Tessa had never been afraid of her enemies before. At least, not before she had faced them. She had fought monsters from other worlds, so foreign to her she could not even begin to understand them. But the fear had always come after. It had torn her from her bed and sent her crashing to the floor, her throat so tight it was as though their hands were wrapped around her throat. She had never learned how to shake them, sometimes the horrors seemed to never leave her mind, but sometimes they seemed as faint as the scars from her first life.
She had never been afraid of them the way she was afraid of Oryx. As exhausted as she was, she lay awake knowing what faced her the next day. Oryx was stronger than anything she had ever fought, anything anyone had ever fought. Even with Damian by her side, she didn't know that they would make it alive. It was a hard fact to face. Even with all her experience, the thought made her cower and tremble. It made her want to weep for her life, to rush and hide. She was young, she'd hardly had a boyfriend except for one jerk titan. She had never had sex, never been to college or gotten a degree, and yet she had seen more in her years than any normal human could hope to see in a lifetime. She had traveled the solar system multiple times over, and had fought enemies few could even imagine.
She had died more times than she could remember, the mass of memories fading to a few, and a number she kept in the back of her brain. And yet, she was afraid of death. She already knew Oryx could take her light. He could make her die her final death. She only wished if it were to come to that, the others would be spared. Damian and Kylie and Echo, they could make more change in the world than she ever could. They could save more lives than she could ever hope to, it had to be them.
She felt bad for yelling at Damian, even if he needed to hear it. If they were about to die, she didn't want it to be his last thought of her, not when he mattered so much to her. She had never met someone that could drive the darkness away from her so completely. She wasn't about to let him slip away, not after everything they had been through already. From fallen threats, to practical jokes, to stressful hospital visits, to foreign courts, to taken armies, they had been through more than she could have ever imagined, and she wasn't about to let it end for them just yet. Not with so much to figure out between them.
Tessa wasn't sure what time it was when she finally drifted off, but she was glad she did, because when she woke, Echo was nudging her awake, informing her it was just about time to get moving. The sun was streaming through the gaps in the curtains, a heavy contrast to what they were about to face.
Tessa dressed carefully, she checked every inch of her armor, everything had to be functioning perfectly for their mission. She carefully planned out a mix of armor that gave her freedom of movement while being strong enough to hold against the taken. Once she had picked everything out, she shaded it with a dark shader, allowing her to blend in a bit more to the shadows. She then called Damian, and the two met at his ship, loading on more ammo crates than they could ever need, and buying as many ammo syntheses as they they could afford. By the time they headed out, it was midday. This time, Tessa didn't stop at the Vanguard leader's table before they left. She didn't want it to seem like a goodbye.
Tessa settled into the copilot's seat as they took off, peering out the window as they left the city, and then Earth, launching into warp speed.
"Alright, Guardians. Let's run down the checklist, shall we?" Cayde's voice came in over the radio. "Hive crystal with Crota's soul?"
"Check." Echo said. Damian had picked it up from Ikora on his way to the hangar.
"Creepy sidekick-" Cayde continued, to which Eris grumbled something they couldn't make out. "Check." He finished. "Rogueish commander, check. The spectators- Ikora and Zavala, check and check. The consultant, Estella-3, check-"
Damian frowned. "Estella's here?" He asked into the radio.
"Not your here, Damian, but yes." Tessa didn't recognize the female voice that spoke up.
"You're acting as a consultant?" Damian asked.
"Yep." The woman said, "I was the one that got you the crystal and the codes for your stealth tech. Though I heard that didn't go too well, huh?" She asked.
"It worked great," Tessa chimed in, her voice only slightly laced with sarcasm. "Until we were filling the crystal with Crota's soul and Oryx released an ambush." She explained. "I'm Tessa, by the way."
"Tough luck, I guess." Estella said, "I'm Stella. I worked with Damian while he was taking down Crota."
Cayde coughed loudly before Tessa could respond. "I'm all for pleasantries, but maybe after we kill the taken King." He suggested.
"Says the man with the checklist." Eris grumbled.
