Season of Transmissions (Destiny x Warframe) — 1. Rap. Tap. Tap.
- Location
- USA
A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel
Meditation was a state of mind that lapsed from the body becoming so inert that the spirit had no choice but to wander. From wandering came clarity, pathways that were not often seen. Guardians, Warlocks especially, could cheat a little in this regard. Thanatonauts were the Guardians who sought visions in the moment between death and revival, being able to fall into this ethereal state of mind far more quickly. It wasn't as simple as merely dying for visions, but rather a shortcut for those who knew the way.
The Young Wolf's Ghost — affectionately named Ghost — didn't know why his Guardian decided to take up the practice of a thanatonaut. Their relationship was quietly close. So much didn't need to be said for them. The Young Wolf was stoic and silent, often necessitating Ghost to speak for them, but he didn't mind. Without him, the Young Wolf would have just kept on going and going as a silent machine until she died for the last time.
She never told him to be quiet, never showed any annoyance, but she always listened. No matter how small or trivial, she gave him her attention. It was a bond of action and quiet affections. Those small, private moments where his Guardian would teasingly call him "Little Light" to get his attention were cherished memories, quietly lit like candles in the dark. Even still, he didn't quite understand why the Young Wolf decided to play the thanatonaut now of all times. Perhaps she wanted answers on their "plunder" after that conflict with Eramis.
Yet, there were people already working on that. What could have prompted this?
He would ask her once he revived her.
She floated in a criss-crossed position, serene in her Tidal Hope shaded robes, looking entirely unbothered. The Young Wolf didn't even look dead, but perhaps that was more to her being an exo than anything else. Two ribbon wires ran down just above her brow. Her face was visible showing only a deep blue save for the left side. There was a white splotch, making its mark like a splash of blood. The surface had been peeled, scratched away, but it left the optics intact. Optics which did not hold a sign of life, the dimness carrying a sort of blind brightness of their own.
That was the biggest indicator of death, in Ghost's eyes, that she was off somewhere ethereal, somewhere he couldn't quite follow, leaving no other recourse but to wait. He had to for the muted, unspoken feeling that would have him return her to life.
Still… there was an off feeling that he couldn't quite shake off, but he had absolute trust in his Guardian. Even as they climbed the Ziggurat, in search of a way to equal the odds against House Salvation, he had faith. He was concerned, of course, but his Guardian had never let him down.There were times in the beginning where he thought, just a little prideful, that his Guardian wasn't like the others. Not in terms of achievements and triumphs, but in the way that she was single-minded. While other Guardians jumped off the Tower for fun, she was constantly and consistently fighting, always in an incessant grind to fight the battles that needed to be fought.
Thank the Traveler, he once thought near the beginning, she's not crazy like all the other Guardians.
Yet her stoic demeanor belied the actual insane drive that she possessed. It just so happened to be channeled productively, but there were these moments where she just would not stop. She didn't even bother taking on a name, considering it a triviality. It was honestly frightening, sometimes, but still he stayed. For all the rampage like after Cayde-6's death, there was still those quiet instances — the commitment to free Crow, for example. She didn't even need to say a word to him, but they somehow both knew that was the right choice to make. And a swell of pride uplifted him.
So for all the mystery, death, and enigma that was the Young Wolf, he stayed for her: those tender moments.
He just wished he could see what his Guardian saw…
His shell whirled and clacked about him in surprise, as his Guardian started to become more ethereal, black smoke wisping from their body.
"Guardian?" he whispered.
Her body started to turn intangible and he cried out in shock. He didn't feel an urgent crying out from his Guardian, but he was going to be damned before he let his Guardian be lost without him. The Ghost started to revive her, but there was this inimical feeling of disconnection. It was like him unraveling his shell and someone plucking a piece from him. There was no tendons or flesh to tear from, but it would be shorn from him all the same.
There no hesitation in what he did next.
He invested more of himself in the effort, feeling that any danger to him would be how much this was going to hurt. He could almost imagine threads of Light that entwined the two of them, but there was a barrier now between the two. The Ghost pushed and pushed and pushed, until there was a clicking feeling as if a connection had been latched between the two once more. And then he started to pull. It crushed him, a mounting pressure that would have had him scream were he not so simplemindedly focused on bringing back his Guardian.
Slowly, but surely, his Guardian started to gain substance, the black wisps slowly receding. For a heartwrenching second, his Guardian disappeared along with the surroundings. There was only a Void with a cascade of light blue, swirling and swirling. And it was all centered around a black-haired child. He didn't get much of a look, but one detail seemed to burn in his memory. Molten core eyes — as if two small suns had burnt themselves out — stared back at him.
Then it was over.
His Guardian gasped, falling onto her behind. She blinked several times before looking up at him.
"Thanks."
"Of course, Guardian. Did you find the answers you were looking for?"
She leaned back, still sitting, and looked like a falling statue just barely propped up on angled stands. He knew better to interrupt these dwelling silences. Even though he didn't always knew what his Guardian was thinking, he always knew when she wanted to talk. Most of the time, she was content to let him do all the talking and other times, like here, she needed a moment to gather her thoughts.
"Entirely unrelated." The Young Wolf sighed. "Might be a new problem."
She rapped and tapped a slow tattoo on the floor. It almost seemed to echo, carrying weight far beyond her knuckles, like tapping against a wall that shouldn't be touched. His Guardian almost seemed to be lost in that noise, walking deep in the void that it left. Then she snapped out of it, looking back at him.
"There's something important in that pattern. Can you ask around for me?"
XXX
His Operator gasped. All at once, she stopped floating in a criss-cross position and fell onto her ass — posterior. She had been floating in a meditative state for the past hour, trying to come up with an answer for saving the Lotus from Ballas, but Ordis privately maintained that it was just his Operator's way of not breaking down in a fit of Void fury. After all, she had been there in person when Ballas came to the Lotus.
She stood up and Ordis kept watch through the Orbiter's systems. His Tenno wore a white vest gifted to her by the Ventkids of Fortuna over a cuirass, a set of sleeves from the Quills that was armored on the left side, and kept a copy of Umbra's scarf around the lower half of her face. Gray, somatic scars marred most of her face, but that wasn't why she wore the scarf. Not to hide them; it was out of sheer sentimentality.
He kept track of her as she paced around her personal quarters. Excalibur Umbra watched from his display. Now that was one fucked-up — disturbed warframe being cursed with a measure of self-awareness that was not common in warframes. After his Operator soothed him, the warframe wanted to rest, like all the other warframes within the armory. But his Operator was a sentimental one. She let him rest in the display, giving him the option of freedom should he chose it.
