The Crow stood at the back of the H.E.L.M.'s main deck, listening to the bellowed commands of the Bracus to the incendiors ahead. Flames flickered off the walls as the Imperial troops burned back the egregore infestation, all the way back into the Crown's chamber. Two legionaries stood guard, pointedly keeping an eye on him specifically. He'd initially tried to follow to watch the incendiors' work, but the legionaries had stopped him. When he'd asked why, one of them had pointedly looked at the doors to the shuttered Psisorium.
Crow sighed, regret and shame still knotting his stomach about the incident. He leaned back against the wall, at least partially grateful that the phantoms which the Crown had conjured up had not contained the Optus in their number. As it was, the occasional hiss of "Uldren Ssssoooovvv" from the specters was disconcerting.
"Crow." He jumped slightly, and turned to see that Eris Morn had arrived in her usual quiet manner. She might have stepped out of a shadow, for all her silence in her approach. The Light's Witch nodded to him, cradling her bone, and glanced to the legionaries. "Have they finished yet?" They did not answer, but a couple of moments later, the incendiors came clomping back to the main deck, followed by their commander. Eris looked up and bowed her head. "Bracus Galm. Thank you for your assistance."
"Dirty work," he replied. Gaal'matel wore the armor of an Imperial Centurion, augmented for this task with the coolant modules necessary for incendiary work. Markings on his breastplate and pauldrons noted campaigns he had undertaken in the name of the Cabal Empire, but all but three had been struck through with a black slash-mark. The Bracus rumbled on, with a note of reproach, "But necessary. Should've been done sooner."
"Some people were claiming that leaving it alone let them wind their hooks in deeper, to pull apart the fungus-mind," Crow remarked. "I personally wanted it burned out, pretty much immediately."
Eris sniffed slightly. "There were reasons it was left to grow, but those reasons are immaterial now." She turned her thrice-green gaze from the Bracus to the windows at the head of the ship. "With the Leviathan growing dormant, I will soon have the Crown moved off of the H.E.L.M."
"Good," Galm grunted. "I've been into the depths of Calus's Menagerie. Saw what it did to that gladiator." He tossed his head to one side, a Cabal equivalent of a shake of the head. "The sooner that thing is away from here, the better. Find a hole and lose the damned thing down it."
"With the egregore purged, I can now perform a ritual to close its connection to the network," Eris bowed to the Cabal and moved past them toward the Crown's chamber.
The Bracus watched her go, then turned back to the Awoken. "She gives me the bone-tremors. She doesn't do the same for you?"
Crow shrugged. "You get used to it."
Galm shrugged. "Doubt that. But come with me. Valus Forge asked to see you."
The Hunter stood at that. "What-- why?"
"He heard what you and your Commander went through aboard the Leviathan." Galm harrumphed. "He wants to see you. Let's go."
Crow brushed a bit at his cloak, and went with the Bracus and his incendiors back to the Cabal fleet.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Eris heard the legionaries tromping behind her to resume their posts beside the decontamination airlock. She descended the steps to the chamber, passing a lingering phantom, looking up at the glistering hulk of the Crown of Sorrow, its empty eye sockets seeming to stare back at her. For a moment, she fancied she could hear a whisper, as of a distant voice murmuring, but she pushed this from her mind as she knelt to re-draw the ritual circle and its runes.
As she did, however, she sensed a nearby presence, and not one of the phantasmal ones. She lifted her head, and actually jumped back as she saw the robed figure standing by one of the supply crates. They wore a warlock's robes, but these were more utilitarian and not armored for fieldwork as usual, and the clothing beneath was simple, off-duty wear. A light purple hand rested on the shell of their Ghost, and their eyes-- clouded over and sighless-- were turned in the direction of the Crown.
So that's what it feels like, Eris mused to herself, as she straightened upright. "Wahei? What are you doing here? You're supposed to be recovering."
The Seeker of Insight's head turned, her blinded eyes facing Eris. "There is only so much convalescence can do," she sighed. "Every attempt at healing my eyesight has failed. There's no underlying nerve damage that the scans can find. But I'm told that my eyes look blind, too, so it can't just be psychosomatic. This is not just 'in my head.' This was purposeful. Inflicted. A curse, if you will."
Eris regarded her as Wahei's lips twisted, almost grimacing, but clearly stopping herself from doing so, attempting to remain stoic. Wahei took a deep breath. "It worries me, Eris. Last person I heard of that had something like this happen to them was Kashaf, and we all saw what it did to him."
Eris nodded. Afa Kashaf-- the Hunter latterly known better as Dredgen Bog-- had been afflicted by some manner of Hive curse after the Battle of Burning Lake. A head-wound he had suffered in the battle had never healed properly, and over time-- and in defiance of death-and-rez and all attempts at treatment-- it had festered, growing larger and more pestilent, leaving him disfigured. His faith in the Light and the Traveler-- already tumultuous and shaky-- had broken and he'd thrown his lot in with the Shadows of Yor, and become a terror that had stalked the outskirts of civilization for years. According to the reports Eris had seen, after interrogations of his erstwhile teammate Magda-9, Kashaf had been ready to kill the Traveler with the paracausal superweapon that she had designed, before he was killed beneath the ruins of Eventide on Europa.
