The Garden of Salvation
The glow of the sun in the dark blue, almost black sky lights up the Vex-terraformed landscape as the trio materializes out of the Vex gate they walked through. They make their way deeper into the Garden, stopping when they enter an empty area that appeared to be a courtyard. They search around for a while, looking for any indications of where the Vex Mind could be. After half an hour of searching with no clues to point them in a direction, the three guardians sit and try to think through the dead end they'd found themselves in.
"I can't believe we've found literally nothing." Nyx says, huffing.
"Well, there's gotta be something around here." Delve sits down, almost leaning too far back. He corrects his balance and sighs. "I hate this place already." At that, Magnus chuckles.
"The way forward is somewhere. It's just about finding it." Magnus states, folding his arms. "There must be a construct we can access somewhere around here." Magnus' ghost, Wisp, appears next to him and starts floating around the courtyard, scanning for any trace of Vex constructs. As she surveys the area, the three guardians get to talking.
"I never thought I'd be working alongside you." Magnus says to Nyx, placing his hands on his hips. "You're still known around the Reef, you know."
"Yeah well, it's not like I wanted to be. The plan went sideways. I'd have gotten away clean if not for the damn security grid." She folds her arms and sits down on the piece of Vex architecture that Delve is sitting on.
"Woah. What did I miss?" Delve asks. He looks between the other two and says to Magnus "Nyx wouldn't tell me what she did. Spill it." Magnus laughs.
"She pulled off- Well.. Almost pulled off the biggest glimmer heist of the last century." He continues to chuckle to himself. Delve is silent for a moment, then holds is hands up in annoyance.
"Well? That's it? That's all you're gonna tell me? How much was the take?" He turns to Nyx, who mumbles a reply under her breath.
"Two and a half million.." Upon hearing the number, Delve is too stunned to speak. He just sits there staring at Nyx with a blank expression on his face, his mouth slightly open.
"You tried to steal two and a half million glimmer from Uldren Sov? That's basically a suicide mission, even for Lightbearers." He picks up a small stone off the ground and tosses it at Nyx, who gives him an annoyed look. "That explains your bounty, though."
"Yeah well.. Shut up." She says, trying to ignore the look that Delve was giving her.
A sound from across the courtyard saves her from too much embarrassment, bringing all their eyes to Wisp, who was now floating back to the group very quickly. Magnus silently read the data that was sent to him.
"There's a construct at the other end of the courtyard. It's currently being masked by some sort of signal." Magnus says to the group. "I'm already working on a way to get through it." A few moments later, a massive construct appears at the other end of the courtyard, and the group walks over to it, each of them sizing it up.
"So, once we hack this.. What happens?" Asks Delve, placing his hands on his hips.
"Well hopefully, it should take us to the Vex Mind." Replies Nyx, looking over at him with a slightly exasperated expression on her face.
"Duh." Delve holds up his hands defensively. "I just meant.. You know.. Is it gonna bring up another gate? Or is it just gonna like.. Teleport us there?"
"It will construct a gate for us to travel through." Magnus says, matter-of-factly. A few moments later, he's proven right as the construct seems to create a gate out of Radiolarian Fluid in the middle of the courtyard. The three guardians step over to its bronzed metal frame as it powers on with a deep thrumming. "Once we're through, we'll probably only have a limited amount of time to kill the Mind before enough Vex to overrun the Last City swarm us."
"Great. Gotta love a time crunch," Delve sighs, taking his revolver out of its holster. "Let's get this party started."
The trio step through the gate and are instantly berated by a blaring groaning horn of a Vex Mind noticing them. The thing they notice next is the oppressive weight of Darkness energy on them. It almost feels like a force is pushing down on their souls.
"The Darkness.." Rust says, almost choking on the word. "I can bring you back maybe one time. After that.." The words she doesn't say ring louder than those she does. The world goes dark for the three of them and when it brightens again, they're standing on the shore of a lake of Radiolarian Fluid with the Vex Mind standing in the liquid. It takes a step towards them, splashing a large amount of it into the air as it stomps its foot down.
"That's one big dude." Delve says, looking up at the enemy in front of them.
"You can say that again." Nyx says, seemingly hyping herself up for the fight. Magnus readies his gun and looks at the other two.
