"damned dangerous orbits, drifting forever afield"
Yu'uro led Ikharos inside. The warmth of the place embraced him, coiled around him; the dining room was as he'd remembered it but the sight of the sea outside the windows at dusk, with the sky cast in broad strokes of orange and purple, was an even more fantastic one. Maybe it was the pain, maybe it was the blood loss, but Ikharos stood there by the table, watching the darkening horizon and it felt like forever. Then - hands, pushing him, down onto the table, transmat tearing his robes away, a knife, his knife, in Indilic's hands, cutting away the underlying biosuit. Formora was there, opposite the Psion, and she studied him, studied the wounds, studied what was there.
"What is this?" she asked, bewildered. She stepped over to somewhere else out of view and began rummaging through a packed bag.
"What was necessary," Indilic coolly replied, pulling free something from his jump-pack. Emergency salve, gauze, black gel. Everything a wounded Legionary needed. He glanced at Ikharos's face. You need to release it. We can't treat you with the Dark in the way.
Ikharos closed his eyes and did just that. The Stasis melted into nothing - and the pain just looped back, almost strong enough to drop him there and then. He could feel it - his lifeblood pooling and running out. He could taste it on the back of his tongue. It was choking him, filling every breath with its smothering taste.
"You're dying," Formora said. She rushed over, inspected the wounds, and tutted grimly. "I thought you said you were immortal."
"Not... invincible," Ikharos gasped.
"Don't talk," she scolded, then laid a hand over one of the more gruesome holes bored through his torso. "Poorly cauterized. You're bleeding badly. A number of arteries and veins have ruptured; you won't last the hour. One of your lungs has been torn as well. Not all the way through, but the lining won't hold."
That must have been why he was having so many issues breathing. Without the Stasis to plug in the breaches, well...
"I can't heal all this," Formora admitted. "I can't-" Indilic reached past and she looked at him with alarm. "What are you doing?"
Indilic didn't reply; he opened the nozzle on the gel-tube and gently applied the vile stuff. It was worse than the Stasis, colder than ice and it stung like a sonuvabitch.
To stem the bleeding, Indilic explained.
Feels like hell, Ikharos replied mentally when his physical voice failed.
Then look into my eye. Look. Indilic moved around until he leaned upside down over Ikharos's head. Psionic power welled around him. Look, commander. Keep looking.
Ikharos looked...
...and for a time, he lost himself.
He dipped in and out of lucidity. It became... difficult to parse the real from the fantasy, all of it cast in a foggy daze. One moment he was lying face-up on a low coffee table, head braced against hard wood, and the next he was standing on the surface of the moon of Tethys, boots planted on irradiated ice, and he beheld the lost cities of Diadem and Travesty, once-seeded by the rulers of Dione. Serpents whipped and slithered in the moon's ocean core, they groaned and they wailed their alien songs. The fractal surfaces below lit up at their passing, shining with their sheer bioluminescence, and when they breached - oh, when they breached it was like the rising of new suns, new stars, the heavens reversed.
There he laid, feeling tendrils of psionic power weave the edges of his skin together while someone sang so beautifully. Back again to Tethys, feeling the quake, the shivering tremble from below. The ice cracked, fissured, and the leviathans of post-Jovian depths rose up to taste the air - monumental, ancient, terrible. Ikharos twisted the flare in hand, feeling the heat of it, polarizing his helm's visor to gaze into its glare, and he held it aloft as the pod careened out from beneath glaciers kilometres deep. They watched him, they glanced at him, they noticed him of course, but they said nothing. Their vast magnitudes were known to him; every child in Sol knew the mystery of the subglacial leviathan intelligences, buried beneath alien ice.
Someone was by him, hand over his forehead. Cool fingertips, gentle touch. "If you are not immortal," they whispered, "then what are you?"
The serpents breached, they swooped through the air and they crashed back down all around him - though they avoided him, avoided the blood-red glow of his flare. They desired no harm against him, but neither did they stop to speak. That was the real prize, wasn't it? Forging a means by which to communicate with them. Rumours spoke that the dolphins had understood them, at least in part, but the dolphins of the Golden Age were all dead - and humanity all the poorer for it. Were the leviathans allies of the blinding Light, at least? Ikharos had always wondered that. Or content to grow and feed in the suffocating shadow of the Darkness?
Or were they careful to commit to neither?
(He heard shouting. The whine of rifles activating. The whir of firing cylinders priming. The chip-chip-chip of three gunshots - accentuated by the explosive crack of wood breaking.
"They can smell the death!" someone warbled in harsh Ulurant. "Yu'uro, watch that window! Watch it! Ellecta, the door!")
These were the things he had to know. Only self-preservation kept him from repairing a Golden Age sub and diving down after them as they returned to the depths, to once more coil and feed from geothermal vents. He wanted to learn. He wanted to hear them. He could have listened to them forever.
But this voice, this sweet voice, from whose lips does it spring? Tear the Void from me and clip my wings; this is the stirrer of souls and I am all the poorer now for having tasted of its haunting notes.
The serpent-song faded until all that remained was the groan of broken glaciers and the howl of icy winds set to strip his flesh from his bones. The very memory of it all, the noise and sight and feeling, soon followed the unnamed leviathans - and they deserted him altogether.
Leaving him with ache and sober lucidity and the soft sound of another voice singing - and the thick stench of Dark Ether burning in the air, likely from the headless Ravager wedged through one of the villa's broken windows. Yu'uro was in the midst of killing it with Arc, lightning flinging from his fingertips, and he held it in place with the power of his bright eye - the Y-iris a stark pit of black amidst the glowing blue.
A roar resounded from beside him; Ikharos winced as Indilic took up his slug rifle and fired through a nearby wall to the chorus of unhappy shrieks and guttural bellows. It struck him, then, that his Light was penned in - beset on all sides by heavy elements of Darkness and dragon-magic. More than he was in any way comfortable with. He tried sitting up - and Formora stopped him. It was she who had sang to him, he discovered, and only because everything seemed so much more natural and real once she'd stopped.
