Seraph, fall
They came in their dozens. Hundreds. Glinting darkly in the night sky, cutting past distant starlight like rows of teeth. They ground to a stop, tension building like a quiver of arrows ready to let fly; whispers built up in the suffocating confines of his flight cabin, pounding his ear drums like war gongs, scraping his lungs with every artificial breath drawn. Malignant un-light flickered along their edges, silhouetting the fractal borders of the fleet in tenebrous ghost-fire.
"Mayday," a dead voice droned. "Mayday, mayday; exigent CARRHAE WHITE in effect. Mayday, mayday-"
Ghost flicked the line off. Jaxson couldn't breathe any easier in its absence. He leaned forward so far his face was almost pressed against the glass of canopy and he watched, transfixed. They gathered like wolves, an endless pack, and with torch in hand the Traveler - she stood against them. She stood against them and she raised her arm, she cast them into the Light and there they stood, there they waited, basking in the moment.
A blip appeared on the ship's radar. A hundred. A thousand. "All Vanguard forces," Zavala droned, voice thick and heavy. "Cabal forces are convening around the Traveler. Advance and assist. Do not open fire."
Don't fire. Don't fire. Every nerve in Jaxson's body railed against the order; don't fire? The end was here in all its tremendous magnitude and they were supposed to-
No. No, it was right. Ikora's ideology was their guiding Light. An act of grace, a moment of mercy. And though it felt wrong, Jaxson kept his hands clear of engaging firing sequences, though every instinct in him urged to assign the targeting matrixes against every black-hulled ship ahead. His fighter swam forward, rattling on silent waves, and nimbly slipped amongst the whale-bodies of warships and carriers, the schools of Threshers and City Hawks and House Light Skiffs. Chatter was at a minimum. On all channels the radios ran silent. Even Cabal battle-speech had tapered off. Jaxson guided his Arcadia beneath the belly of the Eligos Lex V, flagship of all the Ascendancy, and the only thing the Empress uttered on shared comms was "Hold."
Hold. Hold. Keep your nerve. Don't break. Don't even crack.
No one moved an inch
Then - Light, glorious Light, life-giving Light ripping the heavens asunder, splitting through the dark of open space and tearing across the nearest Pyramids. The Traveler was open, it was yawning, it was baring its teeth and biting down, cracking open dark spearheads with pods of pinks blossoms and digging pale roots; the devastation was vast and wonderful and terrifying and it sang, it sang to him, it sang to Jaxson's own Light and he felt his spirits soar with it. But the Pyramids were warships first and foremost, they were borne of conflict and the Black Fleet struck viper-quick in its multitudes, splintering its teeth against the river of Light.
It was time. It was finally upon them. Before he knew it, before he could reason otherwise, Jaxson pressed forth on the throttle, rallied to the fight, she was helping them, she was standing with them, the Traveler was finally fighting back.
"Oh no," Ghost whispered, and Jaxson's confidence melted away. A single Pyramid cut forth. A single Pyramid braved the terraforming beam and cut through it like the fin of a hungry shark, it resisted where its sister-vessels balked and it closed in, it closed until its hull crunched and the Light found its footing and even then it only teetered to a gradual stop. Only its cargo, its crew, its helmsman and architect flew on without it. Jaxson couldn't see it; across all Cabal and even Vanguard lines he heard mutterings, he heard cries, he heard "What's happening? What's going on? What is it?"
But he could feel it. He could feel it like a serpent coiling around his neck, sandpaper dragging across his skin, the air being pulled from his lungs. He could feel it in the roar of blood pounding in his ears, he could feel it in the bead of sweat running down his forehead. He could feel it and he heard it in the silence of all Guardians comms. He heard it in the keening of lonely Psion Flayers, in the shrill cries of pilot Servitors. The silence and the agony - that was ITs roar. Warships and carriers tipped forward, cannons bristling and missile-arrays crackling. Fighters and galliots and jumpships swarmed like wasps, wary and unsure but firm in the knowledge that it was their nature to sting.
And those who crossed the line, who passed out from beneath the shadow of the Traveler, came apart. They fell into pieces, neatly sliced. No scream, no eruption of energy, no glint of gigantic blades. Just... ceasing to be as they were, dismantled blink-quick. Entire pods of Cabal battleships and squadrons of Awoken, fireteams of Guardians...
Gone. Just gone, rendered into diced chunks. Without even a pained gasp to mark their passing.
