Chapter 11: Massacre of the Innocents
Lord Shaxx's pre-recorded voice boomed over the speakers above the decrepit arena. "WE HAVE OUR WINNERS. WELL FOUGHT, GUARDIANS."
"That was bullshit and you know it." Clarence Roy Smallwood grunted with pained effort as he pulled himself from the pile of crumbling bricks and other scattered debris that his ghost had revived him upon after his unceremonious death.
Arda Maras clutched one hand to her ribs and held the other out to help the orange-clad titan to his feet. He smacked her hand away and got to his feet painstakingly slowly.
Eve Delaine's lips curled into a cocky sideways smirk. She planted her hands on her hips and watched with satisfaction as her rivals dusted themselves off. She shrugged. "There has to be a winner, Clarence. It just wasn't you."
Lilei Nizo stowed her rifle on the magnetic plate on her back. "I don't think it ever will be him."
"You're cheaters or something." Clarence pointed at the warlock of fireteam Hades accusingly. "There's no way you moved that fast." His ghost, sporting a teal shell, hovered around him to address his many grievous wounds. "And you," He growled at Lilei and grimaced. "You need to shut your mouth."
"Or what? You'll kill me?" Lilei taunted him. "We all know that can't happen."
"Well," Arda hissed in pain as her ghost, with a rich forest green shell, closed her wounds in short bursts of white light. "If you learned how to have a proper gun fight, he could have."
Lilei stifled a laugh as best she could, but it escaped her throat nonetheless. "Well, if you all learned to stop bending over for grenades, maybe I would."
Clarence staggered up to come face to face with Lilei. His pale blue eyes stared with bubbling anger into her steel ones. "Hey rug muncher, you wanna go? One on one, mano y mano? If you're a good girl I'll treat you to a good fuck to make you straight, too." He did his best to summon a cocksure grin, but the huntress's deadpan gaze softened it.
Lilei did not move. She spoke through gritted teeth. "You're not worth it, Clarence. Go home and get a drink."
"Get some real skill, pussy puncher." Arda muttered even as she pulled Clarence away from the other women.
Eve crossed her arms in front of her. "You know Arda, overuse of homosexual slurs in vain efforts at degradation is more often than not used as a social camouflage to conceal the user's own latent homosexual tendencies and desires."
Arda's blue skin grew flushed and she looked away furtively without responding. She tugged on Clarence's arm and led him away even as he tried to offer a rebuttal on her behalf.
"Yeah, right." Clarence rolled his eyes. "You two really were made for each other." He forced Arda to a stop and leaned his thickly built and heavily armored body against her for support. He called out to the sky, "Hey, Klein! Let's go!"
Across the battlefield, Klein-3 lay slumped in a broken heap against an old brick wall. His ghost, with a plain light gray shell, worked to bring him back to life and consciousness swiftly. His pale pink optics flared to life and he managed to pull himself up against the wall slightly. His vision swam, and when he finally reconciled which way was up, he nearly jumped in terror at the titan standing above him. No, he thought, not again, we already lost. The hunter of Orcus brought his arms up in front of his face in a pathetic attempt to stave off the next attack.
But the blow never came. Klein blinked his optics once, twice, then peered through his splayed fingers to the titan above him, clad in black and leaning down toward him with her hand outstretched. Her helmet was off. Her face was green, her optics glowed a soft blue hue. It almost looked like she was smiling.
"Come on." She said, gesturing toward him with her hand again. "Your team is waiting."
"O-okay." Klein took her hand and she hauled him to his feet. When he nearly stumbled, she caught him and hooked his arm over her shoulders to bear his weight. He was thankful for that, since his legs were still numb and cold. Somewhere, distantly, he could hear Clarence arguing about something or another. He thought he heard him call his name.
Ozara-4 glanced to Klein. She spoke softly but with obvious sincerity. "Are you all right?"
The hunter, taken aback, could only nod.
"Good." Ozara responded simply.
"That, uhh," Klein shook his head and cleared his vision. "That was a good punch."
"Thank you." The titan responded. She lacked the heart to tell him that it was, in fact, several punches that he probably could not remember. She patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. As she led him around a corner, the rest of fireteams Orcus and Hades came into view.
