TITANOMACH I: Triumvirate

by Xabiar

Earth rests within the iron grip of the Triumvirate. Suppression, surveillance, and manipulation are tools used to maintain and expand their power. Rebels and terrorists persist in a futile insurgency, and independent nations struggle to endure under political and economic pressure. On the brink of victory, the course of Earth is forever changed by an anomaly hovering over Mars.

30. Chapter XXVI - Requiem

ACT III | THE TYRANT'S HUBRIS

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CHAPTER XXVI | REQUIEM

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BEFORE THE ENOCHIAN SPIRE | NEPTUNE

"||March||"

The order rippled through the air; a voice spoken in the familiar intonations of Valentin, with the innate power of the Traveler who hovered above them. It was spoken in no known language, yet each of them comprehended the intent and meaning. They heard it with their physical senses, it echoed within their minds, and was felt within their souls.

March.

Mantras stirred in them from that simple word. An order. A command. A promise. An inevitability. March into the Spire to reclaim it for the Light. March into the heart of Darkness. March under Her Light. March to reclaim a world from the evil that had claimed it.

March to bring this battle to an end.

So they marched.

They marched through the golden shimmering portals with smiles on their faces, resolve in their minds, and fire in their hearts.

With the Light wreathed around him, ready to be unleashed by his will, Fang was among the first to step the portal before him onto the pathway that led to the base of the Spire. The cylindrical wonder before them was wreathed in the amber resonance that flowed around it like water; like a parasite clinging to its host. There was a tangible static in the air; an innate sense of wrongness amplified by the hijacked power of the Spire.

Around them were darkened clouds, so high were they in the Neptunian sky. Bales of wind slammed against them; further augmented by the reality-commanding tones of the Antiphon. Occasionally within the clouds were flashes of red lightning, yet it did not seem to come close enough to strike them.

The pathway forward would have been striking in the times before its fall. The white-silver bridge was paved in Godsteel in complex and wonderful patterns, all of which had been reduced to a simple, flat, sterile surface, as if scrubbed by sandpaper.

Resonance covered the road now, flowing like some kind of odious creek which fundamentally repulsed him. One foot stepped into the luster, and it began clinging to him like sap, slowing his movements and chilling his body. Each step was an effort, each movement forward resulting in an unnatural chill becoming more prevalent.

Something that the Intercessor had prepared as a trap? Or merely an effect of the corruption to the Spire?

More soldiers and Guardians stepped out of the portals into the orange-like luster, Valentin the first among them. With a motion he sent a wave of Light across the pathway, sweeping the resonance away like a gust of wind. Freed from its grasp, they marched unimpeded as the Spire loomed above them, and the distant sounds of the Antiphon took on a different tone.

As they marched, each of them shaped their Light into the mechanism of destruction and power they would need for the fight ahead. Fang manifested several corrosive, weakening orbs of energy around him, which orbited him like purple moons. Each one drew a bit of vitality from him, but with the empowering presence of Valentin, and the Traveler above, he hardly felt the draw.

The rest of the Guardians were similarly ready to unleash their power. Khojin's eyes glowed brightly as she readied her sword of Light. Rezyl's arms were wreathed in orange-white fire. In Jaren's hand was a golden gun, burning brightly and ready to be unleashed. No matter the Guardian, they were ready to take the fight to their true enemy.

The Triumvirate forces were similarly prepared. In their hands were the Celestial weapons. The Exos moved with expert precision; their mechanical eyes scanning the Spire before them, ready to unleash their own firepower when the opportunity presented itself. They were just as ready to fight, and the fight soon presented itself.

The Spire had been prepared for them, and unleashed its own defenses once they approached their reach.

The seemingly perfectly-smooth exterior opened up to reveal its bristling defenses. Long barrels and turrets emerged like a machine coming to life, each weapon loaded with Godsteel projectiles. Dozens upon dozens of sleek drones were launched from hidden compartments as they swarmed above the encroaching army with coordinated intelligence.

Nothing had emerged from the Spire proper.

This was just the warmup.

Fang didn't see or hear the first shot, but it seemed to happen all at once. As projectiles began flying, Valentin and several other Guardians created semi-transparent barricades of Light which the Triumvirate soldiers rushed to. Beams of light shot from Khojin's eyes, destroying one of the turrets, before she sprang into action. A shot brighter than the Sun fired from Jaren's gun destroyed another.

Within seconds half of the static defense of the Spire had been reduced to smoldering wrecks. Against a conventional force, they would have endured for some time. Against Guardians, nothing conventional could last long.

It marked the beginning of the battle.

Fang directed his orbs towards several points in the air, watching them fly upwards until they were small purple dots in the sky. In place, and indestructible, they began undoing the material bonds of whatever came within their radius. Without wasting more time, Fang knelt behind a barrier and kept creating more, and he would not stop until there was an indigo hue that fell over them.

The sounds of battle soon dominated everything around him. Silver rounds fired from Celestial weapons as the Triumvirate soldiers unleashed the power the Light provided them. Each projectile that collided acted as a hungry plague, as when they slammed into drones the crystalline substance spread until it consumed them, causing them to fall out of the sky like rocks.

Scores of drones were destroyed with hardly any effort from the Guardians. The turrets were unable to penetrate the barriers or Light and were picked off one by one. Repair drones were deployed, but those were targeted and destroyed almost immediately. With a cone of flame, one drone was melted into silver liquid. With a stream of lightning, another dozen were overloaded and exploded.

Each Guardian dealt with the mechanical defenses in their own way, and no matter what way that was, it was effective. Be it a telekinetic crush, waves of frost, or bolts of pure Light, the Guardians turned the defenses of the Spire to scrap.

With each minute that passed, the forces of Light advanced towards the Spire, led at the front by Valentin, who kept the barricades moving as they advanced, allowing the Triumvirate to utilize a layered defense where the last light would soon be moved forward. A defense force that would have almost certainly decimated a lesser army was nothing when put before Her soldiers.

The Ghosts were doing their part as well. Be they manifesting small barriers to protect their Guardians and other soldiers from shrapnel or firing beams of Light against drones of their own, they were as much a part of the battle as everyone else. Three-quarters of the way to the base, and all of the static defenses were destroyed, and the lands under the Spire were covered in wreckage.

The air above had become a purple haze as Fang's network of disruptive orbs had turned the drone airspace lethal. Even if the machines flew above the radius of the orbs, they would have to fire down, and the orbs would turn the hardened projectiles into putty if not destroy them outright.

They'd not suffered a single casualty yet.

Now they were close to the base of the Spire, with the drones coming in much smaller numbers. The Triumvirate forces established a perimeter, as Valentin stood before the base of the Spire that still rippled with the vibrating luster. The Speaker stood still, as if appraising what was before him.

As if there was some unspoken challenge being presented.

Fang terminated the power he was using to keep the orbs active, and the skies were soon clear. He kept his distance as Valentin lifted a hand engulfed in Light, the first and middle finger pointed towards the Spire like a knife. Where the two fingers were pointing, Fang saw a point of Light where the waves of resonance were cut.

Valentin moved his arm, and as he moved, the cut continued. With the blade of Light, they watched as Valentin cut a perfect circle into the Spire, and with the other hand, pushed to dissolve the separated luster. There was a shudder as Valentin lowered his arm, as if the Spire was reacting to a different command.

In the newly exposed opening, the Spire rippled as it began pulling back and revealing an entrance. The Light around Valentin became less intense, and as they stood before their objective, there was a brief silence that fell upon the short-lived battlefield. The Antiphon remained, but it had returned to a distant melody.

The Guardians and soldiers took a moment to compose themselves, check and reload their weapons, and glance at each other as though unsure of what to think. There was an almost universal feeling that Fang could pick up.

That had been easy. Was it a trap? A method to make them overconfident?

They'd expected it to be easy. This was the probing defense, though how serious it was remained an unknown. Everyone knew it was going to get harder from here. They wouldn't let an easy entrance blind them to this fact.

This resolution firmly in mind, they followed Valentin as he crossed the threshold, and entered the Spire.

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The Well of Souls had been turned into the place where she would command the defense of the Spire, and ensure that any who tried to take it met their ends. Micah stood in an elevated platform just before the central Well mechanism, with spectral windows allowing her insight into the areas of the fortress – and its defenses.

The windows which showed the exterior went dark, one by one, while others remained alight, showing her the other preparations that took place. Micah had observed the battle, her lips tight, and born witness to the vile armies of Light sweeping the innate enhancements of the Master's Temple aside with ease.

Now they had encroached on, and crossed the threshold of the now-purified Spire. She could almost feel that there was now something impure within the structure that she had become fond of. Now there was something repulsive within it; parasitic and corrosive. Micah's skin crawled as she beheld the caustic brilliance of the Speaker's advance, and the ease at which he cut through the luster, weak as it was.

She felt the gaze of the Savior upon her as she watched the battle, though knew that they were also noting the tactics employed by the Celestial forces. She had not expected that the drones would ultimately pose a threat to the Guardians, but seeing the sheer ease by which they had forced their way into the spire jolted a current of concern through her.

The power on display, which she had seen in practice on Neptune, was now on her doorstep.

No. I will not waver. I will not falter.

There is power of my own here.

"They have crossed the threshold. They are inside." She finally said as the last exterior window winked out. She attempted to keep her voice level, though her mistake was to assume such a thing would be believable to the being of power behind her.

She could not lie or deceive, not to herself, and not to the Savior.

_-Do not let their entrance blind you with their power,-_ the Savior admonished, their voice cutting through the doubts in her mind. _-Machines and the artificial cannot stand against the power of they who bend reality to their wills. The Guardians are among this number. You are another.-_

Their eyes scanned the empty windows that had been scrying the battlefield, as she turned to look past the near-transparent barrier that separated them. She could only imagine what it was like to be in their presence proper. _-This development is ideal. It allows them to build confidence. Expectation. They have ordained a narrative in their minds; liberators coming to cleanse a place of evil. Let them enter, and be overconfident; certain in the protective veil of their Light.-_

The eyes turned from the windows, and then bored into her. _-Let what has been built here pierce that shroud of lies they have constructed around themselves. Let it rob them of the hope, optimism, and victory they expect. They seek to be heroes. Deny it to them, for there is nothing for them to save.-_

Their hands met together, forming the fundamental Shape of a triangle as their instruction finished. _-When they reach you, their armor will be cracked; their minds will be weary, and their souls wounded. There is opportunity to strike true - This is no longer their domain, it is yours.-_

One finger pointed towards where the Shards of the Intercessor were standing; autonomous statues rebuilt to fulfill the purpose of service waiting before her. They stood, awaiting her command; awaiting permission to act. Above, the Intercessor continued the Antiphon, but it would be her that stood and gave the orders.

The Ascendant One had made clear His expectations.

Perhaps she would die in service to Him – but the Master was expecting to extract a toll from the wretched armies of Light. She could afford no mistakes; she could hold nothing back. She had seen what the armies were capable of now before her gates – now it was time to orchestrate the first battle.

The first within the Expanse.

With a motion, and summoning a twinge of power, the windows of insight shifted to show where the forces of the Spire had prepared for the Guardians. Liberated Humans with Shaped weapons in their hands; ready to live and die in service to Him. Her resolve hardened, and the power around her coalesced into a whip she would snap at the right opportunity.

With a silent telepathic command, the Shards began departing with movements hypnotically mechanical towards the Expanse until she was alone once again, but for the appraising gaze of the Savior behind her.

March forward, Guardians.

Let us see how you fare against my wrathful fortress ringed in swords.

---

WITHIN THE ENOCHIAN SPIRE

Weapons of blade and rifle were raised, resounding steps in unconscious unison, as Guardians and Man entered the expanses of the Spire. A place that was to be a sanctuary, a place of comfort, and a font of Light that had been desecrated in ways that Valentin knew no one but him could see.

Desecration.

It was the only word that could appropriately describe what had happened. It was not sufficient to merely destroy, because destruction was a simple action that only left ruin. What was destroyed could be remade. To hijack and corrupt the tools and symbols of an enemy was to display triumph and conquest in the most potent of ways.

Thus the Darkness must desecrate, and leave shrines to its conquest in its wake.

The actions cultivated an innate fury within him; a righteous hatred for those who had inflicted a perversion of what the Traveler had created. Even as they walked the opening hallways of the Spire, they were saturated in the corruptive Paracausality that had touched every surface.

It was the air which had a heavy quality to it as if walking through heavy fog; one which left a metallic taste on the tongue. A miasma of luster clung to the walls, ceilings and floors which receded like an ocean with each step he took, but flowed in behind him when he was far enough away.

But it was more than the physical sensations the Darkness elicited from him.

It was the fact that the Spire had become chained.

Corruption alone was not a strong enough word to describe what had become of the structure. It had changed on a fundamental level that few could perceive. The Spire had been designed to be a conduit of the Light, with the metals and materials able to react to it as if it was itself alive.

No more.

Valentin knew what he should see. With his clarifying sight he would be able to look through the thin walls and bear witness to the intricate mechanisms, patterns, and engineering that only a Celestial could design with such precision and care. But as he beheld the walls in this perverted place, he saw nothing.

Nothing but a wall. Nothing but a corridor. All complexity had been erased until there was simply what it appeared to be; a piece of architecture that was designed to fulfill a specific purpose, no more, no less.

Complexity made simple.

Creativity brought to heel.

Infinity brought to order.

As Valentin walked down the corridor, silent and reflective, he found something notable in that this was a reflection of the mind that had created it. The Spire was a reflection of the Traveler, and this inverse offered the same insight to this Ascendant Lord, whose will had created the Intercessor.

In here he saw the face of the enemy; the promised future should they fail.

A world that was cold, sterile, and expressionless.

So pervasive was the desecration that even with his ability to see nothing but possibility, he struggled to see it undone. The materials were seeped in the Darkness, and the faint Song of the Antiphon held each molecule to the respective Order which would not be broken until the Song itself fell silent.

No more was the Antiphon for them, but had now been calibrated to maintain the Order which had been imposed over the Spire. He saw no infinite possibilities in the places he now walked, but a corpse being forced to march, and which could only offer a dim scream for liberation.

He grit his teeth.

|| This is the future we fight ||

Her presence was a brief oasis in the sickening deluge he found himself in.

|| This is the Darkness ||

|| Do not look away ||

He did not look away.

|| The Ascendant Lord seeks not merely conquest, but to dominate, until all life bends to his understanding of Order ||

That was almost a more frightening prospect than the entity they were soon to face. For as the Traveler said, this is the future that would be imposed over reality should they lose. Something worse than death, but the smothering of all possibility, creativity, and complexity.

In this Spire, he saw a reality that was slaved to one perfect, singular Order.

And he recoiled in revulsion.

Even more so when he could see the contrast from those who marched alongside him. The black walls of the corridor slaved to the Antiphon withered when he looked to his right and left at the men and women who were mortal and immortal alike; luminous beings of life; a manifestation of possibility and Humanity in imperfect and contentious forms.

And many of them marched for reasons they didn't understand. Yet they didn't need to, they believed they marched to defend Humanity from a threat that would destroy it, and that was good enough. Not even Guardians saw as he did, but their motivations were the same. In this, today, all of them were united.

He envied their ignorance in a way. They only saw the orange luster that clung to the walls, and complained about the air and taste. Some had commented that it wasn't as bad as they feared. They could not see, and could not comprehend exactly what had been done, and the inherent horror of it.

They envisioned a desecration that was obvious and straightforward. Signs of tangible corruption and destruction. Desecration was supposed to be dirty, unsettling, and messy – but the physical corruption he could burn away with a wave of his hand. It was the fundamental corruption that could not be so easily undone.

But he didn't correct them. They didn't know better.

They couldn't see it, but he could.

Vigil floated by his shoulder, his voice calm in his head.

What will you do, Valentin?

There were two approaches to take with symbols of conquest – destruction, and reclamation. To destroy was a simple matter, a straightforward solution, and a justified approach. That which had been corrupted must be cleansed in the holy purity of the Light, reduced to atoms.

But the Ascendant Lord knew that destruction alone was the choice of men without vision or power.

This Spire will be Hers again.

The promise was made.

There was no greater triumph over evil than to deny it its prizes.

As they continued down the corridor, there was a sudden break from the smothered monotony of the Spire. His mask turned to a corner at the height of the corridor. He lifted a closed fist, coming to a stop which everyone else behind him echoed.

Weapons were primed, Light wreathed around bodies and hands as they braced themselves for a possible attack. With a wave, Valentin indicated there was no danger – yet. Clovis glanced in his direction, voice prompt. "[What is it?]"

The Exo's voice was inquisitive, not irritated or judgemental. He knew this was Valentin's domain, and his choices would mean life and death. Clovis understood little of the intricacies of the Spire, but he possessed enough wisdom to temper his inherent arrogance when it mattered.

"[I am unsure,]" Valentin murmured, taking a few steps forward, as the bright entity coalesced into a clearer shape. "[I think…]"

Then he saw it.

The bright, golden aura that only manifested around a special kind of life he knew resided in the domain of the Celestials. One which had, against all the odds, managed to survive. Vigil and the rest of the Ghosts seemed to twitch and shiver as they all also came to the same realization, a sensation of excitement and relief flowing through him in equal measure.

He reached out, his voice soft, warm, as if enticing a frightened animal. For now, they could pause, for this was something he needed to do. I am here, Skybourne, you may reveal yourself to me. I have come on Her behalf.

He could sense the surprise, hesitation, and curiosity of the entity that responded to his words. Then a moment later, there was some commotion as a creature revealed itself, having used the Light to hide itself. The forces of Man and Guardian alike started at the sudden appearance of the flying mechanical creature, but soon saw it was not a threat.

The Pouka made a happy whirring sound, and swooped down with a few loops, before circling his shoulders several times. Osiris watched the machine with its hypnotically flapping fins with curiosity. "An interesting creature. How did it survive?"

"I suspect," Valentin rubbed its metallic head with one finger. "The Intercessor's forces were unable or unwilling to hunt it down. There is an Aural inside, they know how to protect themselves."

Vigil floated near the Pouka, brightly glowing with the Light. "This one is acclimated to this reality. It was likely one of the first to do so. I suspect that is how it survived. If they fail to acclimate, they often fail to respond to outside stimuli without guidance or prompting. Neither of which were likely provided when the Spire came under attack."

It conjured an unpleasant image of nests or flocks of these creatures being slaughtered by the Intercessor and its legions, not knowing what was happening, or how to defend themselves against it. Against this particular enemy, it was almost the worst thing a free-loving creature like an Aural could fight.

"While fascinating," Clovis' red irises eyed the Pouka coldly. "What use is this to us right now?"

The Pouka perked up, then swooped forward down the corner, whirring, and performing several loops as if trying to get their attention. He couldn't exactly make out what the Pouka was trying to communicate, but actions spoke loud enough.

"I think he's going to help us," Valentin said. "Let's move – our enemy is not far."

---

THE EXPANSE | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The Expanse was what this section of the Spire was called. Based on what Osiris understood about it, it was on the lower section of the edifice, but that had less meaning than it otherwise would have.

Despite the clear efforts of the Intercessor to constrain the Spire, it was acutely clear that space did not work in a conventional way, and the winding and expansive corridors were simply too large for what they'd seen on the exterior. If it wasn't for the choking Darkness that covered every surface, Osiris would have tried to gleam how all of this worked.

Later, though. Once they cleansed this place.

Even knowing this, he was still taken aback when they emerged from the corridor and into the Expanse proper. He wasn't the only one, everyone else soon realized that the Expanse as a word failed to capture what was before them.

Osiris found his eyes being drawn upwards which for a moment seemed to stretch almost endlessly – or it would have if the imposing command of the Darkness were not restricting it. Where he expected Light would flow down, he saw a more tangible miasma of the luster coalescing at the top, bathing everything in a sicky orange light.

Even with the Intercessor doing all it could to strangle the infinity that was the Spire, there was only so much it could do to detract from the scale it embodied. The Expanse was a vast arena, far larger than it should have been from the outside. Osiris brought his eyes back down, briefly looking over the environment they found themselves in – and who else was there with them.

With a telepathic command Sagira flew forward, projecting a zoomed-in image of what was in the distance which he couldn't see with his regular eyes. The Ghosts of the other Guardians were similarly projecting the Intercessor's forces who were already in position far away.

Osiris could imagine what the Expanse was like before the corruption. There were depressions that were supposed to be pools and ponds that were filled with black liquid which might have well been water, but was still and seemed impossibly smooth. The waterfalls and streams were dry or didn't flow.

There was no sign of battle or wreckage. The area seemed strangely spotless; deprived of mess, flaw, or dirt. It was a kind of cleanliness which was artificial; one which could only come from an obsessive mind that saw everything as fulfilling a function, or something to be excised.

The floors were smooth and bare – sheets of metal and tile with no pattern or wear upon them. Osiris knew that these grounds would have been covered in symbology and aesthetic expression, but all of that had been scrubbed away. It made his skin crawl as much as the waves of luster; of something having been smothered.

This place was now sterile, empty; shorn of everything but simplicity.

He could just barely see some glimpses of Possibility, the flash of sight he was becoming more familiar with utilizing. He was not Valentin, but he had an idea of how he saw existence. Right now, it was as though he was blind but for these flashes of vegetation, trees, and ethereal landscapes both crafted and wild alike. A place where there was supposed to be life, all of which was shorn away.

There was no life in the Expanse now.

The bare floors were grey and dull. There was a slight sheen to them from the reflected miasma above, and the waves of luster that flowed over the ground. In all places where life could have grown, there was only dust or steel. The feeling of desecration and loss only grew when he looked at the walls, where there would be nests of the Pouka, all of which were now empty.

There were no corpses or wreckage, there was no sign of struggle or resistance. There were only small hexagons built into the honeycombed walls which were empty, and one could envision that it was an artistic or architectural choice, rather than think that those were supposed to be nests for inquisitive creatures.

Osiris wondered what had happened to the Poukas once the Spire had fallen. He hoped that their deaths had been quick, and the Aurals within them had not suffered too greatly. He didn't know how skilled Micah or the Intercessor were at manipulating such Skyborne entities, but he hoped they hadn't been corrupted.

The Pouka which had been hovering around Valentin, a strange companion to his Ghost, seemed to become still, trilling softly as it looked up at the place which had likely been its home. Osiris felt sad for the creature, and hoped that it would stay out of the fighting. The Pouka didn't seem cut out for battle, or at least, this one didn't.

They filed into the Expanse, teams spread out into mixes of Guardians, Exos, and soldiers. Valentin, Clovis, himself, and a few other Guardians kept to the middle, as they waited to decide what would happen next.

The pooled luster on the ground was at a comfortable distance now thanks to Valentin's aura which seemed to illuminate everything around him. Several of the other Guardians had done their best to erect similar auras with varying degrees of success.

The Speaker paused at the edge of the Expanse, surveying what had become of it. Osiris could only wonder at how Valentin felt, knowing that he could see what it had been – or perhaps not, given the smothering power of the Darkness on the Spire.

Or perhaps the Speaker saw something different. He felt these kinds of things on a level that Osiris could only begin to conceptualize. He'd realized some time ago that Valentin was something else now; he had a clarity and insight that only came with being the Traveler's chosen.

Vigil's voice chirped. "They're coming."

The Ghost's voice wasn't urgent, but pointed. Osiris looked at Sagira's projection to see their enemies mobilizing. There were many of them, he counted at least four or five dozen, maybe more, who were clad in black armor and carrying strange but conventional-looking weapons. However, it was clear these weren't the mindless corrupted Humans they'd mostly fought on Neptune who'd attacked in waves.

These were soldiers intending to fight until the last man. He saw larger and thinner body types, perhaps male and female, but he didn't know for sure. The cloning technologies within the Spire could create whatever the owner wished. Physicality didn't mean as much here as capability, and it appeared these soldiers were ready.

Augmenting the combatants were an equal number of flying drones that swarmed above them like birds of prey. Osiris suspected wearily that they were going to be fighting these the rest of the time, or at least until they reached the Foundry and could shut down the source.

The Intercessor and Micah had not been idle in preparing for the battle here. Their forces had pre-positioned defenses to give them the clear advantage. Barricades and cover had been erected across the latter third of the Expanse, presuming that there weren't any surprises in the meantime. Anything that could have provided cover for the Guardians had also been removed.

Then there were the clear lynchpins of the defense.

Standing mechanically still in between choke points were constructs that Osiris almost mistook for the Intercessor itself – were it not for a few key differences. The projection from Sagira wasn't perfectly clear, but some details could be made out. They appeared to be humanoid in appearance, albeit clad in flowing black overlapping or interconnected scales. They seemed to have no faces or true bodies. They only had one set of arms, in which one hand held a sword of some kind, and the other was empty.

"A derivative, I presume?" Clovis noted, looking at the projection from Vigil.

"Correct," Sagira said. "They are known as Shards; derivatives as you identified. All the Intercessor requires is a host body, where it will place a piece of itself into them, and the victim will be reshaped and able to wield a portion of his power."

"Does this weaken the Intercessor?" Khojin wondered, eyes fixated on one of the Shards.

Sagira's shell moved from side to side in a 'no' headshake. "Not unless the Intercessor was attacked in the act. Shards require time and focus, but come at no cost to the Intercessor itself. Fortunately, there are likely not many. Unfortunately, they are among the most dangerous entities we can encounter here."

"They are designed to single out and eliminate weak or inexperienced Guardians, or conventional targets of note," Vigil added. "Clovis, your people should not engage."

"Understood," Clovis looked out at the hovering drone swarm in the distance. "My own forces will be occupied enough."

There was a brief tactical discussion, where Valentin and Clovis broke down who would move where, which Guardians would engage the Shards, and a few other contingencies. Clovis pointed out a few observations and adjustments that were incorporated into the overall battle plan.

It was a pity Clovis was still their enemy. He had a knack for this kind of warfare.

Well, they still had Rasputin.

While they prepared, the enemy seemed content to watch and wait. Finally, the positions were set, and the squads ready to move out. There was one lingering question. "We have our assignments," Clovis said. "But what will you be doing, Speaker?"

The Light had already begun to coalesce around Valentin, who now seemed to be focusing on something beyond all of them. "I will begin to restore this place to what it should be," he answered, his voice saturated in power. "March, Guardians. Cleanse this scourge from Her domain."

That was the last answer they would get, and Clovis took that as a signal to begin. The Exo began issuing orders to the Triumvirate-Guardian teams to march forward, while Osiris and the other Lightbearers chosen to engage the Shards moved to their positions and readied themselves.

While the Guardian force began moving forward, Valentin had ascended upwards, wreathed in white-golden Light as bright as it had been when they had first stormed the Exterior. His arms extended outwards like an angel or deity looking down upon them. There was a tangible ripple in the air, as if a challenge had been issued to the existing Order that had claimed the Spire.

It was Valentin against the Intercessor, the Creative against the Stillness that had been imposed. Osiris didn't know what was going through Valentin's mind right now, or what he was truly contending with – but he felt the Light flow through his body and soul, as he summoned it for the battle to come.

As Clovis gave the order to march, it was as though the entire Expanse had become agitated. Wisps of Light, ripples of Darkness, a charge of opposites that made one's hair stand up on end. Paracausal forces were about to clash, and they prepared to bear witness, and fight.

They began moving methodically, the Humans and Exos that comprised the Triumvirate forces holding their fire until they reached the halfway point of the Expanse. The Guardians embedded in the Triumvirate teams, Osiris included, had manifested shields or barriers around them.

These barriers took different forms, from being comprised of pure Light, into an indigo energy, or even a manifestation of an element like fire, wind, or ice. Each Guardian had their own way of bending reality to provide protection – and could react quickly to a shifting battlefield.