Formora held his shoulder and tried to guide him back down. "No," she warned him. "Don't. You're still-"
Ikharos's hand shot up into the air and he fired a bolt of Arc right through the ceiling - nailing the Wraith he'd only just spotted through Truesight. Formora recoiled, but he couldn't stop to consider her reaction; flickering, wavering forms circled around the villa in numbers. A whole two Skiff crews, it looked like. Fortunately without the Skiffs. Ikharos propped himself up with his elbows, groaning and cradling his chest as he did so, and his Light rose with him, streaming across his skin and through his eyes.
"BattleNet," he croaked, throat still raw. It was dark out. He hadn't been out the whole night, looked like. Ikharos looked down at himself - and though his injuries no longer looked so severe, it wasn't an encouraging sight.
"They already know," Xiān rattled off. "Vindica'aur's coming with a Phalanx column. Too far out. The Scorn literally just arrived."
"How long was I out?"
"Like fifteen, twenty minutes."
Ikharos looked around, found his Forerunner and snagged its grip. He leveled it out, swept it around and fired through another wall. A Stalker fell dead, its head removed, but from the moment it hit the ground its limbs began to twitch with the magics of reanimation.
Chieftain nearby, Ikharos broadcasted. The Psions answered with wordless acknowledgements.
"What does that mean?" Formora demanded nigh on breathlessly. When he looked at her, he found her near ready for war - sword drawn and held tight in one fist, and the other hand cupped what looked like some ethereal rust-red energy. Her arms were already stained with flecks of blood - his blood.
"You heard-"
"Yes I heard," she snapped impatiently.
Ikharos shook his head; he was still partway in a dream. Psionics were too alluring by half. "Scorn vector, field commanders, leader of the pack." He glanced around, eyes smoking with Void Truesight. "Can't see it."
"But it'll be here," Xiān followed up. "If it's the Locus-"
"It's not. The Locus has a Ketch - and we're not a crater just yet." Ikharos pushed off the table onto his feet, though he stumbled. Formora caught his arm and helped him find his balance. He thanked her with a nod. "Need to find it, keep it from accelerating reanimation processes."
Another burst of slug fire stole his attention, down the direction of the hallway inwards. Ellecta had barred the door over with a bookcase but a gaggle of Ravagers and Wraiths were smashing it apart with their flaming mauls. Ikharos readied one of his Osmiomancy gauntlets and shrouded the hallway in a field of Stasis. Ellecta slowly backed out, her headhunter raised, and she fired again and again at exposed Scorn faces.
Glass shattered. Ikharos twisted, saw the Stalker that had smashed through a window with a tremendous leap, but before he could strike it down Formora met it halfway with startling speed. It raised a club and attempted to strike her, but she danced around the blow with almost effortless ease and sliced at it with unerring savagery. She chopped its legs out from under it, severed one of its arms away at the elbow and with a flick of her hand and a whispered wood forced its remaining limb to fling towards the floor, pinned there with an invisible force.
"Brisingr," Formora barked, and in Ikharos's head the word translated as FIRE. Her sabre caught aflame and she drove it down between the Stalker's shoulder blades - setting its rotted flesh alight and killing it for the moment. Another Scorn creature, a Raider, clambered up the wall and peeked its head in, snarling at her back. Formora turned, shouted "THRYSTA!" and the second creature was flung away as if flicked by a giant.
Ikharos staggered over, gathered up scraps of Light, trading it in for terrible Void and forming a singularity in his hands, infusing its negative weight and space with some purpose, some direction, some life. Ikharos threw the Child of the Old Gods out the window into the mass of yipping, bloodthirsty ghouls outside and found some satisfaction in the cries of pain and rage as the Void Soul cast its tethers, catching them all in weakening threads of caustic absence. Some of them fired up at the window and Ikharos fell back, ducking as the buckshot rounds shredded through the villa's walls. Formora grabbed his arm and pulled him away.
He gestured to the table, caught it with the corner of his mind, but it wasn't enough - until Indilic picked up on what he was trying to do and helped him. Together they lifted the table with the edge of their wills and dragged it through the air, bracing it against the window long enough for him to apply a thin layering of Stasis over it. He was running out of juice.
They bunkered down in the middle of the room, Yu'uro and Ellecta still firing. Formora briefly left them to dive for one of her bags and returned quicker than Ikharos could shout for her to stop.
Too many to outrun, Indilic grimly reported. I daren't open my mind any further for fear of their Chieftain reaching inside. Or worse.
"Good, don't," Ikharos coughed. His chest still burned, still bled, but at least the holes had been filled in. So long as he wasn't looking at his exposed ribs, the better. "Xiān, can you bring around the-"
"The Trespass?!" Xiān interrupted. "Not a chance. It's not flight worthy anymore. Not as is. Iron Beasts don't have anything either. Vindica'aur's double-timing it, but-"
"My Light..." Ikharos ground his teeth and his gaze fell on the dead Exo, propped up against the wall. There was an edge all around him, a cage loosening by the moment, but the damage was done. "I can't pop a Blink far enough."
"They'll know it if I try," Ellecta said grimly. "They can smell our thoughts. They know-"
YES! something roared so loudly Ikharos almost saw white; the noise of it, of the voice, resounded on the inside of his skull - and only there. Outside the villa, the din of Scorn increased what sounded like tenfold.
"What was that?" Ikharos demanded, looking at everyone in turn.
Thought-hunters, spell-binders; they hunger for skyborne prey! the voice manically cheered.
Indilic looked sharply at Formora. Ikharos did the same - but then Xiān pointed him to the bag on her back.
"What the fuck is that?!" Ikharos grabbed it, felt it, but the cold press of steel against his throat gave him pause. Formora had her sword braced against his neck.
"No," she softly warned. "Don't you dare."
There was a threeway click and whine as the Psion aimed their weapons at her.
"What the hell is this?" Ikharos muttered. He was still holding to it; he could feel something hard beneath the rough material. Two somethings - both rounded, both the size of his skull and much heavier.
"It's mine," Formora retorted coldly.
