He'd stayed in one place for too long. The cave was good for shelter, but a restlessness built inside. It had been a cozy half a week, compared to the paranoia of the first days, but like the rising tumult of a typhoon, Seven could feel his time in one place was about up. Something tugged at him in an unknown direction. Two nights ago, upon sleeping for the first time in almost a week, Seven dreamed.
In it, he saw the world through the eyes of a bird. He flew through forests, over streams, through skies of blue and angry black thunderstorms. At the end of the dream was the Traveler, flashing back and forth between being caged and being free. Whether this was merely grief his brain was processing or the Traveler actually sending him a message was unclear. Normally, Seven would chalk this up to being a Warlock and "space magic go brrr," as was Nock's wont to say.
Either way, he hadn't slept since. "Anything on comms today?" he asked to the empty cave.
From their link, Lazarus replied, "Static. Sorry, Sev."
"It's okay, sugar. They couldn't have gotten all of us."
Silence hung heavy as Seven continued rolling things into neat little bundles, then having Lazarus beam them into their inventory. They included the abandoned arc blade and shock pistol as backups. His stomach growled. Second ration, coming this time in gritty blueberry muffin. Seven ate only half before wrapping the rest up in its wrapper for later.
He took down the cloth tarp he had used to keep the elements out from over the shattered remains of the doorway. Crisp air caressed his face, and the smell of dead leaves greeted him. Outside the cave, the golden rays of morning filtered through the trees, leaving the forest painted in sparse greens and oranges from the dying leaves of late autumn. Seven wrapped the tarp round his shoulders. One final glance around the cave's interior and he set off.
Where he was going, he had only the foggiest of clues. A faint pull in Seven's gut guided his feet. Half a day's journey passed before Lazarus spoke up, "I'm picking up small structures nearby."
"Enemy signatures?"
"No, but…" Lazarus grumbled, "She's following us."
"I know. Mark her on the tracker."
"Okay."
They came upon a ridge overlooking a holler. In it, a small, derelict group of buildings laid to rest. The wooden houses, what ones that yet stood, had long relented to the earth's reclamation. One or two of the bigger buildings, however, were made of a combination of rough-cut stone, now crawling with ivy, and long-rusted sheet metal. The remnants of gravel pathways connected them, and tall pillars of green split the paths right down the middle.
A closer look at the furthest diamond-shaped building– the tallest one– showed signs of graffitied symbols. They looked Eliksni, but one of them looked unfamiliar; a circle with two lines above and three lines below. "Are you going down there?" Lazarus asked.
"Looks like Fallen might be here. Never seen those house colors before, either. We should keep moving."
"S-Sehhv-vhen."
At that moment, Seven's eyes flicked up at his radar where a blueberry approached from behind. He turned to see an Eliksni– the very same one from the encounter at the cave, complete with clicking hatchling in her arm –approaching with all the apprehension befitting their positions. She grunted out a few words in her native tongue, the only one Seven recognized being the 'velaask' prefacing the following gibberish. Neither made to move closer than the two arms lengths of autumn breeze between them. "What'd she say?" Seven asked lowly.
The Eliksni repeated herself, gesturing emphatically to the buildings. "She wants us to go into the far building," Lazarus said.
"What are you looking for?" Seven asked.
She tilted her head. Lazarus sighed and fizzled into being between them, causing the mother to jolt and the hatchling in her arms to squirm. It gave the Eliksni equivalent of a cry, a mixture of clicks and whines. Lazarus repeated Seven's question, but in Eliksni. She gave a single word response: Ether.
Seven took stock of them both, the restless hatchling and its mother. Her posture sagged. From beneath the soiled yellow hood, her eyes, though still brilliantly blue, glowed less than when he had seen them just days before. It didn't look like her arm was regenerating either. Without a docking cap, it should have made some progress.
"We can't," Lazarus turned to him, "We don't know what's down there."
"They're starving."
"We're not helping."
"Yes, we are."
"No, we aren't!"
"Yes, we are."
Lazarus held Seven's gaze, piercing through the visor of his helmet. Not even a moment passed before Lazarus let out an exasperated sigh, "You're impossible!"
"Good to know we're on the same page," the Warlock nodded, "Besides, there could be loot."
"You and your loot- you know the deal! Last life."
Seven took on a softer tone. "I know, sweetie," his hand touched Lazarus's shell, "This feels right, though, in my guts like Nock said."
"Okay."
Lazarus spoke to the Eliksni, acting as a translator between her and Seven. They agreed to help. She explained that there was a small group of Eliksni down in the holler who rallied under a new house banner called "Dusk" using the colors of House Rain. There were relatively few of them, but they had a Servitor that was being repaired. When asked why she didn't join them, she fell quiet.
When she spoke, Lazarus translated, "She tried, but was chased away. The hatchling was one mouth too many to feed."
"And she's aware the only way we're getting that Servitor is by killing them, right?"
