went about it the wrong way twenty years ago, with your mother." Mara's fists clenched, but other than that, yielded no reaction. "You see, you nearly delared war, but you were patient enough for your father to follow his leads. You treated him, allowed him to do as he pleased in order to placate him in his grief. I never did apologize, did I? I hear her death changed the Prince immensely."
Do not react. Do not give her the pleasure. It had. Oh, it had changed Uldren. In the space of a few hours, gone was the young teenager who dreamed and had never held a gun before. Gone was a child filled with hope, and in his place stood, faster than they eye could blink, a man who wanted nothing more or less than bloody revenge. Uldren had screamed and cried for days. Uldren suddenly wanted to become a Crow, and to train the elite force for military use. Uldren was soon the dead-eye of the Reef.
Sometimes she caught glimpses of the old Uldren. But that brother was gone, replaced by the man who would surely come at Tay with renewed vengeance once Mara was dead.
"Now, your brother is far less patient. I hear there's never been a sole male ruler on you throne before? As I said, you should be proud. You death will make history. History, and those thousand wars I mentioned. As I said, you brother is a far less patient a man, it will be some much easier for my clients to get what they want with him on the throne."
"And what is it your clients want, Della Tay?" The Queen spoke for the first time since being captured. Tay sat up, and lent down so that she and Mara were almost nose-to-nose.
Contrary to popular belief, Reef pirates didn't dress trashy. No. Every centimeter of exposed skin was a centimeter through which a needle could slip to inject poison. Tay was dressed to survive. Layers of hard leather and wire weave, with a sidearm strapped to both legs, knives on her arms, macabre jewelry hanging from around her neck.
Her face itself was beautiful, sleek and untarnished. Her eyes were large, and glowed a soft, brownish-amber color. Her brown hair was tied back into a bun stuck through with what might have been thin shards of moon-white bone, and her every feature was perfect in every way. From a string around her neck, dangled teeth. No, not animal teeth. No. Human and awoken teeth. One for each of her twenty years of victims. There were two of these strings, and alongside the teeth, were small scraps of metal, with names on them.
Names, followed by a dash and a number. The wrist identifications of all the exos she had murdered, since they didn't have teeth.
Della Tay was a monster, to her core. She smiled at Mara Sov with perfect teeth, white and shining like the bones in her hair.
"War." she answered. "Plain and simple. You brother is much more likely to go to war with the Last City than you are. But there is one other matter I must question you about, before we reach our destination."
Tay turned suddenly serious, a frown creasing her pretty features. Mara resolved not to relent, no matter what it was that the assassin wanted. Whatever awoken secret she was hoping to gain, the Queen would take it to her soon-to-be grave.
"My Queen...what do you know of Ashraven?"
"How do you two know Silverhawk, anyway?" Uldren inquired as they navigated a winding path between dunes. If he was going to travel with these people, he might as well do some investigating.
Uldren Sov hated Heather 'Silverhawk' Chancellor, but ever since finding out about her deathtouch, and reading the report of the Crow who had pieced together Silverhawk's past with Certech, he'd found the need to complete Himalay's work. The Crow, before she had died of the disease, had been determined to find out what had happened to the twelve-year-old girl that Certech had tortured and changed atom-by-atom.
Asking Silverhawk outright was out of the question. He never wanted to see her unbearable face again. But he felt he owed a duty to his dead Crow to find out what happened after Silverhawk had died. He knew that she had met Martin Anton at some point, and that they had been "raised together", but beyond that, his knowledge was limited.
"Oh, we did the exposition where she decided to become a Hunter." Ethan said, slipping a little on a patch of sand. "She was pulled out half way through because her brother was rushed to the infirmary with some kind of illness. It's hard to forget...someone that looked like her."
"If your speaking of her being half awoken, it is safe to say so." Uldren muttered. At the Titan and Hunter's starts of surprise, he added, "She dropped her glasses during the mission for the cure."
Ethan shook his head, and then continued.
"We saw her training once, too, with some practice dummies. They were being introduced to long blades, if I remember correctly." He said. Beside Uldren, Alf nodded.
"She had a lot of promise."
"In fact, Alf wanted to take her in for special training-"
"But Cayde-6 snatched her up before I could get a good word in."
"Do you know how often Vanguards take on an apprentice, while still in active command? That exo was, and is, absolutely crazy."
"Worst part is admitting he did a good job. Remember that mission we did with her, Ethan?"
"How could I not?"
