A/N: Enjoy the chapter, CHECK OUT MY PATRE*N!! Leave a goddamn review for the story, and please, just throw some stones.
patre*n.com/Writers_Ablood
=
[Ishtar Academy]
The crater coughed a white plume. It bubbled up, burst, and slid over the ground in a low sheet, boiling whatever it touched.
Void saw it coming and pulled his aura tight. But heat still leaked through. His forearms hissed and split in hairline cracks. A rustic taste sat sharp on his tongue, and the air in his lungs sizzled.
Inside, rubble shifted. Elsie pushed to a crouch and yanked her rifle closer. As steam rolled through the doorway, she pulled her cloak, shielding herself from the stream of vapour till it passed over her.
Elsie stepped out and glanced at Void.
His aura still wrapped around his figure as haze rolled off his body.
Elsie slid in beside him, "You good?"
"Just....so so." Void's armour hissed as the heat scattered. His light flared, Obsidian flittered beside him, and his body began to heal. Void's eyes snapped to the distance, "Any idea what that was?"
"No." Elsie carefully tinkered with her watch, "This was never supposed to happen."
"Not the first time things go awry if I'm involved." Void shook off the damage, and the two locked eyes. Void gave her a slow nod. He looked towards the ivory hills and flickered away like a blur, streaking across the distance.
Elsie tapped her rifle and vanished.
The crater was akin to a black bowl rimmed by molten stone. Heat still bled off the edges as it singed anything that dared to come close.
Void appeared.
He carefully stepped to the lip. Rocks softly churning under his boots. He looked down into the crater and let his eyes adjust. A sudden prompt appeared in front of him.
[Optional side mission unlocked!]
-
Mission: The Grand Ishtar Archive
Objective: Help fend off the Vex and the Fallen from destroying the last Golden Age archive on Venus.
Rewards: +Golden Age Blueprints, ++ Golden Age Weapon Schematics
Remarks: Knowledge is power, guardian!
-
Void glanced over the system prompt.
"Obsidian," he said. "Analyse the blast, we need info, now."
Obsidian flickered to life at his shoulder. "Checking the City's records, Shiro reported the all clear hours ago." Its eye pulsed then steadied.
"What? Status on Shiro-4, now!" Void frantically spun around, his eyes darting towards the forest as he let out a breath he did not realise he'd been holding.
Space rippled, and a strange pulse thrummed as Elsie appeared beside him. She wordlessly walked to the edge and peered down.
"City records say he's en route to the Tower, left Venus after reporting," Obsidian replied.
Elsie's eyes narrowed, "Wait." She pointed over the edge towards the darkness. "Look."
At the very bottom of the crater, crimson lights flickered, hundreds of them. Steadily, moving like a stream from one point to the other.
"Vex," she said.
"Vex," he agreed.
Obsidian drifted forward a hand's span, hovering over the crater. Its eye pulsed again rapidly, then dimmed. "Ether," he cut in sharply. "High concentration. Near-lethal if you breathe it for long. It's practically everywhere in the crater. "
Void's jaw set. "House of Winter. I knew those rat bastards weren't scurrying away without a fight."
"Yeah. Looks like they used the hours that followed to set this all up." Obsidian quipped.
Elsie nodded once. "An ether bomb. Not the first time I've seen that." She kept her eyes on the pit. "I know why they were here. There is a vault under the academy. An old Vex vault. I saw it when it was discovered. Most likely, the Vex gathered what the Golden Age left at the academy and studied it. This archive could jump-start the City by a century." Her voice thinned a fraction. "Except it never appears this early."
Void looked at her. "An anomaly?"
"Likely," she said, glancing up.
He did not argue. "That's not news to me. Things don't often go as expected."
Elsie chuckled. "That said, I have no intention of watching the academy crumble while they fight a war at its foundations. We'll need to put an end to this."
"Awful lot of sentiment for an ancient, abandoned academy," Void remarked as Elsie reloaded her rifle.
"Well, it wasn't always ancient and abandoned." She shrugged and looked toward the towers that still stood. "When I was a student, even these wretched buildings brought me comfort."
Void raised a brow. "Wait, you studied here?"
"No time to explain." Elsie pulled back the bolt and stepped forward.
They stood another heartbeat, watching the flicker-patterns below sort themselves into a moving grid.
"You in?"
"I'm in," Void said.
He checked his grip, felt the weight of the sword at his back, then looked across at Elsie. No words. She nodded.
They stepped off together.
