Step 5: Charge Da Keep.
"That wierd exo girl has an excelent point. Vex are dangerous. But so are we. And by that, I mean mostly me, I mean, look at me, I'm epic. But you're awesome, too Martin. Lets go kick some butt."-Silverhawk
Silverhawk lowered her binoculars as the portal roared to life. Though the vex couldn't see it, her ghost, Westley, was flying low near the portal, the eye dangling from a string attached to him. He'd seemed quite excited to do something physically useful for a change.
Of course, in their usual convenience of timing, they had arrived just as the vex gate patrol had come through, blocking their way. She counted four minotaurs, two hobgoblins, and a hydra. Perfect.
"Right, Westley; here we come." she said into her comms. She put her binoculars away into a pouch on her belt. She wore gear modeled after the Takanome Rangers, and her outfit was themed blue and black, as usual. The Sparky-Sparky Boom-Boom Stick was strapped to her back, and she had Ol' Reliable and Hawkmoon strapped on holsters on either side of her waist.
She looked to her side at Martin, who was eyeballing their pathway to the gate nervously. He was dressed for battle; he'd started wearing more battle-worthy garments after a run-in with the cabal and fallen a couple of weeks ago. He wore deep scarlet robes, with what she knew to be tightly-padded vest underneath. There was a plate on his right shoulder, and some padding on his legs. His boots and gauntlets were black and his vest and pants were the darkest of blues.
His usual belt of curiosities was tied openly around his waist. She could see his father's knife strapped next to his favorite notebook, and his mace right next to it. Mace wouldn't do much good against the vex, but he insisted on carrying it everywhere he went. "You never know when you might need mace!"
His favorite shotgun was strapped across his back. Correction- his new favorite shotgun, seeing as the old one had been destroyed by a Venusian Treefang, along with his old sparrow, during the quest for the cure to a deadly disease that had wracked the City and Reef no less than about a month ago.
During that mission, they had worked with the ever-charming Prince Uldren of the awoken; a man who could've easily fooled the inexperienced into thinking he was a gunslinger. Also, a man with a bad taste in hair style. He'd looked better the way they'd left him after the mission; he'd had to cut his hair short because of a rather incurable case of dreadlocks resulting from a thousand-foot-or-so fall from the top of a collapsing building. His haircut from before had given her OCD so bad, it made her hands twitch just thinking about it.
The Prince had also been unbelievably not-fun. A killjoy in every sense of the word. And he'd gotten even worse after finding out about Silverhawk's deathtouch; a result of Certech experimentation that they'd put her through from the age of seven, all the way up to when they killed her at age 12. But, he'd agreed to keep her secret, on account of Martin's reasoning about owing Silverhawk not one, but two life debts.
He'd also threatened to shoot her on-sight if they ever met again. Hence why she'd sent Martin to the Reef instead of herself. And her Warlock friend had returned victorious. So here they were, about to assault the Black Garden, of all things. Just the two of them...
And the further they got, the more she regretted not telling Cayde-6 about their mission, or the stranger that had sent them on it. She'd refrained from telling him on account of the fact he would probably brag to Commander Zavala that one of his Hunters was attacking the Black Garden, and then Zavala, rather than be impressed, would insist on a larger fireteam coming with her, or postponing the operation all together.
But...she was starting to think that...maybe a few more hands on deck would not have been such a bad idea. She'd looked for Tevis Larsen, but even Cayde didn't know where the career Nightstalker had gotten off to recently. Oh, well; he'll have to miss out, then! she'd thought.
She was beginning to regret not waiting for him to pop back up again. If only for Martin's sake. Martin...wasn't the best fighter. And here they were, charging deep into vex territory, nay, the literal heart of their operations. She needed his knowledge, and his companionship; but the thought of something happening to him while she was fighting was terrifying.
Sure, he had his moments. With the Deathening, and the occasional Nova Bomb. He turned into the nerd rage psychopath that power triggered whenever he held it. But other than that, he was probably the most helpless, hopeless Guardian in the Tower. He was allergic to thrall, for pete's sake!