A pause to get her response. She knew. Seven sighed, "How many?"
"Six Dregs, two Vandals, and a Captain."
"So, what I'm hearing is that we'll need to be clever to get this done."
One terribly drawn map later, the Mother pointed a clawed finger on two squares that represented rooftops. With a burnt fragment of wood, she circled a corner of each one. As she spoke, two hands made a downward motion over her face, phalanges fluttering. Lazarus need not interpret her words to get the message of cloaked snipers across. Seven asked if she knew exactly where the servitor was, and in response, she pointed to the far rightmost corner of the largest building.
That end of the ruins was backed by hills much too steep to scale. The slopes along the sides were much better, but it was highly likely for them to be the focus of the snipers' attentions. Seven sat back. His thoughts wandered to the Titan of his fireteam, Stella, and what she might do in this situation. The Warlock rolled his eyes when a memory of her and Nock playing baseball with a dismembered Vex goblin's head and arm.
Neither of the Awoken women had paid his attempts to get their patrol back on track any mind at the time. A long, suffering sigh crumpled his torso over, his shoulders suddenly heavier than before. Clearly, charging in head-first like they had done from time to time at Stella's behest was out of the question, so Seven shifted his thoughts to what Nock might do were she in his shoes. Bait would be nice to distract the snipers. He turned to look at the Hatchling in its mother's arm, his gaze lingered for a moment too long.
She caught his eye, then tilted her body to hide the Hatchling from view as best she could. Seven grimaced. He looked at the ground and discarded that line of thought. Nothing to do but to do it myself, he mused.
"Lazarus, how much Glimmer do we have?"
"Around 300," the little light paused, then skeptically drawled, "Why?"
"Gonna have to use some of it. If this pays off, we should earn it back and then some."
With little more than a sigh, they manifested a sackful of basic-form Glimmer, and the planning began. Seven utilized the rest of the remaining daylight to watch the snipers. They rarely leave their posts. When they did, an uncloaked dreg took their place; however, dregs never remained on the roof for more than five minutes at a time. Vandals were never seen leaving their buildings, nor the Captain theirs. Soon, night fell, and the plan set in motion.
The Mother watched Seven work his way round the rightmost ridge line through the scope of her wire rifle. He methodically slid down the wooded hill, then scrambled from the woodline to the first of the Vandal's building. Lazarus flickered into being next to her. "Patching you into their comms," their Eliksni had a terrible accent, but it was understandable.
She nodded, listening to some of the idle chatter. The Captain and one of the Vandals were female and the others, male. They called one another by name. The Captain's name was Iikis and the female Vandal's was Riiskis. The Mother memorized those names.
Seven lunged thru one of the windows. When he pulled back, a dreg came out with him in a headlock. The dreg struggled until the Warlock sunk a Hunter knife deep into it. It twitched until stillness fell over it. The Mother spared a soft glance down to her hatchling, lingered on its sleeping face for a prolonged moment, then back through her scope.
Riiskis had already been slain, having made the mistake of investigating the dreg's absence. Thru the window of the building, Seven, who was hunched over their corpses with blood and Ether staining him, made eye contact with her and nodded.
She shivered at the sight.
Into the comms she beckoned, in a crude impression of Riiskis's voice, the other Vandal to look for her missing dreg. By the time they had caught on, it was too late. Lazarus quietly jammed their comms as Seven pounced. Their deaths were marked by a quiet snark by Seven, "We just made our 300 Glimmer back."
"Save it for after we don't die," Lazarus hissed.
With the scouts disposed of, the cat was almost out the bag. Iikis growled and tittered over the line. The main building's dregs emerged, one by one. Huddled together, their footsteps and chittering filled the night air. Their eyes all flickered around, aiming down their shock pistols in all different directions.
Seven pounced and loosed a spray of bullets from Sorrow's vengeful maw. Round after round tore into them, shredding chitin and tubes, releasing ether into the air. Through the death screeches of Fallen, one managed to get a few shots off. Two caught Seven in the shoulder and thigh, Arc energy sundering the thin shielding Lazarus could infuse his torn robes with. It burst and the emergency beeping of his systems rang in his ears.
The last dreg fell, Sorrow clicked empty, and the Captain burst from doors of the building with a deafening war cry. A single swipe of her massive upper arm was more than enough to knock the dazed Warlock to the ground. Iikis raised her shrapnel shotgun, Seven scrambled for Traveler's Chosen-
Skrrrrr-KOFF!
A single wire rifle shot ripped through the air, through Iikis's arc shield, and met its mark, straight into the Captain's head. Ether blew every which way into the air in an azure burst. Iikis crumpled to the ground, dead and defeated. With a deep, shaky breath of relief, Seven made his way to his feet. Lazarus popped out and mended his shield and wounds.
"You're crazy," said Lazarus.
"Crazy like a fox, sugar," replied Seven, "Crazy like a fox."
