#fireteam apollo

A great tower rose ahead. It stood at the mouth of two meeting mountains, its otherworldly stone glittering in the light of the rising sun. The jagged mountains cast harsh black shapes across the horizon, cutting into a cloudless pink sky. The tower’s shape shifted, sections moving of their own accord and revealing small square gaps through which the light would flow at sunset. The tower stood stark against the soft colour of the sky. Vanir knew it instantly. Any Exo would.

Vanir turned, gazing all around her slowly. She took in all the jagged, blackened mountains, like the teeth of some gaping maw that rose in a cage around the valley of golden fields. There were no other figures in the valley; not a single shadow, not one familiar face. Vanir stood alone in the light of a rising sun.

She turned her gaze back to the Deep Stone Crypt.

She took a tentative step forward. Her hands whispered across the buds of the golden grain at her sides. It tickled her legs playfully, but her presence in the valley set her ill at ease.

Vanir had visited the fields in the valley of death before. That was what they were then: the fields of the dead, filled with the sullen, haunted faces of everyone she had ever known and could not remember, marching to stop her path.

The few times she had been here before, Vanir had arrived ready for war, armoured and armed in a dead field of blackened grass to fight her way through an army…

But Vanir saw no weapons, she bore no armour or even clothes, and the sun warmed her plates like the light of a golden summer.

Despite there being no army, she coiled her fists warily. She tried to snap Arc Light between her knuckles and charge her fist with crackling lightning, but none came at her command.

Vanir looked down at her hands. They were hers and not at once.

Blood dripped from her fingers and smeared across palms of torn tan flesh, split to reveal the metallic shapes of Vanir’s real exoskeleton.

She felt a tremor in her chest, and stared down at the bloody wound in smooth skin that lay across her torso. Blood seeped down across the dark skin bright and warm as the wind. It dripped down her legs and sullied the buds of the grain around her.

Then fire rose from her fingertips, burning brighter and warmer and stronger. It evaporated the blood like wisps of water, and the flesh burned away in an instant of ash to reveal her real body, the metal burning softly with lapping lickings of flame. It devoured the blood and flesh but left her plates and muscle warm and strong, untouched.

A grinding noise rose through the valley, deep and strong as an earthquake but steady. It reverberated through her legs and up her spine, and it felt like listening to the core of the Earth speak, or the mantle grinding its jaws. She curled her flaming fists and looked up.

The Deep Stone Crypt was shifting more. Its shape was fluid and changing as blocks and sections split and moved. Some pounded down to the ground and rose again as if on invisible strings. Their fall caused the heartbeat of the Earth that rumbled through to Vanir’s feet.

Vanir glanced back over her shoulder, out across the vast ocean of golden grain. The sun rose over the mountains, cresting their jagged peaks and baring down on Vanir’s eyes.

She tightened her fists, set her jaw tight, and walked towards the Deep Stone Crypt. Her eyes locked to the shifting pillars of stone around it as they swirled and reflected the light with their dull, dark stone. The grain scratched at her legs as she strode forward, and it snagged against her feet when she pushed through it.

Something changed.

Vanir felt a great weight upon her chest, like a giant viper coiling around her torso and squeezing, suffocating her. The pressure crushed her chest, ripping into her, and she fell to her knees, trying to cry out from the pain, but the pressure stole her voice and cut into her mind.

Her fingers curled in the soil. The wind picked up, swirling the grain angrily around her like the churning waves of the ocean in the storm. She gasped, and a spark ignited deep in her chest.

She watched the soil in her fingers turn to ash, watched the grain around her shoulder wither. The light dimmed, dark clouds covering the sky in an instant.

But the fire burst forth from her heart.

Fire roared into life across her body, burning away the smothering pressure that had built on her chest. It rose, igniting the field around her, and the flames quickly soared into a tower of swirling fury, burning brighter and brighter and burning right from Vanir herself.

The fires grew white with light, their sound drowning away, until all that surrounded Vanir was the white and the silence that fell away into unconsciousness…

Jem stepped into the Vault of Glass warily. The massive door still groaned above and behind him, echoing with strange clockwork mechanics. He had watched teams walk beyond this point before, but never like this, and he had never gone inside himself.