The beam of Light faded. In its wake a speck floated in orbit close to the pale orb, to the cherished Traveler. Smoke-veiled and dark-garbed; IT was titanic and IT was suffocating. IT spoke and Jaxson, everyone linked to that single radial point, that god shelled in ivory, they heard IT. The very cacophony of ITs manifold voices drove him near to madness, overpowering all his senses until he couldn't even see the display in front of him.
The wager is ended, IT whispered, and its voice carried to the ends of the system, to every ear primed to hear. There are no more promises for you to default on. You cannot run any longer. This is far enough. Your every gift of ambrosia turns to poison on their tongues, it drives them to pain. Your mercy is senseless cruelty.
Let it end.
The voice faded. Jaxson gasped, he lolled forward with exhausted exertion, and he opened his eyes... to nothing. IT was gone.
The Fleet and the Traveler with it.
All save a lonely vessel, cracked and broken and home to a swirling tree like a run-down plant pot. The Pyramid's un-light faded and all that remained was shadow and dissipating Light, the remainder of primordial essence coalescing beneath its silver-winged boughs.
"Mayday," a new voice, a living voice, a mortal voice - Amanda? - croaked. "Vanguard command. We've taken heavy casualties."
Silence. Pure, unbroken silence.
"Command?"
"... This is Commander Zavala." Jaxson straightened; it was the soldier in him, rallying fast. He heard his general's voice and he stood to attention as best he could with broken bones. "Render assistance as quick as able. Begin search for survivors."
And that was it. That was all the Vanguard said. Because the truth was clear to see, plain as day.
They'd lost.
He braved the mists of red and there out of the spectral fog hung the slant of a broken mast as long as a Ketch and near as wide; his Arcadia swooped down and he allowed transmat to take him, to grasp his form and throw it out, landing with a stumble onto the broken home of a vacant conqueror. Several flashes of light appeared on each side and from each emerged a figure swathed in armour and bristling Light. Six altogether, himself included. The voices of the Queen, Commander, the Empress and the Kell resounded in his ears, fed by implants earned in another life. The weight of his Ghost settled in his heart and he found comfort in it, a point to anchor him amidst the the crimson waters of this broken Nightmare realm.
"We've arrived," Jaxson reported, voice rough. "Raid Team Endurance on point, Titan Jaxson Ineta confirming. Comm check?"
"Hunter Quantis Rhee," said the figure direct to his right, cloaked and tall.
"Hunter Crow," uttered the gold-swathed man to Jaxson's left. "Comms are clear."
"Titan Anrith present."
"Folkvangr-1 online."
"Warlock Kane-5 reporting in."
"Good," Zavala sighed, relief dripping from every word. "Good. What do you see?"
"A mess," Quantis replied. She strode forward, ivory longbow already drawn, and Jaxson instinctively fell in step after her. "Endemic Light-spawned flora is flourishing, adapting. Native architecture has deteriorated significantly. The air is red. Could be a reaction, instinctual. Vessel's still alive in some capacity."
"Proceed at your own pace," Zavala advised. "Whatever you encounter within, it will not be pleased to see you."
"We need answers," Queen Mara said brusquely. "Find them."
Quantis paused and turned. Jaxson exchanged a dubious look with her. "Understood ma'am," she said, voice sharp. "Advancing now."
Onwards they trekked. Onwards into oblivion and creation, where the Light warred with Dark, where ripe growths punched through walls of stony obsidian slate and coiled around strange, alien sculptures; where flowers bloomed across golden engravings and checkered mosaics; where a great silver tree rose above a shattered black city. They aimed for the heart of it all, over which the winged oak stood - and it took them over arching roots and down shadowed streets, landing them at a raised platform at the top of a temple on the city's outskirts - where a number of plants in the shape of eyes propped up ahead of them, and where pools of liquid Light and rubble Dark swam in tandem in vast whorls through the air.
It reeked of an ambush. The Dark - the true Dark, the Dark of terrible things living and dead - rose up slowly and surely around them, manifesting as the feeling of being watched.
"Get ready," Quantis breathed.
A moment passed, silent and calm.