But he never did. Ordis knew because he monitored the warframe. Maybe the Operator was a bit too trusting sometimes, or was often bereft of good options, but he would provide a measure of safety should she need it. After all, he still remembered Umbra's little rampage and escape from the Orbiter.
The Operator took a deep breath before she slammed a fist into the wall.
It looked like meditation didn't work the way she wanted to. He wanted to chime in. It would not do to dwell on her failures — problems. He often chimed in to prevent the silence from consuming her, annoying with the occasional pun and update her on the number of stars.
She would sigh, somewhat fondly, and mutter, "Ordis."
Yet, he knew his Operator would become snappish if he tried doing that now. The oncoming New War weighed down on her as she desperately tried find a good way to save the Lotus. All the Tenno did, deep down, but some of them felt betrayed enough to consider killing the Lotus. It was a long and daunting process to get all the other Tenno to agree to give her the chance to save the Lotus. Tenno didn't fight Tenno, but it simply wouldn't do for them to get into each other's way. But despite his Operator being of a legendary rank, it didn't seem plausible to some to rest all their hopes on one, single Tenno.
He believed his Operator could pull it off, until then, she would be free to vent. As she sulked – stalked around the room, something pinged his systems. A message in the inbox. He ran all the cursory checks, noting that it didn't have a source for the sender and it carried a package. If it didn't have the package, Ordis would have sent it through. Messages without a proper return address tended to be death threats from highly prominent individuals and his Operator found those warnings amusing. And spam wasn't a real problem. Most Tenno's inboxes were reclusive and elusive things. Corpus advertising could not find them and Ordis had a dedicated filter subroutine for the rare few scattershot spam that did find them.
"Operator, you have a weird — peculiar message in the inbox along with a package. It's probably not a bomb! — anything unsafe, but would you have me do?"
The Operator glanced at Umbra, then sat down on the bench.
"Let it through."
Her eyes went glazed slightly as she held out her hand, reading the message through her cognitive relay. As far as Ordis could tell it was gibberish and numbers. There was no reason to it and Ordis ran several decoding algorithms in a handful of seconds. All of it came up with nothing. He hesitated on letting her access the package, which resisted his scans.
"As your ship cephalon, I recommend against this."
The Tenno clenched her fists. She was a marvel in warframes: skillful, professional, deadly. Given an objective, she achieved it with maximum efficiency. The death she delivered was nothing less than artistry. She was a Tenno, a veteran of the Old War and a fighter of the finest caliber. But he was hers. He'd being nothing less than a disservice to her by being so lax in her safety.
"I'll be fine, Ordis," she gritted. Ordis went silent and the Operator scowled, hand hovering over the option to transmit the package. "If I can't handle it, I trust you can."
Ordis relaxed, feeling less heavy. He didn't like that being so stressed out spread him out over the Orbiter, mimicking an emotional heaviness. It was like… clenching every muscle in a body of meat. With a small amount of trepidation, he let the package go through. He waited with bated breath — in as much as he could as a Cephalon — as it manifested in the Operator's outstretched hand. It was in the shape of a dodecahedron with a lens in the middle. Was it some sort of drone?
His Operator cocked her head, examining the strange object.
"Perhaps some asshole — person accidentally sent it to the wrong address?" Ordis offered.
She held it up aloft. "No… it might be… something else… that sent this."
Oh dear. It looked like his Operator might be having a moment of insanity again. Sometimes, very rarely, she would stare off at a point in the Orbiter or be startled after turning around. Once, she even had a short conversation with thin air.
"Are you sure, Operator?"
"Do you see it? The ethereal smoke around it?"
"Uh, Operator? Do you need a moment?"
"I might black out." Her gaze was glassy as she stared at the object. "Just a feeling. Like the feeling that I should see what… I'm going to be shown."
Then she cupped her other hand over the drone-thing and promptly slumped in the seat, eyes fluttering beneath her eyelids.
"Operator? Operator? Ooooooperator!" he shouted.
He panicked, even as most of him still continued to run the ship smoothly. A great many options flashed in his mind, prime of which that he should load himself in the Host Migrator drone body, and slowly drag the Operator to safety. Were the Lotus… available, he would have called her. Ordis focused attention on Umbra, who was carefully stepping out from the display. He looked at the Operator with an unseen expression. Warframes, he wanted to bemoan.
"Make yourself useful and carry her," he commanded.
Umbra paused and looked around, not like an animal hearing the annoyance, but of someone looking to reprimand another, to shunt blame from himself. But Umbra could not more scold him than he scold the ship itself.
"If you can't speak, then don't bother… just do."
It was probably likely that he was already going to carry her, but you never knew. He scooped up his Operator tenderly, like a small child, and walked softly to the Somatic Link room. He laid her to rest in the seat and fell into a kneeling position, hands holding onto the scabbard of his Skiajati. Both of them understood they had to be patient, hoping that the Operator to come back from wherever she dreamed now.
And in silence, they waited.
XXX
Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, Eris Morn was the one who responded to the Ghost's queries. She, on whatever strange tangent, had discovered a lead back on the Moon. How much of it was connected to her prior research, they didn't know. It would certainly simplify things if it were, but from the way she worded her message, it seemed that she heard the rap-tap too. She waited on the surface of the Moon, three green eyes glowing beneath her blindfold, shadows streaking from beneath.
The Young Wolf strode over to her, Ghost manifesting just over her shoulder.
"Guardian. I am pleased that you recognize the importance of this."
"Is that pattern so importance?" he asked.
Eris looked at the Ghost. "Did you not hear the transmission?"
"Once," the Young Wolf answered, folding her hands behind her back. "During meditation."
"Ah, yes." Eris looked contemplative and the silence started to drag.
"And for the rest of the class?" The Ghost bobbed forward. "I mean, is it the Pyramid?"
Eris startled for a moment, as if she had been lost too deep in contemplation. Three green eyes blinked away a drowning contemplation.
"If it was the Lunar Pyramid communicating, there would be intent. As it is, there is an indifference to this transmission," Eris replied.
"But then why is it a problem?
"Ah, but I did not say it was without malevolence, Ghost. Casual cruelties are the same as any purposeful cruelties. It's a matter of either scale or personality. The Hive and the Vex, for instance. The Hive derive… joy from their winnowing. For the Vex, it's a fact, no more than swatting a fly."
"Then why must we reach out?"
"Because 'good', to use a relative term, is rarely indifferent when it comes to pleading or calling out." Eris looked out in the direction of the Scarlet Keep. "There is emotion even to cruelty, especially when they think it is a kindness. But indifference? What terrors would we see from this? Terrors which come unthinking, actualized as something we cannot comprehend as anything but terrors. This transmission bears investigation, because if we don't, our enemies will."