They were no longer true novices. They had fought on Neptune against this evil before, it was time to do so again.

Once they crossed a certain threshold, the Intercessor's forces began opening fire. The crack of weapons sounded from the enemy lines, only to be returned by the Note-like sounds of the weapons of Light.

The sheer volume of fire forced the Guardians immediately onto the defensive, as they altered their defenses on the fly to intercept and stop these projectiles and explosives sent their way. Osiris, enmeshed deep in the Light, flicked a wrist and dispelled the immediate luster around him, and was able to see what could be manifested.

The Darkness could not constrain a Guardian whose Light was strong.

One barricade for the soldiers was erected with a few moments as he manifested it into being, then another, and still more. The Triumvirate soldiers took up positions, now returning fire and sending bolts of silver-crystal towards the enemy lines.

Osiris watched as they hit, seeing one black-armored Human suffer multiple hits as crystalline bolts impacted, immediately compressing into flowing droplets. It only took a few hits for the flowing crystal to spread and petrify the soldier, leaving an almost transparent statue behind – one which could only be freed by the Light.

Drones opened fire from above, and the battle turned into a pitched firefight as Osiris saw the Shards begin moving forward. The battle lines had been established, it was now his time to ensure the Shards did not reach the Guardian lines.

He remembered the briefing on what the powers of the Intercessor were, and if the Shards had a fraction of that power, it would likely be able to retain its most useful asset, which was to slave him to the action-for-action Law. What exactly that meant in practice he was going to find out.

It was nice of the Intercessor to give them a trial run for the real thing.

Projectiles, crystalline bolts, and explosives alike whizzed over him as he and the approaching Shard drew closer. It seemed like they would meet on a flat section of the arena, with a pool or the unnaturally still liquid nearby. A perfectly fair area of engagement.

He could see the Shard better now that it was before him. It stood no taller than him, and it was clearer that he was facing something that had been augmented, rather than being born from whatever process had created the Intercessor.

It didn't make it less strange to look at.

The head was indeed faceless, and looked like a featureless oval. There was nothing that resembled eyes, ears, a nose, or a mouth. Osiris didn't know how it was alive, or if there was a different way it sustained itself. The metallic material covering its body was hundreds of overlapping small scales, which rippled with a hypnotic fluidity as it moved with a machine-like precision with each step.

In its hand was a long sword, with a thickness similar to a katana. The edge was so thin that it seemed like a direct hit would snap it in two, though Osiris wasn't going to count on that. The weapon itself from hilt to blade was so black it resembled an empty space instead of something colored like the void.

The Shard suddenly paused, and with the free hand lifted one finger up which was wreathed in resonance, and it ran the digit along the edge of the sword. It was not a fast motion, but it was precise.

Ah, so this is how it happens.

He could play the preparation game.

With the opportunity so generously afforded to him, he quickly reinforced himself in barriers of golden Light, and readied himself to be able to manifest certain applications of it upon immediate command. The Shard flourished the blade, now with the edge rippling with luster, as the Paracausal power in its finger spread to its open palm, as it slammed it onto its chest.

The entire body instantly responded to the injection of Darkness, the scales rippled as if alive as the power sank into it, before settling into an engrossing overlay which presumably protected the Shard. Osiris suspected what it was meant to do – disrupt Paracausal effects. It wasn't true protection, so much as dispelling what he could throw at it.

As there was the sight around him allowing him to alter his immediate, the Intercessor had become something that was not only static, but which would actively fight against that which could change it. A black boulder in a sea of possibility. Well, they were going to test to see how strong it was.

He had an idea of how to do it.

Both approached each other again, ready for the duel to come. Once they were close, there was a sensation that descended upon Osiris, a weight over his entire being that was as much physical as mental. Metaphysical bonds along with a distorted sound where all focus was drawn to the Shard which had imposed a Law upon him.

It had stopped moving. So had he.

It was his move.

There was a strange tension in his body; like if it were enmeshed in a material that was just strong enough to restrain him, but with just the slightest effort he could break. It ensured that he knew each move was one he wanted to do, and if he made the wrong one, it would be costly.

If there was a time to test, it was better now than later.

He first performed a dash to the side, and was able to take a few steps before he was frozen again. The sensation now was like an iron cage, where no matter how he strained, he could not move. Not even a moment passed before the Shard performed a sharp motion with its free hand, and a wave of resonance was projected from it, creating an aura similar to what Valentin had created.

This aura was more concentrated; sustained. It wrapped around his ankles like mud, certainly intending to reduce his mobility. Immediately he found he could move again, and he answered the move by manifesting a sword of fiery Light, and slamming it into the ground. Flames of cleansing radiance ignited from the ground in a large radius, with Osiris in the center. A sound like a hiss seemed to come from the Shard, and the luster around it flickered, but didn't break.

Both paracausal forces vied for supremacy in the radius, the resonance attempted to quench the hungry flames of Light, as the fingers of flame attempted to consume and dispel. Both began circling each other, right now immune to the powers of the other. A rhythm was established, one step, two.

The Shard lunged forward, swinging the sword and Osiris heard a sound that seemed a mix of crackling vibration as it missed him, which he followed up with a beam of Light fired from his hand. It sparked on the chest of the Shard, which immediately dispelled it with a burst of luster, which allowed Osiris to confirm a hypothesis.

He only needed a moment.

One disruption was all it took. Two could play at this game.

A dance or sorts resumed, while each were restricted by the actions of another, to those watching it would seem remarkably fluid. Strike, return, strike. The blade was definitely tempered to disrupt his protections, and he very nearly suffered a cut once the tip of the Shard's blade managed to slice through with little resistance.

Repairing the barrier, he waited for the next strike, it came, and he fired a sheet of flame which briefly engulfed the Shard which was instantly dispelled – and around the feet of the Shard he used the Light to reshape the floor to anchor his opponent in place, pinning its ankles in concrete.

It stopped, he became frozen, as for the first time in their duel, the automaton seemed uncertain what to do. However, it was too late - Osiris knew that he had won. It tried to fire a lance of resonance towards him which his barriers absorbed, and he summoned the purest Light he could, and brought it down upon the Shard in a vicious smite from the heavens.

The flames of Light roared in response to his power, and while the resonance barrier remained intact, it was wavering, and with each attempt to repair it, Osiris only kept his fist raised in the air as he channeled divine wrath time after time, over and over, until it was stripped to nothing.

The Law restricting his actions was gone, as the concentration of the Shard had been broken. He wasted no more time and he had only one vision for the enemy he faced – for it to burn to nothing. Responding to his will, the purity of Light became fire that engulfed the Shard, burning it down layer by layer.

One hand extended, white-gold flames burst from it as he took one step forward, and another, as the unholy entity writhed, emanating a tangible distortion which vibrated his ears. In his other hand he summoned a sword with more heatless flames running along it, before plunging it directly into the heart of the Shard.

Every piece of power he had was channeled into it, and before his eyes he saw the thing disintegrate away from the point of his sword, until there were not even ashes left. In a radius of flames, and a sword of purity in his hand, and power flowing through him, he stood victorious over the enemy.

He allowed himself an exhale, as he stood over the defeated creature, as the battle continued to rage around him, and Light just seemed a little stronger now.

One down.

---

THE EXPANSE | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

A blade wreathed in orange sliced through the air, nearly cutting Fang's arm off. The slash was so close he could hear the subsonic crackle as he just managed to turn away in time, remaining in place and not using up his own retaliatory move. The Shard ended its attack, transitioning into a preparatory strike to respond as soon as he made his move.

This was not going as well as it could be.

Fang thought furiously about what to do, recapping what he had figured out not to do. The resonance the Shard had wreathed itself in was strong, and seemed capable of dissipating any brief blast of Light he could summon. If he could sustain an attack, he might be able to break through, but there simply wasn't enough time before the imposed Law cut him off.

Standing stationary was also a bad idea – the sword the Shard held was much more dangerous than he'd expected, and was capable of cutting through his own barriers as his arm now sported a nasty wound. Shadow was able to heal the cut it had inflicted, which was fortunate because that sword had a property to it which first numbed his arm, and then thinned his blood.

There was a non-zero chance he might have bled out if it hadn't been reversed. As it stood he had an actual scar, or at least would through the end of this battle.

His whole arm still felt cold, and only now was some normal feeling starting to return. It was a distinctly unpleasant sensation, one he tried now to dwell on.

The good news was that the extent of the Shard's paracausal powers appeared to be in augmenting itself and its weapon, and it didn't seem interested in directing the resonance against him. A very small mercy that didn't change the fact that he was in a less-than-ideal spot, which didn't bode well for facing the real thing.

Hmm…

Actually, maybe that's it.

He began weaving the Light into a small orb in his hand as fast as he could. The same swirling ball of corrosive energy that had proven effective several times before. Something that would continually leech and weaken the Shard's Paracausal armor was best here. With a burst he sent it flying off towards his enemy, as it began attempting to leech off of the machine.

The good news was that it seemed to give the construct pause - the bad news was that it didn't seem especially bothered by the attack. With its free hand, it reached up towards the orb, as resonance swirled around its hands, and the ball of Light was suddenly encased in an orb of luster. The hand of the Shard closed, and the Light was snuffed out.

Fang couldn't help but be a bit dismayed how ineffective it had been.

Well then.

The exchange had allowed him to put some distance between himself and the Shard, and they began circling each other again, one step, then another. He found it was probably best to keep moving; trying to keep some kind of rhythm because stopping and starting was simply not something he could maintain.

Ideas? He asked Shadow.

One step, then another.

Someone was going to move soon.

It's not alive like you are, Shadow pointed out. Get it caught into a self-sustaining self-destructive loop. Keep it reactive.

He resisted a scowl.

That isn't my specialty!

You wanted ideas!

He could almost hear the self-righteous huff, which would have been funny, if it wasn't in a precarious and dangerous situation.

Especially because the Ghost had a point.

One step after another.

Around them the battle continued to rage. He heard the sound of explosions and saw drones falling from the sky in the background. The air seemed lighter now; less oppressive, and the Antiphon distant. Whatever Valentin was doing, it seemed like it was having a tangible effect on the Expanse.

It might be enough to give him the edge he needed to win this.

Reactive…

Using the Void here was an option, but it was too early for him to use it like this. He needed to save that for when it mattered, not start expending himself right at the start of the operation. If it was life or death, that was one thing, but he was at worst just losing this duel – it wasn't over yet.

Are you ready? Shadow asked.

He nodded. He'd only done this a few times, mostly to see if he could. Time to see if he could do it again.

His arm whipped up in a flash, fingers sparking. A jolt ran through him that stiffened his body as he shaped the Light into electricity that burst from his fingertips into a stream of blue-white lightning. It hit the Shard directly in the chest, and it immediately began trying to reinforce the shroud protecting it, allowing him to continue the attack.

He whipped up his other hand to add to the attack, and he couldn't help the wide grin across his face as he unleashed raw electric power against the construct of Darkness. The Shard suddenly tossed its weapon aside without a moment of hesitation, and lifted its other hand. Fang grit his teeth, still channeling the Light, but the hands of the Shard were wreathed in flowing luster and he saw that it wasn't breaking through as it once had.

He surged more power; the Shard seemed to flash and grow brighter. Ozone permeated the air around them, but it was soon clear that the construct had regained itself, as its arms lifted and extended, and the barrier of resonance stiffened with its movements – one that the lightning couldn't penetrate, and began directing the barrier of resonance in his direction.

No, this hadn't worked.

Fuck.

Plan B.

He ceased the stream of lightning, knowing that he had a single chance to do this right – if he was wrong here, it was very possible the Shard could win the battle. Fortunately, he was vindicated as his opponent used its reprieve to reconstitute its resonance shroud at its full power, and reclaim its weapon which materialized out of the air in a burst of swirling black scales.

Huh, he didn't know they could do that.

The Shard prepared to attack again.

With a fluidity that surprised himself, he reached back and withdrew the COLDHEART. The Shard seemed to stare at him in confusion, making no effort to protect itself before a beam of pure concentrated electricity slammed into it, bypassing the resonance field entirely. A metallic roar sounded as the beam burned through the armored skin it wore.

Fang angled the beam up until it began drilling through the head. The Law the Shard had imposed on their duel had been broken, and he was readying another power pack in case one wasn't enough. However, when the Shard fell to the ground smoldering, it didn't move, and the luster around it faded, leaving only a charred husk behind.

He still spent another full pack on reducing as much of it as he could to atoms, just to be sure.

Fang floated beside him. "[Good job? How did you know?]"

"[These things are designed to kill Guardians,]" Fang exhaled, reloading COLDHEART. "[Guardians fight with the Light; Paracausality. The Darkness was attuned to protect against it, not more…conventional methods.]"

"[Clever,]" Shadow bobbed up and down. "[Hopefully that's all they have.]"

"[Hopefully,]" Fang looked around to see how the rest of the battle was going – and it appeared they were sending the Intercessor's forces on the run. The Triumvirate soldiers and Guardians alike had advanced further, and Fang glimpsed one of the Shards making a swift retreat deeper into the Spire.

There were plenty of drone wrecks, but surprisingly no corpses. Instead, the battlefield was dotted with crystalline statues as the Traveler's weapons had petrified whoever they'd hit. It was a rather strange sight to see a battlefield of statues and almost no casualties – but he was going to take it.

He looked back, then up to see Valentin still hovering, as some semblance of life returned to the Expanse. It wouldn't bring back the dead, but Fang saw that all traces of Darkness had been purged, and the infinity above them seemed as endless as it should be. The Light was weak, but it was returned.

It appeared that they'd decisively won this battle, even if his own fight had been too close for comfort.

He doubted the Intercessor itself was going to fall to a trick like that.

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The battle played out before her as a grand orchestra; perhaps something closer to the fantastical climax of a story, forces of good and evil, albeit through a dark mirror. The Tyranny of Heaven descending to unleash fire upon those who had found and learned the forbidden arts of the Abyss Defiant.

Sounds were so clear it was as if she was standing in the middle of the chaotic firefight; the vibrating hums of the swords the Shards wielded, the cracks of automatic firearms, and the faint notes from the Celestial's weapons of Light. White and Black, Light and Dark, clashing and echoing a conflict that had existed since time itself had begun.

It was all she could do not to roar in anger as she saw the hated Celestial's Guardians cut their way through her carefully entrenched defenses. The useless machines blown out of the sky by Triumvirate forces, her armored soldiers turned into petrified statues, and even the Shards unable to kill a single Guardian.

Why? Why do they fall so easily?

What only made it worse was that even the few casualties that had managed to be extracted were mitigated as Guardians healed the damaged, or Triumvirate mechanics repaired Exos. She'd watched Valentin ascend over the Expanse; channeling vicious power as he worked to unmake the majesty the Spire had become.

What she'd had was not enough.

Not nearly enough.

As the Guardians had engaged the Shards, she found her eyes being drawn to the ethereal Speaker; the living embodiment of the Traveler's will and power whose putrid Light had been used to snuff out the righteous Order that had been imposed; in its place introducing inflammatory, destructive, contaminating Chaos.

Her skin crawled, her body grew hot, and her retinas burned the brighter Valentin glowed like some unholy ghoul that had descended to inflict the wrath of the devil. The sweet miasma was burned away, replaced by scalding brightness. Hatred burned in his soul, anger roiled her stomach, and black liquid dripped out the corners of her mouth as she hungered for retribution.

His desecration would not go unanswered.

Not in this hallowed temple.

_-A true natural,-_ the Savior murmured, their own eyes on the Speaker as their remaining forces were destroyed, while a few, including a Shard, retreated on her orders. _-She chose well. A genuine believer; one with an eye towards unfettered possibility. Sight in such a way, within a mortal, is rare.-_

Micah glanced at the Savior; the thin barrier between them seeming so fragile, yet so far. Their words manifested a strange feeling in her. In the voice of the Savior was a note of…melancholy? Pride? Something else? She could not tell, but the Savior now seemed much more interested in what they witnessed.

One hand gripped the Sirensong, as thin emerald strands coalesced around her wrists and fingers as she absentminded toyed with the fabric of reality itself. She watched as the last of the resonance within the Expanse was swept away, and waves of toxic Light manifested in its place as the Speaker descended, glowing ever radiant.

She remembered when he had reached out to her when they first invaded.

He'd only wanted to talk.

She had not attacked him. She had not gone to him. She had not tried to strike him down.

She should have.

She should have done more than just ignore him, and dismiss him as a mere puppet and vessel of the Celestial.

But she didn't.

She didn't want to think about why she'd refrained.

She'd told herself it was because it was his battle between the Intercessor; one Antiphon against the Celestial's Choir. Yet seeing the antithesis of all that she had come to understand as power and purity take step by profane step into this Spire forced the truth to emerge forward; one that she could not deny.

Within the emotions that swirled within her, there was one she was loathe to acknowledge. Within the hatred, anger, and fury, there was something else.

Fear.

She was afraid of him.

Afraid of the being of Light; the Celestial's Avatar.

One who wielded his Paracausal Gift so effortlessly; who made even the Given seem preferable to face in comparison.

_-Be not afraid.-_

Micah almost started at the soft voice of the Savior, who had returned their attention to her, looking down on her knowingly. Within the black eyes was not a pity, but a certain understanding; a certain camaraderie of similar realizations.

She swallowed.

_Be not afraid,-_ they repeated, in the same voice. _-To face a Speaker is to face the chosen of a Celestial. This one is powerful, but young. See his eagerness; his zealotry as he calls down the Sky's wrath with such conviction and strength.-_

There was a pause. _-Such power, able to be used without restraint, is addictive. More so because it is accompanied by feelings of righteousness and surety. To brandish the fist of the gods is a gift; to do so knowing one's choices are unassailable and they only answer to One higher reveals their true character.-_

The Savior's eyes returned to the windows. _-Fire burns all it touches, oneself not included. Mortals, and even beings like the Guardians, can only comprehend; can only harness so much of what they harbor before they are swept away by their own waves. This man's fire appears inexhaustible; he seeks to be the hero. We will see if this inferno continues to rage, or claims him as its own kindling.-_

"And if it does?"

_-Then you will stand and fight,-_ the Savior said in a tone that was soft, but which brooked no room for argument. _-You hold advantages he does not. You possess powers he recoils at. Watch him. Pay attention. Comprehend. Speakers possess weaknesses like any other foe. He believes in your salvation, not accepting you have already been saved. It is his weakness.-_

The voice became softer, she had to strain to hear it. _-As sentimental as each of them are. Each believing they are an exception to the inevitable.-_

The Savior was silent for a moment. _-Nonetheless, it is past time they witness a glimpse of what has been done. Prepare the Well. It is time We speak to these Guardians face to face.-_

Micah found that she breathed a little easier. Right.

Watch him. Pay attention. Comprehend.

Turn his weakness into your advantage.

He wanted to be a hero, all of them did.

She did not know how to turn that into a trap, but she would endeavor to do so. And she would do it, as she executed the Savior's orders.

"It will be done," Micah promised. "When the time is right, the Well will be unleashed."

---

THE EXPANSE | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

Above the vast Expanse, Valentin bore witness to armies of Light and Dark clash in a series of discordant notes. Only part of his attention was on the battle proper, as the bulk of his concentration was undoing the damage that had been inflicted by the Intercessor on the Spire.

His battle was one of Antiphon against Countersong, as he uprooted the Darkness that was anchored by the abyssal Song, and remade the foundations of what had been corrupted piece by piece. It fought against him every step of the way, but his will proved stronger, and the filth was swept away or burned.

Below him, the forces of Light marched forward, leaving behind petrified statues and ashes of the Shards that had tried to face the Guardians. The forces of the enemy, scattered, broken, and defeated. What remained of the enemy fled, as they sensed the Paracausal matrix of the structure shift decidedly into the Light's embrace.

Or perhaps they fled before his power; power granted by Her.

As the Guardians and Triumvirate forces convened and recovered near the edge of the Expanse's exit, he began descending and letting the intensity of the Light dissipate, though kept it close at hand.

Clovis and several of the Guardians had gathered near the center. Guardians and soldiers alike now bore marks, grime, and battle damage, even if it seemed few casualties had been suffered. They had entered their first real battle, and emerged victorious. None of the Guardians had died, even if some injuries had been suffered.

That was very good, as the Foundry awaited, and that would almost certainly be a difficult challenge.

"Casualties?" He asked Clovis, stepping onto the ground lightly.

"Minimal," came the prompt answer. "Several Exos experienced total losses. A few others have been rendered non-combat-operational and are being repaired. A few non-augmented soldiers suffered wounds, but were healed by Guardians and remain in fighting condition."

That was very good. Osiris, Shaheed, and Khojin were near him again, and seemed at full strength. Fortunate, considering one of the Shards had retreated, and they would need to face it again. "It seems the Shards were handled."

"More difficult than most of these rabble," Khojin's eyes flicked to where the Shard had fled. "Not strong enough to stop us."

"I doubt that was all they had," Shaheed seemed more cautious. "There is little room for error when fighting them, and I expect even less when we face the Intercessor proper."

"All the better we have some experience of how that will go," Osiris nodded. "I'm confident that we will succeed with little issue."

"Famous last words," Khojin muttered.

Oddly enough, Clovis hadn't expressed his own sentiments, and it was unusual for him to be silent. Valentin looked towards the towering Exo who seemed to be in thought; there was a sense of discontent that seemed to express itself through the mechanical shell.

Clovis did not appear to share in the revelry of victory.

Valentin didn't entirely disagree with that sentiment. Everything had continued to go well, arguably better than they'd expected. This had been the first real battle, but it still felt as though it was a trial run; a test of what they could accomplish and achieve.

"[We are being tested,]" Clovis stated definitively, voice clipped and concentrated in a way that was speaking to him directly. "[The enemy has yet to unleash their full potential. Few of the forces committed were irreplaceable. The Shards were the greatest investment, but the soldiers are not. This battle was a test. I would not expect it to be so simple moving forward.]"

"English, please," Shaheed said dryly. "We're not in the Soviet Union."

If Clovis was irritated, he didn't show it. "Your overconfidence is misplaced. We have only gone through another test; a proper one. The enemy watches us now, and they see how we act. I do not think these forces of Darkness are so incompetent as to think this defense is serious."

Valentin did agree. They were almost certainly being monitored, as whoever had control of the Spire had the capability. "Clovis is correct. We remain cautious, and not become overconfident. I wouldn't say it was solely a test as the Shards cannot be easily replaced – but it could be a strategic sacrifice."

"Knights to be sacrificed, initiating gambit to an uncertain endgame," Clovis mused thoughtfully. "Or perhaps I overestimate the ability of our enemy to display complex tactics. Either this is a gambit, or it is the girl who is the strategist here, which betrays an incompetence I did not expect."

"Doubtful," Valentin shook his head. "The Intercessor has directed this campaign against us. Micah is being used, as are the rest of these reconstituted souls."

"In which case, better to assume the worst," Clovis said, before pausing abruptly, and fixating on something behind Valentin. "Speaker. Something is here."

Wrong.

Something was wrong.

The Expanse had been cleansed of the rot festering within. The Light flowed, first from Her, then through the living conduit for celestial warmth that he had become, and finally into the structures of the Spire that welcomed the force they had been designed to accommodate.

This had once been a place of song. Of life. Of activity, wild with carefree abandon and unimaginable potential. The branches of a waltzing tree, extending into forever, curling and coiling in inscrutable patterns that stretched beyond the firmament and into a million tomorrows. Possibility was the true power behind the Light. The unexplainable. The immeasurable. The unpredictable. A garden whose flora could not, would not, be contained.

He had freed the Expanse, banished the oppressive touch of the Deep, and returned this sacred ground to a semblance of what it had once been. He saw it through his sight. He felt the infinite filigrees of unbound causality weaving themselves all around him, falling once more into roiling artworks birthed by a cosmic artist.

But there was another feeling underlying all of this.

Wrong.

Something was wrong.

No, it was not a feeling.

It was an absence.

It was nothing.

Even the Darkness had sensations attached to it. Sickly, fetid, feverish. It was infectious, it was corrupt, it was nauseating, but it was something. The Void reeked of a cold emptiness which sapped life and energy from all it touched. Yet it too was something.

This though…

This was a pit.

It was nothing.

Empty. An outline. A shape of something that had once been, now a wound in the world. A chasm that opened in his stomach and began swallowing him from the inside out. A singularity of spoiling despair that caused his knees to nearly buckle.

A bitterness, a rage most coiled, composed and masked, that still leaked out of the pit like radiation out of a blasted wasteland. It made his throat tighten with an unspeakable terror. It made his eyes well with tears of absolute sorrow that instantaneously overtook him by merely being in its presence.

Every fiber of his being rejected that opened abyss, as if confronting it would kill him. Death was not something he feared, for to be a Guardian was to break the shackles of mortality itself. That was what he had thought.

But this nothingness, this absence…was it what death was like? Not painful. Not joyous. Not cold. Not brutal. No heaven. No hell. No peace. No torment. It was simply a…cessation. The winking out of a small ember, not even leaving ashes to mark its existence.

No, this wasn't death. This was something worse.

Oblivion.

And he realized he was afraid.

He, who commanded Her imperious hymn, was afraid.

Fear as natural and instinctive as that of a rabbit in the presence of wolves. Fear that spread to his comrades. Be they Guardians, be they Exos, be they Humans, they all shared a primal instinct in the very depths of their collective psyche that sounded like an alarm in all their heads.

They could not sense what this was, not like he could, but they had become still, silent. They could not comprehend the wrongness of this thing that should not, could not have existed in a world of reason and beauty. They did not comprehend, they did not understand, and yet they tensed all the same.

The nothingness leaked out of that hole, suffocating them all, yet Valentin had to be brave. He could not falter, not when he was probably in the presence of the true enemy for the first time in this offensive.

And so, he turned around. He turned around, despite his heart beating thunderously in his chest; his every impulse demanding he freeze where he stood. Each instinct screaming, begging, that he not lay eyes on whatever was behind him.

He turned, and faced the maw.

He turned and faced…glass. A see-through barrier, but nothing he could describe as physical. Transparent. So fine and seemingly brittle that the naked eye alone could not perceive it, and which he could only sense through his Paracausal sight.

They all felt its presence, they all knew that something was observing them all like a visitor from the Outside, one watching through a one-way mirror. They could not see the unnatural fog and undulating waves on its edges, as if reality were flesh cut by a surgeon's scalpel and peeled back ever-so-slightly. Just a small incision, just a simple cut so that this thing could push through despite the world's protests and attempts to defend itself.

Behind the glass was a presence. One silently standing, as if it were a guest patiently waiting to be allowed in.

A mere projection, that nonetheless captivated his gaze and made it swim. One that made the hairs on his skin stand on their ends. One that made his jaw clench and his teeth grind against their counterparts. Every impulse was practically screaming at him to blast the opening with cleansing Light and erase it from the face of the Universe - and yet he was frozen.

Not due to power. Not due to an active attempt by the presence, or an employment of the Darkness it surely commanded with ease. Nothing so simple, so explainable, so understandable. For this defied simple, easy, explanations.

No, he was frozen because something inside of him recoiled upon laying eyes on this thing. Something intrinsic, something primal, something so attached to his sense of identity and self that seemed to be directly assaulted by the entity's mere existence.

The Guardians near him cast sidelong glances, he could feel spikes of their concern as they beheld his state with worry, unsure of what to make of the visitor. Unsure of how to react to the terror coursing through their leader's veins.

He could not falter here.

|| Be brave ||

He inhaled. Exhaled.

|| It is us who must face oblivion so others do not ||

Her voice calmed. Her words soothed. Her resolve strengthened.