"Finally!" Clarence called out with obviously exaggerated exasperation at being made to wait. "About time you caught up, Klein. Having fun without us?"
"Aww," Arda cooed mockingly, "I think he has a new girlfriend."
"Well dump her and let's go. We're blowing this place." Clarence scoffed and beckoned Klein to limp away with them.
Klein nearly jumped to be out of Ozara's grasp, and when he began to stumble and fall, the titan caught him again and set him upright. He gave her an appreciative nod. "Come on Clarence -" he started.
Clarence interrupted him. "Roy. I told you that's my name."
Thunder rumbled low on the horizon on darkening clouds.
"Clarence." Klein went on, "They're not so bad."
Clarence scowled at his hunter. "They beat us, Klein. Killed us. They're cheaters and we're reporting them to Shaxx for it."
Eve and Lilei giggled at that.
Klein sighed and hung his head low before starting to walk away toward the rest of his team. "Whatever you say."
The shuffling of feet and soft laughter faded as the moment passed. The air, however, seemed to still. No breeze blew. No sounds other than their own breath, either ragged and uneven or steady and deep.
Then a low whine rose in pitch all around them.
"Wait," Eve paused to listen. When she held up a hand in front of Lilei, the huntress quieted as well. "What is that?"
They heard the gunfire before they heard the screams. The still air carried them both in equal measure across the arena.
"Above us." Lilei scanned the rooftops and drew her sniper rifle. "I don't see -"
A titan in pale red armor was thrown from the roof and landed on the ground in a heap with a sickening crunch, a pool of his dark blood soaking the dry ground. He did not move. Another titan, the one Eve had spotted earlier, stood at the edge of the roof looking down. He was flanked by a dozen combat frames that all levelled their rifles down into the arena beneath them.
"What the fuck?" Eve gasped even as she drew her assault rifle. She looked up to the Redjacks on the roof.
Screams from the other rooftops scattered around the arena echoed through the dead halls. Bullets flew high above. A handful of Redjacks were taking pop shots across the gap between crumbling buildings. The battle frames exchanged fire with the other unseen Redjacks. The titan at the edge of the roof took aim with his own rifle at the six of them gathered below.
"Run! To the ship!" Clarence screamed. He looked up to the clear blue sky only to see his sleek blue jumpship blown out of the air with a dozen mortar shells. "Fuck!"
Ozara commanded her ghost, Boss, "Evasive maneuvers. Put that stealth drive Lilei installed to use."
"You got it, boss." Her ghost replied quickly.
An inky black void materialized nearly directly in front of Klein, cutting him off from joining the fleeing titan and warlock of fireteam Orcus. He stopped dead in his tracks and scrambled a step backwards away from it.
"Take cover!" Eve called out. She stepped back and ducked behind a raised walkway, out of sight of the Redjacks.
Lilei jumped up and pressed her back to a supporting pillar a ways above them on the walkway.
Thinking quickly, Ozara grabbed Klein by the collar of his cloak and pulled him away from the void. A tendril of pitch-black darkness shot out and writhed in the air where he had once been standing. She held him back with her right arm and summoned her huge, impenetrable Cabal Phalanx shield to hold in front of her. She watched in horror as a figure stepped out of the void.
Dressed in all black, a male warlock emerged from the swirling vortex of darkness. He held a staff with a flared cross at its head. Behind him, the portal dissipated in the blink of an eye. He stepped closer to Ozara and Klein and raised his staff up.
Lilei's crosshairs hovered over the strange man's helmet for only an instant before she pulled the trigger. The bullet was swallowed by a smaller portal, however, and she heard it punch into the ground uselessly at his feet. She cursed under her breath. "Shit, Oz you gotta move!"
Eve's eyes were wide with fright as she watched the warlock approach the titan and hunter with such ease. With barely a motion from his staff he had avoided Lilei's bullet. "Oz, run!"
Ozara ignored them. She nearly pushed Klein further back behind her and raised the shield in front of her. She summoned her shotgun now and prepared herself.
"Repent." The warlock in black announced. "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." He raised his staff again and he rose from the ground to float in the air just a foot above the dirt and weeds.
"Who the fuck is that?!" Clarence yelled and took a few quick shots at the stranger with his rifle.
