"Wahei?" Vizier's voice interrupted her reverie as the Awoken Warlock looked up from the Traitor's Die and the cat's cradle she'd fashioned from her rosary. Wahei Ohr blinked eyes that felt raw, dry, as they would do after an unblinking, unseeing stare into probability, and the maddening tangle she kept seeing.
As she came back to awareness, the Ghost went on, "There's an incoming message from Queen Mara via the H.E.L.M."
I need to pace myself. Morgan was right, I need to sleep more frequently. Wahei pinched the bridge of her nose as she closed her eyes and let them rest a bit. "Put it through."
The comm crackled and then the Sovereign of the Awoken's voice came through. "Guardian Ohr," she began. "The time is at hand."
Now she looked up. "The exorcism?" The ritual was at the center of the tangle in the skein...
"The beacons shine bright, and the Ley Lines are set in place," Mara Sov agreed. "My Techeuns are prepared to perform the ritual that will separate Savathûn from her worm. Although she claims she will help us in our fight against the Black Fleet and the Entity that commands it," and the Queen's sneer could be heard in her voice, "she cannot be trusted."
Wahei looked down at her journal. The two open pages were covered in automatic writing scrawl, overlapping and looping, but after decades of practice, she knew how to decipher her own handwriting, even in this state. The visions she'd glimpsed through the veil, the probabilities she'd scryed, as disjointed as she could perceive them. So many had been around this very event. "Seems like we've been waiting for ages," she muttered, "and yet this feels too soon..." I need more time to see the way through. "The things that she could tell us, even with the lies woven through them--"
"You have coaxed enough information from her for my purposes," Mara Sov interrupted. Wahei frowned. You, perhaps. But there are other players on the board, O Sovereign of the Awoken. As the Warlock ruminated, the Queen was still speaking of the danger that Xivu Arath posed, concluding with, "You once swore to aid me in my plans. I call on you once more, Guardian Ohr."
Wahei sighed to herself. "I'll gather my team and head for the Dreaming City." The Queen closed connection as the Voidwalker looked down at the circle that she'd drawn around herself. Runes and markings lined the perimeter, with several nodes containing artifacts she'd hoped would help focus her visions, including the components she'd pried out of Magda-9's forecasting device-- a piece of Reef Amethyst, a Splinter of Darkness, and a Shard of the Traveler. Placed in front of her had been the Wayfinder's Compass, which glimmered in a way that only someone familiar with paracausal energies might have detected.
She collected these all and slipped them into a pocket on her satchel, then began to slowly wipe the chalk markings of the circle off the cold stone floor. Vizier watched her. "What did you see this time?" the Ghost asked quietly.
Wahei looked up and out of the entrance of the cave where she'd holed up, the shape of the Pyramid sitting ominously on the horizon, through the haze of a distant snowstorm. Again and again, details change, but the outcome seems to be the same. How do I stop the ritual from failing?
"Constants and variables," she sighed.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Look to the sky, Guardians! Hear the worm gods roar!"
Wahei felt the thrum of tainted energy all the way from where they'd arrived. A green scar rent the sky above the distant spire, a twisting specter of a worm god coiled around it, its subsonic bellow shaking the stonework and vibrating the crystal glass of the Awoken architecture. Tomb ships surrounded the spire as well, and from here, they could see the swarms of thrall and acolytes besieging the base of the tower. As she loaded a fresh shell into her Deafening Whisper, she fancied she could see the green shade of the worm god turning to look at her, and she took a breath before fixing it with a glare of her own.
Beside her, Donovan Morgan loaded a fresh drum of ammunition into his machine gun. "Yeah, yeah, roar all you like, ugly," he called into the distance. "It means nothing!"
Wahei flashed a smirk. "It echoes with empty promises, O Honest Worm!"
Another Warlock, Shaman-9, let the sunfire bloom from his eye sockets. "But there is meaning in OUR roar."
"After millennia of insatiable destruction," Mara Sov exulted, "they are powerless against MY retribution!"
The Guardians charged, leaping through the teleporters to close with the battle before the spire, but their arrival did not go unnoticed, as two tomb ships diverted from their course to disgorge its warriors in their path on the bridge. Knights and their thralls began to charge, as a towering Ogre clawed its way out of the Hive realms to bellow at them. Two of the Hunters stopped and raised their sniper rifles, but before they could fire, the Ogre's face collapsed inward as a different sniper's shot burst it like an overripe melon.