Ikharos let go. Her sword fell away. At Ikharos's order, the Psions begrudgingly lowered their weapons. "Have it your way," he grimly told her - and double-checked that they were still in the clear. Formora's dead Stalker was beginning to rise again, so Ellecta shot it down, bursting its head with a single well-placed shot. Formora winced, and did so each time the Psions fired out the windows or door. He had to wonder if it was because of her ears; was her hearing that much more sensitive than his own?
What was in her bag, though? It had spoken in projected thoughts - louder than any Warlock could manage, up there with the psychic might of Psions. There was something else, though, a veneer of curious magic that pricked against his Light - softer than the surrounding Dark Ether, but too alien to simply ignore.
Not that he had much choice in the matter.
"I see it," Ikharos announced suddenly, gaze fixed on the villa's left side. "I see the Chieftain. They're coming this way. They're... it's a big one."
Perhaps the scuttled Scornship's captain, Indilic mused darkly.
"Then where's the rest of the crew?" Ikharos questioned. "Bad enough as is. I can't even..." He looked back at the Exo, cursing her, cursing himself for letting her catch him off-guard (wasn't the first time Warmind tech packed suppression charges after all), and it was then an idea struck him. A desperate idea, considering he was practically a lone Risen and these were Scorn, which were worse than everything but the most twisted of Hive, but it was an idea he could appreciate. Simple. Brutal. Within his ability to facilitate, even drained and riddled with plasma burns as he was.
He turned to Indilic so quickly some of the closed wounds across his torso threatened to reopen and he winced hard. "Aboard the Leviathan," Ikharos quickly said. "Some of the Councilors were given to erecting psychokinetic barriers around themselves."
To ward away gunfire, I know, Indilic replied, irritated. I'm aware of the practice but it has no offensive merit. Nor can I - or any of us - create one large enough to anchor to more than a single mind.
"Do mine. Where's..." Ikharos snatched the broken Valkyrie off the floor; the blade of it was sharp enough and it still carried flickers of power. Solar Light, weak, ran up his hand and covered it in a golden radiant sheen. "If there are Raiders all around, then they'll be waiting for a clear shot. I need a ward to close with the Chieftain."
"The Scorn are stronger than you are," Yu'uro reprimanded. "Commander-"
No, Indilic interrupted. He had caught on. We do it.
Ikharos shared with him a grim nod - then turned to Formora. "There's a Cabal contingent west of here, already on the move. If the Scorn are here in force, that's where they need to be."
"You brought them here," Formora furiously pointed out.
"Not intentionally," Ikharod defended.
"I helped you."
"I know." He paused to gather himself. "I need a runner. Someone to reach them, tell them what's happening, make them understand what we've done."
"What have you done?"
Ikharos glanced once more at the Exo. "We've made contact. Stands to reason so will the Scorn. I need them to know. To take the necessary precautions."
"Made contact with-" Formora cut herself off, shaking her head. "I helped you," she repeated. "I should have turned you away. You are trouble. You drag death after you, everywhere you walk."
Ikharos's lips set in a thin line. "And I've seen what you've done."
Formora frowned and blinked. "What I've-"
"It's why you're here, isn't it? Why you're alone on this island? Because you helped kill everyone else."
She froze up. Stared at him.
"I saw," Ikharos said. "I saw the memory of it. Of you. On a dragon - a fucking dragon."
"I-... That was nothing."
"Bullshit."
"It wasn't-"
"I need a runner," he repeated firmly. "You reach the Cabal - you can't miss them, they're as big as fucking boulders with legs - and you make sure they know. We've met with the Fleet's agents, that's what you tell Vindica'aur. She's the one with tusks. You tell her that and you say, the Scorn must already know. Then, if I live, you and I are going to have a talk."
Formora's deer-in-the-headlights expression morphed back into one of forced indifference. "Are you sure about that?"
"You better hope so, because if I die then these Scorn don't have much in the way of meaningful resistance - and there's plenty more where this pack came from." Ikharos looked at Ellecta. "Cover her. Make sure they don't follow."
"I can't shoot down an entire crew," Ellecta objected.
"You won't have to. I'll make sure their attention's somewhere else."
Are you certain this is a good idea? Indilic questioned.
"Have a better one?"
No I don't mean- I am speaking of HER, Indilic glanced at Formora. Ikharos looked at her again and found her impassively staring back. It was a good mask, he thought. Almost enough to convince him.
"Scorn can taste thoughts," Ikharos said. "You three are a little too loud in that regard to pass them by."
And the entity she's protecting? We heard it. The SCORN heard it.
"Best make sure whatever the hell that is, that it keeps its brain quiet," Ikharos told Formora. She didn't reply; just stood up, looked around, then waited and resorted to glaring at him all the while.
It was as good an invitation to get a move on as any.
"Yeah, I'm... not so sure this is a great plan," Xiān admitted. "Ike, you're barely standing straight."
"Better than nothing." Ikharos held out a hand expectantly. Indilic looked at him, paused, then handed his knife back over hilt first. "Thanks."
Indilic said nothing, but his eye began to glow and he holstered his rifle across his back. He floated a few inches off the ground, arms out wide, and a field of pale flickering psychokinetic energy solidified around Ikharos. It was... strange to be on the receiving end of it; he was used to having to find ways to breach these kinds of barriers, mostly through killing those inside up close and personal. The other Psion pair positioned themselves on either side of Indilic, weapons at the ready. It... wasn't the best arrangement, Ikharos had to privately admit. It put each of them at too much risk.
Even so.
"Okay," Ikharos said, and he pulled with the dregs of his laboured Light, a vortex of Void, up, crushing it down, reabsorbing into his body, his bloodstream; it instilled in himself a dark hunger, a desire to break form and mantle a whirlwind of violence, and unlike the actual Dark that lurked in the umbral centre of his souls it felt more natural to give in. Ikharos walked to the dead Scorn by the window as it stirred for the second time and brought his knife down on its neck stump - and it fell apart, devoured by the Void in him, melting into the radiant blade and adding the energy harvested from the raw matter into vitality, into strength, into the power to keep moving, to vault up and out the window and drop into the hissing, snarling masses of the Scorn gang below.