Then violence. A whirlwind of violence - blood flying, ash scattered, energy bolts sizzling through the air. Roars split his ears and Jaxson moved, he moved, he danced with the turmoil and he drew his Iron Battleaxe out of transmat, he swung it with all his strength and he planted it in the dissipating skull of a Taken Knight. He lifted it, he dragged it up to catch a Wrathborn Captain by the thorax, and he threw its body at a Psion garbed in deepest purple robes even while Dark Ether had begun the process of vile reanimation. Jaxson threw a Sentinel Shield after them, feeling the Void crash down around him as a body-shaped shield of null as the discus cut through swarms of bodies, and he carried on with a wordless bellow of his own. Solar energy gathered at the edges of his form, swathing him in tongues of cataclysmic flame. It coalesced in his fist as he planted it against the reinforced shield of a mindless, slobbering Phalanx - cracking both it and the rabid Cabal behind it in twain. So incredible was the force that the Light he exerted erupted forward, cleaving a path through Taken, Wrathborn and Scorn alike - making way for something else, something new, something he didn't recognize in the slightest.
It was towering, a hunched loping beast, broad shouldered and confidently lumbering towards him on stocky legs, hefting a colossal scythe in two four-fingered hands. Its arms were long, and its head - it didn't truly have one, only a triangular cap atop its neck with a glowing gash down its centre. Its hide was red but patterned in other hues at its waist; its biology, even vaguely, reminded him of the creature buried in the bog of High Coven, that icon of pride and arrogance laid so low by another. Whatever it was, the Dark radiated off of it in waves; Void energy flickered between its talons and glowing yellow essence dripped from its pauldrons and chest where bright roots of solid Luster hooked into its flesh. The creature growled and mumbled in a language Jaxson had never heard before, something primal and dangerous.
"That's mine," Jaxson breathed. He pointed with his battleaxe and around him the others moved to cover his flanks. Quantis dipped in and out of broken Cabal ranks, armed with blade and arrow, and Crow danced to a different tune, Golden Gun barking to some imaginary beat. Folkvangr-1 sang above them with fire, both fierce and mending, and at their back Kane-5 and Anrith made the very space around them crackle with dangerous Arc, funnelling frenzied puppets away from their blindspots with endless clusters of lightning.
The scythe-bearing beast bore down on him with a furious cry, picking up speed and raising its dark weapon into the air. Jaxson dove and slid along the ground, crystals forming in his wake, and he cleaved his axe into the thing's side - only for the axehead to rebound with little more than an ugly dark mark to show for his effort. With a grunt the bio-construct swung its arm and caught him with the back of its hand, throwing him across the arena. Jaxson hit a pillar hard enough to hear a crack (though he wasn't sure if it was the stone or his bones that gave way) and he heaved a gasp. Something laughed in the distance. Something living and... far from human. Jaxson raised his head, saw the creature stampeding towards him, and he staggered back to his feet. With a huff he swung his hand out and a glacier of Stasis crystals jutted up from the floor, catching the brute in full and freezing it solid. He strolled over to his axe, scooped it up and closed in on the alien thing, and he raised his weapon high - bringing it down on the beast's head-cap not once, not twice, but three times in quick succession. Its coating of Stasis shattered and it fell to its knees, bleeding from a dozen points of laceration and a buckled cranium. It tried to rise up, but Jaxson smashed it back down with a Hammer of Sol while giving himself a Sunspot to wash away his wounds.
But the creature was not dissuaded. It dragged itself back up, sans its scythe, reached for him - and when he swatted its hand aside, breaking every bone in its arm, it rushed forward with sudden momentum, grabbing him with the other and holding him aloft. Its fingernails chipped into the ossified bone and sanctified steel of his cuirass, cutting deep enough to pierce his biosuit and into his flesh, and its touch brought with it the caustic bite of Void - tinged with the draining essence of Dark. The Sunspot melted away and all Jaxson felt was numbing pain, too much, far too much to bear-
The clap of a Golden Gun discharging staggered the creature and it dropped him. Jaxson fell to his knees, wheezing, but he wasn't so out of it that he couldn't crawl back for his axe. The Dark thing twisted around, snatching up its own scythe, and it swung for a backpedalling Crow. The sight burned, it seared itself into Jaxson's mind, it turned his terror to rancid anger, sparked a fury that drove him up to his feet, that propelled him forward with enough force that his full-body charge ended with his shoulder hitting the thing's back, shattering its spine outright. With a shrill cry it collapsed on its front; Jaxson was back up again in a flash, roaring, slamming his axe down again and again upon its shoulders, its neck, its arms until his weapon broke apart in his hands. He threw aside the remains, tugged a blade out of his Ghost's hold and allowed the brutal burn of Solar to flare to the tune of his rage, to envelop the jagged whirring teeth along its edge with tongues of flame. It wailed like a ghost, a spirit, a mournful banshee and it was famished, hungry, yearning for more more more. He pulled on the trigger and, ignoring the Dark creature's struggles, Jaxson dragged his blade down with all his strength, shredding through its hide with the noise of cracking bone and shrieking steel. The creature jittered, stiffened, shuddered... and died.