He knelt down, pressing Bad Juju’s barrel against a Fallen Captain. The corpse moved with the pressure, his broken face illuminated by the green flame on Jem’s gun. He was definitely dead. He eyed the Wolf banner from the Captain’s neck, and his hands tightened around Bad Juju.

“Captain.” Uaithne placed a hand on Jem’s shoulder. Jem nodded, standing up to his full height.

“Vanir,” Jem called over his shoulder, waving her forward.

She stepped through the ranks of Fireteam Apollo, clad in pure clean-cut black armour. Jem’s team gave her a moderate berth of space as she walked down the steps into the Vault towards their captain, her high tech assault rifle resting casually over her shoulder. Jem figured it was the helmet that unnerved them.

Baz was the only one shorter than her, but they all had a slight deference to her as she walked by.

Vanir stood at Jem’s side and looked up at him, but all Jem could see was the reflections of the cave around them in her golden visor, licked by the blue wisps of flaming light.

“You’ve been in the Vault twice,” Jem said, “we’re going to need some guidance in here from you.”

Vanir nodded. “Understood. We should get down there as fast as we can. Whatever Skolas is doing in the Vault…” Vanir stared down into the dark caves that led further in. She synthesised an inward breath, drawing her shoulders back and setting her gun’s stock into her shoulder. “It can’t be good.”

Jem swallowed and tightened his grip on Bad Juju.

“Listen up, Apollo!” he shouted up the stairs. With the mouth of the Vault showing the sky behind them, Fireteam Apollo stood as six silhouettes against the golden light of Venus’ churning skies. He saw the atmospheric storm rippling into life behind them, and tried to pay it no mind.

“Vanir’s our resident Vault expert; she’s in command from here on out. Understood?”

A resounding chorus of “Sir!” came back, and Fireteam Apollo prepped their weapons, falling into line behind them. Jem turned to Vanir, who was already marching down into the caves.

She waved a hand stiffly over her shoulder without looking back, indicating for them to follow.

The caves were dark and dull, lit by the odd stream of light that bled through cracks in the mountain of Venus. Tufts of vegetation pushed through the floor, and Jem paused at a section of stunning glittering crystals that coated the corner of one wall.

Water trickled down the walls of the caves in sections, dripping from the corners and feeding a few poisonous looking flowers.

Vanir marched with a steady pace, and the team followed her lead through into the Vault.

“This is the Trial of Kabr,” Blaine whispered over the team’s communications. “The cave system that leads into the Vault. They named it after Kabr, the Legionless; he was the one who cracked the Vault, and gave us a way to defeat the Vex inside.”

Jem stuck to Vanir’s side, wary eyes scanning the darkness and fog. His fingertips would be sweaty on Bad Juju’s grip were it not for the absorbent layer of his gloves keeping his grip crisp. He heard Baz’s voice quiet behind him.

“Why’d they call him ‘the Legionless’?” he asked.

“Because the rest of his team were wiped from existence,” Blaine said. “The Vex in here have absolute power over time. They made it so Kabr’s fireteam never existed.”

“Great,” Illara snorted. “Sounds like a cheery place.”

Vanir held up one hand again, and beckoned before breaking into a run. Jem kept right on her tail, with the rhythmic clumping of a dozen feet behind him. They emerged from the caves into a hollow of Vex stone, worn away into the black computational rock like the Citadel that hovered hauntingly through the Venutian sky.

But there was no time to look around.

A bolt of liquid lightning shot off at Vanir, skimming over her shoulder by a hair as she ducked the perfect amount to avoid it. Then she was on the Fallen, her glowing shotgun ripping into their scavenged armour easily.

Jem slid to a crouch and fired Bad Juju, clipping the skulls of two Dregs as Vanir decimated their Vandal leader.

The hollow fell into an echoing silence as smoke drifted from Vanir’s fists and she rose from the tackled body of the Vandal. “They’ll be at the Templar’s Well by now,” she said, looking up at Jem as he and his team quickly moved closer. She stood and pumped her shotgun. “We have to move quickly.”