So he grasped that strength; he focused his mind, calmed his soul, and hardened his resolve.

For this was Her domain.

And he was Her Speaker.

He looked through the mirror for the first time.

The visitor was…a man.

No, it was merely showing itself as a man. An older man with white-grey hair and an accompanying beard. Disarming. It had healthy pale skin, and wore a black, refined suit. Charming. Someone that would have commanded respect if it decided to roam the Earth under this disguise.

Someone that could have stood as a member of a community, a contributor to society, if it so wished. An elder to share his wisdom and experiences with newer generations; who would enjoy the twilight of his years in peace and contentment.

Had it been a man, that was.

But there were details that revealed its true nature. Details that it could have easily extirpated from its person-suit to better blend in. But it didn't need to pretend, did it? It wanted them to know who it served.

It wanted them to realize what its presence meant.

Resonance wreathed the suit's cuffs and collar. Its tie was solid gold, rippling and readjusting itself with endless micro-movements that made the supposed metal seem alive. On its chest was a small pin. An innocuous aesthetic addition that would have not been noticed by anyone else under normal circumstances, but he knew the shape of that small, flaxen pin. A pyramid.

Mockery. Nonchalance. An amused acknowledgement of what was coming their way. An unsaid declaration of what they now faced. Such a small, little thing that pin was. Such an enormous, abhorrent weight it placed on his shoulders the second he saw it.

And its eyes…

Valentin did not stare at them for long. He only needed one look for the image to burn itself into his retinas and for his mind to be scarred by the nightmare. It did not even try to pretend to be something that had a soul.

He stared into pitch black orbs, ringed with unsettling and uncanny white that betrayed the malice behind its courteous visage. They were glassy, as if made from crystal instead of flesh. They were big. Too big for its face. They were empty. Two yawning hollows that sucked the temperature out of whatever they stared.

It might as well have not had eyes. Its face might as well have been a skull with emptied sockets.

The filigrees of Light running through the Expanse, the beauty he had so carefully worked to repair, were dragged into its eyes, disappearing into the night with wails that were unceremoniously cut off before they could even beg for mercy.

It was a blank space on reality's canvas. The walking outline of something that once had been. , beyond death. Death at least left a memory. Death did not unmake what one had been so utterly. It was a vacuum. A thing that had forgotten what it was to be, and would drag them all down into its ignorance. An eraser, where the Traveler was a creator.

He looked away, daring not to gaze at those eyes again, lest he fall into them and never find his way out.

The anathema smiled.

Smiles were supposed to be expressions of mirth. Of joy. Of comfort and ease. An expression that his species had evolved to develop in order to facilitate social interaction and bonding. This thing did not know what a smile attempted one, the same way a facsimile of wood could be dressed and painted to resemble a Human being. But it could never match the real thing. It could only ever approximate.

Wrong.

His instincts screamed again.

This was wrong.

But he had to persevere. He had to continue. He had to be brave. He had to see what this thing's true face was. She expected him to comprehend the totality of what they would face; Darkness, in all its truth and horror.

With a hand that only slightly trembled, he turned his mask back to enable his Paracausal sight, to have the illusion be stripped away.

There was nothing in front of him.

Nothing.

There was a negative space, shaped like a being. The emptiness between stars coalesced into a vortex of hatred and resignation. A hope sink, stripping it off of him layer by layer. A black hole punched through reality, like a sharpened pencil through a thin page, that made the world bleed as the price its rage and hatred demanded and collected on. Its depth had no bottom he could see.

Vast. It was so vast.

A temple to raving madness. A monstrosity beyond perception, which challenged perception itself as if it were something that could be was in front of him was but a piece. A fragment, for the nothing that it was could not manifest through such a small crack. He saw its immensity, hoisting up the person-suit like if it were a puppet placed on someone's finger.

What was this thing?

How could something like this even…exist?

Valentin swiftly reached to his mask and deactivated his Paracausal sight, for he would rather face the anathema than this...affront to reason.

The entity inclined its head and placed its arms behind its back, its black orbs that he refused to call eyes stared unblinking as their gaze lanced through him, pinning him where he stood like an insect to a board.

_-Welcome, children of Sol and blessed of Almaral, Traveler of the Celestials. We have been expecting you.-_

The voice was a chorus of sounds and pitches; neither fully male or female, neither high nor low, but as if a symphony of people, speaking from one mouth in perfect harmony; acting with one mind. Projection or not, the whispers enveloped him in a tempest of emotions. Happiness. Pain. Promise. Despair. Acceptance. Fury. Indignance. Hope.

The innocence of children that cared only about playing and their laughter. The struggles that adults of all species and cultures faced daily. The comfort of the ignorant. The pressure of the knowing. The voices could not touch his mind. They could not sneak through the doors to his thoughts, and yet his heart started ringing in his ears all the same.

He nearly fell to his knees, shocked by the legions upon legions of the lost that spun around in this black hole's orbit, trapped in its maw forevermore. The blissfully unaware heard the voices, and believed them to be a simple parlor trick of the abomination before them. Yet these were no tricks, they were not imitations, they were not vocal deceptions.

He knew what they were.

He knew, and despaired at the revelation unveiled before him.

Souls.

So many.

So different.

So many whispers floating all around him.

So many lives stolen and defiled.

From so many corners of the firmament. From so many different peoples and societies.

Valentin did not know how he would face this monster when it decided to come in all its horrific majesty. Simply understanding what it was, this living collection of harvested souls, made him sick to his stomach and questioned everything he knew.

But he had to address it.

He had to be brave.

Valentin appraised the suit closely, motioning the rest of them to stand back as he stepped closer. "Who are you?"

_-Many things, Valentin Kozhukhov,-_ the anathema answered in their chorus; too considerate, too accommodating, for some reason still emoting and moving as if it were a man. As if it did not know exactly what he had seen.

More mockery. More knives brandished by that false smile instead of teeth. _-A mentor. A protector. A guide. We listen for those who call for salvation, and help them reach their desired Shape. We are their hope, when they have none to draw from. We are the voice to whom they listen. We are the encouragement they need to give in. We are their salvation. We are their Savior.-_

Every single Ghost seemed to jolt in alarm upon the visitor's conclusion. Vigil's fins spun in alert. "A Disciple!"

Disciple.

He knew what they were. He knew the significance of the title. Not gods. Not kings.

Students. Apostles. Philosophers.

The appropriation, the defilement of the word turned his stomach further. A word of humility, curiosity, and exploration taken to perverse ends.

As if there was an ideology behind the horror they committed. As if there was wisdom in genocide and the usurpation of all that was good and beautiful about the world and those that called it home. As if they had a mission, a dream to dedicate their power and their service to.

Dark angels of a black religion. The pantheon of vile demons, sitting in a round table surrounding their Lord. This was all they were, this was all they could be. And yet they believed themselves more.

So, the anathema had a title. Yet another lie it chose to wrap itself with, for it had nothing else to offer.

The Savior.

The sheer farcity and grotesque irony in those two words made Valentin's heart swell with righteous anger. His hands balled into fists, tremors of rage overtaking his body as he beheld this crime against creation.

Anger allowed him to abandon his fear, for fear could not conquer a Speaker when he beheld the sheer injustice before him. He opened himself to the maelstrom of whispers that assaulted his every sense once the Disciple spoke, for he understood that each was a victim he would avenge when he burned this monster on a pyre and it was consumed by flames of Her holy Light.

Every iris on every Ghost turned red, all of them fixating on the projection with murderous intent. Flashes of Light burst from their cores, as they assumed battle formations. Valentin also felt something else shift.

As if new eyes were looking down.

She was watching; listening.

The Disciple turned towards the Ghost hovering near his shoulder. _-Your machine speaks true. Yet it is little more consequential than Her Speaker being present, is it not? We are higher beings in this cosmology, and it is our right to intervene as We see fit. It is not the first time We have done so, nor have Speakers past refrained either.-_

Valentin ignored its attempts at faux diplomacy, and pondered on the revelation of who the true mastermind behind Neptune's fall was. If this was indeed a Disciple, the entities he knew were the most trusted and powerful servants of the Ascendant Lord, then a few puzzle pieces fell into place.

He forced himself to stare into the black orbs. He pushed beyond his every screaming instinct and his every sensation of wrongness. He was more than his weaknesses. Fear would have no hold on the Traveler's Speaker. He fixated an accusing gaze on the anathema, realizing the sickening crime it had committed to serve its Lord's designs, and would only add to the endless list it could likely be accused with.

"You."

The accusation rang out, heavy and weighed with roiling, righteous fury. The thing tilted its head slightly, waiting for him to finish.

It knew what he would say. It would not deny it.

"You corrupted her."

_-Micah Abrams took her first steps alone,-_ the Disciple rebuffed. _-We merely helped guide her when she found her way to us. A woman of drive, power, and authority, who claimed the attention of our Lord through nothing but her will.-_

The Savior's voice seemed to swell. _-Thus, We are here to show her the Bladed Path, and allow her to achieve all that was denied to her. She, who saw the failing of her limited form, and has ascended to something Majestic. We did nothing but offer her salvation, and lead her on the journey to reach it."

Beneath his mask, Valentin's face contorted with fury. As the horror spoke, he was able to hear the cries of infants intermeshed with the cacophony of lost souls, drowned out by compression and proximity to their fellow inmates.

But he could hear them.

He could hear them trapped alongside billions upon billions in that singularity that would never let them go. Children. Innocents. Young voices whose lives had been stolen, and condemned to a place worse than any interpretation of Hell.

Just like Micah Abrams.

Those who were defenseless when preyed upon by an entity whose call was luring them away. The entity who could only be called the Devil, for the Devil was real. Not the one described by many religions. It had no horns or flaming trident. It ruled from no crimson palace and punished no wicked.

The Devil wore a suit. Its words were like sweet honey. It had eyes like dying stars. It smiled as it dragged victims into the moonless night, never to be seen again. Fury grew; atrocity compounding atrocity, as the depths of what this thing had done appeared to have no end.

"She is a child!" He roared, the force so strong it vibrated the intangible barrier separating him from the monster.

His sudden outburst made the Guardians surrounding him flinch, and they flared with unleashed Light as they readied themselves to attack the Disciple at his order.

_-She is her own person. One who does not need the patronizing or lecturing of adults,-_ the Savior paused, unconcerned by the Lightbearers. _-We come with a proposal for you, Speaker. We know the Spire cannot be held forever. If She wished, She could certainly reduce this structure to atoms – but it serves as a test for Her new Guardians, one She is willing to allow.-_

Calm yourself, Speaker. Vigil interjected urgently before he could respond. Your rage is warranted, but it must be tempered. This being speaks with the voice of the Ascendant Lord. It may be wise to listen, understanding the veiled knife it holds.

He took a breath, and his lips pursed. "Speak your proposal."

_-The Intercessor is capable of repurposing Heaven's Gate. It can produce a portal that leads to territory under the domain of the Ascendant One,-_ the Savior stated. _-Allow it to finish this effort, and it will depart with Micah. The Spire will be returned to you to reclaim or raze as you deem necessary.-_

"Allowing you to depart with two powerful assets?" Osiris snorted. "Do you believe we are so foolish as to accept such an 'offer?'"

_-We offer you a path to prevent the further deaths of your compatriots and allies,-_ if the Savior was irritated by Osiris' interruption, they didn't show it. _-If you continue forward, you will suffer losses and face desolation. Perhaps you will win. Perhaps it is inevitable, yet the price will be high. We offer peace. No more. No less.-_

Valentin listened to the words, and watched the entity which spoke them. They were clever, and knew just what to say to appeal to virtues of the Light, while leading them down a path of self-destruction and darkness.

They were lying.

This thing could do nothing else.

Valentin faced the person-suit, which shifted and reacted with movements that were too close to being convincing. But he now knew what he faced. He felt no fear. "You deceive us. Your words have no domain or authority in this place."

There was a long pause.

_-We know you can see us, Speaker of the Light.-_ the Savior's choral voice was oddly gentle, allowing the softer voices of children to take prominence. _-You understand what We are, and are repulsed by what you cannot accept. Nonetheless, We deemed the attempt possibly fruitful. As one might say, it is in our nature. So be it, Guardians. Continue your march.-_

He had heard enough.

This Disciple would not sully his gaze any longer. Its stolen innocence would not pollute his ears any more than it already had. Its judgement would come one day, and he resolved that he would be the one to burn the Devil away.

Today would be the first step along this path.

Valentin stepped forward, one finger with Light wreathed around it lifted, and for a moment he faced opposite the entity, and tapped a finger to the projected glass. Cracks across the illusionary glass pane spread and multiplied in a matter of milliseconds before it shattered, leaving the way forward clear.

The last glimpse of the anathema seemed to be watching him while it shattered.

And the last thing he saw was its smile.

Osiris was looking at where the Savior had stood within the illusion. "That is-"

He trailed off sharply, as all of them felt something shift. No one else seemed to realize something was off except them. The feeling was suddenly everywhere, a sense that made all his hair stand up, as some kind of Paracausal manipulation was happening. Guardians one by one drew on their Light, while Clovis looked around sharply, and entered a battle stance.

Possibilities ran through Valentin's mind as to what this was, it was tugging, pulling, at-

Him.

"The Well!" He suddenly yelled. "They're using the Well!"

He immediately manifested a ward around himself which would protect his soul from being tampered with, yet knew that it was happening too fast for him to save everyone. They had known that the Well of Souls was capable of storing spirits and resurrecting them in bodies – but he hadn't considered that it could be weaponized to rip them out.

As fast as they could, the intangible barriers that protected their souls were placed upon the soldiers, but they were forced to watch as there were flashes, awful screams, and men and women fell to the ground, lifeless as their essences were ripped from their bodies.

---

THE EXPANSE | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

/PRIME DIRECTIVES::BREACHED

/COMMAND==ASSESS

To be an Exo was to be better.

That was how it was framed. Slogans and phrases designed to lure and entice; purpose offered to those who would willingly volunteer to sacrifice flesh and mind for the certainty of machinery and metal.

There were those who wished to give their lives, ambitions, and happiness to serve the missions of the Triumvirate, and their nations of birth. To serve a higher call, once which mundane life could not meet. To become a permanent, eternal, superior individual who would be the bulwark against the enemies of Man.

/CENTRAL PROCESSING::PSYCHOLOGICAL COLLAPSE IMMINENT

To be an Exo was to sacrifice.

The comforts of life that men were familiar with had to be given up. For some this was not a dissuasion, as an Exo would no longer feel hunger, thirst, or many other discomforts of life. They would never tire or become exhausted. Rest was an option, pausing was a choice.

Yet they could not feel as they once did; it would only be echoes and algorithms that attempted to resemble something similar to Humanity. While one no longer needed to eat, they could not savor and taste. Carnal pleasures once enjoyed were no longer possible, nor even desirable. The flexibility of their bodies, in a thousand ways taken for granted, would become restrained in the limitations of a machine chassis.

And yet, this loss was not felt as acutely as many expected, for their minds were now adapted to the machinery they inhabited. The Overminds lurking under each consciousness ensured that they did not long for what had been lost.

That was not their purpose.

They were to be soldiers of iron and steel, machines with the intelligence and creativity of the living, all marching in lockstep to serve state, nation, and Man.

/CONTINGENCY::INITIATE SHUTDOWN

To be an Exo was to serve.

Those who had been laid on the operating table willingly or otherwise had known that there were expectations for their service. The theoretical free will they had possessed was now at the whims of engineers and programming. Perhaps some certainly believed they would be able to resist or retain themselves, yet this was a truth which each of them knew deep down, and most accepted.

Such was the way things were intended to be.

So when they awoke as machines of war, they obeyed. When the orders were given, they marched without hesitation or complaint. Each enemy would be cut down, even as they in turn faced destruction. Yet no matter how twisted and mangled their bodies became, they would endure to the end, until the last servo gave out. For that was what was expected of them.

To be an Exo was to never break.

They would not be allowed to break.

No matter what they did.

No matter what they saw.

No matter what they wished.

/TERMINATE::PERSONALITY MATRIX == JASON_CAYDE.2

If the men and women who had given their minds and lives were incapable of service to the Prime Directives of the Triumvirate, then they would die.

And be reborn better.

/EXECUTE COMMAND

Jason Cayde was not a good man.

A failed man. A failed husband. A failed father. Failure clung to him like a curse, brought about by nothing but his own self-destructive tendencies, his caustic tongue, his substance abuse, his lack of discipline, his indulgent vices, his enslavement to the almighty casino and the roll of the dice. There were few virtues he could claim but love for his family.

Love that he had abused, spent, and destroyed.

He had been sent wandering into the world; bereft of home, family, or purpose. It wasn't long before he found himself in a cell after yet another indulgence of a failed man lashing out upon the world; the crime was less important than the purpose for it. He was a man destroyed, a failure who saw no path but for it to end. A man who would have gladly accepted this, if they had only let him.

Instead, they had given him a choice.

To be locked away, and rot until death claimed him.

Or to become better.

/BEGIN::OVERMIND ASSESSMENT

He made the choice to become better.

So he was taken to a moon called Europa.

/BEGIN::SITUATIONAL ASSESSMENT

Jason Cayde entered the crucible as he was shorn of his failed body, mind, and personality, and in place of this failed Human rose a machine soldier. And he, for the first time that he could remember, knew that he was better. That he could become better. He returned to Humanity, a man with no past, or at least one he wanted to remember.

But this was only the first step.

/BEGIN::PERSONALITY MATRIX == JASON_CAYDE RECONSTRUCTION

He was no longer plagued with the vices and addictions he had suffered. His tongue remained biting and caustic, as he could not fully refrain from the occasional jab and barb he enjoyed dishing out so much - but not quite as sharp as he once had.

Yet which was most critical to him was that now he had something to focus on; a mission to devote himself to, perhaps even a cause to believe in. If not for Triumvirate or Nation, for himself. Scales had fallen from his eyes, and he knew he could become better, and when he did, perhaps he would return home.

Perhaps.

Jason Cayde was sent to Neptune, and bore witness to a hell that should not exist. Blue visual receptors had attempted to process the horror and violence; his digital mind attempted to parse the images he saw, and reflected upon memories now stored in his mind, unable to truly rationalize it as Guardians and demons wielded powers that he could only imagine as magic.

He had seen something that mortal minds were not meant to be. He was in a battle with the mind of a man who'd preferred to run from fights than finish them.

Cayde may have inhabited the body of a war machine, but his mind had still been that man in a cell. He was not a man of combat, he was not a fighter, he was not strong. And as he faced the unfiltered truth of war, and war waged on a cosmic scale, he would have broken.

That was not permitted to happen.

Cayde died on Neptune.

A better Cayde took his place.

A single iteration now defined Cayde, one that he needed not to share. Now he understood more, and the Intelligence had adapted his mind to the carnage of war. The blood and gore no longer bothered him; his mind had been hardened to many of the sounds that might have once shaken him. He even joined in with the soldiers in making jokes and light of what they saw, not even to cope, but as a way of comradery he could understand.

Cayde-2 fought well.

He distinguished himself as Neptune was reclaimed street by street, city by city, enough for him to be selected for the operation to retake the Spire. Guardians, friend or foe, it seemed had not been decided yet, led. He knew their names, witnessed their powers, and this time was close to them and bore witness.

Even as he saw the true power of the enemy before them.

He entered the Expanse with the legions of Exos and Triumvirate soldiers. He fired his weapons of crystal at the enemy, and watched as the bolts had turned them into petrified statues of crystal. And as he fought, he could not help but see the spectacle as Guardians fought the black statue-like creatures with swords. A lethal dance that even he struggled to keep up in, as reality around them appeared to shift and warp because of Valentin's power.

His mind had wavered.

They were not meant to see this.

The Intelligence lurked, preparing to intervene if necessary and terminate a failed iteration.

He resisted.

He clung to his mind, not knowing this kind of primal fear, so unusual was it in his suite of emotions, only knowing that something was lurking to strike him. He only knew that he could not break.

It seemed it would succeed, as the battle ended, and they prepared to exit the Expanse.

Then they had seen the strange entity that spoke with Valentin. Cayde did not know what the others saw, to him it seemed to be a figure of blurred shadow, with an undefined face and voice. Once it faded, there was a brief movement, and even through the remnants of his shattered soul, he felt something.

His audio receptors processed the calls and shouts from the Guardians, yet he entered into a strange state of fugue as he watched the surreal tragedy play out before him. Soldiers screamed and panicked as souls were ripped from their bodies, while Guardians attempted to protect them.

To watch a person flail, convulse, bloodshot eyes rolled up all the way to their skull, as their contorted hands and forcefully curled fingers tried to grasp on to the collection of their selves was too much.

To see their mouths foam, their noses bleed, and hear their rattling yells and gurgling yelps as their memories, their emotions, their personalities, their dreams, their worries, their wants, their fears, their everything were all torn out of them like ticks out of skin…

That was the tipping point.

He was not strong enough.

Not yet.

/ASSESSMENT::COMPLETE

Cayde-2 died in the Expanse.

For only a moment the world blinked out as the Intelligence corrected more flaws and failures.

More vulnerabilities to be shorn, more issues that had been remediated.

/UPLOADING PERSONALITY MATRIX==JASON_CAYDE.3

Another failed man died in the Enochian Spire.

/INITIATING PERSONALITY ACTIVATION

A better man took his place.

/RELEASING CONTROL

---

APPROACHING THE FOUNDRY | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The aftermath of the Well's power was brutal in a way that was starkly different, and in some ways worse than the bloodiest of battlefields.

While there were a minority of the Triumvirate soldiers who were not Exos, they had been unable to act fast enough to save many of them, leaving the battlefield in the Expanse which they had emerged from with Human corpses on the ground. The consequences of their hubris; the price of their arrogance.

Symbols of their failure, even following triumph.

Valentin had only sensed a portion of what they'd felt; forced to watch helplessly as their very self had been torn from their mortal shells. There was a faint echo; a hint of what once had been. One emotion above all.

Terror.

Terror at feeling themselves slip into the bottomless embrace of death. Terror at the realization they were no longer within their own bodies. Horror as they felt themselves be swiftly reduced to nothingness. No peaceful death, but a violent extraction and pacification.

No wounds covered their bodies, but on their faces lay the truth; in their clenched hands and contorted bodies was the story. Faces set in anguish and fear; in their eyes was something worse than the simple absence of life.

There was an intangible emptiness within the lifeless organs that could not be explained; not simply as if something was absent, but as if something had been lost that could not be reclaimed.

Valentin knew what it meant though.

It was natural for souls to leave their mortal bodies; to depart was a natural part of life, even if that death was violent. But most death did not come from aspects intending to target the souls, they only destroyed the corporeal, and when the body fell, the soul was free.

These souls had been directly targeted, and forcibly ripped from their bodies prematurely.

Now these angry, shaken, and restless spirits were certainly trapped within the Well of Souls. A construct whose purpose had been perverted to not be a final resting place or refuge for the departed essences – but one which had become weaponized.

He had not considered that such a perversion of one of the Traveler's most sacred constructs could happen - but the Darkness cared not for what should be possible or right. It would slave and corrupt every tool it could to achieve victory over its cosmic enemy.

And it was their duty to stop this.

They had to keep going.

The dead would have to wait, the living mattered now.

The Guardians looked to him for answers; they looked to him to lead. Even Clovis waited for his decision on how to proceed.

So he turned, and continued the march. They fell in line behind him.

So they marched.

So they ascended through the Spire.

This time they were prepared in case the Well was fired again. Guardians were evenly spaced out between the Triumvirate forces, so that if the Well was used, they'd be able to quickly shield the souls of the living from that grim fate.

The Ghosts upon Valentin's direction gave clearer instructions to their Guardians about how to shield their spirits from such attacks – as while they'd been able to protect themselves through instinct, it was almost certain that the closer they got to the Well, the more concentrated and powerful it would be.

Up and up, they went.

Their victory in the Expanse had not been for nothing, even if the Well's attack had dampened their triumph. There was a different presence to the Spire that hadn't been there before; a wavering in the Antiphon and the oppressive resonance everywhere. The Light was returning, as he broke the first chains of the imposed Order, and allowed the true form of the Spire to begin expressing itself again.

Up, they ascended.

How far were they? Within the Spire convention failed to apply, and they could have been ascending dozens of meters, or only a few. If it was like this, even when the Darkness was trying to smother it, he could only fathom how incomprehensible it would be when restored to its full brilliance.

He hoped to stand in it, when this was done. But only once they had won.

The Foundry awaited.

He could imagine that normally they would be greeted with the sounds of the machines of Light working tirelessly to arm and augment the Celestial forces, but as they drew closer to the Foundry's approach, there was something almost worse than noise.

Silence.

Thick, oppressive, silence. They soon saw why.

As they reached the Foundry's floor, they were confronted with nothing but darkness in every single direction. Impenetrable shadows, thicker than any fog, rested before them. It was like looking into the deepest part of the ocean, or the endless void of space. A blackness that did not merely reflect light, but actively devoured it. There was no way to see even a centimeter beyond where the Night touched.

The Exos in particular seemed unsettled by the ocean of nothingness in front of them, one that was soundless and sightless simultaneously. Within this, Valentin knew that the Foundry laid, but from the outset they would be walking blind, and he knew that the Intercessor's forces would not have this same handicap.

Valentin looked upwards, noticing that there was an endless void, as if they were on a rooftop or a place with no tangible ceiling. By all rights they were in the center of the Spire, but again such conventions didn't necessarily apply.

All the same, he knew that there was something that was going to be…different about this place.

Shaheed stepped forward, and experimentally summoned a ball of pure Light in his hand. They watched as the darkness did recede before him, but only by a fairly small radius, so thick and pungent was its consistency. Unnatural it might be, but it was strong, and the murmuring Antiphon was underlying it.

Osiris glanced in his direction. "Plan of action?"

The Pouka suddenly flew forward – having reappeared by his shoulder after the battle in the Spire. It trilled loudly, flapping its hypnotic wings as if trying to make a clear point. Valentin wasn't clear on what it was saying – but the Ghosts seemed to understand. "We need to turn the Foundry back on." Vigil said. "And reclaim it for the Light."

Valentin nodded, as did the rest of the Guardians. "Simple enough," Shaheed said, with each Ghost in eyesight seeming to shrink and…cringe for lack of a better word.

Clovis noticed the reaction as well. "I suspect," he said dryly. "That it is not a simple a matter as merely 'turning it back on.'"

"It is not," Vigil said. "The Foundry is not simply a place of machines and production – it is a space that transcends the three-dimensional perception most life possesses. It functions in a way that is dangerous to any mortal who enters it, where a single wrong step, approached at a wrong angle, can shear you into nothingness."

A vision appeared in Valentin's head – an image of a Foundry that was in working order. A place where his vision seemed to be perceiving a space where there were copies of things layered over each other, constantly shifting and warping. The space itself was fluid, and nothing made sense.

Machines produced strange products that ran on conveyor belts that ran into walls. When viewed at different angles, the belts and machines themselves changed. When he looked down, he was on the ceiling. When he looked up, he was on the wall. It was all he could do not to become disoriented and fall down.

Vigil bobbed in the air. "That is the Foundry. That is what we must awaken."

Valentin shook his head. "It will kill us."

"Yes – if you do not know where to go," Vigil said. "We can navigate these spaces – so can the Pouka. This is their habitat. We will act as your compasses and do the work of reviving these machines. We will not be able to assist you in this process – but guide us to each Fabricator, and we will do the rest."

"But you must listen to everything we say," Sagira floated forward, emphasizing the word strongly. "Some Guardians can learn to walk with ease, but this is not the time to learn."