After that it became a little more... hazy. The Void tinged his vision, swam on the edge of his sight as an aura of indigo-black. The effects of Devour were addictive; the Scorn were quick to punish him for his audacity and though their shots bounced straight off the shield erected him, they still had the power to physically push through and smash his bones with their mauls, tear at his skin with their claws, nip at his flesh with their terrible fangs. He punished them back for it. With every strike he landed they were reduced by one, another ghoul disintegrated and processed into more power, enough to heal his wounds - those that weren't caused by anything other than the most remarkable means - and blotted out the worst of the pain.
They were larger than him, the Scorn. They mirrored the Eliksni in that capacity; their living counterparts, even at their lowest echelons of Dregs and Wretches, dwarfed the average human with some ease. Undeath didn't change a thing; all it did was bring out the worst in them, heighten their savagery - and that was no small accomplishment, for there was seldom a foe more vicious, more cruel than a bloodthirsty Wolf or Devil drunk on battle. They were larger than him, which was advantage enough, but even then they were not necessarily quicker - nor stronger. Baseline humans reacted to stimuli in two hundred milliseconds. Awoken? One hundred. Exos were theoretically faster than even that, somewhere between fifty and seventy five depending on the grade of their sensors - and Risen were right there with them. It was a hard thing to manage, because there was always that juxtaposition between the limits of a human body and the increased everything that came with being one with Light, but Ikharos had long since moved past that. It helped being part machine; his sensorium wasn't a crazy implant, but it was advanced enough to come with inbuilt retinal scanners, a hallucinogenic heads-up display, a limited communication node wired to his vestibulocochlear nerves, and wireless data-transfer ports hooked to his cerebral lobe. The tech was Golden Age, and he didn't doubt there were a myriad functions on dormant standby he had no idea about, but at the core of it it helped him, for better or worse, account for the sheer power of his Light-infused muscles and amplified speed. It gave him control. And that was the greatest gift the first Ikharos could ever given him.
At the same time, most alien species had beaten baseline humanity in the evolutionary arms race. Cabal were huge, even at their rank-and-file, and were strong enough to crush rocks between their hands - or shrug off even the most mortal wounds. Psions were extremely flexible due to a skeletal frame consisting almost entirely of reinforced cartilage, and they could control their heartbeat, their breathing with their minds - making for excellent snipers and covert ops units. Hive were incredibly resilient, so much that their gods had figured out a way to hide their deaths in other realities. And Eliksni - Eliksni were fast, faster than any human or neohuman could ever hope, and were plenty agile. In death that hadn't changed a bit; if anything the Scorn were less afraid of pushing themselves to their limits. They'd already died once, after all. What did they care for a sprain, a broken ankle, a shattered leg?
They kept up with him, just as he did them. He killed them again and again, and the Scorn eagerly pressed in to fill the empty spaces, mauling him over and over. He tried to push past, he really did, but Ikharos was forced into the melee if only to keep himself alive. With every kill he made himself whole again, and with every kill there was another corpse trying to pry his ribcage open, attempting to pull his head from his shoulders, locking their jaws on his limbs and sinking their teeth into his Void-rife flesh.
Then, just as quickly as the close quarters press had begun, it stopped. Ikharos pinned a Wraith with his knife and drove the Valkyrie's spearhead through its helmed skull, crushing the crude iron and fragile bone beneath with relative ease, and he found himself without a next foe. Raiders aimed at him and Stalkers lurked on the periphery, but they were held back by an invisible barrier - one, he saw, that aligned with the angle their Chieftain was holding out their arms.
Her arms.
It took him a moment, but Ikharos thought he recognized her. Though her garb was of the rough-soldered steel and tattered cloth typical of most Scorn, he saw rags of deep blue about her waist, a torn mantle of fur over her shoulders. She wore an arched black helm that obscured her upper face, leaving her lipless mouth free to grin and growl at him, scar over her left mandible. A Wolf. One he'd thought dead for good.
Evidently not.
"Vel," Ikharos panted, resorting to chirpy Low Speak - the more common of the Eliksni dialects. "Velask, Pirsis."
The Chieftain cocked her head curiously. She hunched her shoulders, drew a pair of broken swords and took a single menacing step towards him before pausing again. Ikharos looked at the onlookers, but they were standing well clear of them.
"Well that's... handy," Xiān said lamely.
A duel, Ikharos mused. They want a show.
"They're evolving."
Or they're remembering something of themselves, he replied. The parts best left forgotten. Ikharos straightened up, pointed his knife at the Chieftain and bowed, inclined his head - performing a quick miurlis salute in the Eliksni style. The Chieftain tilted her head the other way, clueless. She barked at him irritably, without comprehensible words. He doubted she remembered how to speak. Did she even remember him?
"But I remember you, Pallas-Bane," Ikharos murmured. She began pacing to the side, intending to flank him, and he matched her step for step. They circled around one another, blades twitching - waiting for their first taste of blood. "I remember your crimes. I remember the homes you left burning, the bodies you left for the flesh-eaters. I remember you, siege-queen."
The Chieftain clicked her mandibles, the glistening bones therein bared to the open air, and she snapped her yellowed teeth at him.
"Last I saw you, you were fleeing for Earth," Ikharos continued. He held his blades at the ready, clutched them tightly. The Void thrummed in him like a whip flicking through the air, demanding more. It was ceaseless in its appetite and it was never going to stop pressing him for more corpses, more dead enemies, their bodies reduced to nothing - all to produce a paracausal yield of zero-point energy. "My pack hunted you like the mutt you were. Cornered you in Baikonaur - against the Devils and Kings. They cut you down and left you in the dirt. I wasn't there; if I was, this-" He pointed to her with his knife "-wouldn't have happened. Shall I rectify that?"
The Chieftain, Once-Pirsis, surged forwards with a ragged roar. She thundered over the open field, leapt high and came down with her sabres aimed for his collar . Ikharos pranced away, the effects of Devour and so much adrenaline leaving him light on his feet, and he skipped around her - not so close as to nip at her, but close enough to make her nervous. She swept up and around, swinging her swords about; Ikharos ducked and deflected one of her sabres with a flick of his knife, diverting the blow and unsteadying her for a split-second - long enough to lean in and bite at her throat with the Valkyrie. The flesh hissed and sizzled and the veneer of Dark Ether briefly shifted colours: it turned from an insidious deep blue to a much softer tone before the Dark won back over.