"Stop gawking and get shooting. Limited time, remember?" With that, he starts to let off pulse after pulse of nanites into the core of the Mind. It looks at Magnus and prepares to fire its cannon. The gun charges and fires, but before it can harm any of them, the guardians split up and jump to separate areas on the shore. The three of them start to pepper the Mind with gunfire, their bullets hitting its body with loud tinks for the most part.
"Aim for the core in its stomach area!" Magnus says over their comms.
"Yes, thank you Magnus. I've never fought a vex before.." Nyx replies, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Well if you are aiming for it, then you need to work on your aim." Magnus replies, seemingly unaffected by her sarcasm. This continues for a few more minutes, the three making insignificant progress in taking down the Mind. As Delve fires off the last of his loaded shots for his lever action, he grabs more bullets to reload it. Out of the corner of his vision he notices an extremely large amount of Vex pouring out of the three Gates that were on the shore behind them. He starts to reload faster and frantically says
"We've got incoming. Behind us." The other two look and both silently swear as their attention is drawn away from the mind for a moment. "Looks like we're gonna have to clean these guys up. Not sure if they're gonna stop coming through though."
"Delve, you do that. Magnus and I will continue to try and take down this Mind." Nyx calls out, refusing to take her eyes off the advancing Vex towering over her.
"On it." Is his only reply as he slings his lever action over his shoulder again. He draws his revolver and sprints through the crowd of Vex. He fires into their core as he runs past them, enough to bring them all down with one shot each. But for every one that he kills, two more enter through the gate. Soon, he finds himself on the back foot, running from an extremely large crowd of Vex.
"Rust," He says urgently in his personal comms. "I need my big gun." He hoped she couldn't hear his worry.
"One really big gun coming right up!" Her surprisingly cheery voice cut through the sounds of Vex screeching around him. A moment later, a massive heavy machine gun appears in his hands. He slides the bolt back, loading the first round.
"Hope you boys like lead." He chuckles to himself as he pulls the trigger, feeling the gun shake his arms as it starts to let out a constant stream of bullets that seem to almost literally cut the Vex in half as they march towards him.
After only a few seconds the shore is empty enough for him to focus his fire on the Mind that Magnus and Nyx were struggling to keep at bay. His bullets slam into it with enough constant force for it to stumble back and almost lose its balance. He continues to let out a seemingly endless stream of bullets, taking slow steps towards the edge of the Radiolarian Lake that the Mind was still standing in. What Delve had failed to realize however, was that the Mind was charging another shot from its cannon.
"Delve watch out!" Nyx calls out, reaching out her hand. A moment later, the cannon shot lands next to Delve, not hitting him, but the force knocks him over. The gun flies out of his hands and into the white radiolaria.
"Damn!" He exclaims. "That was my favorite big gun." He looks down at the frame of the gun as it starts to slowly disintegrate. As he watches the gun get eaten by the liquid, an idea forms in his head. He gets back up, looking at the Mind then over to Magnus.
"Magnus! I'm gonna need a distraction!" He calls out. "Nyx, when I say so, fire your Golden Gun at that core! Got it?" He points at the core in the stomach of the Mind.
"You're going to do something incredibly stupid, aren't you?" She asks over their comms.
"You know it. Alright, just get ready!"
With that, he rushes the Mind, jumping and boosting through the air to avoid touching the liquid. Through no small amount of effort, Magnus was doing a great job distracting the Vex Mind with his peppering of nanites, grenades, and other things. It was focused enough that it didn't notice a guardian flying at it. Delve collides with the giant Vex's leg, grabbing hold with one hand. His grip almost slips, but he hoists himself up with a grunt and starts to climb it.
"What the-" He hears Magnus ask over their comms. "You know what? Never mind. Whatever you're planning on doing, just do it."
"What exactly is the plan?" Nyx asks, waiting for her cue by clearing out the Vex that were starting to flood through the Gates once more.
"Well," Delve grunts through their comms, "This radiolaria that we're surrounded by breaks down whatever you throw into it." He finds a foothold on a piece of the towering Mind's body.
"Yeah, and?" Nyx stabs a goblin in its fluid casing, before firing her gun at another.
"And.." Delve says, "We have Light that won't break down in said radiolaria. We need to crack open its fluid case and put something in there."