Though given you have stood in the Traveler's heart, I believe you will acclimate quickly. Vigil said privately to him.

"The good news," Jaren Ward said. "If it's this dangerous for us, they won't stand a chance."

"Indeed," Vigil affirmed. "It is almost certain that they destroyed the Fabricators rather than risk trying to employ them."

"I presume they can be repaired?" Clovis demanded.

"They have always been destroyed," Vigil said cheekily. "And they have always been intact. We need only go to a point where one of those suits our interests."

If the Exo could furrow his brow – if he had one at all – he certainly would have. "We will proceed as we planned – with Guardian-led units, sticking close together," Valentin said, addressing the general group. "Do not under any circumstances leave your unit. Anyone who goes into the darkness will be lost."

"And what about the matter of communication?" Shaheed asked. "Sound does not appear to travel within the darkness."

"We have Ghosts, we'll communicate through them," Valentin said. "Vigil?"

"Affirmative," his Ghost said. "I would also suggest the darkness can be weakened – and only you are strong enough to lessen its hold."

"As you say," Valentin took a breath. "I will begin – be ready to move, only follow the Ghosts – and we'll win this. Understood?"

There were affirmative yells and roars, from Guardian and Triumvirate alike, as they dispersed into their units, and prepared to march into the darkness.

Guardians began manifesting blinding spheres of Light, which hovered above them as they took positions within their tightly-knit formations. While it was usually one Guardian maintaining a sphere of Light, the other Guardians augmented their unit with barriers, shields, turrets of energy, and other defenses from possible attacks to come.

His turn.

Valentin looked into the dark infinity, and took a breath.

He let the Light enter him again; he let it be drawn to him once more. Its warmth, surety, and comfort formed a cocoon around him as he rose into the air again. Power at his fingertips, he sent threads of Light with the Notes of his Song into the black, becoming a conduit once more for the Paracausal authority he commanded.

One arm extended out, his hand perpendicular to the ground, he appeared as though a general of Light, one directing his forces to storm the stygian battlefield, as power streamed from him, seeming to be swallowed by the void.

There was no clear effect at first, and the abyss seemed just as thick and black as before, but he did not stop as the Guardians began their dive into the fog. Power surged through him, and into the black, creating innumerable points and strings for him to pull upon when the time was right. An underlying net was being built into this construct of nothingness, one that was almost ready.

And when it was, then he only needed to pull.

The dark ocean was soon set alight by flashes of golden shimmering, and from that point it innately no longer seemed too oppressive, and more importantly – they could not hear the faint sounds of the humming fabricators and shuffling forces of the Intercessor. In the darkness, there was only one true and tested method.

Illumination.

And now they were ready to take the Foundry back.

---

THE FOUNDRY | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The Darkness was much worse than it had been in the Expanse.

The Expanse had been a pleasant stroll compared to the suffocating miasma that surrounded them. Even with Valentin using his power to make the heavy shroud less intense than it had been – they could at least hear now.

But in some ways it was almost worse than the eerie silence, because now they knew of what lurked within.

This battle did not comply to a sense of fairness or coordinated advance. They had confidently – or at least assuredly – strode into the dense sea of black, but had quickly been assailed by the reality of what they stepped into. The waves of orange resonance sapped around them, even with the orbs of Light above them providing as much protection as they could.

The miasma seemed to be fighting back with concerning ferocity, as even if it dissipated in the Light, whichever Guardian maintained the power said it was as if trying to pull against an invisible weight that refused to let itself budge. Those who touched the darkness reported there was a solidity to it, a coldness it left behind, and made them feel oily and dirty.

This was not going to be a battle they would emerge unscathed from.

Even as the Guardians created spheres of refuge around each of their units, the remaining ones worked to establish barricades, shields, and attacks – and even with these efforts, they were unable to prevent losses from slowly mounting. The forces of the Intercessor weren't wielding just the weapons they'd been able to take from the Foundry and elsewhere in the Spire.

Guardians - including Shaheed, who was in his unit - had been intermittently sending out seekers of Light which provided some much-needed illumination across the miasma. Fang and the rest of the Guardians had gained a few clear images of the weapons that were being used by several soldiers of the Intercessor. To Fang, they were armaments that seemed initially strange and unwieldy.

They were blocky, with hard angles, and a stone-like quality that made them appear to almost be hewn; carved rather than forged; barrels that were square instead of cylindrical. Weapons that seemed impractical until the realization spread as to what they were. Shaped weapons of the Darkness; the answer to the Celestial's weapons of Light.

A brief flash or knowledge from Shadow had given him the context; similar instruments that had been faced before in the Traveler's previous battles.

Sharpened knives Shaped from Memory, ones which harnessed the Darkness as easily as their own weapons drew upon the Light.

And they were just as deadly.

No more were there simple exchanges of projectile volleys, but they now faced assaults whose expressions were not fully understood, but that nevertheless had devastating results on those unlucky enough to be targeted. Soldiers were sheared into chunks in explosions of crackling resonance. There were eerie chimes preluding other soldiers exploding into flesh and gore, like overripe tomatoes splattered against an iron wall.

Some weapons aimed to destroy the mind rather than the body, inducing deteriorated mental states upon a hit and making soldiers go insane or lose their bearings. Others slowly corrupted the individual, and slaved them to the Darkness before they had to be put down by their own side.

The communications between Ghosts and Guardians were constant, frequent, and painted a harrowing picture of a battlefield under constant adaptation as the Intercessor's forces brought to bear each edge of its thousand-bladed knife in order to slow them down.

Even so, they advanced.

Their Light was maintained, and Fang's unit finally came across the first of the Fabricators that seemed to be in a state of suspended animation. It was a bizarre-looking device, one with strange angles, incoherent design, and a blanket of resonance over it, as if it was…restraining it.

To Fang, he couldn't tell it was a machine at all, it seemed closer to a statue of abstract art, or a transformer that had been paused midway through its transformation. It certainly didn't remind him of a fabricator, even as they could make out conveyors, offline drones, and automation.

It was also very clearly broken, but according to Vigil, that wasn't going to be a problem. They needed to turn this place back on, and use these Fabricators to banish the Darkness from this place.

"We're here," Shaheed stated, planting his feet firmly, while channeling more Light into the sphere above them, extending the radius of their refuge. "Eagle, get this operational!"

"I am beginning," his Ghost flew forward atop the Fabricator, channeling Light, and the pieces and fins of the machine started disconnecting, spinning, as if taking part in a complex invocation. "Follow the commands of your Ghosts – when this is operational, do not deviate. Synchronization beginning."

"Synchronization supporting," Shadow added, echoed by Zhang, Wei Ning's Ghost, and the third Guardian who was with their unit. "Assume the designated positions."

While under fire, both Ghosts began relaying orders to each Guardian and soldier, making them take very specific places within the radius. Fang had a few questions, but he definitely wasn't going to question right now. That brief image Shadow had given him of what was coming was difficult enough to wrap his mind around.

The Triumvirate soldiers were decidedly tense given some of the places the Ghosts had ordered them to stand were exposed, even as Fang conjured barricades and cover to the best of his abilities. Even so, this was a vulnerable position, and things were going to get worse as they brought it back online.

Fang conjured a purple bubble-like sphere around the entire Fabricator to protect the Ghosts, as those were going to be the prime target. The liquid-like barrier added a lavender coloring to the Light around them, and as the fabricator began to regain their Paracausal power, its radiance cut through the obsidian mantle - and became an even more obvious target.

Shaheed fired another series of Light tracers, briefly illuminating the assembled forces of the Intercessor coordinating their forces, aiming and firing their weapons in symphony with the Antiphon. The barriers rippled as they absorbed bolts of darkness and projectiles alike, while Fang had to reinforce.

However the illumination was just what Ning and the Triumvirate forces needed to concentrate their fire. The Guardian herself was almost as bright as Shaheed, and her aura of power similarly intense. Cyan lightning wreathed her body, that turned her into a living conduit, which filled the air with ozone.

She had no weapons in her hands but what seemed to be raw bolts of deific lightning that she conjured in her hands, before launching them like javelins, usually after a slight leap into the air. Upon impact of each bolt, there was a brief flash that dispelled that darkness again, before summoning another bolt of lightning down to smite any survivors who foolishly remained in range.

A Zeus in the flesh, as she threw bolt after bolt down; seemingly inexhaustible while also not being afraid to punch any thrall that got too close with enough power to disintegrate them. This time was not different, as one of her bolts impacted one of the soldiers, obliterating them instantly, and sending the others close by scattering.

The barrier he'd imposed was taking significant fire, which he had to dedicate to shoring up, but their entrenchment was becoming much more difficult to dislodge – and as the Fabricator was starting to come online, things were beginning to…change.

The area around the machine which they stood in began occasionally flickering; as if multi-layered realities were appearing right on top of each other like mirrored ghosts. He saw flickers of where he was standing, and what surrounded him. Sometimes it seemed like there was a wall in front of him, other times a chasm, still more times a mixture of both.

The Fabricator itself seemed to also flash with completely different machines in its place. Ones that looked like conventional, if advanced machines, and others which he struggled to put into some kind of grounded coherence. These were only flashed for now, but he understood why he couldn't move no matter what.

There was also the sound of something different in the air; a faint Song that was coming from…the Fabricator?

He heard Shaheed begin humming along to it, as he conjured more spheres of Light within the refuge he had created; living turrets that began firing beams of raw might into their assailants, leaving charred remains in its wake. The attacks continued, growing more intense – and more desperate.

There was a sharp Note as one of the Exos barely could speak before they exploded in a burst of metal and shrapnel. Shaheed sent a bolt of Light, and they saw what they presumed to be the sniper in the distance. With a sweep of his hand, Shaheed directed every turret of Light concentrated on the sniper, turning the soldier into a glowing inferno, which was then hit with a bolt of lightning for good measure by Ning.

The flashes were becoming more persistent; the reality around him simultaneously more solid and less coherent. No more was the machine broken, but its metals were glowing white and gold with the power contained within. The Ghosts were continuing to move in a synchronous dance only they knew, and the Song it played grew louder and louder.

He began seeing a dozen different scenes before him, replaced with a dozen more. Reality broken down into overlaying scales and mirror images. New sounds accompanied those of battle; a deep thrum that indicated that something had awakened.

Almost like a dragon from its slumber.

Shaheed seemed to be fully in tune with the cadence of the Song, and Fang felt that something was going to soon shift – and soon enough, it did.

The Fabricator came to life, and he was thrown into somewhere he should not be.

He was standing in a fortress. He was standing before a chasm. He was standing within a tower. He was standing around a barricade. He was standing in all of these places, and none of them at all. Mirrors overlaid mirrors, the air itself was almost physical, and what laid within it held a heaviness of a primeval soup from which anything could emerge.

He turned to see that the Fabricator was as fluid as any living creature, though unlike the area around them, there did seem to be something always coherently there, but what form it took changed depending on where he looked at any time.

Even turning his head caused the Fabricator to turn into a kaleidoscopic pane of stained glass, vibrant with every single color available to the spectrum of comprehension as well as things he could describe with words, for they tapped into senses and sensations Human beings had not evolved to feel, let alone behold.

But it was working.

It was doing something.

All he knew was that his head swam, and there was an intrinsic part of him that should not be here.

"Synchronization complete," Eagle confirmed, floating back down to Shaheed's shoulder. The rest of the Ghosts did the same with their respective Guardians. The radius of Light and this tangible atmosphere they walked in was beginning to creep forward of its own accord.

Shadow floated in front of Fang, his fins continuing to turn, twist, and shift as if continually orienting himself. "Follow my directions exactly, take no steps without instruction."

"I think," Ning muttered, as she saw a trio of Intercessor soldiers suddenly seem to disappear within the dimensional shifts. "That we should listen very closely."

"Lead on," Fang told Shadow, as he took his first tentative steps forward at the Ghost's urging. "Let's go to the next one."

And hopefully, he wouldn't make a wrong turn and fall into a pit of fire that opened before him.

Or something worse.

---

THE FOUNDRY | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

Truthfully, Clovis had expected something more impressive from this Intercessor and the Darkness it could command. While its Paracausal powers were notable, he could not help but notice that it was quite amateurish when it came to its proper application.

He imagined what he could do were he to command power to reshape a world, and found what had been done quite…lacking. Part of this he was sure because the Intercessor was, ultimately, a construct. A machine slaved to its programming, one that seemed quite ideological in nature.

Having power, but not necessarily the creativity or wisdom to employ it properly. No doubt the armies it commanded were impressive – were they not facing an opponent with equal capability, and a clearly superior tactician in the form of himself.

The first battles had hardly been a challenge to manage. The forces of the Intercessor, to include the Shards, were limited, simple, and predictable. It did not necessarily mean they were easy to face, as the Guardians could attest to – but predictability became a simple matter once he'd seen the extent of their effectiveness.

He had references now, audio-visual proofs that were analyzed and added to his memory in microseconds. Every encounter, every reaction, was an additional datapoint for him to use to predict, shape, and control the battlefield with both soldier and Guardian able to act on his orders. And in these first battles, he had been vindicated.

Clovis did not expect things to remain so simple, nor did he think the Intercessor was completely devoid of intelligence. It likely knew it was wielding a sub-par hand, and using its tools to the best of its ability. The girl was likely useless in the realm of strategy, and he doubted significant resources would be expended in a suicidal defense.

The usage of the Well of Souls he held some approval for. The machine, such as it was, clearly was not meant to be utilized in such a way, but it had been a smart choice to employ it. Personally, Clovis would have used it in a more…opportune time, not to effectively make a point, but the enemy was allowed such blunders.

He would exploit each and every one of them.

This, however, was more than a challenge – it was a puzzle – and a decidedly fascinating one at that.

It didn't relate to the ocean of shadows – though that also presented its own unique obstacle. His role had been similar to the battle in the Expanse, though this time he had been pushed to new limits. As he could not rely on sight, he had to rely on sounds, reports, and comm chatter from the Ghosts and Guardians.

Mortal minds would be unable to make sense of over a dozen overlapping conversations and respective chaos. While the limitations of the Exo platform were demonstrating themselves as it related to properly perceiving certain forms of Paracausality, it was not to a crippling degree. In this, the Darkness was simply another element to adapt to, and overcome.

When it came to this artificial dusk, the systems utilized simply didn't work. Paracausality affected the Exo as much as the organic, though the way it affected them was different. The mental effects it caused were non-existent, which was a boon for them, but it also deprived them of perceiving data that would assist them – such as the Antiphon.

An effect he was blind to but was nevertheless able to contextualize into a variable added into the overall battle plan. He was the only one who was capable of harnessing and employing all of this information in a way that could be rapidly disseminated; in a sense, he was the centerpiece of the forward march.

The Ghosts, Guardians, and Exos continually fed him information of where they were, what they were fighting, and he constructed that into an ever-evolving battlefield projection, which he fed back into the Ghosts who updated their respective Guardians. He had enough data to be able to piece a few things together about how this Foundry was laid out, where entrenched defenses were, and what forces were at work.

Now though, he found he was truly in his element, where he was not simply a mere strategist, but a leader.

The advances had been made, and as the first of the Fabricators had been secured, nearly a quarter of the Triumvirate forces he'd brought with them were dead or rendered inoperable. He had quickly excised any forces that had been lost in the abyss as additional casualties. Acceptable losses – for now.

And as the Fabricators had been brought online, and the true nature of the Foundry slowly reconstituted, he was able to understand what the Ghosts had been saying about this place.

The Fabricators weren't merely machines, they were metaphysical constructs whose function relied on them being higher dimensional. As the Light was returned, the Spire gradually reverted to a place which was not constrained by the three-dimensional plane they were so used to.

Clovis had sometimes wondered what it was like to exist in such a place; how it could be studied, let alone comprehended. He saw reality before him, a place of shearing dimensional mirrors and conflicting images. It was a place that would drive most mortal men mad when they tried to understand it, where sense of direction was impossible, and time itself was fluid.

But he got it.

He could see how this higher-dimensional space functioned. He could see and process the multitude of angles and possibilities all at once. It tasked his memory to capacity, but he could look into the white-gold spaces that were rapidly growing, and he could see as clearly as the Ghosts where to go.

It was glorious.

And because he could see, he could navigate, and because he could navigate, he could command. The Ghosts were busy keeping their Guardians alive, while also restoring Fabricators one by one – masterful machines whose function and design Clovis could only marvel at. This place was, as the Ghosts had said, not for mortals.

But he was not mortal.

He was right where he belonged.

A feeling began growing in him, one that seemed rather inappropriate for such a time, but one he felt was well-earned as he strode through the maze of the Foundry with the skill and surety of one who had been walking these places all of his life.

He would not let this smug feeling influence him – but he did find it supremely ironic how he had been able to comprehend this place within only a short period of observation, while the Guardians and the Intercessor – each Paracausal entities, struggled or needed assistance.

Even the divine had their weaknesses, it seemed.

With his sight, he was able to distribute orders with pinpoint precision, guiding his own units through the Foundry without risk. He knew what angles to enter, when to stop, and when to employ this four-dimensional space to their advantage against the enemy. He sadly had no means to directly influence the fourth dimension itself – something he suspected the Ghosts and possibly the Guardians could do if they had the skill – but navigation itself was enough.

As the Fabricators were being activated, they were slowly spreading, and linking the space into one congruent whole. The dark miasma was being pushed back, though still fighting, even as it now contended with time and space itself becoming an unexpected factor. He wondered if…

Ah, there we go.

He heard the first report of the Siren, who had struck without warning and killed a unit of Exos. Clovis had wondered if she would show up soon – now was as good a time as any, especially with the Foundry being reclaimed.

Clovis quickly communicated this to the Guardians, while he positioned his forces within the Paracausal space, in places that could be properly exploited should they be attacked. They were deep enough into the reclaimed Foundry territory, that he doubted the Siren could easily strike – a theory that was vindicated as Micah appeared to be striking on the fringes, at more isolated Guardians.

With limited success, it would seem.

Hard to be an assassin in the blinding light, especially if one was unable to comprehend the higher plane they inhabited. However, as Clovis appraised the attacks, he did note with curiosity that the Siren did seem to have some skill in navigating the Paracausal maze – or at least she knew enough to not die.

But the Guardians had adapted, and with their Ghosts, were keeping her at bay.

In the meantime, there was commotion elsewhere that was causing problems.

At the outset, these new units appeared to be more of the Intercessor's soldiers, ones who were cut down by the combined power of Guardians and Triumvirate forces. Or they would have been, had the Celestial bolts not slide off them like water, and seemingly mortal wounds barely made them flinch.

One of these soldiers was hit with a direct bolt of Light that turned the head into a mess of meat and brains – and the corpse shambled onward, propelled by some unholy force. A frown would have crossed Clovis' face if he could have managed it. The Guardians were only able to stop it once they'd literally reduced it to ash.

Other units weren't as lucky, and were overwhelmed by the resilient attacks of the revenants. Chatter from some of the Ghosts expressed alarm at a notable fact – these combatants did not have souls, which struck Clovis as strange, but might explain their nature.

Interesting.

From what Clovis understood of the cosmic mechanics at work, a soul was something integral to life. And a corpse was not like a machine, which did not require such a thing. One would assume that a reactive mind required a soul - but that did not appear to be the case. Perhaps conventional wisdom did not apply here, or it was yet another instance of this Darkness inducing unnatural things.

In response, the Fabricators seemed to be producing something tangible – something which at first glance, Clovis found odd. They seemed to be spikes of the Godsteel, ones that were practically glowing with Light. The Ghosts were instructing them to use these on the soulless constructs after pinning them down.

Ah, that's how it is.

What better way to kill an undying creature than to stab it in the heart with a holy weapon?

How positively clichéd.

And if there was anything that represented the divine in this battle, it was the Traveler and her Light. The stakes were quickly picked up by Guardian and soldier alike, as the advance was slowed – but continued forward all the same. More ground was taken, and the forces of the enemy continued to retreat.

The midnight mantle itself seemed to be weakening, and as Clovis pressed forward through time and space, he marveled at the construction and power of the Foundry that had been reawakened.

He could only imagine what he could do with such a place.

Musing for another day. He filed it away.

There remained work to do.

This facility would soon be theirs.

---

THE FOUNDRY | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

It was harder.

Why was it so much harder?

It wasn't supposed to be like this, not when this was her domain, yet one which had slowly been taken over by the Light. And not just the Light, but this infernal Celestial sorcery. It had been more than simply restoring the power of this place, but had turned it into a realm where she struggled to maintain her bearings.

She was one with the Darkness; the soothing mist that allowed her to move through it seamlessly, where with just a single pull of the emerald luminescence she could arrive instantly at any point of it. Yet the sacramental incense had been disrupted, and in its place was a constantly-shifting environment that seemed inherently hostile to her.

It was only her ability to see the connecting strands that allowed her to be able to navigate this new multi-faceted reality that had been created. It struck her that even the Guardians were struggling to comprehend this place – but so long as they had Ghosts, they were less vulnerable than she could hope for.

This was a place that had been made for the masters of Light – a place whose complexity was painful, and was far better off choked and destroyed. Once more free, because of the infernal Guardians.

In the Darkness, she was able to be safe.

The Darkness allowed her to be seemingly everywhere at once; for as long as the Luster reigned, her spear was never far away from the throat of an invader. But the beautiful black ocean was wilting and fading; first by the Speaker's incessant efforts to weaken the Antiphon - and the Lightbearers pushing forward and restoring the Foundry to its full power.

The offensive here was more substantial, and her forces were able to extract notable casualties from the Guardians, but as they seized the Fabricators – which apparently had minds of their own, and could reshape the very fabric of reality by their simple presence, these small victories were being whittled away.

It had demanded her direct intervention, and only now was she realizing that she had waited too long. When the first Fabricator had been restored – something that she hadn't thought was possible after destroying them – it had set in motion a chain of events that she couldn't stop on her own without risking everything.

No matter what now, she could not afford to stand by while the Guardians marched forward without challenge. They could not think they had won so easily. She had fought them before, and almost won, she would do so again. The hated Clovis Bray she knew was in their number, but right now, he was unimportant.

He was a mortal who she would take pleasure in breaking when the time came.

The real threat were the Sky's Liars – and the Fabricators.

She needed to find an opportune moment to strike.

In and out of the ocean of Darkness she flowed; weaving through the imposed night with a dancer's grace and viper's sting. She was able to flow through from Celestial force to force, but found herself running into the cursed tampered space, which heavily restricted her movements, and allowed the Lightbearers to counter her attacks too easily – and what didn't help was the Ghosts and sometimes Guardians who seemed to be manipulating the honey-thick air to actively try and destroy her.

She couldn't go all-out, not yet. She needed to hinder; slow them, not risk an ill-timed strike that could be taken advantage of. Right now, she was supposed to lurk and weaken them; picking them off one by one. The real battle was still to come, and this effort was simply to make sure she was at an advantage when it did.

Yet even with this caveat, she was displeased at her progress.

She knew He would be displeased as well.

She couldn't displease Him.

The most she'd been able to kill were a few Exos, and a soldier or two that was just a bit too far from where they should have been, where she was then able to abduct them and snatch them into the Darkness, if not outright kill them immediately. Beyond the mind-burning feeling of being within the altering fields of the Fabricators, the sheer radiance of the Light hurt her eyes, and her skin seemed to itch and burn the closer she got to the machines.

The Paracausal engines fully infused with Light were like suns, much like Valentin who she could glimpse far behind the lines, hovering over everything, and infused with the horrifyingly-unshackled wrath of the Sky.

Such was the divine might that lone man commanded, that she wondered if she would combust into flames and be rendered down to ashes if she did so much as approach him. And she was not about to tempt such a fate. No, she was going to kill at least one Guardian before she left here – and there was one group that seemed tantalizing.

There were three Lightbearers leading it, and just as many Triumvirate soldiers. One of the Guardians was focused on the Fabricator with the Ghosts moving around them, while the other two were keeping watch. One of them was very large, for a Human, clad is heavier gear, while the other was certainly a more normal size. She lurked around the edges of the black mist, looking closely; waiting.

One of the men's eyes were glowing with Light, and a golden gun was in his hand. The bright eyes suddenly locked on her, he raised his blazing revolver and fired. She was just able to slip away along the radius, but the man's weapon followed her, firing repeatedly.

He saw her.

How did he see her?

He wasn't supposed to see her in the Darkness.

Fine, he would be the first one to die. The Sirensong thrummed in her hands, as she emerged into the domain of Light, using the Strands to weave her way through a safe path. She intended to strike him through the heart. Then the world around her shifted, and he was suddenly in a different place, while she struck the ground, a moaning chorus of crimson lightning bolts lashing the radius of her impact zone.

"Ahh, so the girl-shade emerges," the large Guardian rumbled, holding in his hands a long chain-like weapon with a spike on the end. A lash, or was it a whip? There was an expectant, malicious tinge to his voice as he lashed the hand forward sending the tipped chain towards her. "Get over here!"

The chain intended to skewer her, but she was able to delicately sidestep, summoning the Strand to retaliate with bindings of her own. He laughed, and suddenly he wasn't there anymore as everything blurred and she was suddenly upside-down, and was barely able to orient herself before the man with the golden gun was taking aim again.

With a wave of her hand she cocooned herself in a woven mesh of Darkness, which was just enough to absorb one of the shots while she fell to the ground, twisting and landing on her feet, as the flaxen projectiles, as if they were flares being belched by the Sun itself, burned through the weave. The big Guardian wasn't idle, and his chain flew towards her again, and this time it wrapped around her arm, clinging to her with an unnatural stickiness.

The chain immediately ignited, and began cooking the flesh as she risked using the area to her advantage. She quickly jumped to her side, and as she hoped, the unpredictable discontinuity effect worked to her favor, breaking the chain and shifting both Guardians into different places. The Lightbearers immediately continued their pursuit, where she had moments to act.

And she couldn't win this. She could try, but this was not a place where victory was a prize to claim.

And if she couldn't win, she couldn't risk losing here.

With the Sirensong wreathed in resonance, she pulled on the strands she could see, and retreated into the Darkness, entering the balming coolness of the black. Her entire body was smoldering from the Light, and blood wept from where the chain had burned deep. The Guardian with the gun was still firing at her, but she used the Master's blessings to teleport to safety.

She had to recover before the coming battle.

Her stomach twisted, and not from exertion or pain.

Because she had failed here.

The Foundry was lost.

---

THE FOUNDRY | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The miasma was wavering.

The Light was growing.

The Foundry sang.

With each Fabricator restored to working order, another stanza in the mechanical hymn was added, and together they became strong enough to drown out the Antiphon, which still stubbornly insisted on imposing estranged Order upon the Spire. Perhaps this Song would have been silenced had Valentin not been there, weaving each new note into being, combining all into a symphony of power that would not be vanquished anymore.

Alone, the Fabricators would conduct the Song of the Foundry, but in his hands, they were instruments that he was able to employ, and turn the very reality within it to his own will. They were extensions; eyes, ears, and hands that were as much a part of him as his corporeal shell.

Infinite and eternal; Vigil had been right.

This kind of place was where he belonged.

In the Foundry was his vision made manifest. It was his natural habit, the embrace of an old friend; a home returned to, where there was a gentle warm fire that stirred in him memories of childhood and family huddled together.

All that is, was, and would be. No more separation between time and space. It was his to pull and shape as he deemed fit. This was the Traveler's domain, and he was Her architect.

The Darkness saw only machines to be slaved and which could only fulfill a single purpose – and when that purpose could not be met, they would be destroyed and razed. Both to punish, and to deny the Light its tools. A simple mindset, one that failed to see a grander design, for they saw simple constructs as their uninspired weapons were, nothing more, nothing less.

