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[Hellmouth, Ocean of Storms]
The flats outside the maw turned into a flood of Guardians.
Hundreds dropped in. Names the players hadn't ever seen and didn't even know flickered past their visors and kept moving. Some ran patrols in wide loops, pinging caches and tagging rituals. Others stacked bounties while the rest just roamed the desert—chasing dust-devils of green fog and razing down anything that crawled out of them.
The event counter kept ticking.
[LET LOOSE — ACTIVE]
[Rituals Broken: 19]
[Lieutenants Down: 7]
[Supply Caches Secured: 12]
Waffles punched an acolyte, and light rolled through her palms as it disintegrated. IEatPaint jumped with his shotgun, rapidly unloading four rounds in a crystal to stop a ritual. Gandalf and ThunderClappin raced through the desert, circling acolytes as they taunted and led them all back to their teams for slaughter.
BearSpray and TheOneWhoKnocks kept sniping anything that spawned in the middle, ensuring they were never overcrowded.
But as their battle went on, Hellmouth stirred. A strange shriek reverberated through the air, as if acknowledging their foolishness to resist. Then the maw quaked. New totems appeared on the surface, and fissures ran through the sand. The ground opened up and spat out more monstrosities.
Knights marched up with their onyx shields. Wizards came on behind them, hands curled, fog braided into nasty little nets. A pair of Ogres crawled through the gaps, looked up and roared.
The players didn't back off. They set their feet and dialled in.
"Stop the wizards!" someone yelled. A Warlock on the ridge tossed a Nova bomb towards their choir, and a bleak light consumed the Hive in the ritual, tearing them to shreds.
Dumbledore glided towards the approaching Ogres and triggered his own Nova bomb, sweeping them in a tide of light. And as the Legion of Knights approached from the sides, IEatPaint rushed up, slamming into them with a thundercrash.
As the chaos continued, the HUD kept updating.
[HEROIC THRESHOLD: 68%][Bonus: Interrupt 5 rituals within 60s — +3,000]
"68% KEEP GOING." TheOneWhoKnocks said into the open.
"I got it." Undecided nodded, turning his attention towards another ritual in the distance. He took up his rifle and shot towards them, "We've got two on sight."
"Already on my way!" BearSpray said, sharply taking a left on his sparrow.
"Three, two—eat shit!" Gandalf counted down, racing towards the ritual. He jumped from his sparrow and soared in the air. Gandalf raised his arms above, and a Nova bomb condensed in his palms. He chucked it down.
The ritual collapsed immediately, and the wizards were engulfed in the explosion.
BearSpray's eyes narrowed, and he took another sharp right, riding towards the crowd of players that held down the titanic Ogres.
The Ogres shrieked, the eye on their head gleamed with a wicked darkness, and a beam of fiendish fire shot outwards, disintegrating anything it touched.
The crowd of players scattered, weaving through the flames as they continued to pelt the Ogre with their bullets. Finally, the event was updated again.
[HEROIC THRESHOLD: 100%]
The ground shook.
An Ogre stumbled, crashing towards the floor as it heaved its last breath. But just then, a fissure opened beneath its body, swallowing it whole. From the depths of the desert, two more Ogres answered. Knights cleaved through space and formed a wall. Wizards threw their hands and summoned another tide of fog.
This battle had just begun.
Cayde hit comms, voice too cheerful for what they were looking at. "Ladies and gentlemen—looks like you did a grand job of pissing off the Hive. Congrats, they called in an army."
Screens blinked.
[EVENT UPDATED: PUSH BACK]
[Objective: Drive the Hellmouth forces off the flats.]
Cayde went on. "There it is, kids, pack your bags, turn around. We're done making a mess—Time for a little clean up. But don't you worry, cavalry's on the way."
"You're all in safe hands." Cayde chuckled.
Their screens shook, and the players looked towards the right.
A cutscene played.
The camera pulled low and caught a Sparrow tearing the flats in half, dust peeling away from the fins. Lord Shaxx leaned hard into the bars, coat flaring, laugh already rolling out of the helm. Behind him, the Crucible squadrons came in a wave—line after line, all colours and crests, engines screaming.
They hit the fields, streaking through the desert flats.
Warlocks slid off the saddles and planted. Nova bombs rose off palms and went out in clean arcs, folding packs of acolytes in on themselves. Hunters pulled out their golden guns and sniped the Wizards in the air.
Just as an Ogre's eye gleamed, the titans leapt, raising a barrier dome wide enough to cover everything. The Ogre's fire struck, smashing into the barricade like paint against glass, and a pulse ran through the barrier as it easily withstood.