The warlock was unfazed, but turned to face Clarence, his nearly featureless obsidian helmet glinting in the bright light of day. He tapped the end of his staff upon the ground and summoned a mass of darkness at its top. The shadows shot out in whip-thin tendrils toward the guardians of Orcus and Hades alike.
Eve stepped back behind her cover and barely dodged the attack. Lilei hid behind the pillar and it dug into the concrete nearly a foot before it stopped its approach. The two sent at Ozara and Klein were handily deflected by the titan's shield. Clarence managed to throw himself to the dusty ground to dodge one, but Arda was pierced through the stomach.
Arda yelped in pain and clutched madly at her bleeding wound. Her cries of surprised anguish were nearly inarticulate.
Ozara took that moment to steel her resolve. She grabbed Klein by the collar again and this time shoved him toward Eve's cover. He gratefully joined her out of the new warlock's sight. She ordered them, "Run!"
The warlock turned to face her again. Even through his silence, she could feel his rage boiling over at the six of them.
"Oz, what are you doing? Come on!" Eve whispered as she slipped around the corner with Klein in tow, hoping against hope that the warlock would not turn and attack her while she led the hunter away.
The man in black perked up and wheeled around in the air to see Eve and Klein scurrying away. He raised his staff again.
Ozara rushed forward, feinted right, and bashed her shield against his raised staff. A blast of deep violet energy erupted from its tip and flew wild into the sky, detonating mid-air and raining sparks away from them harmlessly.
The titan yelled, "Just go!"
"Oz…" Lilei muttered as she watched the scene unfold from her vantage point.
Eve nearly threw Klein toward his teammates. The tendril of darkness that had pierced Arda was gone, but its wound left a gaping hole in her stomach that the muttering, frantic woman barely managed to keep any pressure on. Clarence managed to get to his feet and was limping away as best he could manage without looking back.
Eve turned to watch as Ozara bashed the warlock's strike off-course. She made to draw her sword. She gripped the hilt, but Ozara's voice stopped her cold.
"Just go! Now!" The titan repeated as she brought her shield to bear against another of the warlock's strikes.
"Oz!" Eve cried out. She couldn't move. Bullets flew across the sky. Cries of pain and death were all around.
Klein managed to help Arda stumble away behind Clarence.
Eve did not care.
Ozara clenched her metal jaw and muttered, "Boss, bring the ship down for them!"
Her ghost replied in her head. "I can't do that, you might need to be healed!"
Ozara's world went still for a moment. Her mind raced. She held her ground against a heavy downward strike from the warlock's staff, charged with swirling purple energy. Lilei was watching from behind her pillar, her eyes were watering. Eve was watching from the edge of the arena, she wasn't breathing. At last she commanded, "Do it! They need to get out of here!"
"You got it boss." The ghost responded sadly.
Ozara pushed back against the warlock's staff and thrust forward, hoping to drive him backward.
The warlock opened another portal in front of him, swallowing her shield into the abyss. She stared dumbfounded for a moment before stepping aside and raising her shotgun and firing several shells into the warlock's face.
The man in black hissed in pain but still did not die. The holes punched into his helmet by dozens of pellets were filled in almost as quickly as they were made. What was happening?
The roar of the ship's engines cut through the chaos for an instant before joining the cacophonous rabble all around them. It made a swift touchdown at the edge of the arena, not far from Clarence and his team. When the hatch opened and the ramp lowered, Orcus did not hesitate to scramble up into the hold. Only Klein looked back to make sure Hades was on the way, but neither Eve nor Lilei had moved.
"Go! I will hold him off!" Ozara roared and nimbly side-stepped a reaching tendril of darkness. She was too late reloading her weapon and it was batted out of her grasp by a swift strike from the warlock's staff. She was quickly running out of options.
The bullets from above stopped. Now Redjacks lined the edges of the rooftops, aiming down into the arena. They opened fire everywhere except upon the man in black.
Shells bounced off the thick hull of the ship, but enough landed near the ramp that Klein ducked back into the hold. "Come on!" He yelled.
Lilei snapped back to attention, nodded toward Ozara, and dropped down, quickly running through the hail of bullets to grab Eve by the waist and drag her toward the awaiting ship.
Eve struggled against Lilei as the huntress forced her backward. She felt weak. This wasn't happening. "Ozara!"