"Hustle up, Lightbearers," Jolyon Till barked into the comms. "I've got too many other targets to track to cover you."
Another voice came onto the comm, though not addressing them. "Corsairs, to me!" Petra Venj called. "Fall back to the entrance! Hold this line to the last soldier!" Gunfire crackled over the comm line, and her voice rose, "For the Reef!'
"Hunters, let our Titan lead the way and cover us from the rear," Wahei said as she slapped Morgan on the shoulder. The scarred Titan pulled his helmet down as he gathered Solar Light around himself. "Morgan, burn us a way to the spire!"
He nodded and summoned forth his Burning Maul as he charged toward the approaching horde of Hive. The massive hammer rose and smashed the foremost thrall into a smoldering paste, casting a wave of flames forward and reducing much of the Hive charge into ash. He parried a knight's sword and clocked it across the face with the butt end of his hammer's shaft, then booted it off the side of the bridge. As he did so, Wahei Blinked into the rest of the throng, her palm grabbing an acolyte before the Void snatched its life-force out, devouring it to fuel her fury as she unleashed a burst of energy that scattered more of the Hive, pivoting and firing her grenade launcher toward a Shrieker that manifested overhead.
The explosion was enough to disrupt the turret's fire, as it howled impotently, before a sniper round punched through its eye. Back at the beginning of the bridge, a Hunter racked a fresh round into her Izanagi's Burden. "Hey, Cyrano," Anax, the Dragonfly, inquired, as she looked up at the specter-wrapped spire, "Reckon we can get up there before anyone else after this is done? I wanna leave my mark before someone else does..."
"First things first, Anax," her Ghost admonished her.
"Oh, sure, of course," she agreed cheerfully, and took another shot to take down another knight that tried to flank the team.
The fight across the bridge continued. For every Hive that fell, two more seemed to drop from the tomb ships. The Guardians did not falter in their advance. Morgan's maul cleared the path before him, while Wahei called out incoming flanking maneuvers. Shaman-9 cast down a rift, as motes rose and sought the other Lightbearers to help keep their strength up. Any Hive that got past Morgan and Wahei were swiftly gunned down by their Hunters, even as Anax kept sniping from further back.
Petra's voice broke through the comms again. "We're being overrun! Break through the Hive lines!"
"Almost there," Wahei muttered as she looked ahead at the end of the bridge. She looked at the swarm that was besieging the Corsairs, and then around at the Hive ships looming overhead. Too many to fight through directly. Need to get to Petra and help them. She thought quickly, sorting through the visions she'd seen, and made a decision. She looked back to their Hunters. "Can you guys catch up without us?"
"We should be able to," Rega-7 agreed. "Why--?"
"No time," she said. Wahei's hands grasped the belts of Morgan and Shaman. "Don't clench up," she advised them, and then she Blinked them to the end of the bridge. She collapsed onto the steps, where a Corsair quickly pulled her up behind cover.
Shaman-9 turned to Morgan, "Let's give them the Business, shall we?" The Titan smirked as he drew out his machine gun, its barrels spinning up as bullets began to chew through the advancing Hive. Shaman drew his Dawnblade and leapt into the skies, raining down fire. The Hive howled and screamed their fury and kept pouring forth from their tomb ships, even as their fellows burned under Shaman's attack, or were mowed down by the incessant stream of bullets pouring from Morgan's Sweet Business.
Two more gigantic ogres took the field, but there was a crack of lightning before the Hunter Yurei spun through the air, her Arc Staff pinwheeling as she swept the beast's legs from under it, then followed up with an overhead slam that caved in its misshapen skull. Another sweeping swing of the staff cleared the thralls descending on her, and then she hurled the staff like a javelin for a wizard, sending the creature sailing off into the ether as it died.
The other ogre bellowed and turned its fury toward Yurei, but then Rega-7 landed on its back, jabbing her knife into its spine for a handhold, then vaulting up onto its head. Fire blossomed in her fingers as conjured up two handfuls of Burning Knives, jabbing each one into the ogre's lumpen face. Its claws rose and scrabbled for her, but she dodged out of the way and landed on the ground, her sub-machine gun rattling as she emptied its magazine into a squadron of acolytes, while the ogre roared in agony before toppling off the bridge as it pawed at its burning face.