At the centre, Shaxx threw his head back and laughed. He lifted a fist. The horizon blinked, went white for a sliver, and a bolt fell out of the sky into his gauntlet. Lightning roared up his arm. He pointed, and the ground obliged—Arcs tore through the desert, and Shaxx punched forward, carving out a hole in the Hive's army.
"CRUCIBLE!" Shaxx bellowed, voice bigger than comms. "Show them your fire!"
CUTSCENE END.
"Move!" Shaxx yelled again.
"Holy shi*." Waffles's jaw dropped.
The players watched in awe as the crucible squads fought alongside them, clashing tooth and nail against the army.
"This shi* just got way better." Undecided smiled, popping one headshot after another.
Waffles darted through the barricade as it flared open. She took out her pulse rifle and began mowing down more acolytes. IEatPaint rushed across, chucked a grenade on an ogre's foot, and got back behind cover before the beam lit his hair.
All the guardians broke out their supers, the world lit up in waves—blue for Arc, purple for void, gold for Solar—colours running together until everything looked clean-burned.
Cayde laughed into the line, not even trying to hide it. "Now that's a party. Keep the pressure up, we're still not done inside. HEY! Hey, that Ogre's looking this way, someone stop hi-." Cayde's voice turned static for a brief second.
"You BASTARD, that's my new cloak!" Cayde groaned and dusted himself off as he continued to observe the battle from a distance.
The HUD clicked.
[PUSH BACK — 75%]
[Hold the ridge for final clear.]
Shaxx planted himself in the dirt at the centre of the field. He raised his fist again, electricity crawling up to his shoulder, and pointed towards the Ogres that held the front.
Lightning wreathed across, blasting towards them and clashing with their fiendish fire. As the bizarre phenomenon occurred, light and dark clashed with a pulse that echoed throughout the battlefield.
"Holy shi*" BearSpray sucked in a breath as he watched it happen.
Shax roared, he pulled back his fist, and the Ogre's fire grazed his shoulder as he recklessly charged forward. Like a bull, he shot towards their chests, reeled back another punch and struck.
His fists drove through the Ogre, punching a hole through it, and the Ogre tumbled to the fall.
Shaxx's laugh rolled across the flats and made the dust lift. "THAT," he announced, "IS HOW YOU CLEAN A FIELD!"
The players cheered, but the fight wasn't over yet. The horizon still bled dark, and even with the Ogre's down, the Hive weren't ready to give up.
The horizon fractured, and a viridian fire slowly colored it green.
"Round two?" TheOneWhoKnocks asked.
"Round two," Waffles said and stood.
-
[Shrine of Oryx — Inner Chamber]
Void hung three feet off the floor, strung up in slick bands of darkness. Tendrils looped his wrists and ribs, one knotted tight at the throat. The eerie silence in the chamber rose and fell in a slow breath; each time it rose, the bindings tightened a fraction. Each time it fell, they didn't give the slack back.
Levi's hand came up on reflex.
"Don't!" Tevis barked.
Levi froze.
The Hidden slipped to the walls, hoods down, scanners dark, fingers already tracing the seams no one else could see.
Tevis circled under Void; he eyed the strange bands of darkness. He could see it, the faint runic writings hidden in the seams of the dark. He looked over his shoulder. "Eris."
Eris and two of the Hidden stepped under the hail of runes carved into the arch. She flicked open a book with one hand, the pages stiff as metal, and started moving through marks like she was tuning a stubborn instrument.
"Figure it out," Tevis said, eyes on Void. "We need to free him as soon as possible."
They worked quickly. Eris muttered. The Hidden layered spell after spell. Each try got a response—a shiver through the tendrils, a tightening, a ripple across the floor—and then the bindings settled again, a fraction harder than before.
"Nothing is working," one Hidden said.
"Not yet," Eris answered, flipping to another page. "Keep looking."
Pahanin's gaze kept drifting to the sword at Void's hip. The blade hadn't been touched by the dark. Its scabbard hung on Void's waist.
The light on it flickered once. It wasn't light. It was attention.
Pahanin frowned. "I think there is one way we could figure it out."
Tevis tapped the floor with his foot.. "Talk."
Pahanin pointed at the sword. "That isn't just a blade."
Bandit cut him a look. "We know."
"Do we?" Pahanin's voice stayed level. "That blade is an Ahamkara. Isn't it? Or whatever remains of it. Seeing as it's stayed with Void this long, it's definitely helping him out."
Eris's head snapped a fraction. "You're suggesting we ask an Ahamkara for help."
"Suggesting we use what he used to get this far," Pahanin said. "It's helped him before. It won't watch him drown and do nothing."