The man in black raised his staff again at the fleeing women. Darkness flared from the cross and shot out swiftly.
Ozara ran forward. She felt bullets pound into her back even as she jumped up. Her reactive barrier shield activated, coating her entire body in a protective translucent indigo aura of light. She activated her back-mounted thrusters and cocked her arm back. She sent a massive punch into the side of the warlock's helmet, sending him flying with the sudden impact and crashing through the steel water tower in a cloud of dust and rust. It bent, groaned, and collapsed inward upon him with a screech of twisted metal. She landed and cracked her knuckles, waiting for her foe to crawl out of the rubble.
Lilei grunted in pain as she forced herself to keep going. She couldn't look back. Eve thrashed in her grasp, but they were so close to the ship. Most of the bullets flying their way were absorbed by her energy shield, but one of the warlock man's spears of shadow had pierced through her lower leg. She dragged Eve with a limp the last few feet.
Eve screamed. But she could not break out of Lilei's grasp. "Ozara! Come on, OZARA!"
Lilei planted one boot on the steel ramp, grabbed Eve under her arms, and forced her into the hold of the ship. Klein was waiting and quickly slapped his palm on the large button to close the ramp.
"No!" Eve cried. "We can't just leave her!" She tried to push past the huntress.
Ozara dodged one tendril and managed to deflect another with a parry powered by her glowing barrier. Her victory was short-lived. A dozen more shot out from the collapsing water tank all at once now. Three of them pierced her through her middle and lifted her up into the air. The others encircled her and lanced through her wrists, feet, and wrapped around her throat.
The warlock emerged from the water tower, floating on darkness at his feet, and seemed to stare Ozara down.
Ozara turned toward the ship as it rose into the sky and the ramp closed. Her bright blue optics met Eve's watering emerald eyes for an instant before the man in black turned her face toward him. In her peripheral vision she could see the ship's nose point up and then heard the booming CRACK of it jumping into light-speed flight from a near standstill. She could still hear Eve's panicked screams of desperation in her mind.
The man in black looked her up and down slowly, as if appraising her, as he held her aloft in the air.
Ozara struggled not to break down in tears, if an exo could cry, as the writhing lances of darkness worked deeper into her gut and forced her limbs into macabre contortions. She coughed up blood, oily and brownish-black.
"You will do." He said simply as he opened another portal of inky blackness behind him.
She wanted to hang her head and embrace death. He forced her to keep her head high as he floated into the darkness. "Just kill me," She shouted at him, "Please!"
He ignored her. Instead, he spoke softly, "Follow me."
With that, he disappeared into the void and dragged her with him.
It was cold.
II
"Bullshit. it's definitely a planet, look at it! It's huge!" Phoenix shouted, pointing down to the dwarf planet they were descending toward in Phoenix's jumpship.
"A dwarf planet, Phoenix. Besides, size is relative." Koru grunted and crossed his arms over his chest, looking straight ahead. Pluto almost seemed to rush ahead to meet them as they approached for a landing upon its surface. "We have this argument every time we come here."
"It's what we were named after, and Cayde said it was a planet." Phoenix puffed up his chest and smiled wide.
"Ikora refutes it every time." The warlock explained.
"Because she's being cranky." Phoenix waved him off dismissively.
"No," Koru spoke more slowly and clearly in a concentrated effort to convey his message to Phoenix. "It's because she knows what a book is."
Phoenix shrugged. "Whatever, man. You just can't face the facts."
"No, that's you."
Commander Roy leaned forward and put his head between the two of theirs. "Well it was a planet when I was a kid so it still should be."
"Thank you!" Phoenix threw his hands up in victory. "See Koru? It's that easy. I win."
Koru scowled to the two of them. "Are you serious? We're guardians. We don't remember ever being children. In fact, neither of you two even remember what happened five minutes ago."
"Well," Roy started.
"Uhh…" Phoenix trailed off and looked away, embarrassed. "That isn't true. I had pizza today."
"That's every day." Koru smirked.
"Okay, fine. Let's move on then, okay?" Phoenix shifted in his chair uncomfortably. "Why don't we talk about your drinking problem, Koru?"