"You ready for this, dude?" she asked none the less. He gave her a weak smile, face pale with fear.
"Nope." he responded.
"FOR NAAARRNIAAAAA!" she cried, kicking her sparrow into high gear. She blasted forwards. Martin screamed and floored it with his own vehicle.
They shot down the sandy hillside. Silverhawk saw the vex perk up as they finally noticed the two Guardians.
"For the wild!" she shouted the Hunter battle cry as they approached the ruins. She thought she saw something black on the ground, in the sand, as she entered the stone area, but she dismissed it.
She wove through the pillars, dodging blasts from the torch hammers and wire rifles. She could still hear Martin's engines behind her, and she kept an ear out to make sure he wasn't hit.
She drove past the vex, and she stuck her tongue out at the hydra as she zoomed past it and into the portal. It was like going in an elevator, except this sensation was mildly painful. And then...she was in some kind of cave, and there was a bunch of plants and vex stone everywhere.
She hit the brakes, and drifted to a halt.
She heard a wail behind her, and she snapped her head around to see Martin flying out of the vex gate, getting thrown off his sparrow...which continued driving like it had a mind of it's own, right past her, and around the corner, as if to say "Forget you, Martin Anton. I know what happened to my predecessors."
Her friend landed on his face, and when he lifted his head, she saw that his glasses were cracked in one lens, as well as slightly bent.
"Ow! Come back here, stupid sparrow! Give me back my Deathening!" he cried, scrambling to his feet and running after his fleeing vehicle half-heartedly, before halting, panting and supporting himself with his hands on his knees, next to Silverhawk.
"Need a ride, stranger?" she asked him with a southern accent, flipping the switch on the extension. It popped out the back end of her sparrow with a mechanical noise.
"Haha, very funny, Silverhawk." he said wryly. His face now sported several scrapes on it. It's a good thing the floor is covered in moss, or he'd be all kinds of messed up!
She looked around at their surroundings. The cave was made of vex stone, red leaves floated around, in from nowhere in particular and carried by a breeze she couldn't feel. The whole place had a strange turquoise glow to it, and she didn't like it. There was something about this place, not the tunnels, or the space, that made her feel claustrophobic... suppressed.
Maybe it's the darkness. This place is really dark.
There was another portal noise behind them, and Silverhawk twisted around to see Westley fly in, the eye still dangling from his shell.
"Whew, what a rush! That portal feels weird! And not good-weird, either!" he exclaimed as he approached them. He expanded his shell, and the string slipped off of him, the eye falling into Silverhawk's waiting hand.
"Good work, farm boy." she grinned.
"As you wish!" the ghost replied with a mock bow, before zooming over to her left shoulder as something of interest seemed to catch Martin's eye. He did a kind of perk up, and then started towards a spot on the floor.
"Dude, what is it? You have that, 'I've noticed something' look on." she asked, leaning out a bit to get a better look at whatever had caught his interest. It was the spot right about where she guessed they had come out of, and she dismounted her sparrow when Martin gestured her to follow him.
He crouched near a darkened patch of moss.
"Silverhawk...does this look like awoken blood to you?" he asked as he knelt beside the patch. She stuck two fingers into the wet moss, and gave it a sniff. It was definitely blood, and it had the same darker shade of red-purple that awoken bled instead of humanity's scarlet.
"Yeah, it sure does. Wonder how it got here..." she mused. Martin looked at nothing in particular, facing the way they had come in from, brows knit together the way they always did when he was deep in thought.
"Maybe... you know how we went to the awoken for help? And one certain prince in particular knows what we're doing? He seemed awfully reluctant to help us. Maybe...Maybe he sent a scout or something, to stop us? Just a thought." he said out loud after a few moments.
"I don't think Uldren would be too terribly concerned about us dying in here. He did threaten to shoot me the next time we saw each other." she told him, and eyebrow raised.