Tevis glanced from Pahanin to the sword and then to Eris. No theatre. Just a measure. "Risk."
Eris's mouth thinned. "Ahamkara bargains are not risks. They're traps."
"Then don't bargain," Pahanin said. "Just open the sheath."
Silence held for one beat, two. The tendrils tightened another hair. Void's boots lifted the smallest fraction higher off the floor.
Tevis nodded once. "Do it."
Eris exhaled. She didn't touch the hilt. She raised her hands and flicked a finger. The blade slid free in a smooth, slow line.
Pale grey split out and took the room apart. It didn't glow. It drained. The colour around the sword flattened, dyeing itself a colourless white.
The air coiled.
Zamyr arrived like a shadow. He unspooled from the blade and wound through the space around Void's body, long, sinuous, a serpent without weight, greyed as if seen through smoke.
No one moved.
«You finally came,» Zamyr said, voice a low scrape across stone. «Good. He doesn't have much time.»
Tevis frowned. "How do we cut it?"
Zamyr's head tipped; «You don't. You can't. We must finish the dark itself.»
"How?" Tevis said.
«Light,» Zamyr answered. «The time he's spent here has drained it all. Give him enough to stand up in the dark. He will do the rest.»
Bandit's brows furled. "A transfer? I've never heard of anything like that."
"We'll just have to figure it out." Tevis didn't waste the second. "Eris."
Eris snapped to a different page, this one warped by heat and use. "Energy can always be transferred," she said. "But no one has ever attempted it with Light. If something were to go wrong....it'll be costly."
"We'll just have to pay," Tevis said and shook his head.
The Hidden moved. They wrote a circle of strange and archaic runes around Void, weaving spells into their writings. The Warlocks communed with their light, unravelling the problem they faced.
"On my count," Eris said, finally finishing the spell's rune. She lifted both hands, fingers crooked, marks breathing across her knuckles. "One."
The chamber's air changed.
A terrifying shriek pierced their eyes like a blade dragged along the spine of the world.
It tore through the tunnel, through the arch, through the teeth of the door, and into the room. The bindings around Void tightened a half-inch in one fast, ugly motion.
The light in the chamber went thin.
Zamyr's coil tightened around Void, not possessive but protective. «She is close,» he said, voice sharp for the first time. «You need to hurry. Now!.»
Levi's hands were already up. "We're out of seconds."
"Then we stop talking," Tevis said. His voice stayed even, and he looked at Eris again. "Just do it.
Eris pursed her lips; she drove her palms into the circle they had etched.
The circle lit up. Eris looked up at the guardians; a simple glance was enough to tell them what to do.
One by one, everyone took their positions.
Light answered—raw and simple, pulled clean out of each of them and laid where it needed to go. It wasn't a beam. It was pressure, heat, attention. It ran into the Void through Tevis's hand and through the lines Eris had drawn.
The tendrils hissed. The script on them wriggled.
«More,» Zamyr said, fast. «This is not enough.»
The shriek came again, closer. The arch shook. Dust fell in a sheet and stopped an inch above the floor.
Tevis didn't look up. "Got it," he said, teeth set.
They did. The chamber bucked, once. The bindings tightened in a last hard clutch and then began to slip a fraction.
Zamyr lifted his head. «Again.»
Eris's voice went rough. "Again."
The guardians felt the strength drain from their legs. Slowly, they all fell to their knees.
"Now," Tevis panted, "Now, do it now."
The Ahamkara turned his head, and the pale along the blade's edge flared.
The first band split.
Void dropped an inch.
The second band frayed. The third spat a string of ugly runes and tried to harden; The fourth band writhed. Zamyr's power surged. The coils jutted and split apart.
Void snapped free and fell forward. Pahanin easily caught him on his shoulder, but just then, the dark writhed once more and reached to take him back.
"Move!" Tevis snapped.
Eris clapped her palms together, and the circle went white, clashing against the dark that reached out and pushing it back.
A sigh of relief spread across the room.
"Is he ok?" Levi asked.
Pahanin's eyes narrowed, "Unconscious, still a bit weak." He assessed Void's condition.
The runic circle etched on the ground slowly burned away.
With Void in hand, the guardians had completed their task. However, the dark was not one to let go so easily.
An ominous presence crept closer to the room.
Their instincts flared, and hairs stood on end.
"Go!" Tevis barked, leading everyone out towards the door.
They wasted no time and rushed outward, feeling the presence on their heels.
Levi slid back, grabbed Zamyr's blade and rushed out behind the squad, sliding it back into its sheath.
And then, they ran.