She waved them through a gap in the Vex structure that Jem had missed beyond the Fallen. The passage was too narrow for them to move easily with two side-by-side, so they ran through in single file, hands tight and eyes wary.

“When we get to the Well, we need to split into three teams to cover the area,” Vanir explained over the radio. Her voice was crackling, distorted slightly by the influence of the Vex in the area, and she quickly switched it off in favour of them hearing her actual voice.

“Vadim, you designate teams, three groups of three. Each of the teams will take a side of the Well, and mine will carve through the centre.”

As Vanir explained, they emerged into a massive cave hollow. Eerie blue mists drifted through the air, masking the distance to wherever the eventual wall must lie. Jem swallowed dryly, leaning over the edge of the Vex stone platforms to peer down.

The cave walls descended deep into the abyss, fading through the fog into unknown depths.

Vanir took a step back, and leapt into the air with a glow of Light.

Jem’s heart leapt to his throat, and he nearly stepped over the edge as he watched her glide through the air and roll to break her impact on a floating Vex structure below.

Jem glanced at Uaithne, and then nodded.

He took several steps back, then sprinted and leapt after Vanir. They each made their way down, following Vanir through several further jumps, rounding the cliffside of the Vault’s giant cave and descending a cliff of square Vex stone to a vantage platform.

Jem separated the teams as they jumped, calling them out and making them sound off to confirm.

When they reached the platform, Vanir was waiting at the edge, her high-tech assault rifle ready in hand. She knelt at the edge, staring down at the strange arena-like area before them.

Golden light bathed the stage, split by pillars of towering black Vex computers, and the Fallen House of Wolves moved about, setting up pieces of tapping technology that Jem vaguely recognised from years gone by in the Reef. He knelt at Vanir’s side. “What are they doing?” he asked.

Vanir shook her head once. “I don’t know,” she said. “But we need to stop whatever it is.”

She checked the magazine of her rifle. Jem placed a hand on her shoulder, meeting the solemn gaze of her helmet. She nodded, then leapt into the air.

Arc rippled around her as she crested her jump, and she shot forth into the arena cased in a lightning bolt.

Jem leapt after her, Bai at his side. They hit the ground running, weapons lighting up the Fallen immediately in the beginning of their ambush. He heard the pounding of boots on stone and the crackling machine gun fire that marked the other teams on either side – Illara leading Baz and Zyduras to his left, and Uaithne leading Blaine and Shani to his right.

His radio flared with static the second he touched down, and Jem grit his teeth against the sound as he fought the Wolves down into the stone stairwell before them.

He passed a piece of their technology set up in the arena and dropped to use it for cover as he switched to a heavier weapon. Chips of stone and slivers of arc ripped through the air around him as Apollo tore into the Fallen defences with the fury of a full-blown Titan assault.

Just ahead of Jem, Vanir slammed her fist into the chest of a Wolf Captain, caving in his armour and bones like foil beneath a blinding blast of arc in her fist.

He fired at the Fallen around Vanir, suppressing them with supporting fire and keeping an open eye on the battlefield’s whole. In the corner of his eye, he saw both side teams pushing through the columns of dark stone and setting up what cover they could.

Lightning ripped across the gaps in the Templar’s Well between bullets and the explosions of grenades.

“Snipers! Platforms on the side!” Jem heard Illara yell, just as a bolt from a wire rifle glanced off the pillar beside him. He shouted the order to take cover to the rest of the team, and fired off a scattered series of bursts at the sniper on the right to force him into cover.

Bai and Vanir skidded into cover beside him, and his radio’s static hissed violently.

“-em? If you can hear-“ a voice broke through the heavy static, and Jem signalled for Bai to cover him while he adjusted the radio. “-ease respond!”

He summoned Circe in his right hand, and the Ghost fed a surge of Light into the equipment to steady its receiver, and the message became clear.

“This is Rohan Nuha attempting to contact Fireteam Apollo in the Vault of Glass. This is an emergency. Captain Vadim, if you can hear me, please respond. Repeat, Jem, if you can-“

“Rohan?” he asked, his voice straining over the blaring of gunfire. “Rohan, I hear you.” As he finished the message, Jem glanced over at the left side time just in time to see an ether supply beside their sniper explode and send his burning body flying into the abyssal depths of the Vault floor.