The Scorn staggered back, snapping her jaws furiously, and she yelled at him wordlessly - doubtless a promise towards the treatment of his soon-to-be corpse. Ikharos wasn't phased; the suppressor charges still worked, then. And they made no distinction between the philosophy of both primary paracausal forces. The connotations thereof were... intriguing. Promising.
But first he had to survive the night.
Once-Pirsis rushed him. Death had made her fearless, paracausality-suppressor be damned, and she still retained her old savagery. Her swords swept and arced through the air, catching the moonlight, and though Ikharos wove around each blow she was penning him in with her much longer reach. That was beginning to become an issue. He couldn't reach her without being eviscerated himself. His Light was reluctant to offer more than what it had already given him and the Dark - it was even more obstinate. Prove you can do this, it whispered. And do it quickly.
The edge of a sword traced along the front of his chest, adding to the burning sensation with a fresh cut. Ikharos cut a hasty retreat, panting but for the strain of it all - but Once-Pirsis was quick to follow, tireless. She ran at him, scenting blood-
So he tossed his radiant knife. Caught her knee, turned the leg to ash. The Chieftain stumbled, fell - right onto his Valkyrie, the spearhead punching through her sternum. Her snarling turned to a wet wheeze. She lashed at him, at his back, and with her claws she ripped his skin open. One of her blades found his side and plunged deep, through his waist and tickling the underside of his diaphragm. With a heaving gasp Ikharos turned them over - shoving Once-Pirsis onto the ground and straddling her, pushing the Valkyrie deeper into her chest. Her Dark Ether crackled in the air around them, threatening to suffocate them both beneath the immense pressure of, but veins of softer, natural Ether spread through it, growing right from the Scorn Chieftain herself. Her hands went slack and fell by her side; Pirsis growled weakly at him, murderous even in her final moments.
Ikharos lurched forward, out of breath himself, and he plunged a hand against her neck - allowing the Void to take him over, manifest as claws to slip through and catch her spine. It ran through her system as a violet venom, down her veins and along her nervous system, and everywhere it went matter deteriorated into a fine indigo mist - until he dropped to the ground, the Chieftain devoured armour and all. Ikharos reached back for the sword in his gut and pulled it free; the Void filled the wound in with repaired flesh and rewoven blood vessels, rendering him whole once more. He looked up and around-
But the other Scorn were already slinking away. Their Dark Ether mists filled the air and coiled around their bodies, dragging them... elsewhere. Likely for easier pickings. Ikharos staggered back to his feet, put his hands on his knees and gasped for air. It tasted sweet. Survival was the finest spice around and even he wasn't fool enough not to savour it. The Scorn were gone.
Though the thick miasma of Darkness was not.
Ikharos slowly looked up. Perched on the villa's tiled roof, like some otherworldly gargoyle, was Zendolyn-Far. She had one hand on her knee and the other on the edge, kneeling over open air and watching him, so utterly silent. Her optics shone a bright gold. Her wings shuddered and twitched, though he didn't know if it was a sign of nervousness or anticipation.
He held out his arms, empty and streaked with Void-ash. "Was that enough for you?" Ikharos hoarsely challenged. "Do you want more?"
She stood up - seven, eight, maybe even nine feet tall at full stature. And still she said nothing.
Ikharos scooped up the fallen spearhead of the Valkyrie and pointed to her with it. "You want freedom? This is what it looks like. You're a prisoner of the Fleet and this is the only way out - powerless and dead. As a mark in someone else's ledger."
Zendolyn-Far dropped down with a thump, knees bending to absorb the impact. Behind her, up by the villa's windows, Yu'uro and Ellecta peeked out. Red tracers aligned with her fluttering wings.
"It's the only way," Ikharos continued, his mouth dry, throat scratchy, eardrums thumping near painfully. "You chose your side. You chose wrong."
"Are you saying no?" Zendolyn-Far softly asked.
Ikharos didn't reply.
"I've chosen my side," Zendolyn-Far agreed, "but now you must choose yours."
"I'm not for the Black Fleet."
"Then you are for the Nightmare Lord. And Xhafi will punish you for it." She quirked a finger and aimed it at his head. "He desires freedom - and what Xhafi desires, the Fates grant. I implore that you spare yourself the heartache, lest you lose more than you are willing to live without."
"What do you care?"
"He will chew the insubordination out of you," Zendolyn-Far coldly promised. "Is that your wish?"
Ikharos's protest died on his lips. The night air suddenly felt very, very cold. He didn't like her word choice. Not one bit.
"I'm going to find out what happened here," Ikharos quietly proclaimed. "I'm going to find out what you've done to my people - and I'm going to mete out justice as I deem necessary."
He projected a thought. The Psions fired - but the slugs didn't even reach their target. The armour-piercing Solar rounds just... disappeared, right out of thin air. Pyramid-based shielding systems. Zendolyn-Far didn't even turn to look at them, their effort was so inconsequential, so useless, so... helpless. Ikharos's face paled; firearms wouldn't even scratch her. He wasn't so confident blades would do the trick either. Not with Solvent involved.
Her helmet melted away, revealing her alien face. Zendolyn-Far's tri-tipped tongue flashed out, tasting the Dark Ether-scented air, and she winced for the sting of it. "Honour the offer made, or we will find another better suited to our purposes."
The witch, he thought. She means the witch. Ikharos's blood turned to ice and the fury he felt cooled in his heart. Before he could manage a retort, however, Zendolyn-Far shrugged her shoulders and the Solvent flowed over her form - coating her in total inky shadow. She fellt into the earth with a groan and a creak not too dissimilar to the noises of a glacier passing down a valley and soon enough there was not a single trace of her left.
Which left him at a loss.
"That was... huh," Xiān said. "Why wasn't she killing you?"
"She knows what I am," Ikharos said, mostly to himself.
"Maybe, but-"
"She's... watching us. Keeping tabs." Ikharos blinked. "Nightmare Lord. Xhafi."
"Should I cross-reference?"