Kashaf had been dangerous, but ultimately weak. Wahei was different, Eris knew. A powerful Voidwalker, with the deaths of two Hive gods to her name, and all of her knowledge, gone to the Dark... Eris blinked then, and set her ahamkara bone down on a crate as she took Wahei's hands in her own. "You are not like Dredgen Bog," she told her, firmly. "You are not weak, like he was." Then, as she saw the warlock starting to calm, she took one hand and smacked her on the shaved-side of her head. "Besides, why compare yourself to him, when there's a better comparison in front of you?"
Wahei's sightless eyes blinked, and then she chuckled ruefully. "I'm off my game, to not think of that sooner..."
"I wandered for decades in the Dark of the Hellmouth," Eris reminded her. "And I was struck blind, too. But I did not concern myself with what might become of me. I adapted. And I emerged back into the Light."
The warlock took a deep breath, and smiled. "Thank you, Eris." She reached up with one hand to touch her face near her eyes. "Maybe I should take to wearing a blindfold until I work out how to adapt. People don't say anything, but I know they're weirded out by what happened with my eyes."
"I could not possibly comment," Eris replied, dryly.
"At any rate," Wahei shook herself out of her funk, "I came here because--" She paused, head cocking slightly. "I'm not sure. I just felt concerned, for some reason. I felt like I needed to be here." Her lips pressed into a thin line as she faced Eris again. "Now I think about it, that bodes. I don't know what of, but it bodes."
Eris nodded slowly. "Shall I bring Ikora? She might be able to make sense of it."
Wahei nodded. "Thank you, Eris." She sat down on the crate, absently scooping up the ahamkara bone and holding it out for Eris, who took it before opening a portal and leaving.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Wahei felt the energies shifting as the portal closed behind Eris, and pulled her legs up to sit lotus-style upon that crate. Her sense of energy fluctuations had always been stronger than most, owing to her broadening her expertise over Voidwalking, but they had definitely gotten stronger still since her encounter in the Lunar Pyramid--
Her heart jumped, she felt a chill go through her, and her fingers clenched on her knees. Panic rippled through her as the memory of the immense presence of the Entity's attention struck her. She took several deep breaths, the phantom sensation of the Pyramid's resonance around her making her feel like she was being shaken. She took a deep breath again, and began counting primes.
"One. Two. Three." Another breath, trembling as she remembered the Voice echoing in her mind. "Five. Seven. Eleven." The agonizing pain of the dreadful attention. "Thirteen. Seventeen. Twenty-three."
She had gotten up to two hundred twenty-nine, and was feeling more like herself, when she heard a heavy footstep and the rasp of a Cabal respirator. "Oi, Warlock, you 'avin' a fit or summat?" One of the legionaries had stepped through the decontamination airlock to check on her. "We 'eard ya countin'..."
"Fine," she called back, without turning her head. "Just..." She took another steadying breath. "...meditating, after a fashion. Has Eris come back yet?"
There was a muttered conversation through the airlock, before the legionary spoke again. "Nah, nuffink yet." There was a pause. "'ere, is it supposed ta do that?"
Wahei tilted her head. "Is what supposed to do what?" she asked, before she realized the energies had shifted around her. Extending her senses, she realized they had been shifting a while, but her panic attack had blinded her to it. The energies were shifting around the Crown of Sorrows, and she heard/felt the whispers and murmurs on the aether. There was a susurration of some sort now, and the smell of ash and smoke after the purge was overridden by a sudden stench of rot and decay.
She sat up as she felt a twinge in her mind. "Code Red!" she shouted. "Emergency! Get back from the airlock!"
But as she was speaking the words, that susurration turned into a rumble and growl of fetid growth. Egregore sprouted anew from the area around the Crown, fungal growth slithering out in a rush, overturning crates and chairs, and plunging past the airlock. The decontamination sprays were not enough to stave off such rapid expansion, and there was a heavy thud as the legionary in the airlock found his feet swept out from under him by the spreading mycelial carpet. A strangled cry could be heard from his compatriot outside the airlock as fungal fronds and tendrils ensnared him.
Wahei started to rise. "Viz, get out of here!" she ordered her Ghost, as the stench grew stronger around her.
"I'm not leaving you, Wahei!" Vizier cried out as egregore growth snared the warlock's ankles, and lashing tendrils whipped out to drag her back against the crates, binding her in place. "I can't abandon you to this--"
"Viz, please!" she pleaded, even as she felt the psychic pressure arising in her mind, grunting as she was bombarded with the unwelcome sensation of a presence, albeit not one as infinite as the Entity's.
Calus's chuckle boomed through the H.E.L.M. as the egregore spread further across the main deck than ever before, winding its way through circuits and panels, overwhelming it all. In her mind's eye, his psychic form manifested, his swollen face split into a Cabal grin, his jowls jiggling with his laughter.