"Working with Silverhawk was like loosing a leg. Agony the whole time, and you still get phantom pain afterwords." Uldren commented. He could sense Alf lean out behind him to look at his brother, and Uldren focused on the path ahead.
They had been traveling for a good twenty minutes, and each second was agony. They were coming up on a feild of dead, twisted trees, many of them half-buried. There was a murky puddle of stagnant water, a dried up oasis of sorts, in the middle of it all. The three of them began to circle around the deep mud, when Bessy appeared in a panicked flash.
"He found them!" She declared.
"I am Groot!" Groot declared, appearing as well.
"Where is she?" Uldren demanded.
"Hush! I'm trying to watch!" Bessy snapped, before hovering in place by Ethan's head. Her shell twitched, occasionally spinning, and every so often, she would make surprised mechanical noises. Uldren lost it entirely when she let out a shocked gasp.
"What is it? What's happening?" he asked, heart pounding in his throat.
"Tay has Robert! He attacked her!"
"Hmmm. Disappointing. I was hoping you would know something." Tay said, sounding disappointing, standing up."Not thrilling. Not thrilling at all."
"I'm sorry to hear of your problem. What were you hoping for? To kill her again?" the Queen asked in a simpering voice. It didn't sound as offensive or antagonistic as she had hoped; she couldn't pull off 'rude' the way Uldren could.
Tay grinned at her.
"The Wolves of Iron aren't what they seem. While I would take great pleasure in being the first person ever to murder a spirit, I'm looking for a living soul, not a dead one. Like you'll be soon."
Mara glared at her. I haven't the faintest idea what she would want with a dead Wolf of Iron. But what little I know of Ashraven, I keep to myself.
"But as we approach your final destination, I'm afraid I have to berate you for how... un-thrilling you're being. We'll have to arm you, of course, to make it more exciting. A knife, perhaps?" Oh, please give me a weapon, if only just to silence you.
The vehicle slowed, and they came to a stop at the entrance to what appeared to be some form of ancient ruins. At the end of it was...
No.
It was the entrance to the Black Garden. They were taking her to the Black Garden.
"Look!" Tay spread her arms wide, joyfully, pointing at the gate it's cruel metal glinting off the sun."Your new home! Isn't it absolutely thrilling!?"
Mara was beginning to hate the word "thrilling". She jerked as Tay's meathead guards pulled her to her feet, struggled as they marched her towards the gate. She fought for every step, struggled for every inch, but it was to no avail. The guards lifted her between them by her arms, and she kicked at them, her feet dangling in mid-air.
Eventually, she grew too tired to struggle, and went limp, settling for glaring at Tay with all her might. They dragged her up the steps, and Tay's guards set her down and took a tight hold on both her arms, so much so that it hurt. Tay stood in front of the gate, turned, and grinned at them. She took something out of a small bag hanging from her belt.
It was a Gate Lord's eye.
The assassin held it up to the gate, and a whirring sound rose in the air, escalating to a mechanical roar. The eye glowed red. White conflux energy gathered at the edges of the gate. It seemed to spin around the edges...and then, like a whirlpool, it all shot towards the middle with a loud boom that made the guards and Mara flinch.
But not Tay. She stood there as energy splashed out like molten lava, landing on the ground all around her. She brushed a spark off her shoulder, smiling like she'd just witnessed the birth of a star. She turned her grin towards them.
"Are you ready to see the darkness at it's purest, your grace?" She called over the roar of the wind that was trying to suck them into the portal.
Suddenly, something pitch as a starless night flashed at the edge of Mara's vision. It shot up from behind the stairs to the platform they were standing on, and one of the guards reeled back, letting go of her, and clutching his face with a cry of pain.
"Run, your grace!" a mechanical voice cawed. A flurry of feathers, and the black bird had cut the other guard's face with his talons as well. It was one of her brother's Crows!
Jerking her arm out of the weakened grasp of the shocked other guard, Mara Sov made a break for the stairs. Thank you, Uldren, if it is you who sent him... Like when her brother had appeared from the mist of the explosion, there was a faint spark of hope in her chest, to go alongside the heart-pounding terror of the moment.
She was free! If she could get to the transport and hi-jack it somehow...or maybe use her lighter frame to her advantage and make a run for the rocky cliffs where the larger guards couldn't chase her on the transport...maybe...maybe...
She let out a cry of pain as hot agony split through her lower right leg. She tripped, and fell to the ground, tumbling along the dust and rock painfully before coming to a stop at the bottom, curling up to grab at the wound. A knife was sticking out of the back of her leg, dark awoken blood seeping out of it, soaking her boot and pant leg around the wound.