"As I was saying," Cayde continued, "We have the consultant, check, and the guardians, check. If I haven't left anything out, I'd say we're ready to kill a king."
"It's motivational, Eris." Tessa heard Cayde tell Eris as they made to transmat out.
They landed easily in the hull breach, guns loaded and ready. Around them, Hive and Cabal battled, the Hive spread out on their side of the enormous space, across from the cabal ship. The Cabal were still defending their ship, holding the line, but they clearly had not made any headway into the dreadnought in this section.
"Push back the dark." Eris told them as they gathered their bearings. "End it." She told them. Tessa decided not to mention that the dark consisted of much more than Oryx and the Taken.
"She's right guardian." Cayde said, and Tessa shot Damian an overly shocked look. Cayde agreeing with Eris? Unheard of. "There's no doubt in my mind this could possibly work. Now, get to that rupture." He told them.
"That's very motivational." Damian remarked. "It's nice to know you have so much faith in us."
Even still, they did what they were asked. They headed towards the shallow ravine that divided the two races, Damian took the right side, spending a magazine worth of ammo shooting at the Hive, while Tessa simply tossed a grenade at the Cabal and ran, knowing they'd finish each other off. Damian followed her example and darted after her.
They headed down the misshapen tunnel made from the debris the cabal ship had left behind in its crash into the hull, reaching the Maulsolum in a matter of moments. The rupture was just ahead of them, the only problems being, Tessa had no idea how to get it open, and their way was blocked by a small group of Hive. These wouldn't have been such a problem, except as they neared the rupture, a swarm of taken descended around them.
"Okay," Echo said, "That's where the rupture should be." He told them as they neared the large archway
"Get it open." Cayde told them, "Once you're through, send your coordinates. We'll lock down your location and send in reinforcements."
They split up as the Taken descended upon them. Tessa took the back half of the crumbling bridge that led to the rupture, and Damian took the ground below it. With grenades and a hail of bullets, they quickly cleared out the taken. She moved towards the rupture as it opened.
"The rupture can sense the soul you hold." Eris told her as she studied it at a distance. "You are ascendant."
Tessa shook her head as she tried to look into the rupture. "Crota is ascendant." She told Eris. "I am merely a thief with a crystal."
Eris did not reply, and there was a moment of silence as Damian came gliding down beside her.
Damian moved towards her, as she headed for the rupture. "Tessa, wait." He said quickly, catching her arm. He glanced to Kylie, who formed at his shoulder with a thought. "Cut the audio feed for me, will you?" He asked, to which Kylie nodded.
"Guardian, what are you-?" Cayde stammered, only to be shushed by Estella.
"They can't hear you." Kylie told Damian as Estella cut off Cayde.
"You're off too." Echo told Tessa, assuming she'd likely not want the vanguard leaders to be listening in either.
"If Damian is cutting their feed it means he has something private to tell Tessa. There are five of us in this room right now and whatever the outcome of this mission, scholars are going to be studying these recordings." Estella was explaining to Cayde, "I wouldn't want everyone listening in on my private conversation either." She told the hunter. Damian flashed a thumbs up, Stella had understood his thoughts exactly. "See?" He heard her say.
Damian smiled weakly, then focused his attention back on Tessa.
"I'm sorry about yesterday." He said, "You're right, what's in the past doesn't matter, and I should focus on the now, and the future." He explained to her, "But that got me thinking. If we're going to go fight Oryx, he could very well kill us, both of us." Damian could feel his heart pounding. "I just- I don't want to leave words unsaid." He heaved a deep breath. "I like you, Tessa. A lot, more than a just a friendship. It's why I hate putting you in danger, it's why I didn't what you to come today. The thought of you dying- I couldn't live with myself. But I needed to get that off my chest, before we go fight Oryx."
"Damian, I-" She tried to speak but Damian cut he off quickly.
"Please, I don't want you to respond now." He told her, "If you do, you might say something untrue. I don't want this to be skewed in the heat of the moment. And, if we make it out of here alive and you don't feel the same way, we can go back to whatever we were. And if you do... I dunno, we'll cross that bridge if we come to it I guess." He said with a small shrug.