"Do." Ikharos heaved a sigh. "Indilic, you can drop the-"
The psychokinetic barrier peeled off of him on the spot, dissipating into nothing but decaying psionic energy. Scorn? Indilic urgently pressed. He sounded drained, his thoughts hollow.
Ikharos cast a cautious look all around, his eyes flooding over with Truesight. "Nothing. They're gone."
Gone?
"Killed their Chieftain. They're licking their wounds."
Scorn don't retreat willingly.
"Stands to reason, then, that it wasn't their own will that drew them away." Ikharos set his lips in a thin line. "We're too late. They've found what they're looking for."
Indilic took a moment to reply. The BattleNet has returned, he said. Val Vindica'aur is close by.
"...Then let's go meet her. Bag that Exo." Ikharos paused, grimaced. "Sweep the place for draconic paraphernalia. Our local's likely compromised; inject cognit-hazard warnings into the BattleNet, status urgent. Did she get out?"
Sir. Indilic radiated frustration and reluctance. She ran.
"What's the issue?"
She ran the other direction. Away from the Val and her approaching Phalanx.
Ikharos bit down a curse. "Dammit."
Sir?
"Not in a state to chase her, are we? Broadcast a warrant for her arrest, wanted alive and unharmed - but warn for unknown magnitude of acausal and paracausal qualities, likely dragon-based, with additional telepathic properties. Seize-on-sight, induce psycho-dampening foils immediately. Subject is to be considered an uncooperative asset. Copy?"
Copy sir.
"Right. Where the hell is Vindica'aur right now?"
The moment they returned to camp, an emergency meeting was called for all the brass on standby. Ikharos had to sit there, braced against the side of the Shadow Trespass, as a Legionary and a Psion patched him up to the best of their abilities - and it ran some interference with his presence in the company's metaconcert. His physical form flickered as the pain in realspace assailed him; it disrupted his thoughts until he forced a Void-induced nullscape down on it all, to keep himself anchored in dead calm.
They'd met Vindica'aur a quarter of the way out. The Val hadn't said anything; she'd seen it loud and clear via BattleNet feed, all of it. Ikharos wasn't sure of her feelings on the matter, but she'd acted brusquely, ferrying them back behind the cover of Phalanx shields. He wondered if the gravity of their situation had finally hit her. The Fleet was present. The Fleet knew they were there. And it had military-grade Exos strung up to dance to its tune.
Possible Wrathborn influence, Ikharos mused. The Exos had spoken Latin. A dead tongue for dead people; it was fitting at least. The things they'd said, though, were a little less inspiring. (Nos deos tuos. We are your gods. Bellum omnium calculo est. War is the reckoning of all. Hive phrases if he'd ever heard it.) He had to consider the ramifications - War's Battlesongs were insidious; they twisted flesh, machine, and mind all the same, drove them all to madness. To worship. To furthering the scope of the Sword Logic. It fit the Exos to a tee; their overreliance on repair nanites was ruthlessly clever, but the manner with which they had reformatted themselves was just asking for DER - to suffer a relapse and another memory-wipe. The mind was a fragile thing; their humanity wouldn't have survived it. He'd known Exos who'd been reset for less.
It didn't take long for the officers to assemble in the mindscape. There was no Brand, no Earth, no relics of Torobatl this time - just an island amidst a sea of pale purple psionic essence and a War Table for them to arrange themselves around.
"Contact with agents of the Black Fleet has been made," Ikharos stiffly announced, and though he was all but sure they were already aware, the Cabal still stirred with surprise and unease. "We know what that entails. The Darkness is here. Myself and the Opti Indilic, Yu'uro, and Ellecta encountered a Disciple and a pair of Exomind subjects - and I'm assuming the latter were a part of the security detail assigned to the Exodus vessel above."
"The Exos there were nothing like what we faced here," Indilic pointed out. "They were natural, in so much as their kind can be, but these-"
"Were altered," Ikharos agreed. "The things they said to me resembled the propaganda spouted by War's Horde. We have to assume they've been compromised, defected to the other side. We can't assume a Hive link, but they're almost certainly in the Black Fleet's pocket."
"They carried a weapon with suppressor charges," Ellecta added. She looked at Ikharos with some alarm. "I inspected the sample. The technology is not so distinct from the net with which Dominus Ghaul caged your Traveler - and the contraband disruptors employed by the Red Legion deserters within the Europan Pyramid, seized by your Vanguard."
"A paracausality dampener, capable of hitting both sources."
"It resembles a Synaptic Spear," Yu'uro said. "Though it operates solely in physical space rather than as a medium through which to sever a mind's link to your Light."
"It also looks like the frame for a Valkyrie," Ikharos noted. "A handheld javelin of Warmind make, capable of causing controlled explosions on impact. They were used to bring down a Worm God."
"Powerful."
"Yes, but they were kinetic-based weaponry. One had to physically hit a target with the Valkyrie to cause damage. The same goes for the Synaptic Spear; it's not a firearm. Neither are ranged weapons. Not unless you plan on fetching it afterwards."
"Your glaives operate similarly, do they not?" Colossus Faer'o inquired.
Ikharos nodded. "They do, though they aren't originally of the City's design. They stem from stolen Pyramid tech - armaments employed by the Fleet's adherents. They don't come from our foundries. Not yet. Though... that's a fair point, actually. The refurbished Valkyrie design could be the work of the Dark agents already here."
"The serpent you encountered, the slithering beast," Vindica'aur growled unhappily. "It spoke with you."
"It watched," Ikharos added. "Watched the Exos come for me. Watched the Scorn do the same. Speaking of which - the remaining Scornship, where is it?"
The Cabal each looked at each other, not one of them daring to answer.
"We've lost it?" Ikharos grimly concluded. "Keep looking. I don't care how far you have to strain yourselves, find it. The Scorn are bad enough, but the Locus needs to die. If they're already in contact with the Disciples, we are already lost."
"The Scorn that attacked us were organized," Indilic pointed out. "Even if in a rudimentary sense. And the moment they lost their commander, they retreated."