"Oh look, we're here. Let's go." Koru said quickly and put on his helmet and unbuckled the safety harness of the co-pilot's chair. He hurriedly got to his feet and walked back into the main hold.
Phoenix and Roy followed suit and joined him in the hold as Skye piloted Phoenix's ship to hover just above the rocky, dusty brownish-gray surface of Pluto. As soon as the ship pulled to a stop, each of the guardians of Fireteam Pluto's ghosts teleported them to the surface in a flash of bright light.
They made landfall. Phoenix looked up and all around them, to the underside of his sleek forest-green ship and the clouds of dust and debris that its thrusters kicked up, to the vast expanse of space above and all around them. The sun sparkled like a tiny ball of light only slightly bigger and brighter than any of the surrounding stars that dotted the cosmos. They each took a moment to adjust to their new weight, or lack thereof, in the dwarf planet's lesser gravity.
The mountains and valleys of Pluto's craggy surface rose overhead and rolled along in uneven rises and falls. It was completely silent here.
"All right Phoenix, what are we looking for?" Koru asked, his voice crackling over his teammates' headset radios.
Commander Roy giggled happily to himself as he jumped up, easily twenty feet, and came back down as if floating on air. "Guys, look! I have moon shoes!"
Phoenix did his best to ignore him. "That's nice Roy. Anyway, uhh… I don't know."
Koru stared for a long time. "What do you mean you don't know?"
"I mean, Cayde never said." Phoenix shrugged.
"You can't be serious."
"Guys!" Roy called out, "I can see my house from here!"
"That's cool, Roy." Koru shook his head and looked up to the clear black sky filled with stars. "So why are we even here?"
"I ask myself that question every day, bro." Phoenix patted the warlock on his shoulder.
"You aren't helping." Koru shrugged him off and started walking off toward a nearby rise in the rocky outcroppings.
"Where are you going?" Phoenix called after him.
"Well, if we're here for no reason, I could at least enjoy the view!" Koru yelled back, knowing full well he did not need to shout over his headset radio. "Might give me some inspiration." He started clambering up a steep slope and jumped up ten feet with ease to grab onto a new handhold.
Phoenix sighed and looked up to see Roy bounding up the sides of a crater a few dozen feet across with mighty strides. He pulled out his small electronic tablet from his pocket and flipped through his received messages, most of them unread, before he found the most recent correspondence from Cayde-6. He opened it, squinted, and resisted the urge to throw his device to the ground. He tapped a few commands on the screen and forwarded it to the contact he had assigned a picture of Koru to as the icon. He spoke quietly, almost apologetically. "Hey Korrie-poo, I sent you the thing Cayde sent me about this mission. I didn't see it before."
A moment of silence passed. Phoenix kicked at a small stone and was amazed to see it sail across the ground much further than he would have expected.
A burst of static was followed by Koru's voice, obviously displeased. "Phoenix, did you even read this?"
"Bro I can't read."
"Oh. Right. Anyway, it's just a -"
"Hey, question." Phoenix started.
"Yes, ask it."
"Weren't you put on the team to help me learn how to read?" Phoenix inquired.
"And to help me do numbers good!" Roy added from seemingly nowhere. Phoenix looked around, but he could not see the titan anywhere. He could see Koru sitting up on a ridge with his back to him, staring out to space.
"So, like, why are we still bad at it?" Phoenix followed up. "Are you sure you shouldn't be fired or somethin'?"
"I'm sure it's purely user error." Koru answered swiftly. "Anyway, Cayde's message just says 'good luck' with a happy cat-face smiley and a series of… random numbers… Hmm."
"Yeah, kinda weird." Phoenix admitted. He jumped up and twisted into a double backflip on the way down. He could get used to doing stuff like that.
Koru laughed a little bit. "All right, I get it now. Much simpler than I figured, but what can you expect from hunters?"
"That's racist?" Phoenix tried to make the comeback.
"Hunters aren't a race. Besides, it is simple. Cayde's 'random numbers' are actually the coordinates for something here on Pluto." Koru stood up and looked back to see Phoenix jumping off of rocks to perform admittedly impressive feats of acrobatics. "Looks like we have a mission after all."
"Oh, cool." Phoenix landed on his tiptoes and stood tall and straight. "So where is it?"
"Guys!" Commander Roy giddily exclaimed over the radio, "Come here! I have something for us."