"If I had a week, I wouldn't have the time necessary to list why that isn't going to work." Magnus chimes in. He's now having to split his attention between distracting the Mind and stopping some of the Vex that slip by Nyx.
"Do you have a better idea, then?" Delve asks him. After a moment of silence, he continues. "Didn't think so. Nyx, get ready to-"
He's cut off by the Mind suddenly shifting its attention to him. The plates of armor that make up its body shift, forcing Delve to drop and land on its waist area. The giant bright white glow of the radiolaria in the Mind's fluid case illuminates Delve as he stares into it. His stare is broken when the Mind seems to hunker down, shifting armor plates over its fluid tank.
"Damn!" Magnus exclaims.
"Good to know he's paying attention to it." Delve thinks to himself. A moment later he's already trying to think of how they're going to open up the armor plates in order to break the casing.
"Rust?" Delve asks in his personal comms. "You said the darkness energy here was too much, right?"
".. Yeah?" She responds hesitantly. "Why?"
"How many times do you think you could bring me back?"
"Probably just the once." She says, then she adds on a solemn "Then it'd be lights out. Forever."
"Once is all we need." Delve mutters to himself. "Nyx! When I tell you to, shoot the casing!"
"Yeah, that was kind of already the plan!" Nyx calls back, clearly annoyed at the endless flood of Vex that were only increasing in numbers.
Delve lets out a sigh and lodges himself between the two armor plates covering the Mind's fluid casing. With a grunt he starts to push against each piece, trying to use his body to separate them. At first even he isn't sure it'll work, but soon the pieces start to move. Slowly but surely. First they move a centimeter. Then an inch. Then they've moved four inches. Before he knows it Delve is holding the pieces apart at his full arm span, forcing the Vex Mind to obey him using pure strength.
"Nyx!" He calls out, his grip on one side almost slipping. "Shoot it now!"
"You're in the way, you idiot!" Nyx says, looking up at him. "Drop out of the way, and I'll time it-!"
"Shoot the damn casing!" Delve yells, cutting her off. He can feel his strength beginning to give, and he worries that Nyx is going to hesitate too long. If he let go now, he'd likely not be able to get it open again. Luckily for him, he sees a golden flash on the shore in front of him. He closes his eyes and steadies his mind for what comes next.
This part always sucked. He heard the telltale blast of a Golden Gun being fired and felt the searing heat rip through his chest, then.. Nothing. Just darkness. Every time this happens, it always feels like an eternity before his Ghost can bring him back. In that time, he thinks that this must have been what it was like to be dead. He wonders what it must have been like to not be a Lightbearer.
His thoughts are interrupted by his eyes snapping open. He finds himself on his feet on the shore of the radiolarian lake, holding his gun.
"Are you alright?" He asks Rust immediately.
"Yeah. Just.. Drained." She responds. This was the first time he'd ever heard her sound tired.
"We're almost done here." He assures her. He tightens his grip on his gun and calls out to his team. "Did it work?"
"Yeah." Nyx responds. "Punched a hole right in the casing. It's leaking too slowly, though. We're gonna run out of ammo before it runs out of power."
"Not if I can help it." Magnus says coolly. He quickly starts firing pulse after pulse of nanites into the casing with pinpoint accuracy. After more than a few pulses, the trio watch in awe as the nanites start to eat the massive Vex machine from the inside out. It shudders as it starts running out of its power source. It falls still, then the metal groans as it falls backwards into the radiolaria, sending a large amount splashing upwards.
"Well that was effective." Wisp says, materializing beside Magnus. "I'm glad you brought that along." Magnus gives his Ghost a look but says nothing.
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"I'm sorry, but I didn't have enough Light to bring you back, and fix your clothes!" Rust says, looking at her Guardian.
"You couldn't do something?" Delve asks, holding his arms out. His shirt and jacket have a large scorched hole in them on both his front and back.
Nyx chuckles as she walks past him. "Looking pretty good for an Exo donut."
"I didn't ask for your input." He points a finger at Nyx, who makes her way up the stairs and out of the cargo bay of the ship.
"Don't care!" She calls out from the stairs. "I'm gonna go sleep for a couple days."
"The Mind is secured." Magnus says, approaching Delve and Rust. "I suggest you deliver it wherever you need to take it. Before someone decides to scan your ship. I doubt you want some low-lives thinking they can take out of your hold after they disable your engines."