"Do you have an idea of its source? It must be from the Moon if you had us meet you here."
"I do believe it's something other than the Pyramid is causing this, but that does not write out it trying to involve itself." She grabbed the Young Wolf's arm. "Beware, Guardian. If I have sensed this… tapping, then so have others. If it seems like you don't find anything, it may not remain that way."
"Then we should make haste. The Enduring Abyss seems the best place to start," Ghost said.
The Young Wolf nodded and that was that. She turned away, the Ghost dematerializing in her wake. A green portal manifested itself a few feet away from Eris where stationed the Lectern of Enchantment.
His Guardian stepped through and reappeared just above the large cavern that housed the Pyramid. The black structure was sharp like the endpoint of an arrow. The air seemed to thrum and still in equal turns, at once a storm and the silence in the center. It was a tension similar to all the other times they ventured close, but… He was suddenly wary of being possessed, to have his autonomy ripped away so he could be used as a mere mouthpiece. Were he to ask to stay away, he knew in his metaphorical heart that his Guardian would relent, but that would leave her alone to face all the threats without him.
Where his Guardian went, so too would he.
She passed through the red pillars, which framed the Pyramid in the distance. He expected Nightmares to attack, to swarm, like the first time they came across this place. His Guardian was haunted by the battles she fought, the fear of failure latching onto physical reality like a disease. It was not so much that she lost, but what it meant for everyone else that these… horrors to triumph over her. These fears didn't need to taunt her; they only needed to be present as if to say you did not win, which would also mean, you are going to fail. He could only speculate, but he was with his Guardian from day one and got a closer look than many.
Somewhere along the way, the Young Wolf internalized that she had to be victorious or that everything else would fall. Like she wasn't the only Guardian that mattered but more that she was the embodiment of the struggle. She was less of a person and more of a force of nature, for all that entailed. Which was why her Nightmares were both a symbolic and literal battle, unlike the hauntings for all the others. For her to fail or otherwise be absent from the fight, then she would become a harbinger of failure, a bad omen. Why else would she continually get involved whenever she could?
"Strange whispers," Eris said over the comms, "Familiar but not quite."
"We will have to go deeper, won't we?" Ghost asked.
His Guardian answered with action, marching to the edge and hopping right off it. Gravity pulled at her and she only tugged back to slow her descent. Light burst beneath her feet in an echoing triplicate. One-two-three turned the long fall into jumping off a staircase of five steps. She descended down the rocky surface, emerging through alcoves, all the while getting closer and closer to the Pyramid.
"The Pyramid is reacting," Eris said.
Even Ghost knew the key word in that sentence was reacting. It was responding to something, but what? The burst of Void energy, dark purple quickly answered their answer. His Guardian snapped to the source with her Quicksilver Storm, pointing the rifle at the bubbling ball of energy a few feet away.
"The Void…" his Guardian whispered.
"Even I can feel it from here… amplified twice over…" Eris replied.
But something was wrong. The dark purple energy was laced with a bright and ghastly blue, like poison pulsating through the veins. Whispers and screams thrummed inside the warping ball of energy, before coalescing into some semblance of clarity.
I was cut in half, destroyed, but through its Janus Key, the Void called to me. It brought me here and here I was reborn.
If the Void is negation, behold the ultimate negator.
The Void creates. Death is merely a blank canvas.
It is the folly of the simple mind, unable to perceive the brilliant richness of nothingness. The Void is not only the absence of Light, but Dark.
The Indifference has awoken, and all of the Void's creations must find a light.
Then, like an egg cracking open, the ball dissembled into fragments with what rested in the center spat out in a river of purple and blue light. A figure tumbled between those waterless waves, before landing on the rocky surface twenty feet away from the Guardian. It stood up, forming into a humanoid figure made up of that blue energy. Yet, there was still a remnant of the Void energy that they were familiar with. It had collected together in a straight line down the figure's chest like a grave wound.
They floated, head turned down like a body in the water. His Guardian approached cautiously and more details became apparent. Whatever this was, it was the size of a small teenager, wearing indistinguishable clothes, all of which blurred together. The only significant piece of clothing Ghost could discern was a long scarf covering the bottom half of the thing's face. The Young Wolf paused before it. Ghost watched and feared with trepidation as his Guardian reached out, paracasual energies lurking just beneath the palm of her hand.
The figure reached out as well, tentatively, before the air rippled and the figure was yanked off their feet. They landed face first on the ground before being pulled toward the Pyramid. Dark red figures manifested in a maelstrom, trying to swallow the figure. The figure cast out its hands and threw its head back in a silent scream.The Young Wolf opened fire on the periphery, taking care not to strike the blue figure, but they did nothing, passing through harmlessly.
"Our bullets are ineffective!" Ghost shouted.
Beams of that not-Void shot from the hands, cutting some of the nightmares down, but more manifested, drowning out the blue figure. The blue light began to dim and the reddish Nightmares began to swell, turning darker and darker in a dim purple color.
It's all your fault! You made us into this! You-you-you! all the Nightmares shouted in a soundless chant, you took the deal! You damned us! You're no sister of ours! Further vitriol echoed in the air, fading away, and neither Ghost nor his Guardian could hear anymore as more luminosity was sapped from the figure.
"Foolishness for us to think that only the Light could utilize the Void. The Darkness is trying doing so as well, taking advantage of the Void's aberrant manifestation in our reality," Eris said.
Ghost couldn't quite follow Eris's explanations beyond the very basics: the Void was acting weird and the Pyramid was using it like a focus for the Darkness. Instead of Void-focused Light, it was attempting to use Void-focused Darkness. But his Guardian, his wonderfully capable Guardian, knew what to do. She put away her weapon and ignited like a star going supernova, energies folding into herself, as the Young Wolf imbued herself with a Nova Warp.
She disappeared and reappeared with a burst of energy, scattering the Nightmares away from the blue figure. One shade of Void clashed another shade of Void, one of which was less pure. Or rather less sure; it held less presence than the Young Wolf's Light, being little more than glue trying to hold together shattered glass. Up close, they could both truly see that it… they weren't an adult. They had curled into themselves, much in the way that someone did under an immense and uneven beatdown.
They looked up, clutching their side, and the Guardian stared at them, then at the churning swirling mass of Nightmare stuff. Injected into the center mass, like a beating heart, was a pulsating source of that blue Void energy. The Darkness around it tried smothering it, digesting it into itself, but it was something indigestible. That aberrant Void energy tried doing the same, but met the same outcome. Paracasual tension crackled in the air before it stubbornly subsided.