A knight raised its sword and shouted its coterie into a fresh attack, but its voice croaked out as a series of violet flashes flickered around it, before Anax skidded to a halt, the Spectral Blades in her hands fading out. The knight fell to pieces, glowing purple slashes appearing across its body.
Petra Venj, blood covering one eye from a cut on her brow, called out to the surviving Corsairs. "Reinforcements have arrived! Rally, Reefborn!" She raised her Tigerspite and opened fire. "Death to the Hive!" She glanced down at Wahei, who was starting to sit back up. "Eyes up, Guardian! We need all hands on deck."
The Warlock let her gaze sweep over the barricades. Several Corsairs had already fallen, and others were sporting wounds. She tsked and looked up. "Shaman! Some healing down here would help!" She cast down a healing rift before standing and catching a leaping thrall by the face. Void Light flashed as the creature crumpled into ash, and Wahei flung energy back into the Hive's charge, scattering it. The Dawnblade alighted beside her and added his Light into the healing rift as Wahei Blinked away and began to cut through Hive with her sword as well.
"Hate dealing with Hive," Morgan muttered as he let one hand drop from his gun to hurl a flaming hammer into the face of a knight, smashing its skull inward. "Get nightmares for weeks after dealing with them."
Wahei appeared beside him, cutting another knight's legs off with a sweep of her Death's Razor. "I know the feeling," she commisserated, her mind flashing back to the Parisian catacombs, but she shook the reverie away before she heard the memory of the Deathsinger's shriek. Focus, Wahei. Don't worry about then and there, worry about the here and now, and on here and soon. She tried to recall the visions, but the tangle hadn't shown much surrounding this moment.
A Corsair pointed. "They're retreating!" Wahei looked up to see the tomb ships withdrawing through to the Ascendant Plane, leaving the few acolytes and thrall that remained behind, where the Guardians were already disposing of them.
"They're regrouping," Wahei corrected them. She reloaded her weapons, taking a breath. "This isn't over, but we've bought the Queen time to conduct the ritual. Everyone, gather inside!"
The doors opened, revealing the open interior of the ritual spire. Wahei could feel the energies of the converged Ley Lines focusing upon this place, as Techeuns gathered at anchor points around the building, led by the trio arranged before Her Grace, the Queen of the Awoken, Mara Sov. Saint-14 was there as well, the broad form of the Hero of Six Fronts practically looming over Mara, before his helmeted gaze turned to glare at the crystal prison. The facets of stone shimmered faintly as the voice of the Witch-Queen came forth. "Ah, so everyone has made it. And who have you brought to protect you, Mara? I see the darning-needle dragonfly who killed my daughter over and over again. I see the huntress who stalked the wilds in silence. I see the scarred man who broke the back of the Cabal prison warden. I see the beacon of sunfire who shined in darkness. I see the stalwart scout with secrets she'll never tell. I see the one who ceaselessly seeks the ever-elusive insight. And, of course, how could I forget you, my love."
Saint's fists clenched at his side, as Savathûn purred, "Osiris admired your patience, but you look antsy to me." An audible smirk. "Having doubts?"
The Titan began to march forward, but Mara rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Doubt is a useful tool, but double-edged." Wahei shifted her gaze from the prisoner to the Queen, frowning beneath her helmet. You would know, Queen Mara. Preying on people's doubts is part and parcel of manipulating them and moving them on the game board. Mara continued, "Do not let it lead you astray." As Saint grunted in frustrated fury and turned away, the Queen looked to her crystalline counterpart. "Leave him be, and keep to your promises, or I'll let him drag you into Xivu Arath's waiting jaws."
"And then she would swallow you as well." Savathûn almost scoffed. "Why must we threaten each other?"
Mara bristled slightly. "I am merely clarifying my intent." There was a hint of a chuckle from the prisoner, and Mara drew herself up haughtily before turning to the Techeuns. "Ylaia, Sjari, Austyn--" a glance to the crystal shape, "--and Savathûn. We are sisters of circumstance, bonded by fate." She raised her hands to them all. "Open those bonds to each other. Become one." She glared at the prisoners. "Expel the parasite from our collective."