"I find it difficult to imagine him working for the darkness. Not too terribly difficult, just a sliver. But difficult none the less. " the Warlock shook his head. "But I can't think of how anyone could have gotten in here without killing a Gate Lord; that thing was really hard to find, you know? Poor Wheatly nearly got caught in those conflux tides! What kind of network has tides?"
"Vex networks, apparently." Silverhawk shrugged, standing up. "Let's keep our eyes out for a wounded awoken, I guess. If they aren't already upgraded or torn up by vex minotaurs already."
"The vex don't convert people; you're thinking of cybermen, Silverhawk." getting up to stand with her. She made her way back to her sparrow, him following.
"You know, one of these days, we're going to learn how to translate all those screechy sounds the vex make, and they're going to be saying ; 'You are incompatible. Delete, delete!'" she mimicked, making her best robot face and altering her voice.
"No. They'll be all like, 'EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINAAAAAAATE!'" Martin imitated in his best Dalek voice.
Silverhawk snorted with laughter. "'You will be assimilated.'"
"'Resistance is futile.'"
"'Enter the conflux.'"
"Hey! No farting in the conflux!" Westley chided when Martin pooted, sending both Guardians and ghosts into a fit of laughter; even Wheatly, Martin's notoriously cowardly and pessimistic ghost.
Then a strange noise echoed through the halls, and they all went silent. It was mechanical screeching, from some unknown vex.
"You know... nobody knows why they screech. It isn't a way of communication; they do that through the confluxes. Maybe the effect is supposed to be psychological; to distress inferior organics like ourselves. It's been noted that vex only screech when someone is around. Do... do you think that screech...means that they know we're here?" Martin worried after a few moments as they stood, ready to mount Silverhawk's sparrow.
"I don't know, Pippin." she said, shrugging and using his nickname. He didn't approve of it, but hey; that was what he got for his parents giving him the middle name 'Peregrin'. "Maybe they're screeching at our mystery guest, if they're still alive and that blood isn't some kind of vex trick to unsettle us."
"Well, if it's the latter, it certainly worked." he said with a shiver, before casting her a non-serious glare. "And don't call me that."
"Never gonna happen." she told him with a grin, swinging one leg over her sparrow. He mounted the extension, and she powered the vehicle on as cruise speed down the halls while Martin sat with his shotgun out, holding it close like a security blanket.
They were off.
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
After a while, they were forced to walk. Silverhawk's sparrow kept getting caught on the vex stone, the ground too rough for the heavly-armoured transport to drive smoothly with two people on it. The vex screeching was becoming louder and louder as they went on, but so far, they hadn't seen many.
Well, not many that were active, anyway. They'd found dozens of "statues", all of which Martin and the ghosts had deemed as being in some form of stasis. They had left the tight halls behind, and entered a wider space of ruins and vex stone, old stairs and odd metal rails , inactive gates and white kinetic fields in patterns of unreadable codes.
"Whoa..." Martin exclaimed softly as they came out into the light, Silverhawk pushing her sparrow along with them. They were in a cliff, and looking out into a what might have been a desert/canyon combination...if not for the vex maze that scarred the ground. Aurora borealis swept through the dark sky, red leaves floated through the air, odd flowers and other plant life in combination with the moss and grass and green-tinged air gave the area an almost peaceful, beautiful appearance. If it were any other place, they both would have described it as breathtaking.
But this was the Black Garden. And like foxglove... it's beauty hid poison.
"There. That looks to be about where the Heart might be." Martin pointed out, taking out his notebook, head pricking up with attention, wearing that 'intense face' he got whenever he had an idea or was doing something important. He got his pen out, flipped the book open to the next two blank pages, and began sketching, occasionally looking up and then correcting something.
Silverhawk took out her binoculars, took off her sunglasses, and found the spot he had been indicating, a dark blot in the middle of the otherwise pretty scenery. The dark blot...turned out to be a dark blot, Darkness rising up like smoke before dissipating. All across the landscape were also wells of what appeared to be a sickly green light.Well, this place certainly looks friendly. She thought sarcastically.