Tessa opened her mouth to speak, then considered his request and closed it again. "Okay." She said at last, nodding to him. "I suppose we should go, then."
"Yeah." He agreed with a nod. "You can turn the audio back on." He told Kylie. She nodded to him when it was done, Echo following in suit. "Thank you for waiting through that." He told their audience through the comms. "I think we're ready now." He said, glancing to Tessa, who nodded.
"I'm ready of you are." She told him, holding out a hand.
He nodded and took it, facing the rupture.
"Good luck." Estalla said as they stepped into the rupture. Damian tightened his grip as they stepped in. He could feel wind tearing at him, for only a short moment, then they landed in a short, dusty hallway, a circular chamber just ahead of them.
The radio fuzzed in their ears as the connection tore, squelching as the Ghosts attempted to clear the static.
"I think we're going to have to finish this on our own." Echo told them as they headed into the circular chamber, skirting a large hole in the floor, an enormous cylinder hanging into it. "My scans are returning nothing." He explained, "We're definitely... somewhere, but there's no sign of Oryx."
They continued into another hallway, inclining gently up, and much longer than the previous one. Large pillars illuminated alongside them as they moved down the hall, towards another circle room. Once they reached the room, Echo was able to place where they were, labeling it as the Asylum. They were still on the dreadnought, but beyond that, the words were not much help.
They skirted the edge of the circle room, heading into another circular hallway that led out into a large space beyond. Tessa spotted a ball of taken light disappear just as they moved into the hallway.
"Well," Echo said, "Now we know we have his attention." He grumbled, "Hi, Oryx." They moved out onto a high balcony, overlooking the space below, two long staircases led down to it on either side. The main platform below them resembled an hourglass shape, the large ends being the building they had just come out of, and the building across from them, where they were headed. The ball of taken light danced in the center of the space, where the platforms were only a thin band.
They leaped off the balcony, not bothering with the stairs as the orb vanished and a taken hobgoblin took it's place. Damian took care of it with a few quick shots, dodging the heavy blast that followed. Behind it, more hobgoblins began to form, along with a collection of psions and even a taken captain, all on the opposite side of the hourglass.
They rushed to meet them, Tessa took out a number of psions with a few quick blows, while Damian took on the hobgoblin. She looked up at a familiar shrieking sound, a wave of darkness from the captain's hand, hurdling itself towards Damian.
"Dodge that!" She shouted at him, and he did without question. "It's blinding. It makes everything really dark for like ten seconds." She explained to him as she ran after a few fleeing psions. "It sucks."
"Good to kow." Damian called back, "I'll be sure to avoid it."
As she hurried left of the large staircase that divided the space into two, she spotted a few hobgoblins shooting at her from a balcony above. She hurled a grenade up at them, focusing her fire on the psions. She wiped out all that were on her side, then leaped up to the balcony, where she finished off the hobgoblins. Damian was climbing the staircase, or had been until the captain threw another wall of darkness at him, causing him to leap off the side in order to dodge the blast. Tessa hurled a knife into his back, then finished him off with a few shots, glad to find the knife clattered to the floor when it disappeared.
She picked it up as Damian hopped back onto the staircase, having cleared out the other side of enemies. They headed up to the large doorway, waiting for the two heavy sides to slide apart, then a collection of razor sharp pieces of metal to retract into the door, so fast Tessa was worried to move through it for fear of them closing on her. Needless to say, she did not linger in the doorway as she slipped inside.
Beyond the doorway, there was a moderately sized entryway, the room beyond opening up to a large space with two levels, the upper tall enough to look like a stage, a gentle ramp led up to it on either side. A huge archway was in the center, identical to the one that had held the rupture they had come through. As they stepped into the entryway, a large figure appeared in the room.