The Fallen were beginning to regroup and fight back with greater coordination. “Jem we’ve intercepted Fallen communications. Variks and I have been translating; apparently they’re trying to tap into-“

A melodic chime rang through the Vault, sinking the sounds of gunfire to a whisper in its wake. Jem’s breath vanished in his throat with the sound, and he found himself standing up despite the battle raging around them. The chime rang through him like a note of Circe’s Deathsong, harrowing yet beautiful.

Vanir whirled at the sound, turning wide-eyed and fearful to look at Anya. Her partner seemed oblivious, her shoulder pressed against a stump of an ancient column as she fired a cool, precise round into the core of a distant hobgoblin.

The bullet seemed to travel in slow motion, rippling through time-distorted air, and Vanir had the time to gather herself and, shakingly, stare in wonder around the arena of the Templar’s Well.

Tetra grappled with a headless Minotaur, her powerful arms rippling with purple void wisps as she tore the Vex’s cannon from its grip and forced it back, away from her injured partner. Zatrix, popping through a cloud of electricity and forming from thick black smoke, fired his sinister weapon into another hobgoblin, cracking it open.

Vanir watched, motionless, as the Hobgoblin’s core split open, and its contents laced through the air. She watched the light of its eye turn dead and the shells of its body crumple against the stone behind it, now painted glowing white.

Then the world rushed back into chaos. Sparks flew from Vanir’s shoulder as a narrowly-missed shot grazed her armour, and Anya instinctively snapped her sights to the culprit and tore them open with a precise round to their eye.

Vanir heard the melodic chime again – a slight pitch higher – and she felt a chill running through her spine as she turned around.

Something bright formed before her, lacing barbs of pure golden light rippling into existence a mere meter from her. They formed in a second, dozens of the bars of light that formed a structural scaffold. Then they burned with bright light. The cube shone with a blinding flash, and Vanir heard Novella yelling through her helmet’s comms, a warning about the ‘Oracles’.

But Vanir was frozen with fear, her eyes locked to the cube before her and her body shivering with its presence. Her gun dropped to the floor, and she felt Anya stealing to her side, swiping the sidearm from her hip and hammering rounds into the cube, her other hand gripping Vanir’s arm.

And all she could do was watch, her body locked and overwhelmed by fear.

Vanir’s screaming voice snapped Jem back to the present. “Oracles!” her cry rang through the Well, a splitting fear and anger in her voice.

Another musical chime rang out after her shout, and she started sprinting towards the left side of the Well. “The golden lights!” she yelled, pointing wildly with one hand and swiping the shotgun from her back with the other, “target the Oracles!”

Jem stared for a moment as a cube of golden light formed in the distance of the Well, and flared into life. He hesitated only for a split-second as he tried to make sense of what was happening, then he followed Vanir’s command without question.

Bad Juju cracked the core of the Oracle before him, and Jem shrugged off a Dreg’s attempted tackle with a fistful of Circe’s Light blaring out and evaporating him effortlessly.

“They’re attempting to use the Oracles to tap into the Vex network,” Rohan explained in his ear, as the Oracle buckled beneath their concentrated gunfire and imploded into a singularity of yellow light before dissipating. “You can’t let them succeed, you have to stop them Jem. Destroy those Oracles as quickly as possible!”

“Understood,” Jem said, dropping the magazine from his weapon. Circe materialised a new one in the air for him, and he slid it into place with a precise sweep of his hand. “Central Oracle is down,” he called to the team.

A third chime, one pitch higher, rang out, and Jem spied the Oracle materialising on the right side of the Well, far from his range.

Uaithne and Shani worked in a perfect tag team of explosive power, clearing a path through the now-reinforced Fallen lines for Blaine to destroy the Oracle quickly.

They fought on against the Fallen, pushing them back into the dark hallways of the Vault, and destroying more Oracles as they appeared. Seven Titans and a Hunter were more than a usual raid team for the Vault of Glass, and despite the bolstered numbers of the Wolves that seemed to pour endlessly from hallways and climb stealthily from the stony cliffs, they held the Darkness back.