Wahei felt the energies converging around the tech-witches, who rose into the air as they focused their wills and the power they channeled into the prison. For just a moment, she could glimpse the skein and the tangle around it, as the techeuns plucked and pulled at it, steadily unwinding it. Mara glanced around and saw her looking, their gazes locking a moment, and there was an incline of an eyebrow from the Queen before she spoke, "This moment is simply the strike of a match. The fires we light here will burn long after." The Queen's "bomb logic" at play again. Let's hope this one takes down the target. "Be ready," the Awoken sovereign warned them, as the spire trembled.
Petra Venj's voice cut through on the comms. "Large concentrations of Xivu Arath's forces are closing in on our position! Protect the queens!"
Saint-14 shook himself out of his seething reverie, fists clenching as Void Light gathered around him. "None shall enter!" he bellowed, before he thrust his arms out to cast a Ward of Dawn around himself and the Queen of the Reef.
The Guardians looked up as a Taken Blight manifested in the air at the far end of the chamber, and from it two forms alighted on the balconies above. A snarling Taken Ogre slammed its fists onto the railing as Kholks glared down at them from its single glowing eye. On the other balcony, the cloaked figure of the Reefbane, Kruutiks, leered as they pointedly cocked their crossbow. "You cannot stand against the War-Bringer, dead-things. Give us the blasphemer!"
As one, the Guardians drew their weapons.
Kruutiks howled with laughter. "So be it!" And Hive began to pour into the spire, conjured forth by Hive magics.
Morgan called out, "I got the entrance! Someone cover behind me!" Sweet Business spooled up and began firing, sending a steady stream of bullets toward the attacking thrall and charging acolytes. Shaman-9 stepped up beside him and cast an empowering rift, then drew his fusion rifle, firing volleys of flaming energy into the tide. The Hunters Yurei and Anax leapt up the walls and got up onto galleries overhead, posting up on balconies of their own, leveling their snipers down on the horde, beginning a steady rhythm of fire. Rega-7 stowed her own sniper and took out her IKELOS sub-machine gun in one hand and her knife in the other as she dashed forward to cut and gun her way through.
"No, no," the Reefbane sneered. "None shall stand against the War-Bringer's will!" The Scorn sniper vanished from their balcony, before reappearing on the main floor-- and then a dozen more appeared surrounding them, before the entire squad of Reefbane copies scattered around the room.
One appeared next to Anax, who ducked under the sudden spray of bolts from the crossbow, then drew her Kindled Orchid and fired a shot through the face of the Kruutiks before her. They shattered into pieces, a cascade of hard light shards falling around the Dragonfly as she stood back up and swung around to shoot at another, which also burst into pieces.
"Light damn it," Rega cursed. "I hated this shit when the Rifleman did it, and I hate it now!"
Wahei was looking around as she fired her scout rifle. Think. Think! This was in the visions. Snipers, there was a duel? But this doesn't feel like a duel, this is-- She looked up sharply in realization. The Rachis! There are other snipers in the War God's service! She looked up and called, "Yurei! Get outside and look for Jolyon! The Huntmaster's coming for him!" The mute Hunter gave her a look, but nodded before darting for a window and jumping through it, scaling the exterior walls in a rush.
The Voidwalker turned back to the chaos around her. Okay, okay, okay, Yurei should skew things away from Jolyon falling. Now I need to find the right Reefbane before he snipes one of the Techeuns. Around the chamber, Hive and Reefbane clones were falling, but for every hard light copy of Kruutiks that fell, another seemed to manifest. She focused as best as she could. There's always a tell, especially when contending with a paracausal observer-- there! Two Kruutiks copies were momentarily side by side, and one had the faintest of shimmers of neon color surrounding it, a distortion of the hard light projection. In the hectic battle, it was almost impossible to see.
She began to raise her scout rifle, but both copies disappeared as Kruutiks vanished into a pair of smoky wisps that split and moved away. Wahei cursed and ducked under a leaping thrall, then cracking the stock of her rifle into its face as it spun, knocking it down. She looked around quickly at the copies around the chamber, and then spotted the one that lacked the shimmer. She gathered her Light and Blinked up to the balcony where the Scorn leader was drawing a bead on Austyn.
The Reefbane grunted as a bullet stung their shoulder, swiveling to see the Warlock. "Ha ha ha, you're sharp enough to see through my copies, Lightborn! But not sharp enough!" The crossbow fired, the bolts striking home-- and the image of Wahei shattered apart into hard light shards. Kruutiks blinked. "What?"