"You are the least hope of the light?" The apparition bellowed at them. Tessa recognized it to be Oryx. "I have taken entire worlds. You are not worthy to face me." The king roared. His voice shook the entire room, and Tessa felt the darkness that accompanied it, pulling at her, tearing at her light. Damian stepped back to stand half in front of her, and she noticed the way his light moved towards hers as though it were trying to shield her from the darkness.
As quickly as it had come, the apparition disappeared, the rupture exploding open in the archway. An enormous figure stepped out, a cabal commander, and Tessa realized with a start, it was the same one that had tried to kill her the night before, when her stealth tech had faltered. His name was Ta'aun, Hand of Oryx.
They were already shooting when the rupture closed, rocket launchers loaded, heavy ammo syntheses out before the taken behind him could even spread out into the room. Like most of the Taken, Ta'aun was easily wounded, but the river of bullets he shot from the machine gun likely as big as she was, those packed a punch.
Even still, with their rocket launchers, and the cover of the room on their side, it seemed the odds were in their favor. However, just as they grew confident, the rupture opened again, and this time, a large taken Ogre stepped out. The Ogre was called Baxx, and was also titled the hand of Oryx. The Ogre roared as it emerged from the portal, firing a rapid blast at them, forcing them to duck behind cover.
"You finish off the commander, I'll get the Ogre." Tessa told Damian, using another syntheses and loading another rocket into her launcher. Damian nodded, drawing his rifle and quickly standing, aiming over the cover. He aimed for the Commander's head, chucking his grenade at it and quickly finishing it off.
Tessa had been making quick work of the Ogre, dodging it's blasts and shooting her rocket launchers at his large head. She switched to her autorifle as the beast let out a roar, taking on a red glow as it charged, despite the heavy damage it had taken. She chucked her grenade at it, and ducked back, reloading her rocket launcher again as Damian drew his own and fired a shot at it, causing the creature to stumble.
"It's almost down!" Damian told her, scrambling to the side as the Ogre tried to smash him with it's fists. Tessa had been behind the rock to his left, and when she looked up, aiming down her sights at the Ogre's exposed back, she saw Damain was right. With their practically limitless heavy ammo, the Ogre's estimated health had dropped like a stone. Now it was at it's last leg. She wasted no time firing her rocket into the creatures back, watching it disappear into oblivion.
It was quick work to clear out the rest of the taken in the room, and once they had, the rupture opened again. This time, nothing stepped through.
"I guess we're worthy now." Damian remarked, raising an eyebrow as they approached the rupture on the upper level. Tessa hopped up, onto the level, summoning Echo to scan the rupture.
"It was opened from the other side." He told them grimly, "I can't promise it leads to Oryx, but there's definitely something bad waiting."
"Only Toland glimpsed the ascendant realm." Eris told them. Tessa hadn't realized they had gotten the radio connection back up. "He spoke of terrors beyond understanding. Some you defeat, some you become."
"Stick with the first one, guardians." Cayde told them firmly.
"Wait, who is Toland?" Tessa asked, unsure if she simply wasn't in on the loop, or if Eris was talking nonsense again.
"Toland was a member of Eris's fireteam." Estella told her, "He wrote a very in-depth journal during their time in the dark. It has all kinds of stuff about the hive. I had to use some of it when I got you that crystal."
Tessa took Damian's hand as he nodded to the rupture. They should get moving before Oryx changed his mind. They stepped in together, appearing in a small room before a thin hallway. They headed down the hallway into a circular room with a spinning cylinder in the center. Doorways lined the space around them, but all were closed off except for one, that led to another hallway. The hallway was dimly lit and covered in hive dust and dirt. They rounded a corner up ahead and Echo recognized the space to be the Trenchway, on the dreadnought.
The corner led them out of the hallway and into a cavernous space that Tessa quickly recognized. They were standing on a platform above the large chasm that separated the outer edge of the dreadnought from the interior. Directly across from them was the platform they had noticed when they first explored the dreadnought.
The platform was the same large semicircle she remembered, an arc of steps leading up to the enormous set of doors in the center of the platform along the wall. And of course, the feature she most remembered, the glowing streams that seemed to flow up, onto the platform from the chasm below.