The Mother approached. "Ah-liiiv-uh?"
Seven chuckled, "Yeah. Alive."
Her head tilted. She looked down at her hatchling, then back up to the Warlock. With a nod, she moved into the main building with Seven following close after. As ruined buildings went, this sure was unremarkable. Seven had seen the ruins of humanity on so many different planets that seeing a pre-Golden Age structure like this paled in comparison.
He wasn't sure what it had been back in the day, but nature seemed to struggle somewhat in taking back the innermost parts of this building. The concrete-bricked walls crawled with ivy, most of the ceiling's tiles had fallen, leaving wires and framework exposed and dripping; however, the ceramic tiling in places on the walls and floors were relatively untouched despite having been cracked and stripped of grout. Lazarus came up over Seven's shoulder to act as a light as they went further from the doors. The Mother squinted her eyes against the sudden flood of light. At her pointed glare, Lazarus nervously chuckled and issued a short apology.
Seven briefly noted that they weren't aimlessly wandering. Somehow, the Mother knew where to find this Servitor. He wondered if it was because Eliksni had an innate sense for finding Ether or because she had been in this building at her first attempt to join this group. Another discomforting thought settled over his psyche. If they had let her and her hatchling in, and he had crossed this path, would he have mowed her down for the loot, too?
He shook away the image of the Mother and her hatchling in place of any of those dregs, at the end of his barrel. They came to a dimly lit room, wires littered the floor, pulsing with energy. All of them lead to the same centerpiece, the Servitor. Its eye lit up and it groaned, deep and mechanical. The Mother skittered over to it.
She held her hatchling up so the Servitor could turn its purple gaze over it. "What's happening?" Seven whispered to Lazarus, "Is it giving them Ether?"
Lazarus responded, "It may be struggling. They need a lot of raw materials to turn into Ether or glimmer."
"How much did we pull from those Fallen?"
"A little under 600. Why?"
Seven's helmet came off, revealing a look Lazarus knew all too well. "No," they said incredulously.
"Yes."
"Why?!"
"It's a kid."
That was a new look. Lazarus held Seven's haunted eyes. Something happened when they were separated in the City, of that they could be certain. But for their Guardian's sake, they opted to hold their metaphorical tongue. Lazarus zipped over to the Servitor and let slip some of their glimmers. The machine needed no encouragement to greedily lap up the programmable matter.
Seven watched in quiet wonder as it released a steady stream of Ether onto both the Mother and her hatchling. Seconds crept into minutes, and once he realized it would be a longer endeavor for them both to have their fill of Ether, Seven drug his feet to the nearest desk and plopped down. He kept watch over the door. It didn't take much longer thereafter for the mother and hatchling to finish up. The servitor dried up and idled, droning lowly.
The Mother spoke, gesturing with her free hand. Lazarus translated, "She says she's grateful to us. Says you fight like a… pytha? I'm not sure what that is, but I hope it's good."
She pats her chest. "Syksis," she gestured to the hatchling, "Yrtaaks."
Syksis continued in Eliksni, Lazarus following, "She hopes you choose to remember the names of the Eliksni lives you've saved today over the Eliksni killed. That's- my, that's actually kinda beautiful."
"I will," Seven nodded, "If this is where we part ways, I won't soon forget you, Syksis. Nor you, little Yrtaaks."
As he made to leave, a cluster of clicks and Lazarus's voice gave him pause, "She's asking where we're going."
"I have to keep moving," after a moment's thought, he added, "Will you be okay?"
In the silence that followed, Syksis thought. Seven saw that while her body didn't betray much, the way her expressive eyes darted and squinted and her brow furrowed and unfurrowed told him of her uncertainty. Yet, she nodded. Syksis went as far as to give a shallow bow. In a garble of Eliksni chatter that the warlock still could for the life of him grasp, the one word she said with crystal clarity was, "Seven."
A small, genuine smile curved his lips, and he left. "You really think they'll be okay?" Lazarus asked.
"If she says they will, I'm sure she can do what it takes to make it. She made it this far."
Lazarus hummed in acknowledgement, then said, "That Servitor's gonna draw a lot of attention if she goes dragging it around with her."
Seven raised an eyebrow, "Now, sweetie, if I didn't know you any better, I'd be inclined to think you're worried about them."
"Well, we did expend resources on saving their lives. It'd make for a poor investment if they died after all that," the Ghost replied.
Seven scoffed and nodded with pursed lips, "Oh, yes. Sure. Quite the investment."
"Quite."
A small pause. "And it had nothing to do with you growing somewhat fond of them?" Seven asked cheekily.
"Not at all," Lazarus snarked back.
Moonlight, crisp and pale, shone through the entranceway. Their exit approached. Eliksni corpses laid still, sleeping the dreamless sleep of death. "Alright, buddy. Whatever you say," Seven said, "Scan for resources."
"And loot?"
"And loot."