"It'd take more than some random thugs to take this ship down." Delve replies confidently. Then his voice gets more serious. "Thanks for your help today." He reaches out a hand in an offer to shake Magnus'. Magnus takes it and they share a solid hand shake.
"Of course. Any time." The faintest of smiles appears on the weathered face of the Warlock. Today had been entertaining. A real challenge for the first time in what seemed like forever. With that, they drop the handshake and Magnus transmats back to his ship.
Delve climbs the stairs two at a time and through the semi-winding corridors of his ship. He takes his seat in the pilot's chair, hanging his hat on the hook.
"You strapped in?" He asks over the in-ship PA system. Nyx, who was in her room again calls out with a faint
"Yeah!" he hears echo through the hallway.
"Good enough for me." Delve thinks to himself. After entering the coordinates for the Last City, he spools up the jump drive and pushes the throttle forward. They lurch into a jump, and Delve can feel the Vex Mind in the cargo bay shift the balance of the ship slightly.
"Rust, can you go tell Nyx that I'm going to have to transmat down, and that I'm gonna leave the ship in orbit?"
"Why can't you just use the PA system again?" She almost whines as she materializes next to him.
"Just.. Go do it, please." Delve says, trying to hide the exhaustion in his voice.
"Alright, fine." Rust floats off down the hallways to deliver the message.
Delve takes this moment alone to look in his waist pouch. He takes out and looks at the mangled, burnt casing that was inside. He had meant to give this to Nyx earlier, but figured it wasn't the time. He sighs and puts it back in his waist pouch. He'll give it to her. At some point.
Tyran watches with a glint in his eye as Delve enters the room and sits across from him.
"Welcome back, Delve." Tyran says, with a smile on his face. "I trust you've actually completed the bounty this time?" His voice has a playful, teasing tone, but Delve knew better.
"Yeah. I got your Vex Mind. It's in the hold of my ship." He leans back in his chair. "Now let's talk payment. How much was this bounty worth?"
"15k." Tyran sniffs, picking up a tablet of the desk in front of him.
"Fifte- Do you know what we had to do to get this thing for you? Fifteen is an insult." Delve sits up straight and pulls his shirt away from his chest a bit. "My damn clothes got ruined!" At his outburst, the guards around the edges of the room all reach for their weapons. Delve had never noticed them before. No, that's not it. They had never been there before. These guys were a new addition.
"Look. You take fifteen, or.." Tyran's accent was very apparent as he leaned forward in his chair, his large belly making it difficult for him to do so. ".. You leave with nothing." Delve chuckles and leans back again.
"Tyran, you and I both know that I've been your best man for a long time." Delve puts his hands behind his head as he visibly relaxes. "Surely you can do 30k." Tyran seems to think it over, then responds.
"Twenty." Tyran stares, saying the words firmly.
"Thirty." Delve says, equally firmly.
"Twenty-five."
"Twenty-seven." Delve crosses his arms. "I'm not taking less."
Tyran thinks for a few moments.
"Deal." He sighs. He taps a few keys on the arm of his chair and the agreed-upon amount of glimmer materializes on the table.
"Good doing business with you, Tyran." Delve chuckles as he takes the glimmer. "Your Vex Mind should be transmatting into your warehouse right now." Tyran looks at Delve with a look that was unfamiliar to him. As Delve is almost out the door, Tyran calls out to him.
"Hey." When Delve turns to look at him, Tyran continues. "Don't come back." His voice was low and serious.
"Where's this coming from, Tyran?" Delve asks, genuinely surprised at the change of tone from the man he'd known for so long.
"I know you've been having dealings with the Vanguard." He almost spits the words at Delve. "We don't deal with them. Ever. You know this."
"Now hold on." Delve holds up a hand. "I'm not working for them. I'm just having them look into some stuff for me."
"Save it!" Tyran bellows. "You're working with them. You've spoken to that Commander Zavala. I have people that can confirm that you met with their Speaker! As far as I'm concerned, you're one of them, and are no longer welcome here." Delve is at a loss for words for once.
"Tyran, I-" he tries.
"Get out, Guardian." Tyran glares at him.