Wahei's sword plunged through their throat from behind. "Sharp enough to cut you down," she hissed. As the Scorn sniper clutched at their throat, which seeped Dark Ether and Fallen ichor, she added, "You're not the only one who plays around with holo-copies." She twisted her sword and tore it free from Kruutiks' neck, sending their head tumbling to the floor.
~*~*~*~*~*~
In the Ley Lines, physical distance was relative. Positions could appear distant, but only be a few footsteps away, with the right application of focus and will and paracausal trickery. Jolyon Till had spent a lot of time here in the past few months, just striving to keep the Hive's forces at bay. The Queen's Wrath had provided him with a list of HVT's, and he had judiciously sat, watched, and stalked his prey. His Supremacy sniper rifle was a heavy thing to lug around, but he had done this long enough that it no longer seemed to weigh as much as it used to.
Here and now, he was checking the sight-lines on the Queen's Spire. The Reefbane had been an elusive target, always a step ahead of him, and whenever the Rachis had managed to tag the Scorn sniper, it had turned out to be another one of their damnable copies, forcing Jolyon to abandon his nest to find a new bolt-hole. Even if Kruutiks' weapons couldn't reach him, Jolyon did not want to risk other forces from closing on his location.
He saw an ogre starting to close up on the door to the inner chamber, so he took a shot. The beast's head crumpled and it collapsed against the door, which also prevented other Hive forces from being able to get to it. But Jolyon was already beginning to scope out other perches, looking for other sharpshooters. This instinctive behavior was the only reason he got a glimpse of the tall, pale Hive Knight sighting on him.
Jolyon cursed and slid backward, behind cover, as a bolt of rotting star-matter smashed into the front of his perch. The War God's Huntmaster had turned up. Ohr had warned him about Zela Tatu, and he hadn't seen the Hive get close. He toggled into his comm. "Rachis to all friendlies, got a bit of a problem. Enemy sniper has my perch sighted. Need an assist."
A synthesized voice spoke up on the comm. "Standby, Rachis." He heard the crack of another sniper rifle, and concentrated a bit on the sound. That was a 1000 Yard Stare, a rifle preferred by Guardian shooters. Not a bad sniper, only a skilled sharpshooter can make the best of it. Another boom from the Hive's Longbore, and an answering crack from the 1000 Yard Stare. The voice popped in again, "We have him distracted, Rachis, move position."
"Copy that." Jolyon hauled his Supremacy up and cradled it as he slid down the slope and then sighted on the distant plateau of another floating fragment of land. He focused, stepping across footholds-- one, two, three, four-- and alighted on it, hustling up to a perch. He peered through the scope of his rifle, picking out the figure of the pale Hive Knight, who was lining up a shot on the nimble form of an Awoken Hunter Guardian, who was moving to make it more difficult for the Huntmaster to draw a bead.
"Standby, Guardian," he said into his comm, as he lined up his shot. He took a breath, held it, and his Supremacy boomed. The calcified armor of the Huntmaster shattered on one shoulder, spinning Zela Tatu around. One arm hung limp, but the Hive sniper raised his Longbore with the good arm. Jolyon racked a fresh round into the chamber, firing again, but the Huntmaster's shot intercepted his own, melting the bullet in mid-flight as the round continued on, though it went too wide to threaten the Rachis.
Then the Guardian landed, raised her own sniper rifle and quick-fired a shot of her own, taking off half of Zela Tatu's crest. The Knight roared its fury, then conjured a portal and vanished through it. Jolyon saw the Hunter quickly scan the vicinity, then turn toward the Awoken's perch and raise a hand with an 'OK' sign. The voice came through the comm again. "This is Vox the Ghost, Rachis. Yurei says we're clear. Thanks for the assist."
Jolyon Till raised a hand in an 'OK' sign as well. "Likewise, Yurei, Vox. Keep your eyes up, though. I don't think we've seen the last of him."
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Vox to Wahei. The Huntmaster's retreated for now. Yurei and the Rachis are monitoring the exterior now."
"Copy, Vox." Wahei cast an orb of Void Light into a pack of thralls, disintegrating them as she ducked under the swing of a Taken Captain's swords, her own sword bisecting the creature through the midsection. Okay, okay, okay. The Rachis stands. What was next? The tangle of probabilities and possibilities had been maddening to try to parse. But the snipers had been dealt with. The next threat had been--
A furious bellow shook the tower, and the Guardians looked up to see the massive Taken Ogre, Kholks, leapt down from the balcony. The tower shook again as it landed before the bubble of Void Light held up by Saint-14. Kholks roared again, slamming its fists on the barrier, which rippled, but held.