Slowly, but surely, the Void flooded into the Nightmares, turning what had been flesh into bones. It gathered together, twisted and misaligned, into a crumbling figure. It flared into a color between blue and purple. This new figure was a broken corpse, crumbling on its hands and knees. With some a large headgear framing a floating, detached face, it outstretched a hand to the blue figure and its lips moved. The child at their side flinched, stepping back.
The Young Wolf made her move, throwing a Nova Bomb at the thing. For whatever reason, the child grabbed at the Young Wolf's wrist, trying to yank it back. But it was too late. The creature lunged forward, batting away the Guardian's attempt to shoot it, and wrapped a tentacle around its neck. With her free hand, she threw her palm out, firing Void energy right into the creature's face, but it remained unaffected.
"You are not attuned to it!" Eris exclaimed. "The Void is vaster than we could even comprehend and it has left us behind for the moment. Retreat Guardian!"
The Young Wolf's face, despite being hidden by a smoky and swirling visor, was determined. Ghost could feel it. She flicked her arm that was still the rifle, swapping it into the grenade launcher mode. The material atop the rifle surged forward, spiking out near the open ports near the barrel. She fired between them, breaking both the grip and the shield. The Young Wolf slid across the ground before rolling back onto her feet. The child reappeared next to them, hands nervously hovering over the Guardian as if trying to beseech them somehow.
The creature howled and fired a beam of energy at them, which the Young Wolf met with her own Arc Beam. The Chaos Reach met the energies on equal ground, one unable to overtake the other. But the difference between the Young Wolf and this thing was one of substance. The creature was not driven back as the Guardian was, boots throwing up dust as they lost inch after inch. It slowly floated upwards, carrying the trajectory with it, and forcing his Guardian to awkwardly meet it. She Blinked out of the way, beam scorching the ground, and the Young Wolf reappeared in the air, twirling back around. Her fingertips were stretched out, sending out webs of Arc energy crackling toward the Nightmare. And it did nothing. It washed over the Nightmare, unable to penetrate the Void skin it wove for itself.
The energy child reappeared in front of the Guardian, holding out a desperate hand. Neither of them could see the details of what should have been pleading eyes. The way they were shaped was like flesh that had grown over the eye sockets, leaving them unable to properly express themselves. The only communication they could perform was that gesture. Whether it was a partnership or a deal, Ghost couldn't tell.
"Be careful, Guardian!" Ghost warned. "I know those Nightmares are after them, but does that truly make them a friend?"
The Young Wolf watched as the Nightmare ascend higher, gathering more power to itself. There was no other recourse besides retreat, which his Guardian would only do in the most begrudging of circumstances. She thrust out her hand and shook the child's hand. He could only watch helplessly as his Guardian stiffened up, as the child disassembled into the incorporeal and seeped into the Young Wolf. She grabbed at her helmet, gloved fingers scratching at the visor futilely. But his Guardian did not scream. She never could scream, retaining her natural stoicism even in the face of annihilation.
Then she stilled, looking down at her hands.
"Guardian? Guardian!" he shouted.
"Tenno… my child… You can't save me," the creature said, suddenly audible.
The Young Wolf's head snapped to their enemy.
"I was made to love you. So, that love? It was never real. And if you can't let me go, then you're just like Ballas."
"We will give you the freedom to make your own choices. And even it breaks our heart, even if you die hating us, you will die free. But not before we save you," his Guardian said, voice echoing with a stranger's voice.
"Guardian? What's going on?" Ghost asked.
"That's the Nightmare of the Lotus. We'll take care of it."
"We? I know you're not referring to you and me!"
"We'll explain later."
The Young Wolf glanced at their rifle before holstering it on her back. The Nightmare of the Lotus roared, firing beams of energy, and then his Guardian moved with a grace alien to her. The Young Wolf was brutally frugal with her movements, not an inch wasted. But she dove through the raining beams, her whole body swirling like a bullet in motion, the energy barely clipping her.
She closed the distance, conjuring up her Dawnblade in her free hand. Except the burning blade had a comet of that blue Void energy circling up and down it. Again, she took up a stance that spoke of vast experience rather than natural born skill and wits the Young Wolf was graced with. Still, in motion, she danced between the desperate rain. Blinking upwards, she fell upon the Nightmare, stabbing it deep in the chest. The circling Void comet surged into the Nightmare and everything seemed to melt away. The Guardian took the Nightmare in her arms, cradling it gently. The Nightmare reached a hand and brushed the Guardian's cheek.
"The Tenno's love for you is real… we will love you whether you're Margulis, Lotus, or even Natah," the Young Wolf whispered in a stranger's voice.
The Nightmare sighed, Void skin sloshing away to reveal the Darkness beneath, but that too had to fade away. Ghost couldn't take this oblique mystery anymore. He manifested himself a safe distance away and his plates whirled angrily about him.
"You better explain what's going on, because I think someone's possessing my Guardian. And you don't want to see me angry! Because I bet I can revive her corpse free of your influence!"
The Guardian took off her helmet, revealing her face. One of her optics was glowing blue instead of white.
"It's okay, Little Light. It's still me," his Guardian whispered in her own voice. And then in returned to that two-toned duality. "We're just… two pieces put together into one."
"What?"
"Transference. Tends to work best with… mostly-blank vessels, but… we're kindred spirits, her and I. That's why there is no emotional rejection from either end; at the cost of being able to undo the Transference. It's mostly stable and we're not fracturing in a clash of two memories. There is some bleedover, though. As much as I'd like an exchange of knowledge, it's inherently untenable. I'm already remembering bits of my pre-Guardian days and frankly? It's very distracting. We can undo it, we think… but we'll be left vulnerable. We need Eris to help sort this out."
"Are you sure?" Ghost asked, feeling out of his depth.
"Of course. Do you trust me?" The Ghost nodded. "Then you can trust us."
The Young Wolf looked up, hands slowly drifting from their sides. Before Ghost could suggest that they do this near Eris, sparks of the Void started to shoot out from them and then that child figure lurched out from his Guardian, who promptly collapsed.
Warframe is a free-to-play third person shooter. The players play one of the Tenno, masters of the eponymous Warframes, and takes place across the solar system. The warframes are the biomechanical creations of the Orokin, possessing a variety of abilities to fight the Sentients, a replicating and adapting foe that necessitated the return to gun and blade. After the Old War, the Tenno then killed the Orokin for their crimes, causing the Collapse and they disappeared afterwards. In the aftermath, the Corpus, a zealous capitalist civilization with their own mechanical monstrosities, and the Grineer, a conquering empire of degenerating clones, arose. This is what the Tenno have awoken to: a system ravaged by this conflict and the rampant Infestation, another creation by the Orokin. The Tenno are guided by the Lotus, who acts as both their handler and maternal figure, as they seek to maintain balance within the system.