"Come for me, warriors of Light." Oryx bellowed, "I will finish what Crota began."
They watched as a long bridge formed across the gap between the two platforms. Across the way, acolytes scurried into the space beyond through the doors that slid open across from them. Tessa hesitated at the bridge, staring into the space beyond as she calmed the fear that began to flood her veins. Damian's words weighed heavily on her, and she dared a glance at him. She didn't want to die without telling him how she felt either, especially now that she knew she was not the only one, but she couldn't be sure he would believe her now. She supposed they would both have to make it out alive. Somehow. She knew they could do it, they had to. They would send Oryx back to whatever icy hell he came out of.
With that newfound resolve, she stepped out onto the bridge. She hoped Oryx was watching, they would kill him for what he had done, and for the safety he threatened, for the lives he and all the Hive had taken. He would pay the price, and oh how high a price it was.
Damian followed her across the bridge, and they moved towards the doors when Echo let out a mechanical chirp.
"Let me scan those statues." He said when Tessa summoned him to her hand. She paused, following his gaze to one of the statues on either side of the door. She moved back, tilting her head back to take in the enormous statues framing the door, matching to the one located inside just ahead. The released him to scan the statue on the left, first.
"The markings suggest this is a Hive God," Echo told them, "But I don't recognize the symbol. Nothing in the World's Grave file, either." Tessa frowned, the World's Grave was the sort of database the hive had compiled on the moon, when they were planning on destroying the earth. It seemed to have everything on the Hive, with so much data it would take a whole team of scholars years to sort it out. If the file didn't have anything on it, and the statue was on the dreadnought...
"The name is... Nokris." Echo finished, fishing her from her thoughts.
"Why would an unrecognizable Hive God have a statue right in front of Oryx's chosen battleground?" Damian wondered aloud. "This place must be sacred to him, look at this." He said, gesturing around them. He shook his head to himself. None of the listeners on the comms chimed in either, Damian wasn't sure if they were even still there. "I'll do some digging when we get back." He said, "Let's check out the other statues."
They moved over to the statue on the right of the door, Tessa released Echo from her hand to scan the statue.
"There are no markings on this that suggest a carving tool." He observed, hovering beside the statue. They were assembled and crafted through some sort of Hive spell. I think this one is meant to represent Crota." He said.
"Did Oryx have another son?" Tessa asked, frowning in thought. If Oryx had another son, it would put him in line for Oryx's throne, after they took him down. If this Nokris was Oryx son, and was able to wield the Taken against the light, all their work would practically have been for naught.
Damian shook his head, "No," He said firmly, "If Oryx had a son that's still alive now, we would know about him. Somehow, someway, it doesn't matter, we would have to know about him. Maybe he's long dead, maybe he died before they started compiling everything in the World's Grave." He suggested.
"There's still one statue left, maybe there will be answers there." Kylie suggested, appearing at Damian's shoulder, then drifting forward to examine the final statue, just within the doorway.
"This one is Oryx." She said as she began to scan it. "But, these statues, everything here was created long before Earth was formed."
"I wonder how many worlds Oryx has taken." Tessa said, peering up at the statue.
"Maybe Nokris is Oryx's father." Echo suggested, "Y'know, like the whole father, son and holy ghost thing."
"I think you need to do a bit more studying of ancient religions." Damian remarked, eyeing the Ghost. "C'mon, Oryx already wants to kill us, I can't imagine he'll feel any friendlier towards us if we keep him waiting."
They moved into the dark chamber and around the statue, straining their eyes to see through the darkness, the space lit only by a single lick of white flame. Upon their approach, the flame shot forward, leaving a straight trail of fire to a doorway. The flame ran up the center of the doorway, branching off in some parts until it lit up the symbol of Oryx, a large curved V with four boxes resting in a rhombus shape in the V. On top of the top box were three lines, stemming from the three upper corners of the shape, almost like a crown. The fire turned the symbol a deep red and the doors opened ominously into another dark chamber.