"Morgan to all Guardians," the Titan came over the comms. "Focus fire on the Ogre!"
Wahei started to bring her grenade launcher to bear, but as she fired a shell toward Kholks, who screamed in rage as the blast blinded it, she saw the attacking Hive and Scorn suddenly redouble their efforts and begin to charge again. They'll overrun us while we focus on the big one! She saw some of the Corsairs in the room fall under the tide of enemies, and heard one scream out, "There's too many of them!"
She stowed her weapons as she gathered the Light, vanishing in a flash and reappearing in one swarm, unleashing a Nova Warp to scatter them to violet-hued ash. She Blinked away and unleashed another Warp, breaking another charge. Another Blink, another Warp, and again, and again. The War-Bringer's forces withdrew again, but were marshalling for another go as she took a moment to catch her breath, and looked up to see a spreading branch of Taken Blight on the wall. She followed it back to a pustule of blight throbbing a short distance away.
A look around revealed there were other nodes of blight around the interior of the spire. Wahei thought furiously as she turned to see Kholks finally go down from a massive blow from Morgan's maul. She drew back into the safety of Saint-14's Ward, the Light within restoring her and clearing some of the exhaustion she felt. Hammer against rage... what else had there been? She looked up at Saint, who still held his arms up at his sides to maintain his shield. "You got this, Saint."
The crested helmet turned to her. "There are so many of them, Wahei Ohr. The weight of their press is heavy." There was a tremolo of worry in his voice, and the attacking swarms scraped and clawed at the exterior of his shield.
Then he blinked behind his helmet as she slapped him in the face. "Is that any way for the Saint to talk!?" she demanded of him. "You held the line at Zephyr Station, even against all the Weapons of Rain! You saved the City at Six Fronts when all seemed lost! You went into the Infinite Forest and fought more Vex than any Guardian known to the Light, to the point they had to design a Vex specifically to kill you, and it failed!" She glared at him, but then her voice softened a bit as she touched a single green accolade woven among the purple ribbons adorning his armor. "You've always kept the faith in your strength. Do not lose it now. Your people need you, Saint."
Saint-14 looked at her, and then stood up straighter, and pushed his arms out a little stiffer. The bubble of Void Light swelled and brightened. The Hive and Scorn shrieked as their fingers and claws and limbs burned away against the barrier's strength. "BREAK AGAINST MY SHIELD!" bellowed the greatest Titan who ever lived, as the Hive advance faltered again.
Then the tower shook again, not from an impact, but from a voice that suddenly sounded in the air.
SAVATHÛN. SILVER TONGUE, BITTER QUILL, LIE-WEAVER, ARCHENTROPE, WITCH-QUEEN.
The voice paused, allowing those within the spire to recover their hearing, before it thundered again.
SISTER DEAREST, I WOULD HAVE WORDS WITH YOU.
Wahei clutched her temples from the force of the words of Xivu Arath, and just managed to hear Petra over the comm. "Xivu Arath is desperate." A Hive portal appeared, and a towering Knight stepped through, raising his weapon with a roar of challenge. "She's sending her new champion as a last resort." But then the Queen's Wrath was drowned out by the thundering voice of the God of War.
KELGORATH, RISEN FROM BONES, SMASH THE LIGHTS AND BRING ME MY SISTER IN CHAINS.
The Wrathborn champion stepped forward, but vanished in mid-step, reappearing behind the Guardians' line. His boomer belched forth blasts of his fury, as he growled, "As above in Sky, so below in Deep. I am Risen from bones, reborn in battle." Morgan leapt toward him with his maul, but Kelgorath slapped him aside with a contemptuous backhand. "I dedicate this battle and all the deaths therein to Xivu Arath, She Who Thirsts For Conquest."
Rega-7 cut down a pack of thralls with her katana and drew her sniper rifle as she sighted on the Hive Champion. "I'm in position. Sync!" she called out into the comms.
The voices of Anax and Vox both echoed, "Sync!" "Sync."