Jaxson pulled his Lament free and flicked the blood and Solar embers from its length, glancing around the platform. Most of their foes were dead or dying and those that remained were being tidily finished off by the others.
"Hey," Crow said. Jaxson's head snapped around; the Hunter raised his hands in surrender. "You alright?"
"'M fine," Jaxson mumbled. He looked down at the creature and studied its broken form, the tender red texture of its lacquered skin. Dark thorny roots slithered out where he'd all but cut it in twain from hip to waist, all in the same manner as the corpse of the First Disciple. He nudged the dead thing with the toe of his sabaton, but it didn't react. Jaxson raised a hand to the side of his helm. "Command, we've encountered heavy resistance. New biological morphs identified, unknown variety. No known relation to logged extrasolar species."
His implants buzzed wordless static.
"Command, come in."
No answer.
"We're being jammed," Jaxson spat. "Too much interference."
"Intentional?" Crow asked.
Jaxson shrugged. "Fuck knows." He looked around. The last Scorn were being corralled into a group just for Anrith to disintegrate with a swing of her fist. "We have to keep moving. Quantis!"
"You good?" Quantis called back. Jaxson watched as she tugged her knife free of a Centurion's warped neck, wiping it down on the ragged gold banner hanging across its shoulders.
"Think so." Jaxson wiped a hand down his front and flames fell over his armour and flesh, mending everything it touched. He glanced at Crow. "You?"
"Yeah, I'm... I'm fine." Crow stared down at the thing. "What is that?"
"Something new," Jaxson murmured. He absently cradled his side. "Felt like it was ripping the Light right out of me." He turned back to Quantis. "We're good!"
She raised a fist and they went to her, rallied around her, they regrouped and reloaded and advanced onwards with grim, fitful determination.
They fought through the press of dead and dying and undying monsters for hours on end. Days. Maybe even weeks; time passed strangely in the scarlet haze and Jaxson had long since lost track of it. He counted their progress in the bodies left behind: hundreds, maybe more. Cabal and Scorn and worse. Time and again they stumbled on another scythe-wielding loper, a stalking predator that struck out from the red mist, and their touch brought forth fresh agonies previously unimagined. They came swathed in Nightmares and they died slow, too stubborn to go without fighting for every inch of ground, every iota of pain.
"They are a blight," Quantis spat as she finished off the umpteenth brute, sliding her long fractal knife out from beneath its shelled ribcage. "A living torment."
It was from then on Jaxson's team found a name for them: Tormentors. It rolled off the tongue easier than Nightmare-Spawn or Those Scythe Guys. Whatever they truly were, the things weren't talkative. Oh sure, they spoke - but only in muffled languages of which none present understood, not even Folkvangr. The only definitive thing Jaxson learned about them was how to kill them quicker the further they advanced in; there were more and more opportunities to practice as much the deeper they delved into the Pyramid. Explosives, while efficient for clearing out gangs of Scorn, were much less effective against the thick hides of Tormentors. It was the glow of exposed Luster roots where they were weakest, that gave Jaxson and his cohorts a chance to fell them in one fell swoop. Their skin was thinner and softer where the golden veins of Darkness peeked out and the flesh there was exceptionally vulnerable to piercing rounds and cutting edges. Knives and swords and glaives were more often than not the preferred option, though that entailed getting close with a scythe-wielding freak; Jaxson only ever dared to approach one with an overshield humming over his body and his Lament firmly in hand.
Other than that the work soon became monotonous. There was enough Light between them to bounce excess off each other, to loop and recycle extraneous power and turn it against their enemies. Every Well of Radiance, every Ward of Dawn, every Stormtrance and Golden Gun fed right back into the cycle of killing Light to be repeated over and over. It was inevitable, then, that they reached the towering gates of a once-citadel from which the silver-winged tree grew.
And it was at those gates they found their first challenge: a Loyalist Cabal Incendior stood in the middle of an empty causeway with a vast curtain of liquid Darkness at his back. He held his magma launcher loosely in his left hand, pointed down at the ground, and with the other he cupped an orb of that selfsame Darkness element. Light-spawned flowers fluttered beneath his bare painted feet and his cloak, long and purple and stained with gold leaf, fluttered to the movements of passing planets overhead - toy worlds swathed in Sky and Deep.