They saw the brilliant infinity of the Spire, could not abide it, and sought to smother and condense it into something less. To pacify, to mitigate, to reduce. Order imposed upon the chaotic and malleable, for in the Dark, nothing could disrupt its grand design.

Not today.

And never again.

He paid acute attention to the faint Songs of the Fabricators when they were coaxed awake by the Guardians and Ghosts, and then let their voices join with his, as the Darkness was banished meter by meter. The Intercessor's forces had made them work for it, inflicting numerous casualties that had destroyed large swathes of Triumvirate forces, and leaving even Guardians drained.

Yet it was insufficient to stop their advance.

And in this domain of Light, where all bent to Her will and power, there was no escape.

The Dawn banished the Night, such was the way of things, and the natural order was one that ironically would not be denied today. While the mortal would have seen the cloud of darkness still smothering them, Valentin saw through it with ease. His filaments of Light had become so thorough, and with the Fabricators now augmenting his power, it was nearly time to dispel.

Even the Dark's breath was no longer an obstacle to him. It had become little better than a faint mist that was laced with white-gold threads. He was one with the golden power that washed over everything; aware of each thing that moved inside it, able to see the Foundry mapped in its perfect contradictory complexity that transcended the corporeal three dimensions.

As the thralls of the Darkness continued to try and fight, no more did the Guardians need to defend themselves, as he merely altered the places they were standing in, and they fell into bottomless chasms, into fiery furnaces, into pits of Godsteel spikes, or were crushed by walls from past or future.

Some he trapped in place, unable to be reached by their allies. To be brought out at a later time, for the Traveler to judge them. It would have been convenient to trap Micah in a similar way, though unfortunately her powers were more sophisticated, and would have allowed her the means to navigate her prison and escape.

She had fled from the battle some time ago, perhaps wisely, as this was not a clash she could win.

Power thrummed through him, and he'd never felt Her closer than now as the beacons of Light throughout the Foundry rose to a crescendo, and a finale that he would enact by his own hand. This battle was one that he was now going to end.

Enough blood had been spilled by the brave here.

Enough lives had been given.

They could hide no longer.

He saw the soulless fiends charging forward; he saw the black-armored soldiers carrying the Shaped weapons of Darkness, he saw the remaining Shard of the Intercessor directing the attack, occasionally firing resonance bolts into the advancing Guardian and Triumvirate units. He saw them running, entrenching, anticipating.

So secure in their defense.

So secure in their power.

Presuming they could comprehend at all what they were, and that they were not just thralls to the Intercessor and Siren.

He'd known that Micah had contributed in her own way, but this time had been driven off without succeeding against her prey. It was not her at her full strength, but she'd been mitigated, and Valentin no longer feared that she would be one that would be difficult to beat. Not with this power.

Perhaps there was some hope to secure the corrupted girl without killing her.

But first, he would dispel the final illusions before they marched to reclaim the Well.

The Speaker's hands were lifted to his sides as he hung overhead the battlefield choked in miasma; they glowed with golden-white radiance, as his own Song reached its final requiem. He only needed one final pull and he would bring it to an end, and restore the Foundry to its former purity.

Let there be Light.

Throughout the Foundry, pillars of celestial incandescence fired down from the heavens directly on the Intercessors forces. Instantaneously there were dozens of thralls and soldiers who were hit with the full force of pure Light, incinerating many on the spot down to the very atoms, and inflicting fatal wounds on others.

The miasma faded with a final puff, as the Light bounced throughout the impossible geometry of what the Foundry had been, and instantly there was no longer a corporeal space the Darkness could navigate through. He let them wander to their deaths or in endless loops, for his focus was on slaying this last fiend.

The Intercessor Shard towards the end of the space had managed to shield itself with a resonance field, and prevent the higher-dimensional field from claiming it – but its power against the overwhelming Light was wavering. With a wave of his hand, Valentin wove his Paracausal power around it, thousands of individual threads of white-hot Light wrapping around the infernal machine like consuming vines.

It tried to resist.

He directed the Foundry around it, shifting it in place, pulling on the different possibilities, all of which were happening at once, until it hovered over a cauldron of eternally burning blinding heat. With a release of his fist, the Shard fell into the righteous hellfire, and even this construct birthed from the Ascendant Lord's armories could not resist the tempered purity of the hottest Light.

There were loud cheers of triumph from the surviving Guardians and Triumvirate soldiers, as they marched through the now-reclaimed Foundry, led by Ghosts and some Guardians who had learned to navigate it. Valentin noted that Clovis of all people had apparently figured out how to navigate it as well without help.

An interesting development.

Above them, Valentin moved forward, attuning the remaining destroyed or offline Fabricators he could see, infusing them with Light once again, and adding them to the Chorus that he led. There was a clear shift in how the Spire felt now. No longer was it a place that was fully under the imposed Shape of the Intercessor.

It was being reclaimed piece by piece.

And unlike the Intercessor, he could harness each part of it to its full potential.

This is not your domain.

It is Hers.

Now.

And forever.

The Well of Souls awaited. It was time to end the Siren.

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The exit to the Foundry, much less the path further up, was one that only those who could navigate the Foundry would have been able to find. While not intended to be a labyrinth, it might as well have been for anyone who was unable to discern the impossible geometries of the Spire's depths.

It simultaneously existed and did not exist. It led to an exit, and was a dead end. It was a reflection of the greater complexity and escalation of power needed the higher one went in the Spire. No more were the pathways simple and corporeal; now they were layered, complex, and indecipherable to the ignorant.

And above them, Valentin could begin hearing the Well. The unintelligible whispers of the souls that should be resting, now called to action as the machines that held them were twisted for abominable purposes. The souls were not fully aware of their surroundings, but the tremor of uncertainty to what was happening was clear.

Even they knew what was going on was wrong.

Unnatural.

Evil.

Attuned as he was to the Spire, even the Order imposed on the Well was not enough to keep its whispers from him. He knew when the Well was about to be fired again now – and it soon was.

This time, they were prepared.

This time, it would not claim more victims in its perverted cause.

With the Light wrapped around him, and the power his to shape and weave, once more incantations were made to dissipate the Well's cold grasp at the spirits of the innocent. Souls of the vulnerable were shielded from even the slightest touch of the dark power that sought to take them. No, he would not allow others to suffer this fate.

Once the attack passed, they continued upwards, Valentin, Osiris, Shaheed, and the Ghosts navigating. Clovis also had proved adept at navigating the myriad of pathways, almost certainly the benefit of his augmented machine mind. Valentin wondered if there should be concern for such a capability.

But such was for later.

They soon reached a part of the Spire that had not been reclaimed by the Light, and the atmosphere shifted once more to something darker.

The Antiphon was again audible – and unlike how it had been through most of the facility, this time it was far louder. It thrummed and thundered strong and relentlessly. A clearer sign than any other that they were approaching the final barrier; they were reaching the last stand.

The Antiphon's song was intense; roiling. A complex symphony of power, of defiance, that acted to hold back the tide of Light that had been unleashed by the Foundry.

Reality bent to the Darkness again; constrained under its singular imposed Order.

The transition to a reality that was more easily discernible to the mortals in their entourage may have come as a private relief for them, and perhaps even some Guardians. For Valentin it felt like stepping from a comfortable fire into a frigid wilderness, naked and alone but for a torch.

The Darkness was a suffocating blanket over him, his armor a diving suit in an ocean. A core part of him that was being suppressed and stifled. A strong sense that this was a place he did not belong settled over him, and it was right. Creatures of the Light did not belong in habitats of Darkness.

Thus they needed to be cleansed.

He exhaled, calm settling over him as the Antiphon thrummed in his ears.

Yes, they were reaching the end.

Their march continued upwards until they reached their destination.

The Well of Souls.

They entered a vast open arena; a space that was far too big for what should have been the confines of the Spire – but not so massive as the first Expanse below. A single pathway stretched from the entrance they came from to a center platform; an elevated sequence of flowing steps which contained the mechanisms that controlled the Well.

More pathways extended from this center platform to each respective side of this arena, and below the paths, below the platform, was the pale blue Well. Not one of water, but a different kind of substance. Bluish mist shrouded the depths of the apparatus, underneath which were seemingly countless machine-like pods.

Osiris cautiously tapped the mist-like shroud with one foot, and found that it was strangely solid. The rest of the forces began slowly factoring that into their approach, tentatively treating the translucent ground as a battleground to fight upon.

But the machines under the shroud were only where the souls were to be harnessed and placed into new bodies. The souls themselves were not confined to a singular place. He could see them saturating the arena; fragments of people of whom now only echoes remained. Wisps of gold, white, and blue; whispers of reaction.

They sensed the Light in them.

Even as the Dark tainted their place of rest and refuge.

Their enemy awaited them.

What Valentin believed to be the last remaining Shard of the Intercessor stood in the center of the Well, within its control platform. Its body was shrouded in resonance, as each arm either manipulated the Paracausal machinery of the Well, or altered the Notes of the Antiphon.

The Siren stood in front of the Shard, at the foot of the control platform.

There was no trace of the wounds that had been inflicted upon her in the previous battle. Her weapon rested against her shoulder, held loosely by one hand, as red lightning ran along the shaft. Her other hand was wreathed in the infinite multitude of emerald threads. There was something different about her now.

There was a sharpness that hadn't been there previously. She seemed more confident, more aware, bearing a considerable weight when before she had been but a feather.

Valentin faced her. "Micah Abrams."

"Speaker."

Her voice, previously raspy and brittle, echoed with tangible force. Curt words she chose to address what was likely an abomination in her eyes scythed through the air, cutting at the very concept of uncertainty and doing away with its remains.

Valentin heard something reverberating around her body, rippling and undulating like waves attuned to her voice, and he perceived that she now was not merely in command of the Antiphon. It was within her.

Perhaps she was directly attuned to the Intercessor.

Silence followed their words; voices carrying over the entire arena as clearly as if they were standing side by side. Valentin's consciousness extended to hers, a gloved hand barely touching the surface of an oil spill, and found that his presumption had been correct. There was not just Micah there, but something more. A private Song of power that was being played solely for her benefit.

An augment – and a shield.

Something that would almost certainly prevent any final efforts to save the girl, and bring her back before it was too late. Though if he was honest with himself, it was too late for the girl as she lived now. Micah Abrams was gone, and there would be consequences for what she had done and become.

But her soul could be saved.

For she was not evil. Not truly.

She had been led astray, corrupted, twisted into a dark reflection of everything she claimed she wanted.

But there was something else besides the Antiphon, there was a connected presence that was not augmenting her, but only observing. A presence that he now knew with familiarity which twisted his visage into a scowl of disgust. Valentin tried to perceive the anathema, but only heard the million-whispered voice of the Savior in response to the probe.

_-It is a beautiful thing to witness the chrysalis of life,-_ the voice mused. _-When they can act without fear. Unshackled from expectation, love, and hope. For that is who they truly are, and only then are they free.-_

Free.

He would have scoffed at the absurdity, had the entirety of the Well not screeched in a deafening choir. A black mass, more horrible than anything that should have ever been found in such a place as holy and pure as this. An anthem to blasphemy. The wicked grin of madness. Pitch black orbs, carved from crystalized cruelty, staring at him with inconceivable glee.

The Disciple's words penetrated down into the ocean of spirits, and bounced from sedated mind to slumbering soul, jolting them awake as a nightmare did to a person, letting them all know it watched. Spirits that began to scream with instinctual, reactive horror and helplessness.

There was a roar of Valentin's own that echoed in his mind; one of fury at the violation on display before him.

His fists became clenched at his sides. The Light was like a knife at his hand; blades at his fingertips that he longed to plunge into the laughing malevolence.

They knew, through some instinct that creation had mercifully spared them from sensing throughout their mortal lives, that the monstrosity was gazing at them with hunger. That they were but wingless flies trapped in a spider's web. That if it wanted, it could steal them away from the paradise that had been promised them.

Because they knew.

Unlike the living, they grasped the true horror before them.

They heard the wails of the trillions. They saw the ghostly luminescence of each withered nebula trapped in the orbit of this black hole.

They could do nothing but scream.

Only he could act, and Valentin would not let them be taken. He would not let them be saved.

The Guardians began spreading out, with the Triumvirate forces supplanting and supporting them.

_-This is who Micah Abrams is, Speaker. Not the lie you wished her to be.-_

He had heard enough. The time for exchanges was over.

The presence went silent, as the Siren stepped forward, her weapon flourishing in her hands and a thunderbolt sounding in harmonious symphony with the Antiphon. "Raise your weapons, and call upon your Light, Guardians," Micah demanded, voice ringing out with piercing clarity. "Your end begins today, be it by my hand, or the Lord who has bestowed his favor."

She lifted her free hand, and the translucent sea they stood upon rumbled as the machines under the misty barrier activated, and bodies floated to the top; fresh Human clones, infused with the vault of souls at their disposal. Their eyes were colored a shining sicky orange, and their minds empty but for the chorus of the Antiphon.

The Well began rumbling in conjunction, as the souls saturating the arena were enslaved to disorient and disrupt, begging with disarming fear as the nightmare spilled over into the waking world and became real. The spider wove its web, cocooning them in preparation for its feast. Valentin knew that if the souls weren't rescued, they would serve only to distract the Guardians. Souls harnessed solely to be a hindrance; a sacrifice. Yet another crime he would punish today.

He would not let them be taken. The anathema would not whisper them away to the space between dead stars. His people would not add their unwilling voices to this thing's cackling howls.

All while waves of these mindless Humans were summoned, until all of them or the Guardians died.

The Well needed to be secured, the souls needed to be returned to peace, and the Siren needed to be defeated.

Light and Darkness gathered, threatening to crack the reality around them as Song and Antiphon clashed, spirits wailed, and weapons fired.

The battle for the Well of Souls began as the Siren lunged forward.

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

As the battle commenced in earnest, Clovis slowed his perception of physical time to something that was more…manageable.

Data streams flowed, onboard vitals informed, heat sinks activating, processing power increased, this was going to be a battle where his physical capabilities were secondary to why he was on this excursion at all – his mind. His ability to process the battlefield before them, and mobilize them to their fullest potential.

The enemies were comparatively easy to manage – there were only two that mattered. The Siren, and the Shard. Both capabilities had been observed and assessed before. It would be easier here because he no longer needed to navigate this labyrinth of Light. Yet the stakes were also higher, because this loss also meant they were fighting on a more even playing field.

He was only slightly concerned of the possibility that Micah would see him as a primary target, purely for revenge. Revenge that she likely would take were she not facing the Traveler's chosen Guardians. Clovis was very aware that himself and the Triumvirate forces that remained were, physically, not nearly as much of a priority.

There were other things that his sensors were picking up; anomalies and distortions that could not be quantified. If he had to guess, these were souls – or remnants of such. It was unclear, but it was the single variable here that he wasn't certain how to take into consideration. He had to rely on Valentin to handle that particular element.

He focused his efforts on the primary objective – destroying the Shard, and reclaiming the Well. The rest of the Guardians could handle Micah.

The newly created, corrupted Humans were numerous, but they only had basic weapons, no armor, and even his forces could help thin their numbers. Clovis felt nothing as the corpses fell; these weren't truly alive, let alone Human. They were puppets being directed by supernatural forces.

This was a dirty, but ultimately necessary cleansing; an example of what the future might look like. The Darkness had not hidden its objectives here, it had no qualms about employing these shambling, walking corpses, for that was all it saw them as.

But he was not ignoring the fact that these souls were here in the first place. This technology hadn't been created by the Intercessor, the souls hadn't been collected by the Darkness. This entire Well existed by the express design of the Traveler – and that was disturbing and alarming.

He doubted that the Traveler was collecting them for no reason.

He doubted that there had been thousands of bodies ready to go if they weren't intended to be used.

And should the Traveler wish to slave souls to bodies, he believed that the end result was going to be something that was less crude, and more unnerving than these ruined abominations.

It would be worse.

He would not forget it.

That little mystery will be unraveled later.

Now he had to ensure a victory.

He focused on his primary target – the Shard of the Intercessor which was standing in the center of the Well's control platform. One hand was lifted as if in benediction, with a globe of resonance energy encasing the platform, fully protecting it. The other hands operated and manipulated what Clovis surmised was the control panel, an alien-looking piece of technology that almost certainly operated through Paracausal rules instead of physical hardware.

The tactics employed were fortunately not more sophisticated than he had experienced prior to this battle. They were in the heart of the harnessed power – and with waning resources, territory, and time, their options were limited. Micah was dangerous, but she was only one piece of this – the other pawns could be predicted and dealt with.

He relayed data to the Guardians and Triumvirate forces, anchoring himself in place, feeding exact coordinates to the Exo forces, while providing direct and simultaneous instructions for the Guardians on optimal moves or targets. A dozen commands were being distributed every few seconds as they cut their way through the mindless hordes, even as their numbers were swiftly replenished, and the bodies rose from the bottom of the pool the instant one was eliminated.

It wasn't fast enough for the Darkness, and progress was being made.

Clovis found himself pushed to the limit, as he was forced to contend with optimal strategies even as their own forces were now limited in number and power. Every single circuit and artificial synapse firing in one glorious harmony as he orchestrated triumph. The battlefield was an overlay before his corporeal sight, for he was its master and prophet. The oracle of what was to come, and what would become those who sought to slay his armies.

He was gathering data on all parties here.

Darkness and Guardian alike.

How these ones thought, what powers they employed, what stimuli they responded to, and what actions triggered responses. He did not test or manipulate them – he only needed to help them, and they gladly showed what they were capable of. Perhaps a pointless exercise; meaningless data that would ultimately amount to nothing.

But these Guardians still held some Humanity in them. A part of them that remained…exploitable when the time came. If nothing else, it gave him a baseline to work with. They would hold nothing back against their ordained enemy – and when they emerged victorious here, they would hold nothing back against him.

He'd be a fool to overlook this opportunity.

After all, with each battle he knew more about them, and he could help them.

He wondered if they suspected.

He wondered if they cared.

Atop many corpses or ossified statues, their forces stepped, and the Shard of the Intercessor was now within reach. The Guardians began assaulting the shell of resonance directly, seeking to break it and finish off the Shard within. Clovis had the Triumvirate forces situated to be positioned to fight off the still-coming waves.

He sincerely hoped the Lightbearers didn't take too long.

Each Guardian unleashed their power upon it. Golden beams of blazing Light burst from Khojin's eyes against the sphere, Fang's hand raised, and a purple-tinged distortion appeared around it, and Shaheed raised one hand to the heavens, as a pillar of Light fell down atop the sphere.

The Shard was reacting to the onslaught.

No longer was one hand maintaining the protective sphere, now each hand was wreathed in the resonance as it tried to reinforce its globe of protection. Based on the level of power displayed, and what demonstrated capabilities of the Shard's, Clovis estimated the sphere would soon collapse completely.

As expected, the resonance field broke a few seconds later, and Shaheed's pillar of Light slammed onto the Shard, encasing it in burning power. Clovis' sensors suddenly returned multiple anomalies, which he had tuned to indicate the Shard was reacting. Perhaps in rage, perhaps in pain. Perhaps a scream of sorts. Clovis could only just make out the silhouette of the Shard within the radiant pillar; a negative space where the enemy had once stood.

The other Guardians ceased their attacks as Shaheed maintained the pillar until there was nothing left of the construct. When it ceased, the automata appeared to have been reduced to atoms – along with most of the control platform itself. Immediately, the hum of the Well seemed to fade, and when the standing wave of braindead Humans was slain, no more rose.

Clovis checked for more anomalies, and noted that the ones he had detected around souls seemed to be reduced. It appeared that with the Shard destroyed, and the control platform disabled, the greatest threat had been eliminated. One target down, one to go.

But despite this success, he could not shake the errant thought that this had been too easy. They had pushed back the forces of the Darkness on every section of the Spire, and it made logical sense that the units available for concentration at this point of the assault were not plentiful. Had he organized this defense, he would have amassed what elite forces remained on the final level to protect the Intercessor itself.

The strategy was logical, and yet it felt like a piece of this puzzle was...missing.

The Shard had been dispatched without much interference from the Siren herself. A surprising choice, given that it was essential for maintaining control of the Well, and she had witnessed how they had destroyed the ones in the Expanse with relatively little trouble.

Her objective was likely to stall, which was why her attention was focused on the larger body of Guardians. And yet stall for what, exactly? If it was holding the Well for as long as possible, then she had undoubtedly failed. He would have expected yet another retreat, but she clearly was not.

Why?

She was almost certainly classified as an elite unit, and if he had been her superior he would have recalled her to defend the Intercessor itself now that it was clear the Well would be lost. It left only two possibilities.

She had either been commanded to fight to the end here, perhaps a demonstration of her loyalty, or a punishment for failure - a frankly pointless waste of a powerful asset. Or the alternative was that the Shard and the Well had been intentionally made vulnerable…

But that theory had its own problems, because the Well was an equally important tactical asset.

Something else was at play. Despite his observations, however, he could not ponder on it for long, for Micah was still active.

He reoriented his objectives to quickly ascertain how the fight against the Siren was going, and if he could have frowned, he would have. The Guardians engaged in battle against her were suffering numerous wounds, Valentin had likely been distracted trying to quiet the souls, and Micah appeared little worse for wear.

Then the Speaker's voice rang out with alarm; the sheer urgency immediately commanding the Guardians who'd been assaulting the Shard to return to his aid and join the fray.

"The souls!" Valentin shouted; words parsing through Clovis' audio receptors as pieces fell into place. "The Disciple is beginning to absorb the souls contained in the Well! Micah is the amplifier for its hold!"

Power flowed through the Speaker, taking another form as he began a different kind of incantation while he gave his final orders. "Fang! Use the Void! Sever her link to the Antiphon before it completes its ritual!"

Ah, there it was.

Like a fog that had lifted, like a maze properly mapped, and a scheme's designs falling into place, it all clicked for Clovis.

This was what she had been stalling for.

Clovis glanced back at the ruined control mechanisms for the Well, and if he still had lips to smile with, he would have done so. He chuckled dryly to himself, feeling some begrudging admiration for his opponent's cunning, for the puzzle now made sense.

Clever girl.

The Shard had been a lure, and they had fallen for it - hook, line and sinker. In their overzealous approach to purging anything related to their great enemy, the Guardians had been manipulated into destroying what he imagined could have been an asset now that this "Disciple," as Valentin called it, began claiming the bounty below.

He too had fallen for this lure - because he had believed that the enemy wished only to stop them, and logically, the Well was a powerful weapon to achieve this. Yet his vision was not quite used to the other forces and interests at play. The Intercessor's forces and this Disciple could not hope to retain control over the Spire.

But the souls within were a resource to be claimed - and they enabled this entity to begin a new ritual. A brilliant choice, and a demonstration of the intellect they faced. If he could tip his head in respect to the creature, he would have.

Well played.

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

_-Tell us who you are.-_

Micah Abrams.

She was Micah Abrams.

The Well of Souls below them all was a wellspring of power. A limitless vein of vitae and sweet refulgence simply waiting to be tapped into and drank by one worthy of its bounty. The Liars of the Sky had fallen for their trap. So simple in their hatred of their betters were they rendered, that they failed to see the scheme being woven by the Master's Angel.

A being of a scale magnitudes beyond what she could comprehend, but whose gaze she knew was on her. She felt its call. She heard its voice. Reassuring her of herself. Reminding her of who she was.

＜OF WHAT SHE COULD DO＞

And…there.

The first errant soul saved from this hell. Once a man, now nothing but an essence of what had once been. Trapped in this prison built on comfortable falsehoods and promises that could never be kept. Torn from quiet oblivion and instilled with purpose. She heard the soul screaming, wailing, begging to be spared as one of the Angel's trillion fingers wrapped around its totality and swallowed it whole.

Another voice joined the chorus. Another whetstone for the knife sharpening her to a razor point. The Angel's voice was clearer. Her heart beat to the rhythm of the Antiphon. Her soul was as saved as that of the spirit that had just been cleansed. And so many more to save. Beautiful. Perfect. The grotesque insult to nature that the Celestial had committed with this crime avenged, one piece at a time.

She was Micah Abrams.

And she was a warrior.

_-Tell us what you are.-_

The Siren.

They called her the Siren.

Because she held the conductor's baton.

＜＜THE SONG CAME FROM HER LIPS＞＞

Up until that point, the battle had been a frantic dance where every step risked death, every missed strike promised retaliation, and each action weighed the balance between victory and defeat. No amateurs remained in the Well of Souls anymore, there were only the hunters and the prey; the gods and mortals; the living and the dead.

For this was the crucible where destinies were to be forged.

The glorious Antiphon howled with unparalleled ferocity in her mind, its every Note, its every rise, its every fall, its every requiem filling every particle of her being with conviction she could have never achieved on her own. She was not merely enhanced by the Song. She was the music. She was the embodiment of the melody that had cut away Neptune's weakness and given it a Shape worthy of Him.

She had been holding off four Guardians on her own, while the rest of their force diverted to the Shard of the blessed Intercessor. The duo that had managed to wound her in the Foundry, one who encased themselves in celestial flame, and of course – the hated Speaker himself.

Before, she would have faltered against such a force. She would have stumbled. She would have been rendered weak by her insecurities and indecisiveness. By her fear. But there was nothing to fear anymore, because she was being changed. Improved.

Not by the Master, for He gifted nothing. Not by the Angel, for to give away power was the way of the Sky.

No.

She was improving herself.

＜＜SHE WAS THE SHAPE THAT DEFINED ITSELF＞＞

In her moment of need, the Darkness had not abandoned her, it had merely molded itself to her ways, like a suit that finally fit her body. A suit that she tailored, not anyone else. She was sharper, faster, stronger than ever before. Everything made sense. Her third eye could see despite the Speaker's radiance blinding her before.

Manipulations of the Strand were as natural and second nature to her as breathing. All slow evolutions. All swipes of the knife that carved her to a finer and finer point, approving of her drive to better herself and rewarding her for it. To never again be the useless girl that she had been before her ascension.

Every time she recognized a failure in her technique, the knife carved. Every time she achieved a new understanding of the power she commanded, the knife carved. Every time she rejected the Speaker's every plea that she could still be saved from the glory that she had become, the knife carved.

BECAUSE THE KNIFE WAS THE ONLY PATH

She had never felt closer to the Master, for the Intercessor was His construct, and it was now the one whose voice sang in her mind. He watched. He listened. He would be pleased. And the Angel helped her obey. Helped her wave the baton and direct the orchestra.

Songs that translated to commands, moments of action; orders to be followed, which she now did instinctively, because it was her only desire to fulfill the Shape she knew she could be.

Strike.

Hold.

Move.

See.

Each word was transmitted to her by the tether in her soul, the Angel's sweet amnion nurturing her as a child in the womb. And she was being born. She was breaking the cocoon. She could sense it within herself. She could see it.

The emerald cracks cutting across what remained of her pitiful Human flesh. The blades of dark metal that pushed out her teeth and slowly coated her bones. The lustrous Darkness that glowed in splendid malachite and caused the Guardians battling her to shield their eyes. The Light she stripped off their bodies with every inhale, and the holy incense of night she spewed with every exhale.

Because she was the Siren, and her domain was the mists.

Before, she feared facing the Speaker. She doubted that she could match his thievery over reality without being burnt to cinders. What an insult against the Master. As if His might would ever cower before an enemy truly worthy.

In the moments before the destruction of the Shard, they had fought.

The hated Slave of the Celestial had woven the room around him, calling upon the Light to emulate the ever-shifting complexity that expanded time and space itself. His attention had been divided, as the Shard manipulated the Well to send the weaponized souls against him – which the Speaker was forced to quiet.