With their third round of Oracles appearing, Jem felt the ground shudder, and heard the cry of the Vex.

“Jem,” Rohan’s voice filtered through his helmet as Circe filled his fist with too much light and he felled a Captain. His arm burned painfully as the Light dissipated, and he hissed through his teeth. “Petra is picking up a massive increase in Vex activity across the sink. Be prepared for them to join the battle.”

Jem nodded, then remembered Rohan couldn’t see him and acknowledged the information properly. “Apollo!” he shouted, and his voice boomed through the Well. “We’ve got Vex incoming, ready up!”

But it seemed the Wolves were prepared for their arrival as well.

As the red eyes of Vex units appeared in the dark tunnels of the far wall and the central pit of the Templar’s Well, the Fallen spurred into hurried motion. Spheres and crates of explosive munitions were dragged from a series of nets and quickly rolled and dropped to the doors. Jem recognised the tactic from long-pitted memories of another war.

As the Vex forces marched from their hallways, the Fallen overloaded their explosive deployments, and the resulting explosion rippled through the air with a deafening roar and a force of great wind.

Jem was lifted from his feet and thrown backwards against a pillar. He felt his armour slam brutally against the stone, and even with the protection of his helmet he lay dazed by the blow, watching the smoke dissipate into the ceiling of the cave.

A Captain loomed over Jem like a dark shadow, and he felt Circe pulse a burning beat of Light through his veins like adrenaline.

But Bai was there in a heartbeat. He kicked the shrapnel launcher from the Captain’s hands and smoothly ducked the countering lash of twin arms. Bai wove beneath the Captain’s attack, his arms coiled close to his chest like a boxer, and delivered two quick blows – one to the sternum and one to the then-exposed throat – that sent the Captain onto his back and opened him for a killing shot.

Bai helped his leader to his feet as, behind him, Vanir fought off a dozen Fallen at once. She moved with the grace and ferocity of a storm, lightning blaring from her knuckles and whirling with perfect awareness and form. Jem had seen Vanir fight many times before, but he had only heard of her capabilities when she ‘fused’ with her Ghost.

It was awe-inspiring.

He did not stop to admire it though, instead charging in to assist. They decimated the Fallen, and once more Jem heard the musical gong-like signal of the Oracles’ arrival.

He shared a glance with Vanir. Her golden helmet stared back with burning blue fire and she nodded. “Final round of Oracles,” he heard her say.

The Fallen were growing desperate; Jem could see it in their attacks, the wildness of their eyes and the ferocity of their charge against them as the Oracles blinked into existence over their carefully placed machinery. He spotted only three remaining Captains to lead their troops, and their numbers dwindled as Apollo destroyed the series of Oracles.

He heard the final chime, the seventh Oracle, and glimpsed the flare of golden light at the bottom of the stairs in the centre of the Well’s arena.

A bolt of arc from a stealth Vandal’s wire rifle cracked against Jem’s shoulder and he grunted as he fall back against a wall with the impact of it. Circe’s shielding held, and the Vandal was quickly slain by a fast eye and a faster trigger finger from Bai.

Vanir ran by them, sliding her assault rifle to the magnetic holster on her back and drawing in Light from an orb at the top of the staircase. “I’ve got the Oracle!” she yelled, leaping into the air.

Lightning crackled behind her like a static connection from the stone, and her body burst with Arc Light as she leapt. She coiled a fist back, and it became blindingly bright with the light of her super. Then Vanir fired forward like a comet.

She disappeared from view, but Jem heard the burst of her landing and saw the flashes across the dark stone all around from her Fist of Havoc. Jem breathed. The Oracles were gone.

Another sound echoed out from the Well, and it froze Jem’s breath in his throat. A massive explosive charge – one he recognised all too well – a Scorch Cannon.

He moved to rush to the Well, but before he could even stand, Vanir came flying out of the pit.

Her body was limp, wreathed in black smoke and burning. She flew out of the pit back towards them, bright embers flaking from her amidst the swirling smoke and trail of fire. Jem dropped Bad Juju as he watched, and Vanir’s body flew overhead to the right.

She slammed against the towering conflux of jagged black stone on the side of the Templar’s Well. He heard the crack of her impact, and then she fell, limp, to the stone floor.