She couldn't help but remember the beautiful valley that Certech had terraformed around the lab where they had invented the disease. Certech were the reason she killed everything she touched, the murderers of herself, her family, and many others, including the hundreds that had died from the disease before her, Martin, and Prince Uldren had retrieved the cure. I think Certech and the vex would have got along. She thought wryly.
"I wonder why this place...looks like this." Martin mused out loud, looking up and looking around with wide, curious eyes alight with that glint they got whenever there was a mystery to be solved. He wouldn't stop until he figured it out. He flipped to the next page without looking down, scanning the sky above. "Maybe it's psychological. Perhaps...they try to adapt the Garden whenever there's an intruder, to suite whatever those intruders will find most disturbing. In this case, a place of beauty hiding cybernetic oblivion."
"So...it would look different if we were say, Fallen?" she inquired.
"It depends. You and I are on the same plane. Theoretically," he looked at a leaf as it floated past, and then back down at the paper, sketching it down," it would be like the theory of parallel universes. There would be multiple planes, multiple ways to reach the Heart; multiple versions of the Garden, all suited to hunt intruders in different ways according to how the conflux interprets the efficacy of the hunt in that environment. Make sense?"
"Erm...all I heard was a bunch of timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly, spacey-wacey, sciency-wiency nonsense. Could you please repeat it in English, not Gallifreyan?" she requested with a British lilt. He stuck his tongue out at her.
"Alright..." he looked around thoughtfully, then, turning the book towards her, he drew two lines next to the picture of the leaf he had sketched(a rather decent sketch as well), one straight, one wavy. "Let's say... this page is the Garden."
He drew a black blot connecting to the right ends of both lines, and then drew two more lines leading to the left of the page, one with right-angled bends like a circuit, the other spiraling toward the edge of the page.
"And this black dot is the heart. Each line is a different version of the Garden. Say, right now we're here, on the spiral line, in this... well, Garden world of utter beauty. Hence, Black Garden. Now, on the straight line, there could be a couple of...well, maybe there are a couple of ancient Fallen traveling on this plane, trying to do exactly what we are. Except, what they see could be someplace totally different. According to Variks, the most he's ever been able to find out about his people's home world is that the sky was pink." he explained. Silverhawk raised her hand. PINK! She screeched in her head hyperactively.
"Yes, Miss Chancellor?" he asked formally.
"Um, teach, what happens when they reach the Heart? Will all four of us meet where the planes intersect?" she asked, wide-eyed and innocent. Matin raised an eyebrow.
"Silverhawk, that has to be the most advanced vocabulary I've ever heard you use."
"Nitwit. Blubber. Noodle. Tweak."
"Forget I said anything. But theoretically... yes, backup from another plane of existence is possible, but highly unlikely. We know that the vex have taken other worlds; it simply stands to logic. They probably even have a few gates connecting to the old Fallen home world. But none of those worlds have the Traveler. It died slowing and/or stopping their progress in this section of space/time; anywhere else won't have been so lucky."
"The Fallen had the Traveler. Look how things turned out for them; they've been reduced to a bunch of butchering space pirates."
"My current theory is that, as a machine, when the Traveler sensed the amount of Darkness heading for the Fallen's way, it calculated what it success rate would be if it stayed an fought, found the odds unfavorable, and left. If found it's odds with humanity to be more favorable, but then the unexpected arrival of the vex forced it to time lock them, and the resulting power surge crippled it and thus prevented it's escape."
He hesitated, and suddenly, she didn't want to hear the rest of his theory.
"Martin... you've got the 'this could be bad' face on. Is there another point to this conversation?" she asked slowly.
He heaved a sighed, looking at the ground, foot tapping as if he wasn't sure whether or not to say what was on his mind. When he looked back up, she didn't like the look on his face at all.