Destiny is a game series that focuses on Guardians: the formerly dead risen by a Ghost and granted powers by the Light. The Ghosts, and the Light, come from the Traveler, a huge white sphere that goes around uplifting alien species, including humanity. There came a golden age which eventually ended suddenly by an external force. The Traveler was pursued by an enemy who uses the Darkness to tear down everything the Traveler has built up. For reasons unknown, it makes a stand at Earth instead of running. The Ghosts came in the aftermath, raising humans, exos (human minds uploaded in a mechanical body), and Awoken (humans caught in the clash between Light and Dark, changing them) so that they might defend against the oncoming threats. Threats such as the Fallen: a species abandoned by the Traveler to the Darkness; the Hive: a species that worships the Darkness; and the Vex: a race of machines with time capabilities. Only the Guardians and their Light stand before them and the Last City, one of the last known bastions of humanity.
Meditation was a state of mind that lapsed from the body becoming so inert that the spirit had no choice but to wander. From wandering came clarity, pathways that were not often seen. Guardians, Warlocks especially, could cheat a little in this regard. Thanatonauts were the Guardians who sought visions in the moment between death and revival, being able to fall into this ethereal state of mind far more quickly. It wasn't as simple as merely dying for visions, but rather a shortcut for those who knew the way.
The Young Wolf's Ghost — affectionately named Ghost — didn't know why his Guardian decided to take up the practice of a thanatonaut. Their relationship was quietly close. So much didn't need to be said for them. The Young Wolf was stoic and silent, often necessitating Ghost to speak for them, but he didn't mind. Without him, the Young Wolf would have just kept on going and going as a silent machine until she died for the last time.
She never told him to be quiet, never showed any annoyance, but she always listened. No matter how small or trivial, she gave him her attention. It was a bond of action and quiet affections. Those small, private moments where his Guardian would teasingly call him "Little Light" to get his attention were cherished memories, quietly lit like candles in the dark. Even still, he didn't quite understand why the Young Wolf decided to play the thanatonaut now of all times. Perhaps she wanted answers on their "plunder" after that conflict with Eramis.
Yet, there were people already working on that. What could have prompted this?
He would ask her once he revived her.
She floated in a criss-crossed position, serene in her Tidal Hope shaded robes, looking entirely unbothered. The Young Wolf didn't even look dead, but perhaps that was more to her being an exo than anything else. Two ribbon wires ran down just above her brow. Her face was visible showing only a deep blue save for the left side. There was a white splotch, making its mark like a splash of blood. The surface had been peeled, scratched away, but it left the optics intact. Optics which did not hold a sign of life, the dimness carrying a sort of blind brightness of their own.
That was the biggest indicator of death, in Ghost's eyes, that she was off somewhere ethereal, somewhere he couldn't quite follow, leaving no other recourse but to wait. He had to for the muted, unspoken feeling that would have him return her to life.
Still… there was an off feeling that he couldn't quite shake off, but he had absolute trust in his Guardian. Even as they climbed the Ziggurat, in search of a way to equal the odds against House Salvation, he had faith. He was concerned, of course, but his Guardian had never let him down.There were times in the beginning where he thought, just a little prideful, that his Guardian wasn't like the others. Not in terms of achievements and triumphs, but in the way that she was single-minded. While other Guardians jumped off the Tower for fun, she was constantly and consistently fighting, always in an incessant grind to fight the battles that needed to be fought.
Thank the Traveler, he once thought near the beginning, she's not crazy like all the other Guardians.
Yet her stoic demeanor belied the actual insane drive that she possessed. It just so happened to be channeled productively, but there were these moments where she just would not stop. She didn't even bother taking on a name, considering it a triviality. It was honestly frightening, sometimes, but still he stayed. For all the rampage like after Cayde-6's death, there was still those quiet instances — the commitment to free Crow, for example. She didn't even need to say a word to him, but they somehow both knew that was the right choice to make. And a swell of pride uplifted him.
So for all the mystery, death, and enigma that was the Young Wolf, he stayed for her: those tender moments.
He just wished he could see what his Guardian saw…
His shell whirled and clacked about him in surprise, as his Guardian started to become more ethereal, black smoke wisping from their body.
"Guardian?" he whispered.
Her body started to turn intangible and he cried out in shock. He didn't feel an urgent crying out from his Guardian, but he was going to be damned before he let his Guardian be lost without him. The Ghost started to revive her, but there was this inimical feeling of disconnection. It was like him unraveling his shell and someone plucking a piece from him. There was no tendons or flesh to tear from, but it would be shorn from him all the same.
There no hesitation in what he did next.
He invested more of himself in the effort, feeling that any danger to him would be how much this was going to hurt. He could almost imagine threads of Light that entwined the two of them, but there was a barrier now between the two. The Ghost pushed and pushed and pushed, until there was a clicking feeling as if a connection had been latched between the two once more. And then he started to pull. It crushed him, a mounting pressure that would have had him scream were he not so simplemindedly focused on bringing back his Guardian.
Slowly, but surely, his Guardian started to gain substance, the black wisps slowly receding. For a heartwrenching second, his Guardian disappeared along with the surroundings. There was only a Void with a cascade of light blue, swirling and swirling. And it was all centered around a black-haired child. He didn't get much of a look, but one detail seemed to burn in his memory. Molten core eyes — as if two small suns had burnt themselves out — stared back at him.
Then it was over.
His Guardian gasped, falling onto her behind. She blinked several times before looking up at him.
"Thanks."
"Of course, Guardian. Did you find the answers you were looking for?"
She leaned back, still sitting, and looked like a falling statue just barely propped up on angled stands. He knew better to interrupt these dwelling silences. Even though he didn't always knew what his Guardian was thinking, he always knew when she wanted to talk. Most of the time, she was content to let him do all the talking and other times, like here, she needed a moment to gather her thoughts.
"Entirely unrelated." The Young Wolf sighed. "Might be a new problem."
She rapped and tapped a slow tattoo on the floor. It almost seemed to echo, carrying weight far beyond her knuckles, like tapping against a wall that shouldn't be touched. His Guardian almost seemed to be lost in that noise, walking deep in the void that it left. Then she snapped out of it, looking back at him.
"There's something important in that pattern. Can you ask around for me?"
XXX
His Operator gasped. All at once, she stopped floating in a criss-cross position and fell onto her ass — posterior. She had been floating in a meditative state for the past hour, trying to come up with an answer for saving the Lotus from Ballas, but Ordis privately maintained that it was just his Operator's way of not breaking down in a fit of Void fury. After all, she had been there in person when Ballas came to the Lotus.