Koru checked his helmet's radar and sensory data, scanning the numbers and matching the triangulated location of Commander Roy. He sighed in defeat. "It's over near Roy. Let's go, Phoenix."
The warlock and the hunter climbed the ridge together, Koru making sure to keep steady footing the entire way. It did not take long to crest the ridge and pull themselves up. They saw the expansive rocky surface of Pluto stretch on nearly unimpeded except for the horizon. Nestled in the center of a massive crater was Commander Roy, his purple armor glinting in the faint light of the sun, waving up at them to join him.
Phoenix leapt from the ridge and somersaulted through the air several times before he hit the ground and began sliding down to the bottom of the crater. "Woohoo!"
Koru followed, albeit without the flashy entrance.
Commander Roy proudly showed off the boulder, about eight feet tall and wide, sitting in the exact center of the crater, buried only slightly. It was rounded, pitted, and a light brown color with a single vein of sparkling metal flecks. "Look!"
"Wow Roy, good job. You found a rock." Phoenix clapped for him slowly.
"Yeah!" Roy shouted happily, the hunter's sarcasm flying far over his head. "And look, he even has a name!" He pointed excitedly to another side of the rock and seemed to beam with pride.
"Uhh…" Phoenix followed and looked on, mouth agape behind his helmet. "Koru, help?"
"Sound it out." Koru laughed to himself and joined them. Stuck onto the rock was a red and white nametag, smaller than the palm of a human hand, at almost eye level with the three of them. 'Hello, my name is…' was printed on the top edge, and beneath it, written in surprisingly elegant script with permanent marker, was a name.
"D… Duh… Duh-wah-... Duh-wah-ay…" Phoenix struggled for a moment. "Duh-way-in. D… Dwayne." He laughed. "Oh, I get it!"
"It's Dwayne, the Pluto rock!" Roy laughed heartily. He plucked a flask from his belt and opened it. "To our new mascot!" He tipped it back over the mouth of his helmet, but the liquid simply fell in a slow-motion waterfall that bounced against the jaw ridge of it uselessly. He shrugged and tossed a splash of the alcohol on Dwayne.
Koru checked his data and sighed. "Cayde's coordinates also lead here." He remarked with palpable disappointment.
"Maybe he wanted us to find the rock?" Phoenix suggested.
"Possibly." Koru exhaled and inhaled deeply, holding his palms over the visor of his helmet. "He probably wanted someone to find this stupid practical joke. And he knew you idiots would eat it up."
"Come on, you gotta admit it's a little funny." Phoenix offered.
"I don't, actually." Koru groaned in obvious dismay.
"Guys," Roy said, "We need to take Dwayne with us."
"Roy, we are not dragging a boulder back to Earth. We can get you a nice Earth rock." Phoenix patted him on the shoulder.
"Aww." The titan visibly sagged with disappointment. "Well, what if I dragged him back to Earth?"
Koru laughed out loud in pure emotional devastation mixed with the acceptance of defeat. This was his life. "Sure, Roy. Go for it. Grab the gigantic boulder and take it with us to Earth. I won't stop you."
"Yay!" Roy nearly squealed with joy and spread his arms wide to give Dwayne the rock as much of a hug as he could manage. He whispered, "We're gonna take you home, Dwayne."
Koru watched in abject wonderment as Roy squeezed Dwayne between his arms and hoisted him up and out of the ground with a mighty effort. Dirt and dust fell away as the boulder was lifted away from the floor of the crater. Roy began the hefty task of rolling Dwayne up the steep slope of the crater toward the ship.
"Hey Koru, check it out!" Phoenix nudged him in the arm. He pointed down at the hole where the rock had been buried.
"You have got to be kidding me." Koru groaned again in surprised defeat, throwing his hands up.
Coated in a layer of disturbed dust and loose pebbles was a crushed cardboard box with heavily worn corners. Written on it, in the same sweeping script found on Dwayne's nametag were the words 'Cayde's Stash'.
III
Everything was in a haze.
She didn't remember blacking out.
She didn't remember waking up.
She didn't remember screaming, crying, shouting.
She didn't remember coming back to the Tower.
She didn't remember coming back to her apartment.
She remembered the last look Ozara gave her.