"Lightbearers," the Cabal intoned, his voice like a silken earthquake. "Does this place humble you? Do you feel small when faced with these relics, such terrible and beautiful tools? Even the lost athenaeum worlds never hid wonders the likes of these." The Cabal turned to them, his upper face masked - one side ivory, the other black - and he smiled with golden teeth. "I ask because I do. I feel humbled. I feel small and unimportant and it is bliss, it is the mercy of certainty. Here lies a solvent, universal. It has taken hundreds of my men and still hungers for more - but it is not the ceaselessness of the Void, for there is something inside. After all, I still hear their voices."
"Where is he?" Jaxson demanded, stalking forward. "Where is Calus?"
The Incendior sighed. He closed his bionic fist and the Darkness fell, it enveloped his limb and tightened around it like a supple glove. "My Emperor brings me glorious pleasures disguised as solemn duty. He is the Joymaker and he has made me very glad indeed. The end is his to herald; I am his to wield. I follow his decrees with relish."
"Stand down. This is your only chance."
The Incendior fixed his eyes upon them and Jaxson felt a shiver run down his spine as the orange glow of fiery resonance pierced through him, glaring out from the chiselled sockets of the ornate mask. "I am Valus Oma'alos, Explicator of Fêted Worlds. My Emperor, my Witness; they have charged me with holding the gates to the heart of Essence at my own discretion." He raised his launcher and held aloft his Dark hand. "Thus I shall gift myself with new purpose: your very eradication."
The launcher roared and a veritable tidal wave of flame soared forth. Too late to dodge, too little time to drop a barricade, Jaxson raised his Lament to the fore and he braced against it, allowing the impact absorber in his gauntlet to activate, to draw across the flat of the blade and drink in the heat. The fire enveloped him, it consumed him, but he became one with it and instead of agony Jaxson found comfort, he found the will to keep going, to fight back. He lifted himself out of the inferno and beheld Oma'alos wending a dozen worlds the size of drop pods. Light and Dark played over their surfaces, danced over continents and seas and pulsed with confined power.
Quantis appeared some distance to Jaxson's left, emerging from invisibility and firing her Shadowshot - but before her arrows could reach their mark a line of Cabal warriors stepped out from the curtain of black liquid and raised their shields, taking her weakening anchors in stride. They were silent and they marched in unsettling synchronisation; their armour and flesh was swathed with inky essence and they danced to the movements of the Incendior's black hand, a soulless choir set before the motions of a spiteful conductor. They raised weapons bristling with foul Darkness and fired in harmonic symphony. They charged, blades drawn, as one.
Jaxson ran to meet them. Once more he lost himself in the fray, swinging and crashing about. The Darkness about the Cabal devoured all conventional rounds fired against them, but it sizzled and gave way where it met glorious Light. Jaxson's hands filled with the Hammers of Sol and he consecrated them with scorching ignitions, willing their very atoms to split and erupt with every strike. He carved his way through their seemingly endless ranks, hearing not a whimper out of them, and his pace only slowed when a pair of Colossi barred his way. The worlds overhead shifted faster, faster, faster - aligning to form a grand syzygy, with the promise of a new God-Wave soon to rise. He cast the nearest of the shadowed giants into solid Stasis and the other he trapped with a series of Sunspots, rushing through to drag his golden-hued sawblade right across the Cabal's shoulders. The other shattered not moments later and soon Jaxson felt their Light at his backs: his comrades, his fireteam, with Crow and Folkvangr-1 offering vicious covering fire.
At last he stumbled against the steps before the Valus, at last the space was clear between them. Jaxson ran, he leapt - and Oma'alos, with startling speed, let go of the Darkness and snatched Jaxson right out of the air. His tenebrous touch was like acid; his golden bionic claws were sharper than sharp and colder than cold.
"Alaugh'r'u," Oma'alos snarled in dogged War Speech, throwing him to the ground so hard the obsidian below cracked. Jaxson felt the breath leave his lungs. He tasted blood. The Lament left his grip and suddenly he was unarmed, defenceless-
-but the freedom from the Valus's hold was gift enough. With a roar Jaxson surged up once more, his own bionic augments injecting his system with adrenaline-packets, and the biotec matter woven into cables along his arms activated, drawing unbidden strength and focusing it at the end of his fist. His Light coalesced beneath his feet, rocketing him into the air, and his knuckles caught the centre of Oma'alos's mask, shattering it on impact. The Incendior staggered back with a grunt, bleeding. He wiped his Dark hand across his resonant eyes and glared. "Barbaric cur," he gnashed past gilded fangs. He tossed his launcher aside and shrugged his magma pack loose until it fell to the ground behind him. "I am a son of Torobatl, bred in the arena of Tor'tral. The honour of my end is not yours to claim. It is already promised to another. I will not die here. I will not."