The Ghosts identified the space as the Alter of Oryx. The air ahead of them bled the same dark, deep red color, some sections almost black, all stemming from one, heavily dark spot in the center. For a moment, the deep reds, and the black silhouettes of the jagged rocks and crystals around them was all they would see. Then, Oryx bellowed, and all the darkness seemed to seep into him, as though he were drawing it towards him, pulling it into his very core to reveal the blinding light that steamed in from beyond. Large, leathery wings formed on his back, almost akin to those Damian bore, only Oryx's were meant for bearing heavy weight, a cargo plane to Damian's fighter jet.
"At last!" The king roared, snatching his sword from the air as he dropped down to hover above the ground. "I will have vengeance!"
Echo loaded up the estimated health bar above his head, a daunting, heavy yellow bar, not that Tessa wasted time studying it. She and Damian were already shooting at Oryx by the time he summoned his minions to the room. Two large black orbs spooled out on either side of Oryx, where he hovered over a raised platform. Tessa was glad for her guns, as soon as she had a spare moment to study the sword in Oryx's hand, she vowed never to go close enough for him to use it. The damage the weapon could do was devastating, she was sure of it.
Out of the black orbs, taken formed, descending into the room, circling around the thin line of cover they stood behind, eager to get to them. Tessa could see a hoard of psions, all multiplying as they made their way over, and a number of hobgoblins, though she was unable to count the amount. Along with them were an army of acolytes, forming acolyte's eyes, floating orbs that shot projectiles at them rapidly.
"You get Oryx, I'll deal with the Taken." She told Damian, dodging a blast from an acolyte's eye. "There's a weak spot on his head!"
With that, she sprinted around the cover to her left, rushing around the perimeter of the room to meet the psions running for her. She tossed a grenade at their feet, raising her rifle to take them out in a row. A hobgoblin was just behind them, and she was forced to dodge a heavy blow aimed for her, hurling a knife into it's skull and watching it vanish, ducking it's postmortem blow.
"Tessa! He just vanished!" Damian shouted to her, standing up to shoot over at the group of acolytes to their right.
"What do you mean?" She demanded, ducking around the large raised platform in the circle to come up behind the same acolytes he was shooting at, careful to avoid the crossfire.
"I mean I shot him with my sniper rifle and he vanished." Damian said, clearly just as confused as she was. "You don't see him anywhere, do you?"
She looked around after they had taken out all the acolytes left. A noise to her left made her turn, and she had just enough time to lunge into a roll before a hobgoblin took off her head. Damian took it out with a quick shot, easily ducking the shot that followed.
"I don't see him, but-" She broke off, feeling a hot, sharp sensation in the air around her. When she looked down, she noticed a circle had formed around her, about ten feet in diameter. A large orb crackled above her and she realized what was happening only a moment too late. She lunged for the edge of the circle, but the orb cracked down, a fiery explosion throwing her out of the circle and into the rock wall of a raised platform in front of her, off to the right side of the room.
"He's in the back!" Damian said, pointing to the far right side of the room, hidden from her view by the raised platform. She groaned, retrieving her gun and standing up. She climbed up onto the platform and moving around a tall rock to a raised circle in the center of the platform, using it to shield herself from the king.
He had formed across the space from them, hovering in the center of an odd looking contraption. Three bars jutted diagonally from the ground and the ceiling, meeting at an obtuse angle, the bars containing only a sliver of space between. Each set was on one side of Oryx, one on his right and left, the final set meeting behind him. Each bar was lined with four rows of two spikes each, connected with wires, the spikes almost seeming to glow as he hovered in the center. It was the closest thing she had ever seen to the Hive using any form of science, and she couldn't begin to understand it.
Oryx held his hands together as though he were performing a spell, though at first nothing happened. Tessa took the moment's breve to reload her rocket launcher, glancing up at Oryx, and around the room as she wondered. She could hear him speaking, but the words were foreign to her, until she realized, deep in the back of her brain, she recognized them, very faintly.
"Tessa, something's happening." Damian said worriedly, looking down at his hands, then up at Oryx.