She remembered Lilei holding her back.
She remembered Lilei crying.
She wished she could remember it all.
She wished she could forget it all.
Eve stirred and forced her eyes open. Narrow slits of darkening amber daylight on the floor were indicative of the mostly-blocked sunset outside. She rubbed her eyes absently with her bare hands. They were cold. She pushed herself up onto one elbow, scanning her familiar bedroom more completely. Nothing was out of place. She was wearing only her pants and a black undershirt. Her coat, gloves, and boots were set on and under the chair she kept at her desk. The dim light was barely enough to let her sit up and see that the door to her room was slightly ajar.
She spied the familiar silver-steel eyes of Lilei peeking through the gap between the door and its frame. Eve nearly choked up on the spot and forced her way past it. "Come in." Her voice came out as a pathetic croak.
Lilei was quick to open the door and step inside.
A glance to the living room showed that it was empty and quiet.
Lilei sat down at the edge of the bed next to Eve. For a moment she did not speak. She was dressed down as well, eschewing her gold breastplate, greaves and gauntlets. She had taken off her flowing white cloak to wrap around her shoulders like a blanket. "I'm sorry." Was all she said to break the silence.
Eve pulled herself over to the foot of her bed and sat closer to her friend. "What happened? I remember Ozara…" She trailed off. What did she remember about her? Her bravery against an unknown foe? Her insistence on protecting others before herself? Her eyes? Her voice?
The huntress held her hands tight in her lap. "Yeah."
"What happened?" Eve repeated.
Lilei took a deep breath through a runny nose, her eyes welling with hot tears again. She hated this. "Oz is gone."
Eve remembered the last look Ozara had given her. It had been full of such assurance. "Are you sure?" She asked desperately. But she knew it was the truth. She had seen the darkness wrapped around her, stabbed into her. But she did not want to believe it.
Lilei only nodded.
"Her ship?" Eve considered how it had managed to make a landing when Clarence's had been shot out of the sky. Normally ghosts can pilot them, but…
"It uh, it got us off the ground on autopilot. When she…" Lilei paused and shut her eyes hard. "When she was gone, Klein took the pilot's seat and got us home."
"Oh." Eve's breath stilled. "What about them? Orcus?"
"They're alive." Lilei shrugged then as if to explain she had no idea what else to say. "We split up after we landed. Miss Holliday didn't ask any questions. She uh, she asked if we needed anything." She tilted her head back and stared up at the ceiling as if it would offer her answers to her myriad of questions. "I just wanted to get you home. You were…" This time when she paused it was to find the right word. "You were hysterical."
"How many people know?" Eve looked to the window blocking the setting sun. Beyond it was the City, full of no shortage of people who had tuned in to watch the Crucible broadcast only to see a massacre unfold.
"I don't know." Lilei admitted. "I came right here. I haven't left. I've just been… thinking."
"About?"
"What else? Why." Tears streamed down her cheeks freely. "Why did it have to be her? Why couldn't I do something? Why were Redjacks killing each other? Who was that warlock, and why was he attacking us? Why, why, why." She took a deep, seething, ragged breath. "What are we going to do?"
Eve brought her legs up and hugged her knees to her chest. "I don't know." She buried her face in her arms.
A hard knock from beyond the living room roused them from their lamentations. Eve nearly jumped at the sudden intrusion. She gave a glance to Lilei, who was holding her face in her hands, wiping away her tears. It smeared her makeup.
Another round of three hard knocks rang through the nearly silent apartment now. Eve rose slowly to her feet and slipped out of her room to approach the main door. She stepped over Lilei's discarded armor. The huntress appeared behind her swiftly, and waited near the sofa in the living room, clearly wanting to see who would be at the door when Eve answered.
After another three knocks that shook the wooden door in its frame, a voice, soft but stern, called out in familiar cadence. "Open up." Lord Shaxx called out plainly. His voice was as dignified as ever, but held the distinct air of haste.
Eve hurried to open the door now, but still only swung it in about halfway. The light from the hallway's fluorescent bulbs flooded in and nearly blinded her dark-attuned eyes. She squinted and did her best to stand taller, prouder. "Lord Shaxx," She managed a deferential nod. "What's going on?"