Vanir lay in blackness, suspended. The void around her cradled her like a child and she lay soft and limp. She imagined this was what it felt like for humans to float on the surface of a lake, softly bobbing in the warmth of the water.

She could hear the ocean waves lapping all around her. The soft sound of waves rolling against a shore was soothing, calm and constant. She could not see a beach or a coast. All she saw was black, even as she turned her head about her; all was solid blackness, as if she had gone blind.

But she could smell the ocean and hear the heartbeat of its waves.

Vanir had been here many times before. Some called it Limbo – the place between lives, but that was not truly accurate. She lay in the nothing, letting it hold her like the ocean, and felt Fuse’s Light in her chest. This was the place Ghosts pulled them from, to bring them back to the Light from the brink.

But Fuse is here.

The thought was fleeting, but enravelled around Vanir clean and clear as the crashing of the waves. She felt fear boil in her throat, sparks coiling in her fingertips and her whole body shivered.

There was a deep, burning pain in her chest, and a pressure that threatened to crush her like a gargantuan vice.

Vanir whirled in the void, her fingers clawing at her chest but feeling nothing.

Above her, a point of light poked through the darkness. It was blinding, though it seemed scarcely a flicker in the darkness. It hummed and sang to her, growing and falling towards her like a slow-motion drop of rain from the unseen sky.

It was warm and orange, and as Vanir reached out she glimpsed the shadow of her fingers over it’s form. It swirled, taking shape in an orb of fire the size of a baseball, and it continued to sink towards her.

Vanir let it fall to her hands, and it floated just above her palms. It numbed the pain that threatened to tear her nerves apart, and she held it to her chest. Vanir let the fire tear through her body like a shot of adrenaline through blood, and every fibre of her being flared with her Light. She opened her mouth, tossed back her head as her body tensed with the feeling like being bathed in thermite…

and she screamed.

“Illara!” Jem yelled, sprinting over to Vanir. “Ward!”

Illara’s head snapped to look, and she tore across the battlefield in a flash, Baz and Zyduras carving through the Fallen at her side with ferocious arc blades and fists. They willed points of Light into focus with their supers as they went, charging Illara’s arms with glittering light.

She slid across the stone, kicking up pebbles and the dust left by their battle with her boots, then slammed her feet down.

Jem felt the soothing purple light of her Ward of Dawn form around him. It muffled the gunfire outside, washing over his hands with a subtle blessing glow. He lifted Vanir from the ground. Her weapon was smashed, Hard Light’s casing cracked and rent and the pieces clattered to the ground as he turned her over.

Vanir’s chest was smoking, and even through his gloves, Jem felt the smouldering heat from where she had been shot.

Her helmet’s blue flames flickered, and Jem tugged it free. As he waved the smoke free and placed her helmet aside, Jem’s heart leapt into his throat.

Her face was fractured; the plates across the left side of her face cracked and broken. Her eyes were shut, with only a faint ring of orange light against their black surface. Her plate across the side of her mouth and her jaw was shattered, the orange painted pieces scattered across her cheek.

But her chest was where the real damage lay.

Jem’s hands shook as he looked at the gaping, jagged hole in Vanir’s torso that left her core exposed. Soft lights pulsed inside of her, with the armour blown clean away.

“Shani!” Jem yelled without looking up, propping Vanir into a better position in the centre of the Ward while the rest of the team defended them against the remainder of the Fallen. “I need help!”

Shani slid to his side quickly, stowing his weapons and tugging his helmet off as the Ward wafted protective Light around him. He knelt at Vanir’s side.

His mouth glowed softly, but the words died in his mouth. “Where’s her Ghost…” he whispered, glancing at Jem with fearful eyes.

Then Vanir burned.

Her chest ignited with a great flame that spread across her body in an instant. Her chest convulsed and she arched her back from the stone, writhing for a moment as if taking a great breath after nearly drowning.

Jem and Shani shuffled back with surprise at the leaping flames, and Vanir burst with power like a Sunsinger willing themselves back from death with their Radiance. She pulsed off the ground for a moment, her flames leaping from her fingertips and rippling from her body like solar radiation.