It was then that Tessa recognized it, her light, Oryx was draining their light, but slowly, so slowly. It felt like the air was slowly being drawn from her lungs, but even still, she could still breathe.
"Pull from their supers!" Echo said to Kylie as he too recognized the feeling. "You can still fight him. Before it's too late!"
Tessa raised her rocket launcher, taking aim at the center of Oryx's forehead, the weak spot she had identified earlier. Wrapped up with his spell, the king did not notice the shot until it was too late, roaring as the rocket hit it's mark. She felt the corruption stop, and distantly, she heard Damian gasp as she switched back to her rifle, shooting at the king's head before he could recover from her previous blow. A taken captain formed at his right as the king rose a hand for another spell.
She heard the crackle and burn of the air and looked worriedly around her unable to find the circle. Then she looked to Damian, finding the circle had formed around him, oblivious to it as he shot at the Captain at Oryx's right.
"Damian, move!" She shouted at him, and thankfully he did, but the Captain had anticipated it. The Captain flung a blast of darkness precisely at the edge of the circle where Damian had lunged to.
Tessa was moving before the blow had even hit him, leaping from her raised platform, hurling a knife into the Captain as the blow stuck Damian, an explosion roaring within the circle just as it did. The blow flung Damian back, into a rock jutting from the ground behind him. Tessa grabbed her knife back from the Captain, slicing it sharply across the Captain's neck, finishing him off, then racing back to drag a half blind Damian behind a much larger rock, granting them cover from the king as Damian frantically tried to clear his vision.
She slammed another round into her rocket launcher, raising it and taking hasty aim at the king before firing, glad to hear his roar and watch him disappear again.
"Are you alright?" She asked quickly, drawing her sidearm in case any taken came for them in the brief moment of calm.
"Yeah," Damian said, though he sounded off, he blinked a few more times, then nodded. "I can see again. I'm good." He told her, moving to stand. "I wonder where he went this time."
They peered up from the rock, having made their way back towards the entryway, just to the right of the rocks in front of the doorway. Minus a few acolytes and psions which they quickly took care of, the room was empty. Puddles and rocks covered the jagged ground around them, and she was glad for them as she listened for any sounds around her, for a shift of rocks or the splash of a foot in a puddle.
They moved back over towards the door, peering back at the large open space just behind the raised platform Oryx had stood on when they came in. The platform almost appeared to be outside of the dreadnought, a balcony off the edge of the massive ship, and the only place in the room Oryx had left untouched. The balcony was a large circle, an enormous puddle of black liquid took up the center of the space, four tall stone pillars creating a box around the perimeter of the circle.
As expected, Oryx appeared on the balcony, just to the right of the enormous puddle. Tessa hadn't even realized the damage they had dealt until she saw the health bar above the king's head. Echo suspected Oryx to be on his last leg. Off to Oryx's right, a large ball of taken energy formed over the puddle, depositing a number of psions and thrall. The thrall jumped towards them, teleporting short leaps this way and that, causing Tessa to miss every time she rose her gun to shoot at them. Damian had drawn his sniper rifle and was peering down the sights, shooting Oryx's forehead as she had with her launcher, the impact shaking the king and sending him backwards.
One of the thrall appeared just behind Damian, but Tessa slammed her knife into it's back before it could even brush him with it's claws, kicking another one away from her before lunging on it and driving her knife into it as well. Suddenly, Oryx roared and she felt Damian grab her arm before the ground dissolved from under her feet.
They landed in the center of the balcony, black liquid splattering over them as they landed clumsily in the puddle. Damian's grip had been torn from her arm during the fall. She rose to her feet, her gun raised as she looked around them. The platform had been wreathed in fog, so thick she could hardly see beyond the four pillars on the edge of the circle. Oryx was nowhere to be seen, but Tessa could feel her heart pounding in her chest as fear began to flood her veins like ice.
A pair of cursed thrall formed just in front of them, but they took them out with a few quick shots. Tessa looked around wildly, searching the fog for Oryx, straining to see anything beyond the thick cloud of white. She caught sight of a silhouette in the distance, but hardly managed one shot before she collapsed to her knees.