Gravity took them. Void slid the first metres, boots scraping through gravel and chalk. He hit a slanted slab and cut speed with a hand on rough stone. Elsie glided the whole way. Ether crawled up from the depths as they descended, staining the air a toxic blue.
Halfway down, Void looked across, "Any sign of Fallen ?" He asked.
"None yet," Obsidian said. "They didn't show up anywhere near after the blast."
"So it's just the Vex," Void said.
"And us," Elsie said.
The flickering lights at the bottom moved like a swarm and continued to descend into the dark.
Elsi and Void hit the ground hard, denting two small craters into its soft soil.
"Watch your step," Void whispered as he gestured towards the side.
Liquid ether pooled all around them, vaporising at a speed visible to the naked eye. Its fumes spiralled upwards, but the liquid was strong enough to leave an effect on them; a mellow acidic taste clung to their tongue.
"Lemon", Void clicked his tongue, "And...peach?"
"Best not get used to it. That stuff will kill you in an hour." Elsie surveyed their surroundings with keen eyes.
Obsidian threw a faint pulse of light into the dark. "It's a network of tunnels. Leads downwards towards a gallery."
Void set his balance.
"Ready," she said.
"Ready," he said.
They moved.
-
Red Vex eyes drifted like fireflies in the dark clearing ahead. Void kept his aura dim, and Elsie crouched beside him as the two crawled through Vex tunnels, creeping towards the Vex one step at a time.
Void felt a sour taste glisten on his tongue. He glanced at Elsie and got a nod. She had felt it too. The deeper they went, the higher the concentration of ether. At a point, Void could even feel under his skin. A strange pressure had built up in his lungs, and every breath he took was heavier. Denser. Difficult.
Elsie and Void crept deeper and deeper into the tunnels. Til they were mere inches away from an army of Vex that seemed to gather and halt.
"Conflux ahead," Obsidian whispered. "Looks like that might be the entrance to the Vex Vault."
"Scan it, find out what we need," Void murmured.
Obsidian nooded, its shell scattering into glimmer as it faded away.
Elsie put down her rifle and took a position, aiming down sights as she scoped the conflux. "They're shuffling into the Vault little by little." She raised her head, "It's impossible to break it; we'll need a matrix code."
"She's right." Obsidian reappeared, "I scanned the conflux from afar. The Vex are using it as a gate, but without a key, we can't do anything."
"Right, and why do I feel like this is all just going towards a fight?" Void glanced at Elsie.
"You'd be right." Elsie picked up her rifle and slung it over her shoulder, "That key's probably stored by one of the Vex units here. Until we dig it out, we can't go inside."
"Haah..." Void sighed. He got up and slowly walked towards the legion of Vex goblins waiting for the conflux.
He moved first.
Void flickered with a step, landing inches away from the goblins.
-Clink-
The Vex goblins reacted, whipping back to face him with their blasters raised. A spark ran through them.
Their legion fell apart. Beheaded with a single cleave.
"There. Can we get this key now?" Void groaned.
Just then, the space behind him fractured, and a lattice appeared. Void turned to look back.
A Vex Minotaur walked through and blasted right at him.
The blast left a crater where his head had been as Void flickered back.
He hit the open floor at breakneck speeds. Void slid just below the Minotaur's cannon and unsheathed his sword. He swiped, and the blade clashed with the Minoaturs' energy shield, pushing him back with a rebound. Pain bit his wrists.
Void quickly transitioned, sweeping at the Minotaur's legs, and he cut into the joint of the knee. The Minotaur staggered.
Elsie pulled the trigger.
-Bang!-
The Minotaur's blaster hand was picked off with a clean shot. The second shot rang out and pierced straight through its eye as the hunkering machine lost its vision.
In the midst of the chaos, its shield flickered, and Void drove his blade into its core. Letting his light surge just enough to crack the Minotaur open. Radiolarian fluid spilt out, steaming on the floor on contact.
Void dashed back, ensuring no part of it touched him. He looked back at Elsie. "Save your ammo, we'll be needing it later."
"I've got enough to play around with," she said and flicked back the bolt on her rifle. The bullet lodged in the floor squirmed as they shot up and spun back into the rifle's chamber.
Something in the chamber changed. Not light, not temperature. Rather, it felt akin to a tilt in attention. The Vex had decided to act against them. The Conflux glitched and pulsed a bright flash, enough to illuminate the dark tunnels for a brief second.
The next instant, hundreds of lattices sprang up in the room.
"I take it back. Shoot everything you got."
=