She stood up and Ordis kept watch through the Orbiter's systems. His Tenno wore a white vest gifted to her by the Ventkids of Fortuna over a cuirass, a set of sleeves from the Quills that was armored on the left side, and kept a copy of Umbra's scarf around the lower half of her face. Gray, somatic scars marred most of her face, but that wasn't why she wore the scarf. Not to hide them; it was out of sheer sentimentality.
He kept track of her as she paced around her personal quarters. Excalibur Umbra watched from his display. Now that was one fucked-up — disturbed warframe being cursed with a measure of self-awareness that was not common in warframes. After his Operator soothed him, the warframe wanted to rest, like all the other warframes within the armory. But his Operator was a sentimental one. She let him rest in the display, giving him the option of freedom should he chose it.
But he never did. Ordis knew because he monitored the warframe. Maybe the Operator was a bit too trusting sometimes, or was often bereft of good options, but he would provide a measure of safety should she need it. After all, he still remembered Umbra's little rampage and escape from the Orbiter.
The Operator took a deep breath before she slammed a fist into the wall.
It looked like meditation didn't work the way she wanted to. He wanted to chime in. It would not do to dwell on her failures — problems. He often chimed in to prevent the silence from consuming her, annoying with the occasional pun and update her on the number of stars.
She would sigh, somewhat fondly, and mutter, "Ordis."
Yet, he knew his Operator would become snappish if he tried doing that now. The oncoming New War weighed down on her as she desperately tried find a good way to save the Lotus. All the Tenno did, deep down, but some of them felt betrayed enough to consider killing the Lotus. It was a long and daunting process to get all the other Tenno to agree to give her the chance to save the Lotus. Tenno didn't fight Tenno, but it simply wouldn't do for them to get into each other's way. But despite his Operator being of a legendary rank, it didn't seem plausible to some to rest all their hopes on one, single Tenno.
He believed his Operator could pull it off, until then, she would be free to vent. As she sulked – stalked around the room, something pinged his systems. A message in the inbox. He ran all the cursory checks, noting that it didn't have a source for the sender and it carried a package. If it didn't have the package, Ordis would have sent it through. Messages without a proper return address tended to be death threats from highly prominent individuals and his Operator found those warnings amusing. And spam wasn't a real problem. Most Tenno's inboxes were reclusive and elusive things. Corpus advertising could not find them and Ordis had a dedicated filter subroutine for the rare few scattershot spam that did find them.
"Operator, you have a weird — peculiar message in the inbox along with a package. It's probably not a bomb! — anything unsafe, but would you have me do?"
The Operator glanced at Umbra, then sat down on the bench.
"Let it through."
Her eyes went glazed slightly as she held out her hand, reading the message through her cognitive relay. As far as Ordis could tell it was gibberish and numbers. There was no reason to it and Ordis ran several decoding algorithms in a handful of seconds. All of it came up with nothing. He hesitated on letting her access the package, which resisted his scans.
"As your ship cephalon, I recommend against this."
The Tenno clenched her fists. She was a marvel in warframes: skillful, professional, deadly. Given an objective, she achieved it with maximum efficiency. The death she delivered was nothing less than artistry. She was a Tenno, a veteran of the Old War and a fighter of the finest caliber. But he was hers. He'd being nothing less than a disservice to her by being so lax in her safety.
"I'll be fine, Ordis," she gritted. Ordis went silent and the Operator scowled, hand hovering over the option to transmit the package. "If I can't handle it, I trust you can."
Ordis relaxed, feeling less heavy. He didn't like that being so stressed out spread him out over the Orbiter, mimicking an emotional heaviness. It was like… clenching every muscle in a body of meat. With a small amount of trepidation, he let the package go through. He waited with bated breath — in as much as he could as a Cephalon — as it manifested in the Operator's outstretched hand. It was in the shape of a dodecahedron with a lens in the middle. Was it some sort of drone?
His Operator cocked her head, examining the strange object.
"Perhaps some asshole — person accidentally sent it to the wrong address?" Ordis offered.
She held it up aloft. "No… it might be… something else… that sent this."
Oh dear. It looked like his Operator might be having a moment of insanity again. Sometimes, very rarely, she would stare off at a point in the Orbiter or be startled after turning around. Once, she even had a short conversation with thin air.
"Are you sure, Operator?"
"Do you see it? The ethereal smoke around it?"
"Uh, Operator? Do you need a moment?"
"I might black out." Her gaze was glassy as she stared at the object. "Just a feeling. Like the feeling that I should see what… I'm going to be shown."
Then she cupped her other hand over the drone-thing and promptly slumped in the seat, eyes fluttering beneath her eyelids.
"Operator? Operator? Ooooooperator!" he shouted.
He panicked, even as most of him still continued to run the ship smoothly. A great many options flashed in his mind, prime of which that he should load himself in the Host Migrator drone body, and slowly drag the Operator to safety. Were the Lotus… available, he would have called her. Ordis focused attention on Umbra, who was carefully stepping out from the display. He looked at the Operator with an unseen expression. Warframes, he wanted to bemoan.
"Make yourself useful and carry her," he commanded.
Umbra paused and looked around, not like an animal hearing the annoyance, but of someone looking to reprimand another, to shunt blame from himself. But Umbra could not more scold him than he scold the ship itself.
"If you can't speak, then don't bother… just do."
It was probably likely that he was already going to carry her, but you never knew. He scooped up his Operator tenderly, like a small child, and walked softly to the Somatic Link room. He laid her to rest in the seat and fell into a kneeling position, hands holding onto the scabbard of his Skiajati. Both of them understood they had to be patient, hoping that the Operator to come back from wherever she dreamed now.
And in silence, they waited.
XXX
Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, Eris Morn was the one who responded to the Ghost's queries. She, on whatever strange tangent, had discovered a lead back on the Moon. How much of it was connected to her prior research, they didn't know. It would certainly simplify things if it were, but from the way she worded her message, it seemed that she heard the rap-tap too. She waited on the surface of the Moon, three green eyes glowing beneath her blindfold, shadows streaking from beneath.
The Young Wolf strode over to her, Ghost manifesting just over her shoulder.
"Guardian. I am pleased that you recognize the importance of this."
"Is that pattern so importance?" he asked.
Eris looked at the Ghost. "Did you not hear the transmission?"
"Once," the Young Wolf answered, folding her hands behind her back. "During meditation."
"Ah, yes." Eris looked contemplative and the silence started to drag.
"And for the rest of the class?" The Ghost bobbed forward. "I mean, is it the Pyramid?"
Eris startled for a moment, as if she had been lost too deep in contemplation. Three green eyes blinked away a drowning contemplation.
"If it was the Lunar Pyramid communicating, there would be intent. As it is, there is an indifference to this transmission," Eris replied.