She felt a hand wrapped around her throat, squeezing it tight until she was clawing at herself, desperate to feel even a gasp of air in her lungs. She could feel it again, the light being drawn out of her, but it was worse than before. Damian was hunched over in the puddle, on his hands and knees, his helmet brushing the dark, oily surface. She saw him shaking, she could feel his light, she could feel it fighting, defending him until it's last breath, clinging to him until it was torn away by the dark claws of Oryx.
"Your light is mine!" The king bellowed. Tessa watched the ghosts fall out of the sky, splashing into the puddle beside them as they gasped for air like beached fish.
Tessa managed in a quick breath, grabbing her sidearm in a shaky hand, then grabbing the ghosts and Damian's half limp body, still doubled over in pain. He would not be able to fight, not like this. The loss of light, it killed Guardians. If Damian didn't get back to the traveler soon... She wasn't sure how long he would last.
Tessa dragged him back, pulling him out of the puddle and towards one of the pillars, only to drop him and throw the ghosts in his lap as a hoard of Taken thrall descended on them. She defended him as best she could, shooting as many as she could with her sidearm, using her knives on the one that got too close, but there were so many. They tore at her, pushing her back, away from Damian, back to the edge of the platform until she could hardly see Damian anymore. She felt their claws on all sides of her, and her armor held well, but not as well as she would have hoped. More and more descended on her, it seemed that when she killed one, two more took it's place, while she desperately searched for Damian.
She hardly saw what had happened, only spying him through gaps in the hoard of thrall around her. He had managed to get up on his knees, he was holding his gun, Kylie hovering beside him, having risen with what little light he had left. Then, Oryx had fired. Heavy, round orbs of dark purple, so dark it was almost black. One caught him on the shoulder and he was flung back, but he rolled onto his hands and knees, trying to rise, to reach for his gun when Kylie collapsed again. He grabbed her instead, but the next blast of projectiles hit him true, and Tessa cried out as he was thrown back, into a pillar behind him. She heard his helmet hitting the surface with a definite smack, and he collapsed on the ground below, limp.
Then, she saw Oryx swooping in, towards him. The king's eyes were lit with a fire of rage as he descended on his son's killer. His sword was raised, poised for a killing blow while while Tessa screamed. She slammed her knives into the last of the thrall and took off at a sprint, scrambling to put herself between Damian and the king. She grabbed Damian's rocket launcher, halting Oryx's in his approach. She could see the meager sliver of health he had left, he could not take another blow.
She pulled the trigger.
The gun clicked once, but nothing came out. Oryx sneered at her, watching as fear flooded her viens as dropped the launcher and scrambled back. The king swung his sword, a blow to take her life. She felt the slice as if in slow motion, she felt the cool metal sliding through her armor like warm butter as she turned her head to the right and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt the blade in her skin, but at first, she felt no pain as the blade sliced along her left hip, the path curving as it traveled up her torso and through her right breast, then the small gap of space between her shoulder and her jawbone, where it moved on to slice into the back left edge of her jawbone, curving up until it sliced just under her left ear.
The pain still didn't hit her when she leaped into the air and buried her last blade into the king's exposed forehead. The blow was enough to make him roar, and the two collapsed to the ground, Oryx falling into the large, black puddle, landing on his hands and knees, Tessa, collapsing beside Damian before she shakily rose to her knees, retrieving her sidearm in a trembling hand.
The king slammed his sword into the ground when he fell, gasping as he pulled her knife from his forehead and chucked it to the ground as though it were a utensil for a doll. Then, he reached out, and his sword began to glow with Taken energy. He drew it towards him, gathering it in a ball on his hand. He thrust it into the air with a roar, then slammed it into his chest, watching as the power consumed his body.
Tessa watched in horror as the energy lifted him off the ground, consuming him, shredding through his entire body until it had consumed his whole being. He stared straight into her eyes as he laughed, and the taken energy pulled him into the abyss. He vanished without another word.
Art credit to Bungie.