"Silverhawk... if we succeed...then, theoretically... the Traveler could come out of it's coma...and itcould leave us. If there is, indeed, a possible route of escape from this system, and depending on whether or not it's AI interface has become...attached enough to humanity to stay. This isn't Rasputin or SIVA or even a ghost we're talking about; it's like all three mashed together. Cold calculations, the ability to construct things or turn on those who use it in a way that displeases it, development of emotional attachments to people and places." he told her slowly. Silverhawk mulled this over in her thoughts.
On the one hand, they were risking the end of the City by doing this. But they'd be taking the same risk by not doing this; Martin had said it himself, confirming what the weird, exo stranger had told them. The Traveler's time lock was fading. The vex were waking and moving again. The Heart was sucking away at the light, waging a war across time and space with the comatose Traveler.
"I guess... we'll have to take that risk, then." she shrugged. What happened, happened. Even if the Traveler left, it would leave the Guardians behind, at least. And the Ghosts. So long as they had the Ghosts to keep waking the light within potential Guardians, the City would have it's defenders. They...they would just be an easier target, was all. They would lose what minimal protection the Traveler was able to provide.
But they couldn't keep it there, not even if they wanted to. There was no way to stop the massive mechanical orb from leaving. No wall, no barrier, no tether. Attacking it, trying to force it into submission, would make them no better than the Fallen. The Speaker, and the City, would probably let it leave with sadness, but no fuss.
The New Monarchy would probably be pleased; it would mean they could finally replace the Speaker. Dead Orbit would probably scamper off with the Traveler, go to wherever it goes. The Future War Cult... now they probably wouldn't be too happy. They always were the more volatile faction on the Council.
"Well, we ought to get going, don't you think?" Martin chirped in an attempt to be cheerful. "We've got a world to save! Or end..."
She patted him on the shoulder. "Dude, we aren't going to cause the end of the world. Tevis Larsen is. It's confirmed, remember? Cayde confirmed it."
Martin let out a small huff of amusement. Silverhawk took her sparrow by the handles again, and continued to push it. The area ahead seemed to let in to several tunnels; they would have to check each of them, just to be certain there were no deceptive paths down to the maze or secret teleporting elevators or anything.
Besides; she got the feeling Martin might not be finished with sketching just the one leaf and maze map.
Okay, so , you can all expect my next update the day RoI launches, if not the day before. Most likely, the day before, because lets face it, you aren't going to be reading fanfiction; you're going to be playing Destiny. And those of you who are staying up late so they can play the MOMENT it launches will need something to pass the time. Before you all ask, about the "Traveler leaving" thingy… nobody knows about Rasputin's little ABHORRENT watch-ya-ma-callit protocol.
Order and Chaos: Tay was just joking about killing someone who was already dead. We'll get into Tays hirers later in-series. It's going to end up tying so many things all together in a nice little bow.
(False) Fierywarlock999: Yup. Space magic.
(Real) Fierywarlock999: You amuse me, mortals.
Guest(3rd): *angry twitching, glares at cabal*
MaybeALittleBroken: I KNOOOOOOOOOOWW! *high-pitched screaming* YOU"VE SPREAD IT TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Guest(4th): He is tough. That, and his sister used space-magic to keep him a live for a while(in my head the process is very unpleasant, bordering on inhumane). Martin and Silverhawk are in no way influenced by my in-game characters. My Hunter is actually based off of one of Amberstar's OC's, Lizza, an Auror in her pottertrek fic. She is human.
Guest(6th):The awoken age very differently than humans.
Raise your hand if you're staying up till 2AM on the 20thfor Rise of Iron's launch! *raises hand*
If you want something consistent, Amberstar of Thunderclan is posting a one-shot a day up to the launch, in a short series called 12 Days of RoI; go check it out, it's hilarious, and she's even written a bit about the Iron Lords for tomarrow!
I am so FREAKING EXCITED PEOPLE! I might just update EVERYTHING on the 20th…
Next Time: The Queen meets the idiots her brother keeps complaining about, and Silverhawk makes a wish. Wish granted.
Cheers!^^