Ikharos inclined his head. "Zendolyn-Far was there. She saw them. She knows about them. It's likely already too late. But..." He trailed off. "I'm not sure we have even the beginnings of the full picture. My contact - she said this anomaly, this cage, sprang up as a result of a turf war. I don't know the relationship between these Disciples, but I'm not sure the Witness would abide infighting unless it can be avoided. They're not swords, not like the Hive; they're delicate tools, groomed over extreme periods of time, fit for every purpose. If there's three of them here... Something isn't right. It wasn't right with the Exos, it wasn't right with Zendolyn-Far, it wasn't right with-"
"What was the serpent's proposal?" Vindica'aur impatiently pressed.
Ikharos shot her a warning look. "Help her and hers get out of here."
"The anomaly?"
"It's a prison. An idyllic one, but stifling nonetheless."
"Then this... may not be of their making?"
"Possibly not, but everything about this is beyond humanity's power - even at the heights of the Golden Age. The status of the Exodus vessel and the Exominds I encountered don't help that theory either."
"There could be other forces at work," Indilic mused. "What we saw..."
"Exactly," Ikharos confirmed. "We... saw a vision. A memory. Similar to one I sampled in the dead city north of us. This island used to be settled, by humans and neohumans both. They... had a relationship with what appeared to be Ahamkara."
Instant uproar. Cabal shouting, crashing their fists against their breastplates, righteous fury spilling over into demands - ("Allow me the honour, commander!" "I will slay the beast!" "Fire on everything that moves!") - and though he understood the thick wave of emotion that took them all, he couldn't abide it to fester.
"Silence!" Indilic snapped, the gilded shadow of his mind flaring up around him. The Cabal were quick to settle. Ikharos interlocked his fingers and sat back.
"The settlements," Ikharos began, "we have encountered before almost all bear the same marks - destruction via non-causal means. The most recent memory revealed the destruction to be the handiwork of more drakes. And... they had mortal retainers."
"Human retainers," Vindica'aur rumbled.
Ikharos glanced at her irritably. "Can you, Val, truly say you're immune to the whispers of an Ahamkara? Can you with all honesty say you'd turn away their honey-sweet words?"
"I would crush their skulls underfoot."
"Oh, I'm sure you would. They'd help you live that fantasy alright." Ikharos turned back to the rest of the brass. "It is now imperative that each living soul in this company reinforce their psychic defenses."
"That will not be enough," Vindica'aur barked. "Dragons-"
"Need putting down. What's the status of the Rancis Olytus?"
Vindica'aur looked down the table. A Bracus sat up straight and said, "The infestation has spread, sir, but the Scorn have abandoned it as far as we can tell. They migrate, though we cannot see to where."
"Is there a clear path to the ship?"
"... Relatively. We cannot account for the intervention of another marine predator."
"I'll handle that," Ikharos said dismissively. "Then we move now, while the coast is clear. I want aircraft; I want armour. I want ammunition and I want more black gel. We need it now. Begin preparations. Vindica'aur, ready a dive team to capture and secure. Clear?"
"Clear," Vindica'aur grumbled back. "Shall I accompany?"
"Do so."
"Thank you, commander-interim." She bowed her head and disengaged; the rest of the Cabal followed suit. Ikharos cut his connection to the mindscape-
-and returned back by the Shadow Trespass. The soldiers tending to him, however, had ceased in their work in favour of aiming their weapons at the Exo standing right in front of him.
"Elisabeth," Ikharos grunted. He levered himself back to his feet and gestured for the Legionary and Psion to stand down. they lowered their rifles, though their eyes were still pinned to her. "How long-"
"Just a moment," the Stranger told him. "Not long."
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" he snarked. Ikharos inspected his wounds and found them patched over in grainy cytogel crystals. Xiān transmatted a replacement biosuit over him. He pulled his greatcoat over it, finding some comfort in the weight of the heavy weathered jacket.
The Stranger tilted her head. "Looks good on you," she murmured, optics soft.
Ikharos glanced at her. "... Met with Zendolyn-Far," he told her. "A couple of Exos too, but I'm not so sure they were with her. Was that what you were pointing me towards?"
"Not quite. Did you find-"
"The memory?"
The Stranger nodded.
"Yeah," Ikharos exhaled. "Yeah, I saw it. Picked up the mask pieces. It's full of Nightmares."
"A relic. Not meant for us, but one we can use all the same."
"Love how you're framing that. 'We can use.' As if we've been happily working together so far."
The Stranger's faceplates shifted, assuming an unimpressed expression. "Zendolyn?"
"Yeah. She's... yeah." Ikharos grimaced. "She's under the impression that we're amenable to her cause."
"More with her than with the others," the Stranger acknowledged.
"Others like Xhafi?" he inquired curiously.
The Stranger's optics flared. "Ye-es," she said slowly. "Like Xhafi. She told you?"
"Made some threats on his behalf. Who's that?" Ikharos crossed his arms. "Xiān ran a search just there. I can't profess to having the entire Cryptarchy's archives at my disposal, but my own stores are hefty enough as is - and we haven't found a single match, not in all the extrasolar texts I've logged. The name's just not there. Who is he?"
"Another," the Stranger cryptically replied.
"Disciple, right? Because that's what it sounded like."
She nodded.
"What's his deal?" Ikharos questioned. "What's his M.O.? Manipulator, assassin, general or-"
"Dragon-Eater," the Stranger whispered. "They call Him Dragon-Eater."
Ikharos fell silent. His breath stalled in his chest. "So I'm right," he murmured. "Those are Ahamkara."
"No."
"No?"
"Not quite. Not in the manner you're imagining. But Xhafi - He is exactly what you think he is."
"I... see."
"Do you?"
"Don't know if I do. Don't know if I want to."
"He's..." the Stranger hesitated. "He's a threat. A target. We can't let him out."
"But we can for Zendolyn, apparently?"
"She hasn't killed either of us yet," the Stranger pointed out. She stepped forward and leaned against the Trespass's hull beside him. "She's not a friend, but she's not necessarily a foe. Ikharos, I'd really rather go without making her an enemy. Please be careful."
Ikharos shrugged; no promises. "Who's the third?" he inquired - if only to capitalize on her brief bout of upfront honesty. "You said there were three Disciples. Zendolyn's one, Xhafi's the other - who's the last?"