"But then why is it a problem?
"Ah, but I did not say it was without malevolence, Ghost. Casual cruelties are the same as any purposeful cruelties. It's a matter of either scale or personality. The Hive and the Vex, for instance. The Hive derive… joy from their winnowing. For the Vex, it's a fact, no more than swatting a fly."
"Then why must we reach out?"
"Because 'good', to use a relative term, is rarely indifferent when it comes to pleading or calling out." Eris looked out in the direction of the Scarlet Keep. "There is emotion even to cruelty, especially when they think it is a kindness. But indifference? What terrors would we see from this? Terrors which come unthinking, actualized as something we cannot comprehend as anything but terrors. This transmission bears investigation, because if we don't, our enemies will."
"Do you have an idea of its source? It must be from the Moon if you had us meet you here."
"I do believe it's something other than the Pyramid is causing this, but that does not write out it trying to involve itself." She grabbed the Young Wolf's arm. "Beware, Guardian. If I have sensed this… tapping, then so have others. If it seems like you don't find anything, it may not remain that way."
"Then we should make haste. The Enduring Abyss seems the best place to start," Ghost said.
The Young Wolf nodded and that was that. She turned away, the Ghost dematerializing in her wake. A green portal manifested itself a few feet away from Eris where stationed the Lectern of Enchantment.
His Guardian stepped through and reappeared just above the large cavern that housed the Pyramid. The black structure was sharp like the endpoint of an arrow. The air seemed to thrum and still in equal turns, at once a storm and the silence in the center. It was a tension similar to all the other times they ventured close, but… He was suddenly wary of being possessed, to have his autonomy ripped away so he could be used as a mere mouthpiece. Were he to ask to stay away, he knew in his metaphorical heart that his Guardian would relent, but that would leave her alone to face all the threats without him.
Where his Guardian went, so too would he.
She passed through the red pillars, which framed the Pyramid in the distance. He expected Nightmares to attack, to swarm, like the first time they came across this place. His Guardian was haunted by the battles she fought, the fear of failure latching onto physical reality like a disease. It was not so much that she lost, but what it meant for everyone else that these… horrors to triumph over her. These fears didn't need to taunt her; they only needed to be present as if to say you did not win, which would also mean, you are going to fail. He could only speculate, but he was with his Guardian from day one and got a closer look than many.
Somewhere along the way, the Young Wolf internalized that she had to be victorious or that everything else would fall. Like she wasn't the only Guardian that mattered but more that she was the embodiment of the struggle. She was less of a person and more of a force of nature, for all that entailed. Which was why her Nightmares were both a symbolic and literal battle, unlike the hauntings for all the others. For her to fail or otherwise be absent from the fight, then she would become a harbinger of failure, a bad omen. Why else would she continually get involved whenever she could?
"Strange whispers," Eris said over the comms, "Familiar but not quite."
"We will have to go deeper, won't we?" Ghost asked.
His Guardian answered with action, marching to the edge and hopping right off it. Gravity pulled at her and she only tugged back to slow her descent. Light burst beneath her feet in an echoing triplicate. One-two-three turned the long fall into jumping off a staircase of five steps. She descended down the rocky surface, emerging through alcoves, all the while getting closer and closer to the Pyramid.
"The Pyramid is reacting," Eris said.
Even Ghost knew the key word in that sentence was reacting. It was responding to something, but what? The burst of Void energy, dark purple quickly answered their answer. His Guardian snapped to the source with her Quicksilver Storm, pointing the rifle at the bubbling ball of energy a few feet away.
"The Void…" his Guardian whispered.
"Even I can feel it from here… amplified twice over…" Eris replied.
But something was wrong. The dark purple energy was laced with a bright and ghastly blue, like poison pulsating through the veins. Whispers and screams thrummed inside the warping ball of energy, before coalescing into some semblance of clarity.
I was cut in half, destroyed, but through its Janus Key, the Void called to me. It brought me here and here I was reborn.
If the Void is negation, behold the ultimate negator.
The Void creates. Death is merely a blank canvas.
It is the folly of the simple mind, unable to perceive the brilliant richness of nothingness. The Void is not only the absence of Light, but Dark.
The Indifference has awoken, and all of the Void's creations must find a light.
Then, like an egg cracking open, the ball dissembled into fragments with what rested in the center spat out in a river of purple and blue light. A figure tumbled between those waterless waves, before landing on the rocky surface twenty feet away from the Guardian. It stood up, forming into a humanoid figure made up of that blue energy. Yet, there was still a remnant of the Void energy that they were familiar with. It had collected together in a straight line down the figure's chest like a grave wound.
They floated, head turned down like a body in the water. His Guardian approached cautiously and more details became apparent. Whatever this was, it was the size of a small teenager, wearing indistinguishable clothes, all of which blurred together. The only significant piece of clothing Ghost could discern was a long scarf covering the bottom half of the thing's face. The Young Wolf paused before it. Ghost watched and feared with trepidation as his Guardian reached out, paracasual energies lurking just beneath the palm of her hand.
The figure reached out as well, tentatively, before the air rippled and the figure was yanked off their feet. They landed face first on the ground before being pulled toward the Pyramid. Dark red figures manifested in a maelstrom, trying to swallow the figure. The figure cast out its hands and threw its head back in a silent scream.The Young Wolf opened fire on the periphery, taking care not to strike the blue figure, but they did nothing, passing through harmlessly.
"Our bullets are ineffective!" Ghost shouted.
Beams of that not-Void shot from the hands, cutting some of the nightmares down, but more manifested, drowning out the blue figure. The blue light began to dim and the reddish Nightmares began to swell, turning darker and darker in a dim purple color.
It's all your fault! You made us into this! You-you-you! all the Nightmares shouted in a soundless chant, you took the deal! You damned us! You're no sister of ours! Further vitriol echoed in the air, fading away, and neither Ghost nor his Guardian could hear anymore as more luminosity was sapped from the figure.
"Foolishness for us to think that only the Light could utilize the Void. The Darkness is trying doing so as well, taking advantage of the Void's aberrant manifestation in our reality," Eris said.
Ghost couldn't quite follow Eris's explanations beyond the very basics: the Void was acting weird and the Pyramid was using it like a focus for the Darkness. Instead of Void-focused Light, it was attempting to use Void-focused Darkness. But his Guardian, his wonderfully capable Guardian, knew what to do. She put away her weapon and ignited like a star going supernova, energies folding into herself, as the Young Wolf imbued herself with a Nova Warp.