Without another words, Delve turns and leaves the building. He wordlessly winds his way through the streets and markets, walking for hours to get to the Tower. Thoughts raced through his mind one after the other. How he's going to earn money now was the main one. Once in the Tower, his mood had stabilized considerably so he made his way to the same wing that he had met the Speaker in. However, he wasn't there for the Speaker today. Delve enters a small clothing and tailor shop nearby that was named 'Eva Levante's Shaders, Clothing, and Repairs', according to the sign.
"Why are you stopping in here?" Rust asks in his personal comms.
"Because someone can't fix my clothes." He replies, teasingly.
"Well I'm sorry. It's not like someone else got shot with a Golden Gun. Again." She replies, equally teasing. "Besides. I can still feel the chill of the Darkness. I hope it goes away soon, because I still can't repair your clothes, let alone bring you back again."
Delve browses the shop, looking for a shirt that would both fit him and look good. He ignores the comments from Rust about him being too interested in looking nice. Eventually he picks one out and takes it to the counter. Behind it is a generic robot frame, probably filling in for Eva. Delve sighs and places the shirt on the counter, along with his jacket.
"I want to buy this shirt, and I need this jacket repaired." He says to the frame looking at him.
"Five hundred glimmer for the shirt. One thousand glimmer for the repair." The robot replies to him, emotionless.
"Fifteen hundred.. This stuff is expensive." Delve mutters to himself. "Rust, can you give the robot its glimmer?" Rust doesn't reply, she just materializes the glimmer in the countertop next to the clothes.
The robot frame takes the glimmer, putting half of it into what seems like a drawer in a machine behind the counter, then it stands and takes Delve's jacket, placing it onto a mannequin. Delve and Rust watch as the robot presses a button on the machine, and it scans the jacket. A moment later, the machine begins reprogramming the glimmer inside it, and applying it to the jacket. In just a few minutes, the jacket was fully repaired, and it looked just like new. The robot hands it back to Delve, who inspects it closely.
"That's always really cool." Rust says quietly, looking over his shoulder at it.
"Thank you." Delve says to the robot behind the counter. He takes his burnt, crispy shirt off and slides on the new one he'd bought. The can almost tips as he tosses the old one into the trashcan by the front door of the shop and slides his jacket back on as he walks out.
"Where are we off to now?" Rust asks.
"I have no idea." Delve sighs.
"Well-" Rust is cut off by Delve's vision and hearing starting to fade for a moment. He stumbles for a second, barely righting himself. He holds his head with a hand but holds both out in front of himself when he sees something that baffles him. His hands and the rest of his body, he assumed, had a faint glow from inside them. It was as if his very core was made of Light.
"Delve?" Rust asks, worried. "Are you okay? Can you hear me?"
If he could, Delve made no effort to respond. He just continued to stare at his hands as they very slowly started to glow brighter, bringing a burning sensation along with it
. The people around the two start to take notice and begin to quickly move away from the Guardian in the plaza. Delve closes his hands into fists as the Light inside him seems to plateau, feeling like it's scorching him from the inside. He falls to his knees and closes his eyes, trying to focus past the pain. He manages to somehow ignore the Light being emitted into his eyes from his core. He places his shaky hands on his legs, trying to find a place of focus.
Unbeknownst to Delve and Rust, the Speaker had walked out of his office when he heard the commotion. He watches as Delve, who is now glowing so much that it looks like he's in the middle of using his Super, is seeming to meditate while kneeling on the concrete. Rust looks around and sees the Speaker. She floats over to him quickly.
"Please.. Is there something you can do?" She asks, her voice worried.
"I've never seen anything like this." The Speaker says more to himself than Rust. He walks slowly but carefully over to Delve. He reaches out and places a hand on his shoulder, with his own eyes closed behind his mask. The flood of torrential Light energy immediately overwhelms him, and he staggers backwards. "That's.. Light energy.." He gasps, and after a moment he stands up straight again. Rust looks at Delve, then back to the Speaker.
"Is he going to be okay?"
"I don't know." The Speaker's voice is full of thought. He thinks back to their previous conversation, and Zavala's information. "This has happened before."
"Yeah." Rust confirms. "That punch we told you about? That's the last time this happened. But that time he channeled it into an ability. He can't do that here, so what's he going to do?" The Speaker is silent for a moment before he responds.
"I suppose he's going to control it." He looks at rust. "Either that, or he's going to burn."