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The Cabal Empire has come.
In a wave of fury of vengeance, they've come. After a decade of silence, through half hopes that the message to their Emperor never met its destination, and perhaps, the City could breathe for once in ease. But they came anyways and retook Mars swift as the shifting sands and they now focus on the Moon as the gateway to Earth. Fury and vengeance and conquering arm their vast military.
And what did the Vanguard arm us with?
In a wave of fury of vengeance, they've come. After a decade of silence, through half hopes that the message to their Emperor never met its destination, and perhaps, the City could breathe for once in ease. But they came anyways and retook Mars swift as the shifting sands and they now focus on the Moon as the gateway to Earth. Fury and vengeance and conquering arm their vast military.
And what did the Vanguard arm us with?
She woke to the face of a dead vandal.
Its helmet had been broken open by an explosive, charred black, metal fusing with flesh. Dried ether staining its fanged teeth and chin. It was inches from her head. But her body convulsed violently- curling and uncurling like a baby experiencing life for the first time. With it came pain and numbness in her fingers. Dimmly, she was aware of a voice whining above her, but without control of her body all she could do was spasm and wheeze and stare at the corpse.
Minutes passed. Then, experimentally, she made a fist.
"Hestia!"
Control came unwillingly but shakily and Hestia managed to reach out and close the eyes of the Fallen. Then she sat up and flexed, expelling the last of the convulsions, shaking the numbness from her hands. A metallic blue Ghost hovered at her line of sight, its body flexing and rotating around its center anxiously.
"You okay, Hesi?"
It took her a moment to remember the use of her mouth. "Th-thana. What-?"
"Arc wave from a psion. It penetrated your shields and wrecked your nervous system. You scorched it before you blacked out."
Hestia tilted her head with satisfaction as she looked around. She recognized where she was: near the entrance to Crota's Temple, at the base of the rock ledge. Before her stretched dozens upon dozens of bodies. Most were Cabal. Others, long dead Fallen. One was another Guardian. A Bladedancer. Hestia didn't recall seeing him, and wondered if they'd fought side by side without knowing. She did remember being pushed back here, when she had started near the center of the fight.
They'd met at Hellmouth- the Cabal and the Guardian forces. Within an hour the Cabal had them mostly surrounded and pushing the Guardians back towards the Anchor of Light. They were separated, unable to group more than three to four people, and Cabal canon fodder made it easy for Guardians to waste their Light energy just as the centurions and colossus' and primus wafted in to place new pressure. It wasn't until the war reached the Anchor when a large band was able to form and repel Cabal attacks. Hestia had been in the midst of that- a sort of stalemate as more Guardians banded together, pushing the Cabal away, before a wave of reinforcements hit and somehow, she'd become detached from her partner, fighting for her life as she slew everything in her path and pushed to the fringe of the battle. In the distance, she could still hear it raging.
"What's the last marked hour?" she asked
"The fourth."
"Are we winning?"
"Well, we haven't lost yet."
She bent to pick up her rifle. "I want to find Rigel-7."
Floating to one side, the top half of Thana quivered. "No one knows we're here. Shouldn't we try to use that and find a way to recover communi-"
"Nope," Hestia said and began trotting back to the Anchor. Thana wavered, then disappeared, staying near her as they re-entered the battle.
Gunfire erupted when she rounded the bend, as if being so near the temple of a Hive Prince muffled all sound around it. It was chaos: the battle had expanded to encompass nearly the whole of the Anchor, with most Guardians forced back near her position. They were getting dangerously closed to being pushed again, to Archer's Line, the Guardians' transmat zone. Hestia huddled in the shadows as she watched, trying to find an opening, a moment to get where she wanted to be.
At the center was the cylindrical outlook of the Anchor, normally patrolled by Fallen but now she could glimpse a primus there, surrounded by chosen soldiers. She almost didn't spot him, as he hunched in the shadows like her, overseeing the battle without drawing attention. She smiled. If I get there, maybe then Thana can scan the battlefield and find Rigel. I need him at my back.
Hestia waited for two heartbeats before leaping forward and blasting a nearby legionnaire fighting a Defender titan. He fell forward, then suddenly exploded with compressed solar energy. Two psions were caught in the blast. The titan turned, stunned, only to relax when he saw she was the same as him. She walked over and pointed towards the outlook. "I need to get there."
He cocked his head to one side and Hestia rolled her eyes beneath her helmet. "It's imperative that I do so. Will you help me?"
"Why?"
"You have something better to do?"
He thought about it and shrugged. Bending down, he yanked out an ax etched with the symbol of the Iron Temple and motioned her to stay behind him. Hestia obliged, keeping an eye on their six as they re-entered the throngs of war.
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