She screamed, her voice splitting with agony for a moment and tearing into Jem’s ears like a knife.

Vanir fell to the stone again, her fire dying down, but still burning across her body with Light and strength and warmth. Her scream had lasted only a second, and as Jem scrambled back to her side, he saw her helmet and shattered gun dissipate with her Ghost’s Light.

But even as Fuse’s core appeared, shimmering with fire and a closed eye in the cavity of Vanir’s chest, her wound did not heal. The fire continued to lick across her entire body, fuelling her with life but not enough to heal her.

Shani’s hand on Jem’s wrist shook him back into thinking properly. His eyes met Jem’s sharply once he had his attention. “Vanir needs to get out of here,” he said, and Jem could tell he was trying not to panic at what was going on, “out of the Vault. She needs medical attention.”

Jem nodded, swallowing and grabbing his radio.

“Rohan?” he called, praying beneath his breath. “Rohan are you there?”

As he waited for a response, he turned to his team. Baz and Blaine had cut through the last of the Fallen, and Baz’s Arc Blade was imbedded in the throat of the Baron that had shot Vanir. The Scorch Cannon sat in Uaithne’s arms, burning with charge.

The fight was over, and all of them had turned with concern after Vanir’s scream.

The Ward of Dawn dropped as Rohan’s signal reached Jem. “I hear you Jem, are the Oracles destroyed?”

“Yes, but Rohan…” he glanced at Vanir’s burning, quiet form, and swallowed. “We need a ship right now. Vanir’s in trouble, we need to get her back to the City-“

Jem heard movement from Rohan’s end of the transmission. “Alright, I’m on it, I’ll divert a ship from the-“

“No, Rohan,” Jem interrupted them. He tried to keep the fear and concern from cracking his voice, but his hands were shaking with uncertainty. “We need to get her to the City now, we need your ship.”

Apollo’s eyes flicked from Jem to Vanir as the emergency cry went out, wary and uncertain of what to do. Some moved closer to Vanir, stowing weapons and kneeling, while others checked the area to ensure it was secure now.

“Understood. I’ll be at the Vault door as soon as possible, you just get Vanir out of there.”

Jem turned to the others as the transmission ended. He glanced at Vanir. She still burned, her fire rising and falling like breath around her body. Tiny Vex fireflies – little cubes that blipped through the air around them – were moving towards her.

He hurried to her side and gently, slowly, he picked Vanir up in his arms. “Illara,” he said, looking to her as Circe appeared at his shoulder. “Can you keep Vanir protected with a barrier?”

She nodded, pulsing Void Light across her hands as she approached.

Jem grunted beneath the weight of Vanir’s body, but he started walking back towards the platform far above that had led them down to the Templar’s Well. “Shani, Zy, I need you to boost me. We’re climbing out, double time.”

The fireteam hurried from the Vault with Vanir. She burned constantly as they climbed, her Solar Light flowing across her in waves and breaths that warmed Jem’s arms and chest as he carried her. Illara’s dampening Void made the flames a soft bluish colour, and it kept the Vex motes at bay – those tiny firefly-like nanomachines that flitted through the air after her, eager to corrupt her by slipping inside.

Their climb was hurried but careful, scaling the cliffs of square stones and leaping with Lift between the eerie floating platforms.

Shadows waited amidst the bleary light when they passed through the Trial of Kabr and ascended the stairs to the Vault’s great door.

Jem gasped as they made it through the door, his breath coming slightly short from the hurried run while carrying Vanir. But his posture relaxed, a flow of warmth like Vanir’s fires drifting through him as he saw Rohan’s jumpship hovering amidst the Waking Ruins.

Rohan was waiting on the central sync plate, the reinforcements from the Venutian Garrison standing around them, ready to enter the Vault and destroy the Fallen’s technology inside.

He jogged to Rohan’s side, and even they could not mask the uncertainty and concern on their face as they looked at Vanir’s limp Radiance-warmed body.

Illara’s hand brushed his shoulder as Rohan opened their ship to load Vanir aboard. “Go with them,” she said as Jem looked down at her. “They’ll need all the details of what happened.

“I’ll keep the boys in order.”