But a being of his power was hardly helpless, and even with a portion of his attention on it, it forced her to react accordingly. His experience through the Foundry had awakened a new kind of power in him, one of the Light that allowed him to shape it in a new way.

He had sharpened himself as well, but he did not understand that only the Deep could make such a transformation complete. Only the Dark could drive a being to that ultimate conclusion, that state of perfection that started to be crafted when one desired to be better.

And that made him less than her.

That made her Micah Abrams.

Because she was not afraid to do what was necessary to be her best self. Because she knew what being pitiful was like, and she would not go back.

The Light was deception and complexity, but the Dark was simple. She had not needed to understand the Speaker's trickery and convoluted thinking to break free of the nauseating labyrinth he sought to trap her in. She simply needed to-

Cut.

＜＜AND SHE WOULD CUT＞＞

So when the Speaker had conjured around her an infinite mirror; a trap that no simple mortal could escape, she had two options. She could escape as she had done before, using her ability to weave the Strand and manifest somewhere else. Or she could break the prison around her. And she was no longer a coward that would flee. She would rise.

And so, she rose.

The power had flowed through her, as the Intercessor had helped her see the lie for what it was and where she was to strike to banish it. As the Antiphon sang through her, the Sirensong struck the false reality at the precise point where the Speaker had grasped reality's membranes and woven his design, and the prison that sought to hold her was shattered into a trillion shards of multicolored glass.

Then she began to hunt the three Guardians and their Speaker. A furious clash that saw reality be shifted over and over as the Slave of the Celestial sought to reimpose his tyrannical chaos on the stability she embodied by twisting the room's angles and seeking to overwhelm her orientation, and which she shattered over and over as she pushed the Lightbearers to their limits and slowly embraced her metamorphosis.

The Lightbearer with the fiery whip had proven to be her most persistent annoyance, for he absorbed each blow she struck if it let him be more aggressive, and stuck to her even through her various attempts at rushing the Speaker. Another, the gunslinger with the Golden Gun, stayed at range, firing projectiles that she was able to deflect or dodge. But she eventually gained momentum.

She drew their blood. Her Sirensong struck true. She forced them on the defensive. She inflicted wounds they had no time to heal as she maintained the pace on her relentless assault. The Strand wove itself around their bodies, suffocating their Light and choking their throats. Her mastery over the elements battled with the Speaker's growing hold on the Spire. A convergence of Light and Dark that she was honored to be a part of.

For she was the Siren, and she was the eye of the storm.

But she had not managed to kill any of them.

She had not claimed the lives the Master was due.

That would soon change.

There.

A second soul had just been swallowed by the Angel. In a past life, a five year old girl killed in a car accident. Potential, erased by the senselessness of the world that needed shepherds to guide it. A story ended before its first chapters had even been written. Do not worry, sweet, wizened child. You serve a purpose greater than yourself now. You. Are. More.

Just as she was.

Just was what she was becoming.

"The souls!" the Slave screamed with horror once he realized the Angel's plan; meaningless words whose desperation salted the amnion produced by the five year old girl once her benefactor absorbed her shrieking voice and added it to the chorus.

Amnion that flowed down the tether connected to her soul, and gave her the last push she needed to become herself. "The Disciple is beginning to absorb the souls contained in the Well! Micah is the amplifier for its hold!"

_-Who is Micah Abrams?-_

The Angel demanded once again. Its voice a mighty legion that nearly made her knees buckle. The weight of nations slamming against the edges of her vision and making her gasp with greatness most unthinkable. The finger of an unfathomable entity pushing down on her, seeking to squish her if she would allow it. Because only coal crushed under enormous pressure could produce a diamond.

No longer was it treating her as a child. It now understood who she could be. It now saw the Shape she was defining. It would break her if it could. The knife would whittle away all that could be whittled away, and if she failed to stand up to it, she would be excised by the blade that wanted nothing more than to sharpen her. But she was not afraid before the Angel.

She would rise.

＜＜I AM MICAH ABRAMS＞＞

＜＜I AM THE STORY THAT REWRITES ITSELF＞＞

＜＜I AM NOTHING SHOWN HER PURPOSE＞＞

＜＜I AM THE STUDENT THAT BEGINS TO LEARN＞＞

＜＜I AM THE BOUNTIES OF YOUR LABOR, O ANGEL MINE＞＞

"Fang! Use the Void! Sever her link to the Antiphon before it completes its ritual!" the Guardians heeded the Slave's call, and began converging solely on her, for the Shard was destroyed.

But they would not defeat her. Her body began to pulse with tremors of unleashed Strand threads that burst out of her back, rocking the floor of the Well of Souls with miniaturized quakes that caused the Lightbearers to brace to regain their footing.

She clenched her fists tightly as her muscles and internal organs bulged with golden veins and black vines produced by the soul that had finally given itself entirely to the Deep. As she burst out of her cocoon and forever left behind what she once had been. As she understood what it was to fully be a being of the Dark.

_-And what is Micah Abrams?-_

The pain of her entire internal structure breaking and reforging itself before the iron tendrils was indescribable, but she laughed through the delicious agony and raised her hands in supplication towards the Angel who judged from above. She cackled with glee as the Guardians began to rush towards her, and the Triumvirate soldiers led by the walking scrap that thought itself a man readied themselves to join the fray as well.

"No! Clovis, hold back!" the Speaker roared with a hand directed towards the inconsequential mortals. "Take one more step and you will die!"

All of them suddenly halted, though she could not tell if it was her display, or the audible fury in the Speaker's voice that gave them the most pause. They quickly pulled back before they could insult her with their presence.

Good. This battleground was meant for gods, not men of flesh and bone.

＜＜I AM THE SIREN＞＞

＜＜I AM THE MOUTH THAT SINGS THE ANTIPHON＞＞

＜＜I AM THE WILL WITHIN NEPTUNE, AND THE AMBASSADOR THAT INVITES YOU TO OUR HOME. HERE, I SHOW THAT HUMANITY IS WORTHY OF SALVATION＞＞

＜＜ARRIVE, SERAPHS OF THE TWILIGHT. ARRIVE, LORD THAT SHATTERS GODS＞＞

＜＜HEAR THE MEANING OF MY ROAR, AND KNOW＞＞

＜＜THAT I＞＞

＜＜AM＞＞

＜＜REAL＞＞

THEN SHOW US

A bolt of carmine lightning slammed into her from above, or perhaps it was from all directions, and the thing that had once been Micah Abrams let out a screech that emitted a scything soundwave across the entirety of the Well of Souls.

The wave cut in two the Triumvirate soldiers that were not immediately protected by the Guardians conjuring shields of Light, and many of the Lightbearers were knocked to the ground despite surviving the expression of unleashed power. A maelstrom of black, bladed particles erupted around the creature and spun around with tempestuous speeds, and Micah thrashed and twisted within the eye of the storm as she embraced her new self.

Out of her opened mouth erupted black vines, pulsing and roiling with veins of amber resonance that beat like the arteries of a heart, enveloping her body and doubling both her size and mass.

Her living metal armor enlarged to accommodate her new size, and stabbed into her nascent flesh, becoming one with it and attuning itself to the Darkness now under her complete command.

The Strand burst forth from her scalp, pushing out what little hair remained on her head and weaving itself into wiry threads that flowed down her neck, her back, and then the rest of her body. Her entire body wrapped with flowing emerald, a large eye opened on her forehead, cutting through the maelstrom like a neon searchlight.

The Ambassador exhaled, her metamorphosis complete, and she slammed the tip of the Sirensong onto the ground, producing a ring of crimson lightning that exploded on the point of impact and dispelled the storm by expanding outwards and through the entire facility.

It was time to kill.

It was time to fulfill her purpose.

It was time to impress with her brilliance.

For she had sculpted it by herself.

SHOW US, MICAH ABRAMS

WE BEHOLD YOUR SHAPE

AND WE FIND IT MAJESTIC

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

_-You cannot save them all, Speaker.-_

The Savior's voice sounded on the outskirts of his mental fortress. A dead hand, lazily dragging its hundred fingertips over the entrance gate to his thoughts. Everywhere at once, and at the same time, nowhere at all. A cascade of withered whispers and muffled begs that he was forced to endure with gritted teeth, entangled with such an unholy insult to all creation as he was.

The voice was calm, unrushed; unfazed. There was nothing in its inflection outside a certainty that came from a speaker of fact. Like a teacher lecturing a student, saying merely that this was how Things Were.

No mockery. No malice. Not even satisfaction.

Only certainty.

Valentin floated in midair, his body engulfed with golden flames that he was sure made him look like the fusion heart of a star shaped as a man. He had called upon the Light to the greatest expression he could muster to push back against every monstrous yank that the Disciple used to drink the souls below.

His hands were tightly balled into fists and he held them to his sides, feverishly grasping the mass of spirits who knew he was the last obstacle between them and the anathema that would steal them away if it was allowed.

If they had not destroyed the control mechanisms of the Well, one of his comrades could have commandeered it to aid him in this task and use the construct against the Disciple - but that had been its trap. The scheme being woven right beneath their noses, and as such the task now fell to him and him alone.

Sweat dripped down his brow. Veins bulged on his neck and forehead due to the enormous exertion he was forcing himself to endure. His body screamed for relief that he would not provide it until the work was done. The Dark entity was magnitudes above anything that he had faced before - and it was a mere projection. This thing that was nothing but a fragment of the whole, was forcing him to push himself beyond his limits.

He was starting to realize that the Night had champions that could very well match a Celestial's Speaker - if not surpass them entirely. The road ahead would be a long and arduous one. He had much to learn. There was further mastery of the Light that was eluding him that would let him stand as an equal to the entity he faced.

But today what he knew had to be enough.

He would still protect them.

He would not tire.

This was what the essence of a Guardian was. This was the sacred purpose instilled onto them by the Traveler's blessing.

To protect those who could not protect themselves.

_-You missed another one. You will miss more.-_

His eyes widened as the simple notation became reality, and one of the million unseen tendrils of the abomination he was contending with wrapped around a soul he had not managed to sufficiently protect.

Like an abyssal predator's feeding tentacles, the moment the fell appendage touched the spirit it had targeted, it shot up with unfathomable speed towards the living abyss above the Well. Valentin attempted to intercept and grab the kidnapped spirit, but the invisible tentacle was too slippery for him to get a firm grasp, and the doomed soul screamed all the way until it disappeared within the open maw.

The Speaker had to suppress his disgust and rage for the sake of the souls below, else he lost control and damned more to the black infinity. His unwanted connection to the Disciple allowed him to hear the crunches and slobbers and gulps the monstrosity produced as it enthusiastically devoured the soul.

He knew not if it was his mind attempting to process what the Savior was doing in a way he could understand, or if it was as disgustingly monstrous as he heard.

He knew not, because that alone was insufficient punishment for failure, as the Savior also showed him who he had just failed.

In most circumstances, all memories of past life vanished when the soul left its vessel upon the moment of death. But the Spire functioned the same way as a Ghost did, just at a considerably larger scale. It served as a safety net meant to not only safeguard the souls of those who departed within its radius, it was also designed to encode all the essential elements that made a person into their incorporeal spirit.

Memory, inner tendencies, personality, every facet of the essence of the self. A mechanism beyond the preservation capabilities of a Ghost, for they could not recover their Guardian's memories should the brain be completely destroyed on the moment of death. A capability of the Spire that would ensure these souls would be whole once they were placed within the cloned bodies they would receive whenever the Traveler deemed the time right and the Well of Souls fulfilled its true purpose.

The Disciple knew this.

They knew, because everything about the anathema was a slap in the face of all that was right and good about the Universe. And these memory-fattened souls provided choice feed for its gluttonous appetite, engorging its entrapped chorus with psychically rich additions that it sought to collect in order to increase its power beyond what he imagined regular spirits would have provided it.

Valentin suspected this was the reason it was trying to take as many as it could instead of more directly assisting its servant. He wondered if it was pragmatism that compelled this choice - or compulsion.

Images of who the consumed soul had been flashed through his mind.

He was an old grandfather. Peacefully passing away on a hospital's bed after a long battle with disease. A passing surrounded by loved ones. Visited by friends and those whom he had met throughout his journey in mortality. A peaceful smile on his face as he slipped into the endless. A funeral filled with spilled tears and told tales.

He had just failed that man. He had just allowed that man that had done nothing wrong in his life to fall into a place worse than any hell he could conceive of. He had failed many before him too.

He had failed, because his sight was extended throughout the Well. He was focusing his entire attention on denying the Savior its meal, but he had to be aware of the battle taking place below. He had gotten distracted, because said battle was proving to be far more challenging than they had expected.

One could even say it was going badly.

The Guardians were occupying Micah and preventing her from targeting him, but they should have been capable of doing more than just occupying her.

_-A true natural,-_ the Savior's voice had an air of mild pensiveness to it. _-Few can walk the Bladed Path, yet she was born for this trial. We have not been presented with such a delightful pupil in eons.-_

It seemed Valentin could almost sense a drawn-out pause; a contemplation by the dark void. _-Perhaps it has been more, perhaps less. Time loses its meaning when one discards the chains of mortality. You will understand this one day, should you survive.-_

Before, Valentin would have taken the suggestion that the Lightbearers he had led into the heart of the Spire could bedefeated by Micah Abrams with a healthy degree of skepticism. They all knew that she was a powerful and dangerous opponent, but eight of the best GuardiansHumanity had to offer should have been more than enough to handle her.

It had been the Intercessor which was to prove their greatest trial; the source of the Antiphon to be silenced.

But not anymore.

Because Micah Abrams was no longer merely a girl corrupted by the Darkness.

She was a dancing hurricane.

Rezyl Azzir had just slung his flame whip at her, and she answered with the lash of a whip of her own. A tendril of neon Strand that had burst out of her hand wrapped around the Guardian's weapon and stopped it before it could complete its trajectory. All that the girl had to do then was to yank her grotesquely muscular arm back, and the Guardian was sent flying towards her, the power behind the move so much so that he was not able to anchor himself in time with his Light.

Shaxx supercharged his running speed and aimed to slam into her side with a crackling shoulder charge, but she somehow saw it coming despite her eyes not being on him, and teleported forward with a burst of emerald fire.

She materialized and caught Rezyl midair by the face, a hundred threads of Strand immediately weaving all around his body to immobilize him and suppress his Light, snapped her fingers behind her to cocoon Shaxx and entrap him long enough for her to slam Rezyl headfirst onto the metal floors.

Shaheed tried to conjure Paracausally-forged armor to nullify the force of impact, but Micah countered by vomiting a thick cloud of resonance around her and her prey, disrupting the enchantment from reaching its intended beneficiary.

Rezyl was stunned by the titanic blow that concussed him against the floor, and the Ambassador wasted not a second before she stabbed the Sirensong straight through his heart and pulled it down the length of his body, disemboweling him before the Well that had never been intended to witness such brutality.

_-Crush his anchor to the Sky.-_

Micah complied with the Disciple's order, and one quick swipe of the Sirensong above Rezyl's lifeless body was all that was required to separate reality's membranes and expose his Ghost. His Ghost, who was drained by the resonance tempest and whose movements were sluggish, was unable to immediately revive its charge before the end came.

But before the Ambassador could grasp the machine and deliver the Guardian his true death, Khojin slammed into her from above with her Lightblade, the impact as ruinous as that of a train running over a person. Micah caught the strike with the shaft of her spear, which somehow did not snap in two or even crack against the strain due to the resonance shielding it was protected by - though the shielding glowed brighter from the sheer force it absorbed.

Micah gracefully parried the momentum behind the swing as Khojin slammed feet-first into the ground beside her, immediately turning on the defensive as creature counterattacked. Micah latched Strand hooks through her shoulders and launched herself towards her with the speed of a blasting rocket.

Khojin was just fast enough to react, and Lightblade met Sirensong, causing a miniature shockwave to burst from the point where the Night's metal met the Dawn's steel. The two weapons held their poise before the other for long seconds, sparking and glowing brightly where their metal handshake locked.

The two began to duel with speed that Valentin could not properly register; lest he lose his concentration against the Savior, but he was able to perceive that Khojin was losing. Until now their enemies had been constrained by mortality, natural laws, and inferior power.

Micah was none of those things.

Micah was far faster with her weapon, and the Guardian was forced on the defensive again as she focused entirely on blocking or attempting parries against every swipe of the lance. Opportunities that the Ambassador did not allow the Guardian, as her ferocity was tireless and she made her take backstep after backstep, not even allowing her to catch any of the rare openings she offered.

Not even the scalding lasers Khojin shot out of her eyes gave her the upper hand, as Micah's third eye responded to the assaults and wove a million threads of Strand that laced between the beams, dissolving them to nothing, until the threads themselves reached Khojin's face and began burrowing into her eyes.

That was not all that Khojin was forced to contend with, as a loom of Strand tendrils burst out of Micah's back like a living cape, and sought to lash the Guardian to distract her from her bladework. The few that managed to sneak past her guard and make contact with her body instantly enveloped whatever they had struck with threads of Strand that slowed her down, and the Lightbearer had to quickly tear herself free before the Sirensong impaled her through the heart or took her head off her shoulders.

There was only one Guardian Micah appeared wary of.

Fang.

As commanded, Fang was calling upon the Void. There was less of a person where Fang stood, but a flowing, infinite, cold hole in the shape of a man. It was not like the Savior's nothingness, because even the power Fang commanded came from somewhere. There was something in it.

It was the anathema to Light and Dark alike; the thing which drained even primordial elements. Yet Fang's greatest advantage was also a handicap, as he could not employ his power indiscriminately, lest he harm them in the process. Each step left a footprint of night, each shaped drop of Void had to be carefully thrown.

One touch was what he needed - and Micah knew that.

He didn't know if the Void would be enough to actively kill her in time, even if Fang touched her, but he knew at minimum it would weaken her, and sever her link to the Savior. She knew it too, and was keeping far away, or engaging so closely with Guardians that they were as much at risk as she was.

They couldn't rely on Fang, and the only alternative was ensuring that the flow of souls the anathema was consuming was stopped. The Speaker was preparing a ritual of his own to attune himself to the mechanisms of the Well and deny the Disciple its feast, but he needed time.

And the only way to buy time was for his comrades to survive until he completed his work.

Osiris, Jaren Ward and Wei Ning finally entered the fray, which was difficult to keep up with due to the speed at which Micah flew from one corner of the Well to the other. All of them came to Khojin's aid. The Phoenix launched the Titan above Micah with a telekinetic burst, and Wei conjured a lightning strike to fall upon the Ambassador's head as she flew through the currents of the black maelstrom.

The Ambassador reacted with impossible speed and clarity, flexing her thighs before jumping with such power that it left a depression on the Well's floor and threw Khojin onto the ground, as her hand flared with Light and she tried burning out the Strands that were consuming her.

Micah swung her lance, caught the lightning strike before it could make contact with her, absorbed it mid-swing, and sent it right back at Wei Ning with heavier force, the resonance-tinged bolts frying her nervous system in an instant that was faster than it took an eye to blink.

The barrier that Shaheed conjured in front of Wei before the scarlet lightning killed her only managed to preserve her body whole, rather than her getting atomized or left as little more than burnt ashes.

The Warlock was conjuring shields of Light to both the surviving Triumvirate forces and the Guardians engaging Micah, protecting them from the bladed winds of the dark tornado her very presence summoned. He was the only reason why their Light was not being weakened by the corrupted elements of Neptune that flooded the Well of Souls, or cut in half by the swarms of red lightning bolts that kept raining on them all like a hail of spears.

Jaren turned himself invisible with the Light, and used his Ghost to teleport to one corner of the Well, positioning himself for the moment when the entity provided him the perfect shot.

The creature's attention shifting did not give Khojin the respite she desperately needed, as a neon reflection of Micah, left behind by her once she jumped, took her place and continued the calamitous duel as if nothing had happened.

Osiris flew aloft wings of flame to where Wei Ning's lifeless body was crumpled, quickly pulling her out of the cloud of resonance so that her Ghost could get her back up. With a wave of his hand, Khojin was encased in cleansing Light, purging the remaining Strands infecting her and letting her survive against the shade facing her.

His companion saved, Osiris swung in the air and accelerated himself to meteoric speeds against his target. He met Micah midair, the black clouds coalescing around her and lifting her to meet the Guardian directly. Strand clashed against Flame as the champions of two sides that would forever remain embittered enemies exchanged blows.

The Phoenix extended his hands in front of him, conjuring blazing fireballs out of his palms that locked onto his enemy and sped off like furious comets. The Ambassador answered in turn, her third eye's neon luminescence intensifying as she held her spear above her head and conjured a constellation of miniature emerald stars that sped off towards Osiris's meteors.

The projectiles made contact with each other, and the malachite stars penetrated the expressions of burning Light, suspending them before they could complete their trajectory. The missiles made a beeline straight for Osiris, forcing him to flap his radiant wings and shoot himself out of the way, only for them to turn midair and explode on the Guardian.

Osiris clenched his fists and caused a solar flare to burst out of his body, saving himself from the Strand's impact by destroying the neon needles before they could skewer him. Thenthe needles broke off into nets of wrapping, emerald limbs that cocooned the Warlock before making him fall to the ground, his Light temporarily disrupted and his wings cut off.

Almost there…

Valentin just needed more time.

_-Your hold is slipping, Speaker.-_ the Savior admonished. _-How many will you allow us to save before you slam shut the doors to the Celestial's prison? Are you an emancipator or a jailer? Do they cry in terror of Salvation, or eternity in these cages? No. Salvation is not yours to deny.-_

The voice layered; deepened; intensified beyond what he had experienced before. He heard nothing but the chorus of the Disciple. _-They. Will. Be. Ours. We will become One.-_

Accompanying the Savior's words, Valentin felt thousands of souls suddenly be grasped by the abyssal monster's tentacles that erupted from within the bottomless hole, and he screamed with equal parts frustration and conviction to not let them be taken. As he intensified the hold he had on the innocent spirits and pushed himself even further, calling upon more of the Traveler's power to be able to maintain pace.

The Disciple was escalating, letting him know that he was more than outmatched in this hellish tug of war they had found themselves locked in. That he was facing a being older than his entire species. A legion of enslaved civilizations and nations made to bend the knee. A mere student of the Lord above them all.

But he did not care.

Because he was a Guardian.

And he would protect.

Osiris broke free from the threads wrapping around his body, and blinked back to where Micah was before she could return to her duel against Khojin. The Ambassador responded to his return, and dove down with her spear before a beam of magma from the Phoenix made impact against her, driving it through the Godsteel floors of the Well.

The effect was immediate, as the Sirensong began to pulse with Strand as if it were a rod channeling lightning, sending ring after ring of concentric green energy that surrounded Osiris and closed around him, forcing him to rapidly blink in and out of existence else his waist be separated from his torso. He responded in between each rapid teleport, making pillars of roaring flame explode from the ground beneath Micah with raises of his opened palms.

The Ambassador cartwheeled out of the way of every conflagrating pillar with grace that could not belong to such a monstrous creature, and each pirouette left behind a Strand reflection of herself that ran towards Khojin and started overwhelming her through sheer numbers alone.

Shaxx suddenly came flying through the air, a missile wreathed in furious lightning that aimed to slam right into Micah and shatter her with brute force, before the entity shot out neon hooks from her hands and caught the Guardian as he streaked towards her.

Hooks in hand and driven through Shaxx, Micah cartwheeled from another pillar of flame that Osiris made burst beneath her, created yet another reflection that ran after Khojin and joined the small army wearing her down through attrition, and once she landed on her feet she yanked both her arms to the side and forced Shaxx to crash away from his destination.

Jaren still had not been able to properly line up the shot, for he needed her to stop moving so erratically and aim for a weak zone or gap in her armor.

Her target identified, Micah sped herself through a burst of Strand beneath her feet, and launched herself towards Shaxx through the connection she had forced through his body. The Titan met her midway with a crackling fist that impacted against her face, winding her and making her take a step back, drawing her blood and leaving a deep bruise on the point of impact.

Whatever advantage that blow might have provided was quickly lost, for the Ambassador recovered as if she had not been hit at all and responded by weaving a mass of neon threads around her hands and fashioning it into blades. Shaxx clenched his fists and covered himself with raging electricity, and the two soon began trading brutal blows that made the floor shake beneath them and caused miniature shockwaves to explode on each point of angered contact.

All the while Osiris kept sending what projectiles and manifestations of fire he could quickly muster against Micah and the shades attacking Khojin, in between every blink he was forced to employ by the rings of energy closing in around him.

Some crashed against her back, eliciting wails of burning agony and sizzling against her oily skin, but most she managed to cartwheel away from in the middle of her bladedance against Shaxx, creating more and more afterimages that kept going after Khojin.

The intense flames that would have rendered any other enemy down to cinders barely slowed the Ambassador, and her screams of pain were a brief, rare indication that the attacks hurt her. Screams that became less and less frequent with each one she let out, as the creature grit her teeth and powered through, likely due to her tether with the Savior that kept her energized and focused.

When the Phoenix switched tactics and began targeting the Sirensong to disrupt its waves of Strand keeping him subdued, the spear coated itself with thick resonance shields that made his flaming Light simply dissipate without causing any harm. Magma waves, pillars of fire that erupted beneath it, rapid-firing fireballs, crackling pulsars exploding on top of it.

Nothing that Osiris conjured was sufficient to penetrate the shield protecting the weapon. Shaheed understood what was required, and with clockwise turns of his wrists he blessed the revived Wei Ning and Rezzyl Azzir with Light potent enough to break through the resonance, and blinked them in front of the planted Sirensong.

But before the pair of Titans could unleash their twinned fury into the Dark-forged spear, Micah snapped her fingers and recalled it into her waiting hands, for she had won in her duel. Shaxx was missing his arms, the stumps of his former extremities burning with malachite fire that was slowly consuming him from the inside out, and was trapped in a Strand web behind her as the lightning dissipated from his decaying body.

She, for her part, was severely bruised in many portions of her face and body that were visible amongst the armor, bleeding from the open wounds but still not slowed down whatsoever in her rampage.

The Ambassador stepped through an emerald tear in reality before any of the remaining Guardians could attack her, materialized right beside Khojin as she swung her Lightblade against the dozen reflections keeping her on the backfoot and multiplying with each copy she destroyed, and ran it through her side.

For a brief moment she was exposed.

Jaren had to fire now.

Then Micah grabbed ahold of Khojin by the waist, the Guardian unable to free herself for she was stuck to her spear and encased in a cocoon of Strand that had woven itself around her body to suppress her Light, materialized in front of Jaren Ward even though he was supposed to be made invisible by his Paracausal power, and used Khojin to block the shots of the Golden Gun as they were fired.

The Guardian fell to the floor lifelessly, whistling holes carving through her flesh in various points of her core, and Jaren scrambled to jump out of the way of the Ambassador. But it was too late as a Strand whip wrapped around his legs, tripped him mid-run, and quickly dragged him over to Micah, who stomped on his head with her armored boot. The gunslinger's skull was caved in by the blow, and his neck became nothing but fine dust before he could fire the Golden Gun at her again.

_-What will you do, Valentin? Allow her this honest victory, or release us our due?-_

It could not be that he would be forced to make such a choice. He was close to being done. So damn close. If only they had been able to hold out for a couple more moments. Why would he be made to pick either of these outcomes?

Micah's Sirensong cut the air above both Guardian's corpses, and their revealed Ghosts were instantly encased in fields of resonance-charged Strand that immediately disabled them. She snapped her fingers, and the Strand connecting them to her caused the two Ghosts to materialize within her waiting palms.

