Destiny | The Blackened Heart | Discontinued

8: The Lost Guardian

Light.  

And air and feeling.  

I draw in a gasping breath and roll over onto my stomach, barely feeling the gravel digging into my arms as I push myself up on my elbows.  

"Guardian?  Mora?"  There's something like panic in the little ghost's voice.  He hovers closer running his scanner over me and I flinch away from the light, waving for him to stop, and he does so.  

I sit up and brush my hair away from my face.  The ground is blackened by the blast.  Riksis and the Vandals are gone, vaporized to dust like myself.  Gone.  I make an effort to breathe deeply. 

"Dying's not fun."  

"No," North agrees.  "Don't do that again." 

"I make no promises," I reply with a toothy grin.  "That over-sized Dreg's face was priceless."  

He tips his shell forward, trying to look stern.  "Maybe a little.  But not worth your life." 

I shrug and brush dirt from my gauntlets.  "They were going to kill me anyway.  I just got there first."  I pause for a moment, wondering if Riksis had even been killed in the blast.  I had assumed, but...  "Riksis is dead right?" 

North nods quickly.  "You killed the Archon.  And we got a Warp Drive!" 

I exhale in relief.  "Good." 

"I've already transmatted it to the ship.  As soon as we get home, we can have Amanda install it."  He pauses, spinning his shell, looking upward to the sky.  "I have a transmat set.  Are you ready to-"

"No." 

North stops and turns back to face me, optic cocked to the side in question.  

"The Titan.  You had access the information hub didn't you?  Can you pick up any signatures?  Any trace?  Anything at all?" I ask.

"Hmm, maybe.  Though I doubt we'll find her," he replies skeptically. 

"Try."

With that he hums up, shell splitting and orbiting around him in a field of energy.  "When we accessed that hub, there was a record of another viewer within the last day- and the time frame that the Titan went missing in.  I bet she was the one who owned the crashed ship.  Maybe I can track her Ghost..." 

"Do you think it'll work?" I ask eagerly, rocking to my feet to stand beside him.  

"Well..."  He trails off, circling slowly around the room.  "I am picking up something.  In there."  My lips purse as he stops in front of the air shaft that the Archon crawled from, and retracts the energy field around him.  "Great," he says weakly.

Oh, so now he's sarcastic?  I step up, running a gloved hand over the wall, looking for a hold.  

"It might not be wise to go in without a helmet," he warns.

"Those Vandals smashed it in.  Repairing it would only waste time."  I grip the edge of the vent and heave myself up.  "Besides," I say, turning back from the tunnel, "The Fallen just lost their leader.  There's got to be some disarray." 

North says nothing, evaporating from view.  I face into the dark, and start inside.  

The reek of Fallen is strong in such a confined space, and the passage curves many times, until I am completely lost, except for the guidance of the Ghost, tracking the signal of the possible target.  The darkness is nearly complete, but it takes a few times stumbling over chunks of concrete and bones, before North comes out to shed light on the way.  I almost wish he hadn't after we pass half a dozen skeletons of humans, animals and who knows what.