"Three, two, one, send it--"
Three sniper rifles cracked, three bullets struck home, one for each of the knight's eyes. As he fell in flames, they could feel a twist in the energies, as his carcass vanished. A green flash from another Hive portal, and Kelgorath stepped forward again, sneering. "I live. I die. I live again. In service to the War-Bringer, in service to the Worm My God, in service to the sacred Deep."
Shaman-9 cast his fire from his Dawnblade as he soared over the battlefield, but the champion strode through the flames without slowing, firing his boomer with one hand, as the other twisted about and sent searing heat back toward the warlock. Shaman landed in the Ward and frowned. "How do we take this guy out? He won't stay down."
Wahei was watching Kelgorath, who endured the fire from the other Guardians without apparent concern. "It's like he's stalling. He's not afraid of death--" What had there been in the vision? A blighted detonation, that has to be the next threat to the ritual. Her eyes widened as she looked around and saw the throbbing nodules of blight on the walls, and then looked again at Kelgorath. Blackened energy writhed around his arm as he walked, and she saw more blight twisting away from each step he took. "He's laying a trap," she realized. "Even if he's got the favor of Xivu Arath and the worm gods, he can't beat six Guardians--"
"Talk less," Mara Sov declared, without sparing even a momentary glance away from the ritual, "solve the problem."
Wahei took a breath, chuckling faintly as she saw the irony, "A bomb, to defeat the bomb logic." She shook her head. "Eyes up, everyone. I have to step outside the Ward to do this, and if they realize what I'm up to, they'll try to target me. Keep them off me while I deal with the bombs."
She barely heard their acknowledgment as she stepped out of Saint's Ward, drinking a single vial of tincture of queensfoil, feeling the throb of paracausal energies in her brain as she let her eyes unfocus on the material, to see through the veil and into the immaterial.
And she saw the runes scrawled upon the air around the spire. Each of the blight-nodes on the walls was situated near one of these. Okay, okay, okay. Work the problem, Wahei. Remember all the runecraft you learned alongside Eris. Every rune carries meaning in itself, but also meaning in the larger context. Work it out. And what she worked out wasn't good. The blight was feeding off all the death being dealt in the spire. Every Hive, Scorn, Taken, or Corsair that fell added to the power being contained. All waiting to be returned, tenfold, back in upon all those within the spire. And Kelgorath didn't just hold the detonator, he was the detonator.
"Shit," Wahei breathed. Xivu Arath may not always be the most creative of the Osmium Dynasty, but she knew how to use the same old tricks in the right way. The more the Guardians fought back, the more they charged the bombs. If the bombs went off, they'd kill everything inside, apart from Savathûn, who would then be captured by Xivu Arath. But if they stopped fighting, they would die, as would the Queen and the Techeuns, and Xivu Arath would capture Savathûn anyway. It was a lesser version, in a sense, of the Taken Curse on the Dreaming City.
But as clever as it might have been, Xivu Arath wasn't the sister styled as the Scheme-Mother, and Wahei could see how to unravel this one. She tapped into the tincture's power again, feeling the veil tighten around her as she reached out, not with her hand, but with her mind and her will. Reach through the veil and twist--
One rune was thus inverted, altering the nature of the spell, and Wahei collapsed back into Shaman's arms as she released her grip, blinking slightly, blood trickling from a nostril. "Oof," she grunted. "That took some doing."
Outside the Ward, the Hive Champion was smiling. "Every slice of a sword, every bullet fired, every punch and every blow, all of it has been tallied, and every tally is tithed." Kelgorath raised his fist overhead, where a pulsating Taken Blight was forming. Wahei pointed at it, and as one, the Guardians fired on it. The champion risen from bones laughed as their bullets and rockets and Light struck home. "All tithes to Xivu Arath--" he declared, as the blight detonated.
And there was a howling from outside the spire, a subsonic roar of absolute fury, and a bellow of primal rage, as the Hive Tomb Ships surrounding the tower exploded. The spectral shape of the worm god dissipated, and the rumbling presence of Xivu Arath's attention abated. The Hive and Scorn forces within the spire looked shell shocked, Kelgorath included, and the opening was enough for the Guardians to gun them all down. Kelgorath took a fusillade of fire and crumpled into ash and bone, which Shaman scoured away with a burst of flames.
Saint-14 let his Ward fall at last, and looked to Wahei. "What did you do?"