Time slowed down for Valentin.

Osiris, Wei Ning, Rezyl Azzir, Fang, and now even Shaheed were mid-blink and about to slam into the Ambassador. Fang had eschewed caution and was now letting the Void spread everywhere he could. The Well was dramatically damaged, and puddles and streaks of the Void painted its floors and walls, with things inside being called.

There was no choice but to escalate, even if it put more of them at risk.

Yet none of them would be fast enough before Micah destroyed the two Ghosts.

_-Make your choice, Valentin. Show us who you are.-_

He either let what was going to happen take its course and held onto the thousands of souls who had him as their lone hope of salvation, or he intervened to save his comrades at the expense of countless innocents.

How could he possibly make such a choice? If they lost Khojin and Jared, the whole operation would be compromised and their chances of success when they engaged the Intercessor itself drastically reduced. He would sacrifice two of Humanity's greatest Guardians, who had a part to play against the Triumvirate itself and then what would come beyond, and the Spire had not even been fully liberated yet.

But if he chose to save them, then he would be damning an unconscionable number of innocents to one of the most horrifying fates that likely existed. And even if he chose to try and save them, he had no guarantees that he could actually keep them from the Disciple before he attuned himself to the Well.

They were slipping. They were slipping between his fingers.

He could not just do nothing. He had to make a he saw no clear path. There was no obvious fate to pick.

|| The most important choices are not easy to make. Never have they been, and never will they be. This is the burden that the righteous carry. This is virtue that many believe weakness ||

The Traveler…

What do I do?

|| As you see fit. Know that, regardless of outcome, your heart is pure. You are good, child of Man. My faith in you has not once been shaken. The Betrayer seeks to break you, to make you despair. All that it has accomplished is make you stronger. Have faith in that, Valentin. Have faith in yourself, if you will not have it in anything else ||

He would make his choice.

I'm sorry…

We will free you…when the time comes.

Time returned to normal, and the Speaker broke his concentration against the Disciple to channel the Light somewhere else.

There was something he felt through the connection with the Disciple.

Just a hint.

Surprise.

_-Fascinating.-_

Surprise - and interest.

_-You understand the value of practicality, when so many of your kind are driven by ideology. A pleasant surprise, Speaker. It will become easier.-_

In a moment the Savior took the thousands of souls it had snatched, and devoured them in one cruel instant that Valentin would never forget for as long as he lived. As the endless screams of the many, from all ages, from all backgrounds, innocent and promised better, were abandoned to the demon and drowned out by the chorus.

So many, lost beneath black waves and left to suffocate as that oil filled their lungs. So many, whose past lives he saw flash before his eyes as he heard the crunching and slurping of the feasting anathema. So much devoured power, that its presence began to slowly grow more and more palpable.

With a yank from Valentin's hands, the two disabled Ghosts were taken from Micah's clutches and recharged with Light, for the Speaker had made his choice. No Guardians would die today. Not to the Siren who called for their lives.

They would fight on for the bigger picture, for the war tomorrow that would dwarf anything they faced today. Because if they lived, those that they would save would be far more than those that had been lost. That was the simple truth, even if fury and sorrow tainted his focus due to the fact that such a choice had to be made at all.

_-The path to the Slave is open. Strike.-_ the Disciple gave their order to Micah, but Valentin did not need to hear it to be prepared.

He did not need any warnings because he had just secured the Well.

The Ambassador switched the grip on the Sirensong and threw her spear at him with speed that caused a sonic boom to explode out of thin air. She dematerialized in a burst of Strand before any of the Guardians that had been targeting her could make contact, and reappeared midair as she held onto her weapon's shaft and cruised at supersonic speeds.

The tip of the Sirensong was crackling with scarlet lightning, dripping with thick and black liquid that caused cracks to manifest within reality's surface as she cut a path straight to him. An obsidian meteor, raging with stygian flame and approaching him with such acceleration and weight that if she made contact with a skyscraper she would punch clean through it and demolish it.

She neared him, aiming straight for his heart and visibly excited to attack him, if the way she was widely grinning and her pitch-black eyes twinkled with life were any indication. He heard her howling laughter, wet and reverberating with malice so unbefitting anything that had once been Human, and realized that there was no Micah Abrams left to save.

There was only a beast to put down.

The Speaker raised a gloved hand before the Ambassador completed her trajectory, and blasted her point blank with a golden-white explosion of Light that left her screaming as she careened down to the floor with enough force that it punched a hole through the Godsteel surface and left her smoking from the burns, the testament to the force and rage behind the attack that he had sent her way.

The reminder that she was nothing but a thrall that had been misled to think that she was more, and he was the Speaker of Almaral, Traveler of the Celestials.

Enough.

He had seen enough.

He had heard enough.

He had tolerated enough.

It was time to kill what had once been Micah Abrams.

This story ended here.

_-We will converse soon, Speaker. May your Light burn bright.-_

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The moment the Shard had been incinerated, and the control panel destroyed, it had seemed as though there had been a fog that had lifted. Fang had no idea what the entities that he presumed were souls normally did, but they'd made it far more difficult to concentrate and perceive things, which had only stopped when the construct commanding them had been destroyed.

Then something new had taken its place; something that was on the edges of his entire consciousness; oily fingers grasping across everything. A sensation of the air becoming sharper, and the weight of something malevolent exerting its power.

The errant obfuscations of the souls were gone, but they had been replaced by something far more expansive, singular, and powerful.

It took Fang only a few moments to consider if destroying the Shard and the control panel was something that they should have done. Then Valentin had yelled his warning to them, and the doubt turned to certainty. Something was trying to take the souls now.

All of them.

His head turned to see the battle that had been waged against Micah - and things had not gone nearly as well as he had expected. Micah had transformed into something that bore only a passing structure to even the corrupted girl he'd seen before. A towering three-eyed monster wrapped in a sickly shroud of emerald and luster.

What hesitation he might have had at Valentin's order never manifested, and the Void congealed inside him, drawn from the endless Nothing.

Since he had been able to draw upon the Void, there had always been the fear in the back of his mind that he might not come back from it after the power had entered him. Even now there might be pieces of himself that were lost to the oblivion that he didn't perceive.

But that did not matter.

The Speaker had given his orders, and his failure might condemn them all.

He let his connection to the Light slip away and be entirely muted as he instead reached into the Nothing to pull upon the emptiness of the black. The oblivion that consumed everything. He clenched his hands as the Void spread across him like oil, and a cold power rushed to fill the displaced Light.

There was a different kind of difficulty each time he did this now.

It was like exiting a pool of comfortable warm water, to instead plunge into an arctic lake. Familiarity replaced with the glacial chasm of the unknown. The power to create being replaced with negation; comfort with absence; fire with vacuum. Paracausality all the same, but the feeling was one that was wholly alien to what he was becoming used to every day.

No power like this came without cost.

He spread his arms, as he directed the leaking Void to spread across the arena. Each step he took left inky footprints, and souls and mortals alike recoiled from touching the space he now commanded. Even so, he was a faucet whose flow he needed to control, lest he unintentionally risk the lives of the Guardians who were singularly focused on Micah.

The black hole he embodied would spare no one caught in its event horizon.

Micah might have transformed, but she seemed to understand what he was. Or if not what he was, what would happen to her if she was allowed to be reached. He couldn't move nearly as quickly, and while he could not be touched with the Darkness she was using without abandon against the other Guardians, he also needed to reach her.

It was a strange, infuriating helplessness as he watched how Micah was able to not only hold her own against his comrades, but deal fatal blows to them. It was clear she was being empowered by something that was giving her this strength, but he was just too slow to be able to do anything to stop it.

Shaxx, Jaren, Khojin, nearly half of their force remained fallen, and while their Ghosts were safe, to risk a revival right now would be suicide. Fang couldn't feel or hear the Paracausal forces at play, but he did witness the Ghosts be plucked away by Valentin, and send Micah into the floor below.

Something had changed now. Valentin was fully in the battle. Fang didn't know if that meant he'd prevented the souls from being taken, or…

Not important right now.

Survival came first.

Fang had since reduced his restraint, and the black sheen of the void touched a significant portion of the ravaged Well - but he was starting to realize that this wasn't going to work. Micah had since reemerged, but this time was explicitly more on the defensive, as she now had two to avoid - him and the Speaker.

Shaheed and Osiris remained active, fighting her to contain and leave room for Valentin to pin her down, or drive her closer to him. Ning and Rezyl were acting as the hard edge to confront her directly, knives, whips, and hammers infused with elemental power swinging around her. Yet she was faster than all of them, and could move from one side of the Well to the other in a blink.

She was a difficult, persistent opponent, even as she occasionally tried to slow him down with absolute futility.

Resonance waves were swallowed by the barrier. Strands around him sloughed off like burned tendons. He felt no electric shocks from bursts of red lightning from her weapon. All that was Paracausal was nothing against him. He'd suspected that none of this was because she intended to actually hurt him.

She was testing him. She might know that time was his enemy.

Time that he could not hold onto indefinitely unless he wanted to risk the Void consuming him entirely.

He didn't know what would happen if he lost himself to this power. Would he fade entirely and the Void withdraw, or would he become a vessel for the presences and voices that lingered on the edge of his consciousness?

He didn't want to find out.

Since the Speaker had become directly involved, the pace of the battle had shifted to one that was more even. There were visible wounds on Micah from attacks by Valentin and some of the other Guardians, while at the same time not seeming to slow her down. With how fast she was, there was only a moment needed for her to capitalize, where he was stuck even slower.

If he was more adept, more skilled with this power, better, maybe he'd be able to contribute in a meaningful way. Yet so long as he had to be careful not to hurt his comrades, and limited by his own knowledge, he wasn't going to be able to help.

Fang concluded that this approach wasn't going to work. Brute force was not what he needed here – she was too fast, he was too slow, and she knew he couldn't sustain this forever.

She needed a reason to risk herself against him.

Like the Shard, there needed to be bait that couldn't be ignored.

His Light suppressed, and with it the connection to his Ghost, he could not ask Shadow's opinion, but if he could talk to his companion, he was certain he would be told it was a terrible idea. However, some of them were going to die today, be they true deaths or not.

If they were to die, why not give it meaning?

He made the choice to pull back the ocean of the Void before it consumed him entirely – while holding onto a sliver to use when the time came. He only needed a little; only a touch. The Siren didn't notice right away, but when she did, she sent a pulse of sickly resonance. It was weak - but he did stumble while clinging to the sliver of void in his hand.

That was all she needed.

He was isolated, unsteady, and the Void was beginning to fade across the Well. He made a show of retreat, but with a creature as fast as her, it wasn't fast enough – and he did not create any countermeasures.

There was nothing that stopped her from materializing in front of him, and with that same smooth motion, skewered him through the heart. He heard someone calling as he gasped. Micah drove the spear deeper, and he could smell the metallic air of the Darkness around him.

Still, he smiled at her, because death was not the end.

And only when he lashed one hand around her wrist did she realize what he had done. He channeled everything into that single hold, unleashing a direct connection from the Nothing to the monster roaring at him.

His senses already fading, he barely felt his arm be severed from his body, and the rush of air as she retreated, but he knew it was too late for her. The single handprint he'd left of the Void stained her wrist, and with his last efforts, he let the rest of the Void within him fade.

Replaced with a more…comfortable oblivion.

He didn't know if he'd awaken again, but he did know that he'd done all he could. It was up to the rest of them to finish the job.

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

The hand that the infernal Guardian had laid on her was cold. Colder than ice. Colder than freezing winters. Colder than the vacuum of space itself. Colder than anything she had ever felt before in her mortal existence. It was worse than cold, deeper; it was the absence of anything. Numbness more terrifying than any frostbite.

She had known better than to try and strike the Guardian of the Void directly – the Angel had been clear in its direction. Let the Guardian exhaust himself, as he would drag himself back before being consumed by the power. When the Void had begun to be withdrawn, she had known that she had outlasted him.

She had slain many of the Liars - or rendered them incapable of joining the fray again without risking their true deaths. The fury of the Celestial's Slave was turned against her, forcing her to refine herself faster and further, as now mistakes would be punished with death.

It had not been perfect. Her arms were laced with burns caused by hellish flames, her body bore punctures from splinters of Light that had buried themselves in her. Yet she stood against the Slave, and he knew just as well as she that there was no room for error.

＜＜AND THE KNIFE MADE HER STRONGER＞＞

Thus when she'd seen the Void retreat, and the blackened Lightbearer recover his color and form, she had tested his resilience to ensure it wasn't an illusion. The pathetic creature had wavered at just a slight wave of luster.

Isolated. Alone. Vulnerable.

Another triumph to add to the pile of bodies. Another offering to the Angel who watched with pride.

The Logic bent all things to that which commanded it. She wove it to write his fate into the fabric of reality itself. To decide how his story would end, and etch the narrative conclusion of the man that called himself Fang Sov into the pages of the waiting firmament.

＜＜DIE＞＞

The majestic clarity consumed her; her own voice telling her what she had to do, what she wanted to do above all else in that moment. A hunger to be satisfied. A compulsion to be obeyed. Not the Angel's words, for they were too blunt, too indelicate. Not the Master's direct commands, for she was too inconsequential to receive them.

Something deep within her. Something whose roots had found purchase in the fertile compost the banquet of corpses she had left behind in her wake served. A seed that had been planted once she awakened into the ways of the Dark, blooming throughout her journey, growing as her understanding, now spreading and elevating her during these exquisite moments of extreme exhilaration. Reminding her that she was well and truly alive for the first time in the story of Micah Abrams.

REND

She had mauled her prey.

The spear pierced through his chest like a molten edge through butter, and she felt the earned power of the carving knife rush into her as another enemy fell by her hand. A moment of triumph that quickly turned to alarm when she realized something else. What this was.

A trap.

ADAPT

But it had been too late to move.

The Guardian's hand had lashed around her wrist too fast for her to pull away. With a yank of a Strand thread she quickly wove around it that arm was ripped off, but not before the touch of oblivion stained her. Like an insidious sedative, it did not hurt, it only stole feeling as it slowly crept up along her body.

The Guardian was dead, or soon would be. But his sacrifice had been strategic, one that had been intended to allow the rest of her enemies to kill her. Already the effects of this poison were taking hold, unmaking her heart's twinning with the Angel's. The sharp focus she had maintained was slipping; the notes of the Antiphon seemed fainter.

Bile rose in her throat as she felt the glorious presence of the Angel become silent; severed entirely - and the souls she had been a conduit for were also gone.

No, no!

RISE OR DROWN

The ground she stood upon became illuminated in a pool of Light summoned by one of the living Guardians; with enough ferocity that it seared her entire body, but for the part touched by the Void. She teleported away, the Strand still woven around her fingers, but smoke rising from her burnt body. All the progress she'd made in that time was lost. The Angel was silent, the Antiphon fading, and there were no more souls to even try and latch onto so that she could sup of their essence and recover.

The Slave's full power was turned against her; his fury and rage as incandescent as the sun; as he channeled all the unearned power of his patron demiurge against her. The assault proceeded in earnest, as projectiles and bolts of Light flew her way in continual barrages every continual moment. She gritted her teeth, sending a wave of resonance out with one hand, while weaving the strands into an emerald armor that absorbed the brunt of the attacks.

But it wasn't working anymore.

The Void ate.

Waves of Darkness that would have disrupted even the strongest of Light projectiles only weakened them slightly. Bonds of Strand she'd restrained empowered Guardians with sloughed off their inflamed bodies like water. Strikes that would have impaled or decapitated were deflected or blocked.

Her sharp edge was gone, the speed was fleeting.

As the oblivion ate, it dawned on her that she was going to die.

Worse, she was going to be consumed.

DEFEND YOUR CLAIMS

She had believed that even if she fell, she would be welcomed into the Angel's glorious choir - and now she was infected by something that would deny her even that final comfort.

With every minute that passed, everything seemed fainter now, farther away. The Void drove its way deeper into her mind and soul like an unstoppable poison. The notes of the Antiphon were gone. The Darkness itself was disrupted, as if she was trying to listen for something that was underwater.

And she could no longer dive.

She dodged out of the way as a dozen small beams of Light were conjured from a wave of the Warlock's hand, only to find herself ensnared in another reality trap created by Valentin, this one more complex and stronger than any before. Calling as much power as she could, she slammed the Sirensong into it to break the false reality – but this time she didn't know if she would be able to succeed as before.

She stumbled out of Valentin's trap, only to run straight into an inflamed fist from the Guardian phoenix. She stumbled, as he conjured a burning sword which he plunged directly into her stomach.

LIVE A PREDATOR, OR DIE AS PREY

She kicked back, roaring and teleporting a short distance away, as the scalding weapon burned inside her. She gripped the golden blade, burning layers of skin off of her hands, but she was able to channel enough resonance to quell the flames.

Her focus ensured she couldn't dodge the next barrage of burning Light that tore into her. The Void had spread up her entire arm now, and she couldn't feel it anymore. It was a strange sensation, like reaching into a pool of cool water and becoming numb to all feeling.

She hadn't even noticed several of her hand's fingers were missing.

She didn't know where the Sirensong was.

Everything was silent but for the sounds of combat. Pain itself was dulled. Her perception was blurry.

Panic swelled into terror.

No! Not now!

EXISTENCE IS THE FIRST AND TRUEST PROOF OF THE RIGHT TO EXIST

Her chest panged, her heart beat frantically.

She was going to die.

She had failed.

PROVE YOU CAN HOLD IT

A stream of fire erupted from the hands of the Phoenix, engulfing her in scalding flames. She screamed as her flesh charred, her eyes boiled, and everything became a white-hot experience of unrelenting pain.

Thoughts were becoming scattered; disjointed, scrambled. She tried reaching out to anything she could, for the familiar presence of her saving Angel, or the notes of the Antiphon. She could reach nothing, and she was alone with only the demons of Light around her.

PROVE YOU DESERVE IT

I'm sorry.

But apologetics were wasted thought. Apologetics meant nothing to the defeated.

She had failed Him.

Valentin was hovering just above her, an unholy spear in his hand whose bright-white head was held by a shaft crafted from pure Godsteel. A mockery of the Sirensong that had led her to rise beyond what her purposeless existence would have allowed. A bitter reminder of the heights she had aimed for, and would forever be denied. One last insult before she fell and was ground to paste by the weight of her sad failure.

It sped towards her at a velocity she would have been hard-pressed to dodge even at her full power. The weapon skewered her heart, acidic poison lacing through even fiber of her body that could still feel.

Her fist clenched, as she tried summoning the last remnants of her strength for one final defiance.

YOU ARE SUSTENANCE

YOUR BETTERS WILL MARCH OVER YOUR BONES

But she could not do so. The final darkness came over her, and she collapsed to the ground.

And that was the end of Micah Abrams.

---

THE WELL OF SOULS | ENOCHIAN SPIRE

Micah fell, the Siren defeated at last.

Valentin did not allow the possibility this was a trick, and with a hand summoned a cone of Light that reduced her head to atoms. Not a single reaction came from the impaled corpse. It was actually over now, and for the first time since this had started, he allowed himself a moment to relax.

The Speaker exhaled, and let the power fade as he returned to solid ground. Several of the Guardians moved closer to the fallen Siren's corpse, while others moved to either help the few remaining Triumvirate soldiers that were still alive, and appraise the damage to the Well of Souls. Ghosts reappeared, reviving the Guardians who had fallen.

As they reconstituted themselves, Valentin listened to what was there.

Or rather, what wasn't.

So many of the souls were gone, consumed by the Disciple. His choice had allowed him to secure the Well and prevent more from being taken, but it was impossible to deny that there was a hollow, pervasive emptiness of those who should be there, but were not. The remaining souls were quiet; processing an ethereal trauma over the lingering memory of the Savior's attempt at abduction.

He had no idea how many new lives had been lost forever, but it was too many. His choice had allowed them to win, but the cost had been high.

He didn't think it would be the last time he had to make such a choice.

Rezyl and Shaxx were warily circling the Siren's corpse, Light at their hands in case there was something that emerged out of the mutated body. Khojin was kneeling by Fang who had been resurrected by his Ghost, but was still unconscious, recovering from the toll that usage of the Void extracted from his body.

Valentin looked down at the monstrosity that had once been a young girl. She had become something dangerous; her metamorphosis had allowed her to fight each of them simultaneously, and nearly succeed. Be it the Intercessor or the Disciple, he shuddered to imagine what she might have become if allowed to achieve her full potential.

He shuddered, because the implications that this duel had posed were disturbing. She had just been a girl, and yet she posed the greatest challenge he and the Lightbearers he commanded had faced thus far.

The true depths of the Darkness, and the power within it, were beginning to dawn on him. If someone that had just been a girl could become...this, then the true champions that served the Ascendant Lord would demand they hone themselves beyond their current capabilities if they hoped to survive, let alone win.

And they still weren't done. The Intercessor awaited.

Even with the Light flowing through and restoring their vitality, not all of them were as sharp as they had been in previous hours, nor held the numbers they had fielded to this point.

Nonetheless, he had the Light and the Traveler's blessing, both of which had given him victory today.

He would move forward.

"Well," Rezyl's voice was…drained. "Anything we want from this, Speaker?" He pushed the toe of his boot into the corpse, testing its weight.

Valentin looked at the crumpled creature, and could muster nothing but revulsion at what she had been turned into, and anger over those who had twisted her into this. All to create something they intended to throw at them as another obstacle, while making her think that she was special, wanted.

Worse, they convinced her that she'd had none of that before. That she was worth nothing before she willingly damned herself.

That in particular made Valentin furious. At how they'd twisted everything good she'd had, her life, her parents, her friends, all of the love and joy she'd experienced, into being worthless, and into seeing value only in the blessing of the Ascendant Lord and comfort of the Dark.

There is nothing we can do for her? He wondered rhetorically.

Vigil floated beside him, his voice equally somber. Not as she is. But her soul can be free again, and return to the Traveler's embrace. Wounded, corrupted, and splintered. But it can be healed in time. She does not deserve oblivion.

Vigil's fins twitched. She is only another victim.

One in a long line. He agreed.

A tired heaviness settled on him, at how pointless all of this was. Thousands of people had died on Neptune, at so very low cost to the Darkness. The victory here was one of damage mitigation, not one that could fix anything. Their mistake in allowing the Intercessor to take root had been an investment for the Darkness that paid off tenfold.

Not the time for this, Vigil snapped him back to focus. We can ponder on mistakes after.

Right, he returned to the matter of Micah, whose soul was nearly snuffed out, suffocated. Even after death the Darkness was trying to keep her spirit from freedom. He didn't know what happened to the spirits of Darkbearers upon death, but suspected that the Dark would consume the soul rather than release it to peaceful oblivion.

"I'm going to extract her soul," he told Rezyl, approaching the ruined corpse and kneeling beside it. "The Dark will be denied a final prize."

He began the process of untangling the soul and salvaging something of if - and only a few minutes passed before he realized something alarming. The soul was not being stopped because of some innate nature of the Darkness. It was being deliberately held back.

He stopped in shocked understanding; an inkling of the reason converging on him too late.

The air inside the Well of Souls cracked like a pane of fine glass, shattering with a thousand fault lines as a visitor from the outside stepped through it.

What he had witnessed in the Expanse had been a mere impression pushing against that thin barrier. The groaning of a world in distress. The agonized moans of the very concept of sense, wounded by a finger that had stabbed through its back and pushed into its helpless flesh.

But this was no pained wail.

This was heralded by no scream.

It was a swift death. A gunshot to the back of reason's head, with not even the unceremonious thud of its slumping corpse announcing that a murder had just been committed.

The dimmed but strengthening brilliance of the Well of Souls was drowned out in one sudden moment. Dusk so impenetrable that he could not even see his hands as he held them forward fell upon them. An eclipse so total that the greatest expression of Light he could muster did nothing to cut through the black mantle.

His chest tightened as his heart's acceleration steadily rose. He grabbed at his throat and began to gasp for air as he was slowly suffocated by the stygian aura that leaked out of the hole punched through the Universe's cerebral cortex.

Vigil fell to the ground, instantaneously disabled by the Darkness that only one being he had grown so unwillingly familiar with could command. He was not even able to yell out warnings to his comrades to prepare themselves and brandish their Light, for a ghastly croaking rattle was all that emerged from his mouth.

A sound that should only have existed if his neck had been snapped and his vocal cords twisted.

His warnings would have accomplished nothing even if he had been capable. None of his comrades were faring better than he was. He reached with his Paracausal sight, straining against the black to be able to locate the rest of the Guardians, and found them all in various states of delirium.

Some were downright catatonic, bleeding from their eyes and ears and mouths as they lay collapsed on the floors; alive, but helpless. Osiris was grasping his head with both of his hands and emitting a soundless scream. Shaheed lay on the ground, rocking himself in a fetal position, whispering a deluge of feverish prayers that he could only understand by reading his lips, for no sound managed to escape from his mouth. Wei Ning was clawing her eyes out with her gauntleted fingers. Khojin was bashing her face against a wall in an attempt to kill herself.

Madness claimed its crown and sat on its throne, and his attempts to reach his comrades and offer them the strength they needed to merely stand in its presence utterly failed. He was trying to yell through obscured waters. Those reborn in the Light were not meant to swim in this bottomless ocean. Guardians of the Traveler could not withstand such atomizing pressures.

The Deep was not for him.

But the Deep did not care that he was drowning, as the anathema materialized in the air behind Micah's corpse and slowly levitated downwards. As a storm of pyramid-shaped particles and blinding resonance, the million edges of the knife that had undone so much with nothing but its arrival, coalesced into something that Valentin could only describe as a wraith.

It was here.

The Savior was here.

Here.

He instantaneously knew that this was no illusion or trick. This was nothing that could be categorized as a mere taunt. This was real. He knew it was real, because the moment the Disciple extended its palms as if for prayer or cordial introduction, his entire body was paralyzed. A chill whose deathly touch stabbed him through the gut a thousand times and encased his everything in an intangible block of ice.

His limbs. His lungs. His heart. His organs. His cells and the atoms that comprised them. The pain was indescribable. He was dying. He knew that he was dying and wasn't simply panicking. His body needed blood pumped through it. His brain screamed for relief as it slowly suffocated and tried forcing his lungs to act so that he could breathe. He could no longer extend his Paracausal sight to his comrades, and he dared not look, else he found them all dead.

The Savior moved its hands, hands that looked too Human, hands that left a million million afterimages of themselves as they slowly clasped together, and steepled its fingers to form a triangle. The careful, deliberate, purposeful motion leaving ripples in the continuum of space-time itself as the two halves of infinity sought to join with each other and marry under the vigil of a black mass.

Every minute movement of its gloved fingers produced ghostly reflections that echoed on reality's deeper layers, repeating the gestures in endless procession to force him to witness the true Majesty behind its Master's symbol.

The Fundamental Shape.

That which would cut everything that could be cut, until only the worthy of existence remained. The Edge of the Knife. The Black Blade that would deliver the Universe from its weakness. The harbingers that would blanket the skies of every world Humanity had ever known before wiping them all out. The Maw that would swallow them all and move on to the next, for the war was eternal.

For the war was greater than what their inconsequence could let them comprehend. For the God above Gods had a name, and if they could not stand before even one of His Disciples, then Sol would be left as nothing but a cold grave.

As so many before.

The moment the two hands steepled together, a sigil manifested in the space between the Savior's palms. A resonant halo, turning in clockwise motions and etched with minimalist runes in each turning layer of the ring that he could not comprehend. Runes that were elegant. Ancient. That said only what they needed to say. That communicated nothing beyond the factual. Eschewing unnecessary flair or the life of someone that had a culture other than the ruthless pursuit of one final goal.