Through a dizzy haze of pain, she looked up to see Tay, outlined by the light the portal cast, gripping the Crow by his beak with one hand, another knife at the ready with the other. Uldren's scout beat it's wings, pulling. It beat Tay's hand with it's wings when trying to fly away didn't work, and it swiped it's talons at her fingers to no avail; the leather on her gauntlets was too thick.
"Hmmm. I must not have hit him hard enough, if he's clear-headed enough to alert his martian scouts. Next time, maybe I won't hold back from breaking his skull. Yes, that would have kept him down for a good while... long enough not to interfere..." Tay pondered thoughtfully as the Crow struggled in her grip. Mara felt tears of pain slip down her cheeks as she pressed at the area around her wound with one hand.
The guards came up on either side of her. She noticed, with a brief flash of satisfaction, one of them sported a trio of parallel cuts dangerously close to each eye, while the other had blood trickling from six cuts on the side of his neck. Each man was glaring at the bird evilly. She wondered, sadly, what horrible end it would meet at their hands.
"Bring her up." Tay ordered her men. They stepped down, striding up to Mara and yanking her to her feet, ignoring her sharp gasps and moans of pain. They dragged her up to Tay, the Crow's struggles for freedom never wavering. They threw her down on her hands and knees in front of the assassin, who continued to grin down at her. She brandished the Crow.
"You see, this bird has the right idea. Thrilling! Absolutely thrilling! I admire this kind of loyalty, even if it is programmed into them." she told them excitedly, she grinned at the Crow.
"Why, hello, Prince Uldren! Or...is it... King Uldren now? Well, if not already, then soon. You know, your bird's got moxy, I have to say. And it was such a good try,as well. She just wasn't fast enough." She jerked the bird around so it faced Mara. She flicked her free hand. "Take my prize."
For a moment, the Queen was confused. Then she remembered.
The teeth.
Before she knew it, her jaw was forced open. For the first time since her initial capture, she screamed. She struggled, tried to wretch her jaw out of their grasp, no care to whether or not she injured herself in the process. One of the guards held her head in place, pinning her head against his own body with his arm, useing that same hand to hold her top jaw, as he used his free hand to hold her bottom jaw.
She shut her eyes, not relenting. There was soon something metalic in her mouth, and then a bright, horrible pain as they slowly pulled out one of her back teeth. She let out a choked scream.
Gone was the Queen. In her place... someone who just wanted to go home. To say goodbye, to see her brother one more time, to let her people know it was all going to be okay... anything...
They let go of her jaw, the joints throbbing as well as her mouth as it filled up with blood. Her vision still blurred with pain, with tears of pain, she spat out a bloody glob down at Tay's feet. The guard on her right set the bloodied tooth down on the ground, and took hold of Mara's arm tightly. Still smileing, Tay leant down, and used her knife to cut the rope that bound Mara's hands together.
The Queen jerked forwards, wanting to strangle the woman in front of her. Her leg burned, her jaw and mouth ached and throbbed, and tears stung her eyes as her hair and the sand around them whipped around in the wind caused by the Black Garden's gate. Tay held the Crow close to the Queen, and the bird stopped struggleing, as if to avoid hitting Mara.
"Take a good, long look, would-be King. This is the last you'll ever see of h-" Tay was cut off with a scream of agony as the Crow gave a sudden jerk, lashing out at her face. Her screams pitched as she let go of him in shock, and he flapped and beat the air with his wings, as he clawed at her face, cawing angrily.
The guard to her left pinned her arms to her sides as she tried to stand and make another break for it, while the other guard came to Tay's rescue...though by then, the damage had already been done.
The Crow bagan to lift away with an odd, sudden jerk, and Tay's screams increased in volume. The assasin fell back into the arms of the guard that had come to help her, clutching her bleeding left eye.
Or rather, where it should have been.
For now, it was dangling from the bloodied talons of Uldren's Crow, it's glow dull, dripping blood as he took off.
"Della! Della, hold on!"the guard cried with distress as the Crow beat it's wings, taking off in a direction away from the ruins. He lifted his hand cannon, took aim, and fired. There was a suprised, animalistic, mechanical cry of pain, and the black bird dropped to the ground like a stone.
"Kill her!" he shouted at the other guard, cradling the screaming Tay in his arms and stroking her head comfortingly. With that, the burly guard spun around, and threw Mara forwards.