She disappeared and reappeared with a burst of energy, scattering the Nightmares away from the blue figure. One shade of Void clashed another shade of Void, one of which was less pure. Or rather less sure; it held less presence than the Young Wolf's Light, being little more than glue trying to hold together shattered glass. Up close, they could both truly see that it… they weren't an adult. They had curled into themselves, much in the way that someone did under an immense and uneven beatdown.
They looked up, clutching their side, and the Guardian stared at them, then at the churning swirling mass of Nightmare stuff. Injected into the center mass, like a beating heart, was a pulsating source of that blue Void energy. The Darkness around it tried smothering it, digesting it into itself, but it was something indigestible. That aberrant Void energy tried doing the same, but met the same outcome. Paracasual tension crackled in the air before it stubbornly subsided.
Slowly, but surely, the Void flooded into the Nightmares, turning what had been flesh into bones. It gathered together, twisted and misaligned, into a crumbling figure. It flared into a color between blue and purple. This new figure was a broken corpse, crumbling on its hands and knees. With some a large headgear framing a floating, detached face, it outstretched a hand to the blue figure and its lips moved. The child at their side flinched, stepping back.
The Young Wolf made her move, throwing a Nova Bomb at the thing. For whatever reason, the child grabbed at the Young Wolf's wrist, trying to yank it back. But it was too late. The creature lunged forward, batting away the Guardian's attempt to shoot it, and wrapped a tentacle around its neck. With her free hand, she threw her palm out, firing Void energy right into the creature's face, but it remained unaffected.
"You are not attuned to it!" Eris exclaimed. "The Void is vaster than we could even comprehend and it has left us behind for the moment. Retreat Guardian!"
The Young Wolf's face, despite being hidden by a smoky and swirling visor, was determined. Ghost could feel it. She flicked her arm that was still the rifle, swapping it into the grenade launcher mode. The material atop the rifle surged forward, spiking out near the open ports near the barrel. She fired between them, breaking both the grip and the shield. The Young Wolf slid across the ground before rolling back onto her feet. The child reappeared next to them, hands nervously hovering over the Guardian as if trying to beseech them somehow.
The creature howled and fired a beam of energy at them, which the Young Wolf met with her own Arc Beam. The Chaos Reach met the energies on equal ground, one unable to overtake the other. But the difference between the Young Wolf and this thing was one of substance. The creature was not driven back as the Guardian was, boots throwing up dust as they lost inch after inch. It slowly floated upwards, carrying the trajectory with it, and forcing his Guardian to awkwardly meet it. She Blinked out of the way, beam scorching the ground, and the Young Wolf reappeared in the air, twirling back around. Her fingertips were stretched out, sending out webs of Arc energy crackling toward the Nightmare. And it did nothing. It washed over the Nightmare, unable to penetrate the Void skin it wove for itself.
The energy child reappeared in front of the Guardian, holding out a desperate hand. Neither of them could see the details of what should have been pleading eyes. The way they were shaped was like flesh that had grown over the eye sockets, leaving them unable to properly express themselves. The only communication they could perform was that gesture. Whether it was a partnership or a deal, Ghost couldn't tell.
"Be careful, Guardian!" Ghost warned. "I know those Nightmares are after them, but does that truly make them a friend?"
The Young Wolf watched as the Nightmare ascend higher, gathering more power to itself. There was no other recourse besides retreat, which his Guardian would only do in the most begrudging of circumstances. She thrust out her hand and shook the child's hand. He could only watch helplessly as his Guardian stiffened up, as the child disassembled into the incorporeal and seeped into the Young Wolf. She grabbed at her helmet, gloved fingers scratching at the visor futilely. But his Guardian did not scream. She never could scream, retaining her natural stoicism even in the face of annihilation.
Then she stilled, looking down at her hands.
"Guardian? Guardian!" he shouted.
"Tenno… my child… You can't save me," the creature said, suddenly audible.
The Young Wolf's head snapped to their enemy.
"I was made to love you. So, that love? It was never real. And if you can't let me go, then you're just like Ballas."
"We will give you the freedom to make your own choices. And even it breaks our heart, even if you die hating us, you will die free. But not before we save you," his Guardian said, voice echoing with a stranger's voice.
"Guardian? What's going on?" Ghost asked.
"That's the Nightmare of the Lotus. We'll take care of it."
"We? I know you're not referring to you and me!"
"We'll explain later."
The Young Wolf glanced at their rifle before holstering it on her back. The Nightmare of the Lotus roared, firing beams of energy, and then his Guardian moved with a grace alien to her. The Young Wolf was brutally frugal with her movements, not an inch wasted. But she dove through the raining beams, her whole body swirling like a bullet in motion, the energy barely clipping her.
She closed the distance, conjuring up her Dawnblade in her free hand. Except the burning blade had a comet of that blue Void energy circling up and down it. Again, she took up a stance that spoke of vast experience rather than natural born skill and wits the Young Wolf was graced with. Still, in motion, she danced between the desperate rain. Blinking upwards, she fell upon the Nightmare, stabbing it deep in the chest. The circling Void comet surged into the Nightmare and everything seemed to melt away. The Guardian took the Nightmare in her arms, cradling it gently. The Nightmare reached a hand and brushed the Guardian's cheek.
"The Tenno's love for you is real… we will love you whether you're Margulis, Lotus, or even Natah," the Young Wolf whispered in a stranger's voice.
The Nightmare sighed, Void skin sloshing away to reveal the Darkness beneath, but that too had to fade away. Ghost couldn't take this oblique mystery anymore. He manifested himself a safe distance away and his plates whirled angrily about him.
"You better explain what's going on, because I think someone's possessing my Guardian. And you don't want to see me angry! Because I bet I can revive her corpse free of your influence!"
The Guardian took off her helmet, revealing her face. One of her optics was glowing blue instead of white.
"It's okay, Little Light. It's still me," his Guardian whispered in her own voice. And then in returned to that two-toned duality. "We're just… two pieces put together into one."
"What?"
"Transference. Tends to work best with… mostly-blank vessels, but… we're kindred spirits, her and I. That's why there is no emotional rejection from either end; at the cost of being able to undo the Transference. It's mostly stable and we're not fracturing in a clash of two memories. There is some bleedover, though. As much as I'd like an exchange of knowledge, it's inherently untenable. I'm already remembering bits of my pre-Guardian days and frankly? It's very distracting. We can undo it, we think… but we'll be left vulnerable. We need Eris to help sort this out."
"Are you sure?" Ghost asked, feeling out of his depth.
"Of course. Do you trust me?" The Ghost nodded. "Then you can trust us."
The Young Wolf looked up, hands slowly drifting from their sides. Before Ghost could suggest that they do this near Eris, sparks of the Void started to shoot out from them and then that child figure lurched out from his Guardian, who promptly collapsed.