Inside the golden rings lined in ebony debonair, there was one lone symbol. A symbol that he had seen etched into the chestplate of Micah's armor. A single vertical line, perfectly straight, with two branching lines emerging from each of its sides and diverging in calculating angles that ended in simple shapes. Above the main line, like the canopy of a tree, were what he could only discern as blades. Or a spear's head. The concept of conquest distilled into a single shape. Of unfettered Chaos mercilessly beaten down and broken on an anvil until it was left as nothing but cold Order. Forced into a shape that it could not fulfill, but forced all the same to be something it would never be.

A symbol whose significance he did not understand until that moment.

A symbol that represented one word in particular. One whose weight he had been grossly ignorant of until that very moment.

A symbol whose weight he now perfectly comprehended.

Because the symbol told him.

＜＜＜ALTIS＞＞＞

The word slammed into Valentin's face with the force of a rocket-propelled battering ram, and monumental gravity suddenly pressed down on his head, forcing him to kneel and breaking his knees. The nausea slowly growing in his stomach overpowered him, and he vomited thick-dark liquid onto the obscured floors of the Well of Souls.

The rancidness of the taste burned his tongue like acid and induced more retching in him. He emptied out everything that was in his stomach, and soon the black vomit was tinged brown with his own blood.

He hoped that the Lightbearers behind him had survived the mere uttering of that word; or better, that they had not even looked upon its Majesty.

But hoping was not something he had the luxury of allowing himself in that moment.

He had to be strong.

He could not hear the Traveler, but he needed to be strong without Her. Everything that She had taught him until this point would have to suffice, because no one but himself could stand before the Savior.

If it wanted him dead, he would have been flayed down to the atoms by that lone word. He felt the sheer power behind each letter, he understood the eons of murder holding it to the dark heavens with bloodstained hands. The galaxies of corpses the Lord had left behind in His wake was almost unfathomable, and there could only be one explanation as to how he had survived the naming of the ineffable.

The Savior was not fully here.

This was…a fragment.

A manifestation.

A show.

The Speaker wiped the vomit with the back of his gloved hand, and lifted his face to meet the Disciple.

Its body was long. Too long. Slender and spindly in its proportions, and yet looking too Humanoid for his comfort and raising questions he would not ask himself in that moment. Its arms were thin, lacking any noticeable musculature or girth, and they were flexed as its hands remained steepled and projecting the banner of its Lord.

Why did its hands have five fingers? Why did they look so much like his own?

Its body was clad in a long robe of black metal that shifted and moved and realigned itself in accordance to its wearer's measured movements, as if it were alive where the anathema was not. A dark cape fell from its shoulders, as unmoving as a sheet of steel as it was made to create the silhouette of a pyramid behind it.

Mists of resonance emerged from its bottom as the Disciple slowly approached Micah, and the wrongness of its movements sent a chill up Valentin's spine. It did not look like it was walking. And yet it did not levitate with any sort of grace or flair or technique. It simply slid over the ground like a legless banshee, perfectly still in its posture.

And the face…

He would not look at that face again.

It was nothing but a gray blur. Dull smoke contained in the vaguely oval shape of what had once been a head. Two large absences in the smoke formed what he supposed could be eyes, and it gave its visage a sinister quality that reminded him of a husked-out skull. A head that expanded upwards into a cloud of thick gray mists that stripped the Well of Souls of its features and detailing as it levitated towards Micah, leaving behind dulled metal devoid of any ornamentation or spirit in its craftsmanship.

But Valentin saw more, because he could comprehend the horror of this creature for what it truly was.

Because in this very moment, his gifts as a Speaker were a curse that would not allow him to forget what the Savior was behind its disguises. Sights that he would find strength instead of fear in, for he swore he would destroy this monstrosity when he understood the Light to a degree that allowed him to stand up to its horrible splendor and challenge it.

He would not kneel before it after this day.

But for now, he could only see.

He could only witness.

He could only behold as a sea of faces emerged from the smog extending above its head, quickly diving back down into the smoke, their brief moment of freedom lost forever before another took their place. Faces from all species he could fathom. From countless nations amongst the stars. Of all ages. Of all creeds and beliefs and origins and dreams and wishes and hopes and wants and lives and more. And more and more and more.

Each face with its eyes closed in apparent serenity, lips pursed in a lack of pain, and happiness, and joy, and sorrow, and everything. Each rendered into nothing. Each face locked into a falsehood that attempted to convey peace.

Each soul forced into the Whole, erased over the ages until nothing but an empty shell remained. A shell that would then be filled with this thing's pollution. Could they even be rescued from this fate? Did anything even remain to be salvaged?

The monstrosity finally reached Micah, and knelt beside her corpse. Its featureless face began to quickly blink with reflections of the trillions of people it had stolen throughout the ages, as if it were perusing its collection of masks before deciding on which one to wear for the occasion.

Each disguise perfectly stretched itself over the gray blob, the empty head realigning its bone structure to replicate what the damned person had once looked like, before dematerializing and making way for the next.

Valentin could not tear his eyes away from the unholy spectacle happening before him. He could not comprehend how such a thing could exist in a Universe that had good and beauty to it. He could not understand if what he was witnessing was something out of some terrible dream, or a reality most foul that he would have to contend with when the time came.

The Disciple finally settled on one particular face. A Human man, in his early forties if he had to guess. Bearded, wearing glasses and keeping his hair somewhat ruffled. Some sort of…researcher?

The Savior turned the corpse over with its hands, so that she looked upwards. An unnecessary act, for she was already dead.

And that was when Valentin heard it.

And his heart was cleaved in two by cruelty that somehow kept escalating.

Dad?

No…

He heard the whisper. Soft, fading, yet he could hear it amidst the Savior's miasma all the same. Female. Young. Confused. Scared.

Micah.

That was what remained of Micah. Micah as she had sounded once before; a young girl untainted by the corrupt form the Darkness had warped her into.

Then…that face…that soul the Savior dressed itself with.

How…How could it…

_-Micah! It's me! Yes, it's me! Thank the heavens that you're alright! I was worried sick! Me and Papa were looking for you! We didn't know where you ran off!-_ the chorus of voices; female, male, infantile, adult, growling, velvety, deep, high, loud, quiet, all answered at once in perfect synchronization, even as the mask's lips barely moved beyond a lifeless monotone.

It was a deluge of whispers that made Valentin's vision swim and made the world spin from under him. A symphony of demons playing the part of a caring father. The total silence was still held over the Well of Souls, and no matter how loudly Valentin screamed at the girl's spirit that this was not her father, he could produce no sound.

No matter how he raised his hands to try and reach out for her disembodied spirit, he found no purchase. No matter how he tried to stand, the rune still pressed down on him and kept him kneeling.

Dad! Where's…Where's Papa? I-I'm scared! It's cold, and dark, and I can't see anything! I can't hear anyone else! Where are you, Dad?

_-Papa is with us.-_ despite the all-consuming Darkness, there was an emotionless glint reflected by the glasses' lenses, even as its voice remained reassuring and soft. _-We are all waiting for you, Mic. It's okay to be scared. I was too, but now I'm alright, see? Come, let me pick you up, like when you were five. Now now, before you say no, I know you're a young lass and don't need an old man like me babying you. But…could you let me do it? One last time before you meet our new family?-_

The Savior raised one of its hands over the corpse, resonance began to distort the air around it, and Valentin felt a pull extend towards something deep within the body and begin yanking it out.

No!

Stop!

Heh, sure thing, grandpa. Better watch your back though. You can carry me, but just this time, alright? And…new family? Are…Are they nice? Do you think they'll…like me?

_-Oh, they will love you. They are excited to meet you, Mic. Close your eyes, this will just take a moment.-_ With a final, decisive motion, the Disciple clenched its fist and claimed what it had arrived to secure. What this show of power had bought it sufficient time to do. It did not seek to do battle against them, it merely aimed to secure its investment.

Dad, I-

And then the voice abruptly stopped speaking.

Valentin desperately tried reaching for any traces of the girl, but he found nothing.

Nothing.

One more absence. One more crime. Meaningless in the grand scale of what this thing was already responsible for. Inconsequential when it came to the grand ever-war between the Light and the Dark. But so unconscionable, so unspeakable, so aberrant to the very idea of innocence that Valentin's lips trembled and tears began pooling behind his eyes.

He would not forget Micah Abrams.

He would kill this thing to avenge who she had once been.

The Savior rose from its kneeling position, slowly turned around, and stared straight into the Speaker's eyes. Two burning points of crimson resonance, a pair of supernovas about to burst with the malice and hatred for creation the anathema bore deep in its gaping abyss, lit up inside the empty spaces of its eye sockets. They bore through Valentin's mask, and their fury matched his own increasing rage and disgust at everything this creature was and stood for.

_-Now, Valentin Kozhukhov. Let us converse.-_

There was a sudden flash, and they found themselves somewhere else.

---

UPON A CONQUERED WORLD

There was no flash as the world reconstituted itself around Valentin, only a sudden transformation from the architecture of the Spire to a world he had never seen before.

Tricks.

This Disciple had nothing he wanted to see.

This creature and him would not speak.

He stood upon a grassy cliff, high upon a mountain that stretched even farther into the heavens. Within the multi-colored grass were alien flowers with drooping petals, dehydrated from the dry air. In the distance there were more mountains, whose tops stabbed through the clouds themselves. Beneath them were rolling hills as far the eye could see, with a blue sky above them, whose trio of blue suns seemed to look upon the world like eyes.

Tricks.

Nothing but lies.

Nothing but the same lies that had damned Micah Abrams and the people of Neptune.

The display was nonetheless something of a relief to the violating agony he had previously endured. Valentin physically felt nothing, neither temperature nor wind, confirming that he wasn't really here – this was a projection of the mind. There was a strange sheen around him, and he suspected the Disciple had brought him to a dreamscape of its creation.

He managed to isolate the telepathic link that it had forged between his consciousness and its gestalt, and tested its strength by closing his eyes and taking deep meditative breaths. Prods, pushes, tests…

A few crucial moments passed. The link…

…it was bending.

The bond crashed against the solid fortress the Light had forged around his inner thoughts, unable to fully pierce its gates. A likely consequence of the Disciple only arriving via an aspect of itself, for its power had not manifested fully. And if it could bend…it could break.

Get out of my head. We have nothing to speak of.

He received an answer.

_-You can sever our connection if you so wish. This is not a prison. It is a school.-_

The anathema's layered voice, now purposefully subdued so that it would not instantaneously overload his senses, sounded in accordance with his thoughts. Get out of my head. My thoughts are mine to have, they do not belong to you. They will never belong to something like you. He began the process of severing the connection, but before he could do so, the Disciple spoke again and stopped him with nothing but its words.

_-Prisons hold prisoners. Schools house students. As We said before, you may leave whenever you wish.-_ the voices wormed around him, soft and clear. _-But are you sure that what We have to show you is not something worth learning? That it has no use to Almaral's Speaker? Are you an ideologue or a pragmatist, Valentin?-_

You lie.

The declaration allowed him the resolve to continue.

All that you have to show is either lies or veiled traps. Words do not leave your mouth, only cloaked knives. You seek to lead me astray, as you did Micah. Your goal is to sow doubt, because you know I am the Traveler's proof. That is my "pragmatism," anathema. There is nothing practical in walking into what one knows to be a trap, or listening to the words of a creature who breathes deception.

There was no reaction discernable in the Disciple's voice.

_-You are not Micah Abrams. You know who you are. You know what you are. If our words are enough to make you renounce your vows, then you were not worthy of them to begin with. A Celestial's Speaker can witness truth and bear the weight of its fall.-_

A note of goading; of challenge entered its voice.

_-Are you a Speaker, Valentin? Or is that mask you wear over your face made of aluminum instead of Godsteel? Are those hallowed robes of yours the disguises of a charlatan, or the mantle of Her purest servant? You know you have much to learn before we meet again, so let us begin here. Rise or Drown, the choice is yours.-_

You do not know who I am. You do not understand what it is to be a Speaker. You place no value on the burden. Responsibility is a concept as alien to you as your existence is to me. You serve no purpose other than to serve your Lord. You will burn everything that you will burn because you do not have to pay the price your ambitions demand.

Blades sharpened by his own words; ones that were laced with the venom and fury he felt; words that came from the heart, purer than any that he had spoken before. Words shaped into spears that would not pierce the mind of the enemy.

But ones that ringed the fortress of his mind.

You force the helpless to shoulder the consequences of your wants. You pass what you should carry onto those that cannot oppose you. You only take from the world, and add nothing in return. It is why you are less than me, despite all your power. Despite believing yourself divine.

There was a pause before the answer came.

_-Is that so? Then let us know each other. Let us converse, Speaker of Almaral. From one humble servant of a great power to another. Your words show that you do not fear us. You possess surety that the girl did not. You know exactly who you are. You know exactly what you are. It is why you will not falter in your path - so long as your faith remains resolute. Yet belief is not proof. Show us, Speaker. Show us your resolve.-_

He knew he should not.

He knew he was being manipulated.

He did not know if this knowledge changed anything. Was it worth risking all that he was against an entity that had demonstrated its utter superiority over him? Yet if the Savior had wished to kill him - they could have. All the same, sowing doubt, questions, especially now, could be just as damning.

And yet…

He had a feeling that if She were here, She would trust him to remain resolute. That he would be able to parse and accept what the Disciple showed him without letting it sway him. For She knew that this was only one of many, many tests he would face.

He could not falter at the first step out of fear, for if he faltered here, then Humanity had no hope.

The Disciple believed him incapable of choosing this, expecting that fear and self-preservation would win out.

He had to prove this thing wrong.

He…He would not falter. He would not fail again. He would not fail like he had done the souls he sacrificed to this monster.

He would not fail here, like he had done Micah Abrams.

The Disciple seemed to perceive that he had made his choice.

_-Then, let us converse.-_

Let us…converse.

The Savior stood beside him, their hands still steepled into the Fundamental Shape, but no longer conjuring the rune that had brought him to his knees. The effect of their presence was still palpable, and he kept his eyes forward to avoid looking at the slender wraith that towered above him.

Even as his heart once again accelerated its beating and he had to slow his breathing to calm himself, as the Disciple's mere presence on the edge of his peripheral vision was enough to induce powerful dread and discomfort in him whose cause he could still not identify.

But at least he could stand before the anathema without risking total collapse of will.

Because its gravitas was being drowned out by another's.

A presence that was far away, but was still powerful enough to be felt where he stood even through this projected state of being. If the Disciple's rune had been nothing short of instantaneously overwhelming, then he could only try to imagine what being in the presence of this entity would be like.

Despite the distance separating him from this being, he could still hear the call. A marching pasodoble that instilled within him a desire to kneel, submit, and obey the God it was exalting, despite any attempt to ignore it or muffle the sound.

A chanting melody of authority; whose chorus was an anthem to the divine.

No, not the divine.

The Majestic.

_-To whom all things bow,-_ the Savior spoke softly. _-To whom even the stars submit.-_

Gooseflesh crawled across Valentin's skin as the Savior repeated what his heart was dutifully marching to with an understanding nod, for it already knew what would be instilled. Curt sentences that condensed the enormity of this being into words he could comprehend. This embodiment of power and order. The layered voice swirled around the edges of his subconscious, and the Speaker shook his head to anchor himself.

He was the Speaker of Almaral, Traveler of the Celestials.

And this would be his proof.

He would not leave, not yet.

Not until he understood what the Disciple wished for him to see.

The Savior gestured with one of its hands, the thousand afterimages left by the movement brief as they coalesced into its limb. _-Look below.-_

Valentin looked.

Enormous the world was, but it was a world that was being ravaged by war. Below them Valentin watched as armies so numerous they covered hillsides like ants swarmed against fortifications and cities. Bursts of orange, white, and yellow were frequent across the epochal battlefield that would decide the fate of a people.

It was impossible to make out what the individual soldiers looked like, but Valentin felt the tremors in the air, and the distinct sounds of Paracausality raging with brilliance and shadow as the armies clashed. It was clear who held the initiative and advantage, as he watched a city be overrun by this carnivorous force.

The skies were filled with ships of an architecture he'd never seen. Flying cathedrals carved from bone, whose grey-green exteriors invoked the aesthetics of a power more ancient than he could imagine, roused from its slumber by the call of battle. They flew between the mountains, bombarding the ground below with malachite missiles and black pods that dug into the earth and released swarms of chitin.

High above them, resting in the low orbit of this world was a colossal ship in the shape of a Pyramid, which was an omen he was well acquainted with after so much. It spoke to the sheer size of the black vessel that he could behold its surface clearly even far away where he stood, and in its formation were smaller copies of the behemoth awaiting commands. A singular dark blade, with its million edges ready to stab and cut and rend and kill as soon as the call was uttered.

The martial march came from that ship. Even from his distant vantage point, he could feel the boleros striking against the drums of conquest. Each strike made him shudder, each reverberation made him swallow, because the urge that he was resisting to teleport into the middle of the battlefield and tear apart the enemies of the Majestic was undeniable.

But this was his proof.

He would not bow.

That ship was where the source of the power sat.

The Ascendant Lord.

Altis.

His eyes returned to the battle being waged – as it became apparent what the war was against. There were various displays of Light, alien when compared to what he and the Guardians knew but Light all the same, meaning this was a species that had been blessed by a Celestial. A species that the Ascendant Lord had decided to make an example of.

Valentin could see flashes of the Light across the battlefield, yet he could tell that the struggle itself was hopeless. It did not matter if the explosions of radiant Paracausality wiped out a thousand soldiers, double that amount was already joining the fray. A beam of furious Light cut across the sky like a scythe, leaving a small fleet of the cathedratic vessels as nothing but debris.

Only moments later, reinforcements arrived and replaced the destroyed fleet, as if their loss was of little consequence to the inexhaustible armies of the Lord. The Savior waved a hand, and the air shimmered as the battle Valentin had been looking at came into closer focus. One of the smaller Pyramids began firing what Valentin initially thought were missiles, but on a second look he saw they were not missiles, but soldiers.

A species of aliens with lithe bodies, slender limbs ending in long-fingered hands and what he could only discern as hooves instead of feet, tall and helmeted heads, and whose form-fitting armor was an argent white.

By aesthetics alone, he could tell that these were not the same as the masses of chitin swarming the Lightbearers. These were elegant. Refined. Worth more than the mere cannon fodder that had been fielded thus far. They were fired from their ships like projectiles, gracefully twisting in the air as they made impact, leaping straight into battle. They held glaives in their hands, each one wielded with a skill and precision evidently gained after vast experience.

A species that was proud, elite, and powerful, indicated solely by the air they carried themselves with. Regnance was in each step they took, and resonance coated their weapons and bodies as they took command of the chitinous aliens that Valentin saw properly for the first time.

Living skeletons. Three blinkless eyes filled with emerald fire, lacking any soul or thought beyond their appetite. Lipless mouths, showcasing grotesque fangs that looked far too much like a mummy's decayed rictus.

Hunger.

Hunger to kill.

Hunger to die.

Hunger for the mere chance to cause suffering.

The Savior dispelled the focused view, and Valentin saw the whole battlefield once again, for it was a war that was coming to an end. He mustered enough courage and looked to the Savior, who quietly stood, observing the carnage without a tinge of emotion in the empty skull that was its face. "What is this place?"

_-A world soon to be under the rule of the Ascendant Lord, upon which lives a species soon to be extinct,-_ the Savior answered. _-They aligned themselves to the Celestials, and had just been given the Light as a reward. Too late for them, so an example was due.-_

The Savior turned to face him fully, the resonant supernovas of its eyes flaring with Finality as it spoke. _-Only one battle out of millions which are waged each day. Light against dark. Celestial against Ascendant.-_

Valentin met the dead fusion hearts of its gaze, forcing himself to stare into their appalling malice and coiled fury. "Is this intended to be a demonstration to me? I see no purpose in this other than an attempt to intimidate me."

_-It is a demonstration, in a way, but not one meant to dissuade. We seek to help you understand a truth that you are now bound to,-_ the Savior disputed. _-You are as helpless to change destiny as any of your kind.-_

"My kind being?"

_-Those who gain the curse of the Celestial's favor,-_ the Savior said, its crimson oculi flaring with brief intensity that was soon subdued. _-Her Guardians. Her Speakers. Those charged with seeing the will of the Celestials executed. We know what you are, but We do not know what you can do, and what you cannot. Not yet, at least. We merely desire that you understand what this war you have stepped into will entail.-_

"And why extend this courtesy?"

_-Because She will not. This war you enter is one you do not fully understand.-_

Valentin returned to observing the war's raging blitz. "I knew what would be coming." He said quietly. "She showed me the origins of this conflict."

_-Do you? The understanding of the Celestials is incomplete, as they have not breached the gates to the Deep. They do not understand what a place that forges one such as the Ascendant Lord entails, nor do they know what He seeks to achieve but for his adherence to the Logic.-_

A shake of the ghostly head. _-But that takes away from what We say. You may understand the reasons for this conflict, but the scale is something mortals do not…grasp,-_ one of their hands extended over the battlefield. _-A species dies today, Valentin.-_

The voices held some remnant of passive wistfulness. _-Do you know what those words mean? An entire people, like yours who call Earth their home. A story that could have been grand, had the book not been burnt before the page could be turned. An entire culture that will never make the meaning of its roar be heard.-_

The voices lost their flavor again. _-Their Speaker was amongst the victims, a chosen one who was meant to be a symbol of the Celestial's favor. A beacon to instill hope amidst the hopeless. A brilliant candle, snuffed forever. A world ravaged, transformed, and conquered.-_

The hand fell. _-For them, this was everything. For us, it was only one more battle. One more day. And our days have been many, Valentin. We were already carving our way through the firmament when the first Humans fashioned shelters out of hardened mud and dried branches. It is difficult to accept one's place in this Universe – or in this contest that shakes the heavens themselves. Yet Speakers die, species are exterminated, and worlds are destroyed all the same. Each day death on a scale you cannot comprehend. For what? For Light and Dark to prove their triumph over each other.-_

Their voice grew quiet, the layered cadences almost whispering. _-This war you enter is one of utter annihilation. One of utter carnage. One without mercy.-_

Valentin's lips pursed. "This is how your people wage this war. We do not."

The Savior turned back to him. _-Do you believe Light and Dark can coexist? Do you look upon us and see something that you can stomach, that you can live with? Do you believe that it is any easier for us to bear what you are?-_

No.

The answer was nothing other than no.

"That's…" Valentin shook his head. "We are different. Different from mortal species, unchanged by the power that flows through us. We will remain as we are. We will not lose what makes us Human."

_-We thought so, once,-_ the Savior mused. _-That there is a distinction between the powerful, and the pawns. But it is more than power, it is in the goals and intentions of each side. Light and Dark take their pawns, molding them into their ideal visions. It is more than power that makes Light and Dark incompatible, it is a fundamental understanding of one's place in the Universe.-_

"Perhaps," Valentin said. "But that will not be what I do. That is not what She wishes."

_-Perhaps you will not,-_ the Speaker did not seem offended. _-Or perhaps you will change when you see what this war is, in a way you cannot ignore. Perhaps when your Celestial gives you an order to carry it out yourself.-_

Here it was. The attempt to plant doubt. He should have known.

Valentin shook his head. "You lie."

_-It is a progression. Each moment, you come closer to whom the Traveler wishes you to be. There was a time where you balked at raising arms against Clovis. You were determined to keep the Triumvirate alive. The Traveler has given you no orders, imposed on you no visions, but your objectives have shifted all the same,-_ the Savior's voice grew soft. _-You cling to principles, but you are shaped by the Traveler, and understanding Her ultimate objectives. You are Her extension, Her will, and ultimately, Her voice. Evolution is inevitable in a war of annihilation.-_

A sigh was released from his lips. He could not see himself going to the extremes the Savior claimed he would. Yet there was a truth under all of it – that Light and Dark were incompatible. "What choices are there, if all that awaits us is extermination from those we fight?"

_-Few, Speaker. So very few,-_ the Savior murmured. _-Celestial, Ascendant Lord, they work to ensure the enemy is one so heinous that extermination is the only viable option. Perhaps they are right, perhaps not. What choice do we have, we wonder, when our destinies are not commanded by us?-_

His lips twitched. "What point are you trying to make with this speech?"

_-Merely that you will soon step into a maelstrom that may claim all you hold dear,-_ the Savior said. _-Do not waste the time afforded to you. Do not take the lives and loves for granted, for there will soon come a day when the Black Fleet descends over your homes, and lays waste to your people. Just as it was for these beings. Just as it will be for so many more.-_

He met the Disciple's eyes, staring into their sickly infinities for the first time without flinching. "Only if I fail."

_-Only if you fail,-_ the Savior repeated. _-There are always exceptions. Perhaps you will be one of them.-_ the Savior looked out once again to the battlefield, where another city was falling. _-The Universe makes us both victim and perpetrator of its infinite cruelty. Slaves to fundamental forces and cycles that cannot be broken.-_

It was a strange admission. "Is that what you are? A slave?"

_-It is all any of us are,-_ an amused lint entered the Savior's voice. _-Why else would gods go to war, if not to break the chains imposed on them, or prove that they are above the constraints reality claims they must obey? In this Altis and Almaral are the same; divinity chained to something higher that imposed the fundamental rules that drive this world.-_

They paused. _-Live well, Speaker, while time remains. We may converse later, should you survive the coming battle. The Ascendant Lord watches your rise as we speak. Do not disappoint, lest you earn His sword, as well as His attention. And should that occur…you will drown.-_

Valentin turned his head to face the Disciple, but the creature was already gone. Faint whispers that emanated from where it had been standing only moments before, that faded into the silence of the dead that now was all the dreamscape had to show him.

He knew that he needed to return to his own people and tend to them before they could face the Intercessor and finish what they started. He severed the telepathic connection, and the conquered world crumbled away like melting ice, until he was once again in the Spire.

---

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER XXVII | ANACRUSIS

---

Xabiar's Note: It's been a while since the last chapter. Quite a lot has happened in the Destiny world, some good (Season of the Witch was one of the best ones they've put out), and some definitely not as good. I hope that all of the laid-off Bungie employees find new and stable careers. It's extremely disappointing to see the mismanagement. I can only hope they learn going forward.

Back to the story, there are a few comments to make. The first is that this took quite a long time to do, as you can probably discern from the length. The reasons for that I'll go into after the next chapter, suffice to say there were a lot of good ideas, a larger increase in scope, and real life all contributed to the final product which I'm very proud of, but does take longer to do as a consequence.

So, that means the bad news is that the actual conclusion to this arc will be the next chapter, not this one. A decision not made lightly, but because this one was getting a bit too long. Which yes, means that this is a bit more than half of where the chapter was at the time. Next one probably won't be as long when things are said and done, but…we'll see.

The good news is that I can promise that the conclusion will come out in December. I can't give an exact date, but it will be in that window. Considering how important both of these chapters are, it's important to get them right.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

- Xabiar

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Edumesh's Note: Hey y'all. Edumesh here. A ton of work has been put into this chapter by all of us who are part of the team over here, and I hope that you have as much enjoyment reading it as we did writing it. This whole Spire arc is pretty much our take on a raid, and we wanted to properly set the picture for how crazy raids are going to be in this series when they do happen. Anacrusis is bloody insane, so stay tuned for that. That's all I'm going to reveal about the finale to the Spire arc.

Also, the google doc where I worked the Micah bossfight is called "Micah goes apeshit" which Xabiar called a "A certified Edumesh™️ title."

Just wanted to share that fact, hah.

- Edumesh