"As in Light, so in Dark," she shrugged. "I saw the runes holding together the bomb-spell. It would have killed everyone inside the tower. So I just inverted a rune. Everyone outside got hit instead." She tapped her comm. "Yurei? Are you and the Rachis all right?'
"We're clear, Guardian. We were out of range." Jolyon Till assured her. "Nice going."
Then Savathûn's voice cut through. "A momentary victory. You're running out of time-- I can feel my sister bearing down on you."
Mara Sov tsked. "Your family is tenacious, if nothing else."
Now there was a spark of amusement in the Witch-Queen's voice. "No more than yours."
The Queen of the Reef's eyes blazed. "My brother spent years suffering punishment for the path you made him walk." Savathûn said nothing, but there was an audible smirk in the silence, a tacit raising of the eyebrows. Mara raised her chin and fixed the crystalline prison with a glare. "Finally, justice finds its mark. Let this be the end of it."
She stepped back, joining with the Techeuns, and the paracausal energies twisted and focused on the prison. It resonated with it, the crystal humming and chiming, until a high, clear note defined itself, and the crystal began to crack, then shatter apart as bright light shone outward.
As it faded, Wahei saw the Queen advancing on the shattered remnants of the prison, her knife drawn. Then Mara Sov drew up short, and she heard a defeated, if amused, chuckle from Her Grace's lips. "No..."
There in the pile of crystal shards lay the unconscious form of the exiled warlock, Osiris. Saint-14 rushed forward to help lift his friend from the rubble, but stopped as he heard, as they all did, a relieved sigh in the air.
Savathûn murmured, "Thank you..." And then there was nothing.
Saint shook off the shock first, brushing aside the rubble and scooping up Osiris, carrying him to a clear patch of floor and laying him down. "He's alive," the Titan gave a relieved laugh. The Techeuns gathered around him, stooping and touching his brow, his temples, his chest. Ylaia turned and gave a nod to Mara, who nodded to Saint. The Titan continued, "We must get him to--"
"Don't wait," Wahei told him. "Go. We'll take it from here." Saint-14 nodded to her, cradling Osiris' body in his arms before transmatting away. The remaining Guardians were looking at Mara, who was poking through the rubble herself. "How did she get away?" Wahei demanded.
Mara shook her head faintly. "Plans are fickle things," she mused aloud. "Two can view the same events and predict entirely different outcomes--"
"Quite," the warlock interjected. "How ever could we have assumed that Savathûn didn't have her own contingencies in place. It's almost as if being a scheming, devious bitch is basically her stock in trade--"
"I was outmaneuvered!" Mara snapped back. Wahei simply raised her eyebrows back at her, and the Queen of the Reef sighed. "I was outmaneuvered," she repeated, "and Savathûn slipped through my fingers." She looked away, her gaze distant, seeing her own tangles in the skein. "I was sure that this path, these actions, were absolute."
"Constants and variables, Your Grace," Wahei folded her arms. "I was trying to foresee this path, myself, and I lost count of the number of variations I saw." When the Queen looked back at her, the Seeker of Insight shrugged. "You are not the only one seeking a path to victory, a way past failure."
Mara Sov turned back to her sifting. "And what did you see, Guardian Ohr?"
"I wasn't just talking about myself, Your Grace. Savathûn has been doing this longer than either of us, and she has more insight than the both of us combined. She knows enough to turn those constants into variables, and variables into constants."
"My Techeuns verified Osiris' identity. Savathûn upheld her end of the bargain. And she did not escape unscathed." Mara Sov rose now, turning and cradling a calcified worm in her arms, a cold, satisfied smile on her face. "Her worm is mine." Wahei eyed her, and opened her mouth to speak, but then the Queen purred, "It will grant many insights, I am sure."
Damn you. You know the right things to say to get people to do what you want. Wahei eyed the worm as well, and felt a sort of hunger of her own. Knowledge and insight. Always.
"Go home, Guardians," Mara Sov said, handing the worm to one of the Techeuns. "Prepare for what is inevitably to come."
Wahei nodded slowly, the slow throb of the queensfoil still aching in her temples. Another snippet of what she'd seen and heard in the tangle came back to her.
I see you. Searching through the twisting lines, seeking a path to victory. There is a way past failure, and all those roads lead to me.
Wahei departed with her team, still hearing the laughter of the Haruspex in her memory.
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