The Stranger paused. "Shelbth," she said.
"Selbth?"
"Shelbth. They're... not quite so important at the moment."
"Why's that?"
"Because they're incorporeal."
Ikharos raised an eyebrow. "Care to elaborate?"
"Living concept," the Stranger explained in a low voice.
"Ah." Ikharos winced, closed his eyes. "A sentient idea."
"Yes."
"Vex-based?"
"No. And all the worse for it."
"That's..." He grimaced hard. "That's unfortunate. Viral?"
"Dangerously so. Keep your Psions on a tight leash."
"That was always the plan."
"Ikharos, I'm serious. They're killers, all of them."
"And yet here we are, talking about how you've made friends with one."
"I haven't-" The Stranger shouldered him, gently. The gesture was a whole lot more affectionate than he would've considered reasonable, given their... lacking relationship. Ikharos allowed it, once - and only because he was curious. She knew him better than he knew her.
The only mystery was how far that went.
"She's possibly amenable to us," the Stranger stressed.
"You say it like she's not a believer," Ikharos pointed out.
"Perhaps not so strongly as the others. Depends on what you do."
"No pressure I guess." Ikharos sighed. "Is that why you've kept me flying blind?"
"That's part of the reason I didn't want you going in guns blazing."
"Up 'til now?"
"Yes."
"Elisabeth-"
"You're careful," the Stranger interrupted. "You're always careful when faced with something you don't understand."
Ikharos pursed his lips. "Been burned too many times."
"If I told you everything, you could lose that edge. Get angry."
"I have reason to be angry?" he tested.
The Stranger looked away. "Plenty."
"What happened here?"
"You met Exos?"
"Two of them. They were... I don't know. I want to say 'severely misguided.'"
"Is there anything left?" the Stranger asked knowingly.
Ikharos rolled his eyes. "Partially. Had to burn it out, lest the nanites bring it back. All's left is a skeleton. Why'd they attack? What happened to them?"
"Check the Exo."
"Elisabeth-"
"Spinal column." She tapped the back of his neck. Ikharos shivered for the physical contact - it was a strange feeling, always, what with the sensation of static. He wasn't used to it. To her credit, she pretended as if not to notice. "There. Vertebrain, security failsafe. Military-grade augment. It's like the cloud we had on Europa before... before everything. Keeps a copy of their memories, their secrets, their everything. If it's not completely destroyed, that is."
Ikharos nodded. Slowly. "Right. Your design?"
"After the war on Europa, yeah. We needed a way to keep soldiers alive without relying on Bray backup servers. In case the Vex attacked again."
"Doesn't sound like something that'd survive direct conversion."
"No, but we take what we can get. And Exos..." The Stranger trailed off. "We were the best weapon humanity had at the time, Warminds notwithstanding. The best we had to fight the Vex."
"I'm aware. These Exos... they're something else." Ikharos chewed his cheek. "They aren't the only worry either. Scorn. Where's the Ketch?"
"Upper atmosphere, mapping out blindspots."
"There's ob-sats in orbit."
"I know."
"Locked to stationary rotations, fixed positions. What's their function?"
"Surveillance. Barracks. Armouries. Laboratories. Forges. Cradles. They're birthing new machines. Or trying to."
"Exos?"
"In part."
Ikharos made a face. "I don't like the sound of that."
"How do you think I feel?" The Stranger looked around. "Where's Formora?"
Ikharos scowled. "Pulled a runner."
"Can you blame her?"
"Heavy pack of Scorn on my ass, bleeding out where I stood, and all I asked her was to get to Vindica'aur."
"She's solitary. Proud. She won't follow you. Remind you of anyone?"
"Plenty of pride here, Elisabeth. Too many personalities. Gotta be more specific."
"I'll find her." The Stranger pushed away from the hull.
"I've already ordered a warrant for her capture," Ikharos warned her. "My Crows, my Cabal - they'll do the finding. We have questions for her."
"Not how I wanted you to ask them."
"Care to take her place?"
The Stranger turned back to him and smiled thinly. "Don't bluff with me."
"You think I won't?"
"I know you won't. You care."
"When I have room too. Right now I'm feeling a little claustrophobic."
She patted his cheek. He restrained the urge to recoil from it - to stand still and take it. It chafed. "I'm sure you'll find yourself some wiggle room."
"Elisabeth-"
"Call me Elsie. You know that's how I prefer it."
"Elsie," Ikharos said patiently. "I saw her. With a dragon. I think... I think she still has one. Or it has her."
"I know. I know that's what you think." Elsie's expression softened. "Don't blame her for it."
"Why would I-"
She disappeared, her form dissipating into a transmat almost reminiscent of Vex teleportation.
"-nevermind," Ikharos finished. He looked back at the watching Legionary and Psion and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "What are you waiting for? Dismissed."
They quickly left him, bowing their heads as they went.
Ikharo dragged the dead Exo inside the Trespass, right to the laboratory, and there he set it up on the table face-down. It was little more than a husk of its former self, just struts and foils and plates. Xiān ran a scan - "No nanites, no trackers, we're good" - and stopped over its neck.
"I see it," she said. "It's... it's slagged."
"Show me."
Xiān highlighted the vertebrate in his sensorium. Ikharos drew his knife, wedged it into the Exo's neck and began working at it - chipping away at the molten metal that had cooled around it. It took a while to pry it free, and when he did, he found some of the chipped boards within warped and twisted by heat. Xiān scanned it and sighed.
"Not... not great," she admitted. "Lotta broken files."
"Anything useful?"
"Give me a- Ah. Yeah. There's... well, there's this node. Vault-in-a-vault. I'll start transcribing the rest, but this - this looks clear. It looks." Xiān froze, seized up. "Oh. Crap."
"Xiān?" Ikharos questioned, worried.
"Ike, ah..." She turned to him. "There's... a couple of things, but it's... it's addressed to you. This file is for you. It's a message - for you."
AN: Huge thanks to Nomad Blue!
There's an accompanying interlude-thingy piece to this, soon to follow today, but then that'll be it for the year. If you celebrate Christmas, then I wish you a merry time; if not, I wish you just the same! :)