She let our a cry of pain as she put her weight on her bad leg, and did a sort of spin, trying to turn back. She caught a glimpse of the one guard picking Tay up in his arms like some sort of sick, twisted, murderous romantic, and the one that had thrown her turning away, bending a little, perhaps to pick up Tay's "prize".
Then...it was like the feeling one got inside an elevator. Like your insides were having trouble keeping up with your outsides. Except worse. Much, much worse, in a painful sort of way. Then, it stopped, and she fell backwards. She took in a deep, gasping breath as agony ripped through her leg, the impact with the ground having pushed the knife in further.
She rolled onto her side with a choked sound of pain. Blinking away tears, and looking up and around herself, she realized she was in a cave, surrounded by vex stone. There was an odd amount of greenery, and some very strange flowers greeted her. She kept picking up flashes of amber in the air, and leaves from no tree that she could see drifted through the air in an eeiry but beautiful way. The very air had an odd, turquiose tint to it.
Mara Sov, Queen of the awoken...was inside the Black Garden.
Okay, so, we won't see Uldren and the twins for the next couple of chapters. He's gonna be mad, so expect some violent disembowelment on Smelldren's part(inside joke between me and Amberstar, because he'll be calling a character 'Lice' frequently later on). Grant it, it's hard to disembowl a robot, but hey, a guy can try, can't he?
MaybeALittleBroken: I thought as much. I take it you loved Groot, then?
jsm1978: I have a feeling that, in Destiny 2, dead Crows will become something like CAlcified fragments, or Dormant SIVA clusters, as the new area on mars will most like be the same place that Uldren crash-landed in in the grimiore. We know he's looking for her, and we know he has some of his robots with him; but in the year between TTK and RoI... well, a lot of stuff can happen in a year if your stranded on a desert planet, and we can assume that, seeing as it's been a year, him and his Crows somehow failed to repair his ship... I think we'll be seeking out both royal siblings in D2.
Fierywarlock999: I once considered changing my penname to 2Lazy2LogIn. Haven't seen that Iguana recently; did you by it a lizard leash?
Guest of August 17th: Inverse Shadow perk works on them, they glitch-throw my poor hunter all the way across the map every other sheild bash, and they are very, very rude and hostile. Therefore, they are classified as minions of the darkness in this fic.
ThisIsSarcasm: Greetings fellow WoF fan; I'm on team Qiblajou. You?
DestinyHead123: Fun fact; of all human languages, english is the hardest to learn? Variks might have had better luck with spanish. Glad to find you're likeing the series so far, I hope to keep your interest!
Guest of August 24th: My Taken King stories had undergone many overhauls in my head. It's going to change a lot of stuff in this series, and it will be drastically different than what happened in-game. Oryx did make a pretty good villain. As for the royal siblings, ina grimiore, the queen states that lingth and dark were her parents, but for this series that's different. I mean, if humans and awoken really lived as long as they do in-game, then both the Reef and the City would suffer cycles of famine and overpopulation. Their societies would be unsustainable. So, in this, people reproduce the normal way, and they live normal-spanned lives(though, Uldren is 33 in this fic by earth years, in Reef years he's 39; time is very different for them).
Order and Chaos: I'm afraid Tay will only appear one more time in this series, and it's not during this fic. So no, Ethan won't get to punch her. But maybe Uldren will. As you can see, sadly Robert's story has come to an end, though. He did get Tay's eye, though, and I'm pretty sure there's a pun to make here somewhere... ah! Better be careful; you know what they say! "an eye for an eye"!
Well, poor Mara Sov has gotten herself into quite the pickle, hasn't she? Smelldren and the twins are en route, but so are two other Guardians. I'm working on the second chapter of Petra's Face is Hilarious, which may some day turn out to be more important than it seems at first.
Chapter eight is slow going, but it's getting there. It's hard to write because it's really funny, and the scenes I'm writeing for 15 Seconds at the moment are... depressing and dramatic.
How are you guys likeing this so far? Is it doing Fever justice? We haven't had much humor here yet, but that'll change in the next chapter because it's a WHOLE chapter of Silverhawk's PoV. It's always been historically difficult to make a good sequel to the original. I think Fever may always stand as the best installment in this seires, simply because I've often found the first to always be the best in a series. Speaking of Fever, the rest of the re-written chapter should be posted soon, maybe today or tomorrow, so check often! Chapters 8-13.
Next Time: Silverhawk and Martin discuss space-time, more puns than you can shake a stick at, and Martin's sparrow might know how dangerous it's driver is...
Cheers!^^