"You never cease to entertain me, little Guardians." His voice thundered in her head, but it echoed physically in the world, the deckplates of the H.E.L.M. ringing with it.
Wahei had no way of knowing it at the moment, but this same proclamation was being heard across the system.
In the Cabal Ascendancy's forward operating bases on Nessus, Mars, and elsewhere, the Cabal troops and psions all looked up at the projection of the erstwhile emperor's face in the skies. Aboard the flagship, Caiatl's fist clenched so tightly that tendons began to pop. Beside her, Valus Saladin Forge glowered even more forbiddingly than usual, and at his side, a war beast growled as it sensed the rage in its masters.
In Botza District, Eliksni of House Light and their human counterparts paused in the construction of the community outreach center, looking skyward as well at the booming voice, and Eliksni caretakers had to calm their hatchling charges, who began to chitter and wail in dismay at it. Mithrax and Saint-14 stood together as they stared back at the enormous face, the former rumbling in concern, while the other silently cracked his knuckles in preparation for a fight.
In the Tower, Commander Zavala and Ikora Rey went to the windows of his office to contemplate the appearance, both frowning at the implications, and sharing a glance, knowing this would bring with it fresh problems. Ikora laid a hand on his shoulder and nodded. "Trouble follows," she murmured.
"Time and again," the Opulent Herald went on, "you have moved me to applause! And have I ever withheld your gilded reward?" There was a brief pause, and there were many Guardians who shared glances of their own. Guardians that had partaken of the Joyful Sovereign's Menagerie and the riches with which he had showered them. Treasures whose glittering opulence had grown tarnished, if only in spirit, with his disappearance and latter return as the herald of something worse.
"No," Calus smiled. "For I am magnanimous. Generous. Giving. And so I grant you yet another gift: one last chance at salvation."
Across the system, Guardians that had been to the Black Garden, that had seen Clarity Control, that had had their own encounters with a smiling doppelganger, with a hijacked Ghost, with a Voice, a Whisper, an Entity-- Guardians that had been witnessed-- felt a dark tingle along their spines. Wherever they roosted, phantoms and specters called forth by the Pyramids whispered in unison, "Salvation..."
Calus was smiling, but his eyes' mirthful gleam was cold. "The Witness, in all ITs glory, has set ITs covetous gaze upon your Traveler." The smile was sharp as a knife as he added, "You cannot stop IT."
In the Reef, even though the Herald had not extended his psychic broadcast toward her, Mara Sov heard the proclamations, for there are few things that the Queen of the Awoken did not hear or find out. Her expression, for all of her stoicism, betrayed a moment of half-remembered panic of her own, at the memory of her own encounter with the Witness. And then her cold expression returned, her resolve hardening.
"Light burns for only so long," the erstwhile emperor purred. "A feeble flame, easily... extinguished."
Those who heard the broadcast received an image then, of the Traveler shining bright, a beacon in the universe, eclipsed and smothered beneath a spreading grasp, like a hand tipped with Pyramidal claws.
"But you need not share that fate," Calus's voice had that superficial compassion in it again. "I invite you to instead join me in revelry, and embrace the inevitable."
On a catwalk near his spot in the Tower Annex, the Drifter walked one of his jade coins across his knuckles, his trademark smirk nowhere to be found as he flipped the coin off his thumb and slapped it onto his opposite wrist. The shape of a Pyramid looked up at him from the coin's face.
"Alas," the Joyful Magister sighed, "you have always been... stubborn. So if you insist on being devoured..." The ex-monarch's voice put a little too much hungry pleasure in the word. "...Then I will savor your final moments."
Back in the H.E.L.M., Wahei strained against the grip of the egregore binding her, as Calus's attention focused back on her. In her mind's eye, the Herald of the Witness smiled at her. "Until our next reunion, my dear."
"Not your dear," she spat, but his presence was already departing. The fungal mass encompassing her hands shifted in a disquieting manner, and she felt it depositing something in her fingers' grasp. With a furious cry, Void Light erupted around her, vaporizing the tendrils around her. She stumbled to the slime-covered floor, and heard something clatter nearby. Her hands groped for it, until she touched some kind of metal object, but it vibrated faintly with some manner of resonance. She hesitated, but then stuffed into her robe's pocket as she pushed herself upright.
"Vizier?" she called, and felt the Ghost flit against her outstretched hand. Settling her fingers atop his shell, she let him steer her, turn her toward the airlock. "Legionary?" she called next, as she carefully ascended the steps toward the decontamination chamber.
"D-down 'ere," a voice croaked. She felt her foot bump against a large mass, then crouched carefully as she extended her other hand to find him, and the egregore mass that had squeezed around him. "W-wot inna Pit's darkest 'ole wuzzat?"
"A message," she muttered, carefully using her Void Light to wither away the mycelial bindings. "A warning." She rose as she felt him pushing himself up and tearing the remaining bindings, and then moved on to aid his comrade. "We're past the point of no return, boys."
She lurched and shuddered against the side of the airlock as the memory of her encounter in the Pyramid came to her again. "The Witness is near. It is the beginning of the end."
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