Jaxson roared and rushed back in, fists swinging, cracking plate and bone with every strike - and Oma'alos returned the favour in kind. They hammered at one another with blows strong enough that mere mortals would have long since perished, atomized; they fought, tearing and pounding at one another with vicious abandon, their very bodies enhanced by paracausal purpose and mechanical efficiency. Jaxson danced, he weaved, he allowed the torrentuous Arc within to amplify his very movements; the fire in him remained unquenched, demanding MORE MORE MORE, dashing him with healing properties on every skull-shaking impact; the Void groaned, solidifying around him as a screen of empty vacuum, the aegis of absence. Even the Dark came to him in those brutal moments, lending support to his comparatively more fragile form and forming spiked gauntlets of sheer crystal around his fists.
It seemed like an age they battled, almost too long to bear, and it was by some miracle that the Valus stumbled before Jaxson - a minor mistake, a moment's weakness, but enough to capitalize on. Jaxson stepped in close, beneath the swinging arm of the Incendior, and with one precise blow he shattered Oma'alos's femur. The Cabal gave a howl as he collapsed, something more than mere pain at work, and he dragged himself back up onto his hands and knee. The broken leg hung limp and useless, and the Valus swore when he tried to put weight on it. At last he turned his head up, meeting Jaxson's own iron gaze.
"Wait-" he groaned, reaching out with his Dark hand.
But there was no plea that would have stopped Jaxson in that moment. He brought his Lament down on the Valus's skull and he split the warrior in twain from crown to groin. The sound of combat passed almost instantly, soon followed by explosive crashes as the planets fell. Someone cursed, others yelled, but there was nothing else to warrant concern. No shriek of Scorn or wail of Wrathborn; no bark of Cabal weapons and no sibilant whisper of Darkness.
"Jay?" someone called out.
Jaxson exhaustedly raised a thumb into the air, still staring at what remained of Oma'alus. "I'm fine."
Quantis stepped out of a Blink beside him - and suddenly the fugue that had taken him passed. He closed his eyes, heaved out a heavy sigh and doubled over as the pain and exhaustion caught up with him. "Aw fuck..."
"You good?" Quantis asked. She caught his shoulder. "Nevermind, you don't look it."
"I'm fine," he muttered. "Fuck."
His Ghost compiled in realspace, shell already opened up, and soon enough benevolent Light enveloped him in full, erasing his injuries but doing nothing to remedy his racing heart. Jaxson straightened up and opened his eyes. "Thanks," he quietly gasped.
Ghost bobbed and disappeared.
Crow rocked up to them, still smoking in the aftermath of his Super, and he propped his hands on his hips as he gazed up at the veil of liquid black. "So what now?"
Quantis reached down and touched Oma'alus's black hand. The power still inhabited his flesh, even unto death, but the very moment it came into contact with her skin it lashed up, ran across her glove and ingrained itself anew.
"Rhee?" Jaxson asked, concerned.
"It's alright," she assured him. "Feels like... pins and needles. Very, ah- OW!" She winced and doubled over, cradling her hand. "Ow, ow, ow-"
"Rhee-"
Quantis shook her hand out - and the curtain parted before them, bathing them in silver light. Jaxson covered his eyes until the glare of it passed, and looking out he saw in the far distance the trunk of the winged tree set amidst a vast garden of chaotic brilliance. He glanced back to Quantis, but she was upright again, staring at her hand - now devoid of the supple Darkness.
"Are you alright?" he questioned.
Quantis drew in a low breath. "Good as. Thought it would be a little more like Stasis."
"You shouldn't have-"
She ignored him and raised her arm into the air. "Come on!" she called to the others, marching forwards.
Jaxson shared a look with Crow, who made a face. "What?"
"Nothing," Jaxson sighed. He glanced one last time at the dead Valus before picking his Lament back up and trudging after the rest of the team.
AN: All the thanks to Nomad Blue for beta reading and editing!
So this is a quasi-rewrite of Orion Steps Astray - very different premise, very different plot, a number of the same characters. It's also a different take on the events of Destiny: Lightfall, so be aware of that if it's an issue. The setting was one I'd been considering for a couple of years, but only recently did I feel confident enough to try my hand at it - with my usual blending spin, as I'm wont to do for every crossover I write.
Thanks for taking the time to read!