Lord Shaxx stood a head taller than either Eve or Lilei, was clad in his familiar white and orange armor, complete with fur collar and pauldrons and the visorless one-horned helmet that had become his staple. He nodded once in recognition of her deference. "Firstly, I would like to offer my condolences for the loss of your teammate, Ozara-4."
"Thank you." Lilei added from behind Eve.
Shaxx continued. Beyond him Eve could hear murmuring whispers from the neighbors. More distantly, she could hear dozens of guardian jumpships entering and exiting the Tower's hangar. "Secondly, I ask that you get your things and come with me to the Vanguard Hall immediately."
"Oh, uh, yes." Eve stepped away from the door and turned toward her bedroom. Remembering her manners, she said, "It might be a few minutes. Would you like to come in?"
Lord Shaxx rocked slightly on his heels once. He shook his head. "No. I will wait here. Please hurry." He nodded again and watched as she stepped away from the door. He stood with his back to their apartment and stared straight ahead at the opposite wall.
Eve and Lilei whispered to one another as they donned their armor side by side in the bedroom. Eve asked, "Why is he here?"
Lilei shrugged. "He could be gathering reports."
"Personally?"
"One way to find out."
The two women finished adjusting their armor and stepped out into the hall. Eve closed the door behind them. Lord Shaxx seemed to nod once, as if in approval, before he began making his way down the hall. They followed side by side.
The elevators to the Tower plaza were a short walk away. They secured a lift for themselves and were stuck in awkward, tense silence as they rose up higher and higher in the cramped cabin. Eve tried to break it. "Shaxx, why did you get us yourself?"
The large titan did not answer right away. "I was meaning to fetch you, then miss Nizo, separately. I was pleasantly surprised to see you were together."
Lilei stared at the digital display to the upper left of the elevator's doors. It ticked up with every passing floor. "Is this about what happened in our last match?"
Shaxx shifted his weight slightly. "In a manner of speaking, yes. What happened to you was, sadly, not an isolated incident. The same thing happened across every arena we had in use for the Trials of Osiris." His fists clenched at his sides, crackling with leaping electricity.
"The same thing?" Lilei asked incredulously. "Even the warlock?"
"Yes." Shaxx admitted through clenched teeth. "Everything. Redjacks turning coat, good guardians dying, and that warlock taking away some of our best fighters."
Eve's mind worked with fervent, and no doubt ill-informed, intuitions as they ascended to the Tower's plaza. The elevator began to slow down in its approach.
Lord Shaxx nearly whispered, "I will tell you more soon. Come." He stepped past the two of them and led the way through the crowded throng of guardians in the Tower's plaza. The motley assortment of titans, warlocks and hunters were all gathered and discussing amongst themselves in smaller groups, likely their own fireteams and circles of friends, the recent events of the Trials of Osiris. She overheard some whispers as they made their way through the disjointed crowd, but none of it was anything she hadn't heard before.
Shaxx descended into the corridor of the Vanguard hall. His station on the right side was unmanned and empty, though the repurposed frame Arcite-99's station on the left was servicing a line of waiting guardians procuring weapons and armor. A few of the guardians, mostly human men and women, in line gave the ladies of Hades a knowing, solemn nod as they passed by. Eve made a note that none of them were exos.
At the end of the hallway, the doors to the Vanguard office were closed off and locked. Shaxx stopped, his ghost materialized a key into his waiting palm, and he opened the sliding doors for them. The office was manned by a dozen robotic frames working at terminals along the walls. The pit where the Vanguard worked was in a similar state of functional disarray as when they had seen it last. Ikora's books were piled up and scattered across one end, Cayde's miscellaneous trinkets and tools laid out over his old map, and Zavala's holographic war map glowed a deep orange on the opposite side of the table.
Lord Shaxx barked out a series of orders to the attendant frames. "Radio silence, off record indefinitely. Reassignment order seven-dash-seven. Respond."
The frames all perked up and beeped harmoniously before responding in eerie unison. "Complying with reassignment parameters." They marched out of the office in single file and up into the Tower plaza. After the last one left, Shaxx slammed the door shut behind it. He turned to face them. "Now, down to business."
"Shaxx," Eve frowned, "What is this about?"
Shaxx was quick to respond. "Welcome to your new office. I have appointed the two of you as the new Vanguard."