[Freehold Crater]
The fire settled, and the blinding light faded.
What remained of the battlefield outside the dome was ruin in every direction.
The smouldering heat of the orbital strikes had caused the crater's edges to cave inward, leaving fresh craters inside the old one, the ground reshaped into something that bore no resemblance to what Freehold had looked like minutes ago.
Cabal tanks sat half-buried across the field, twisted into shapes that no longer resembled vehicles but mere carcasses of metal and rock, their barrels pointing at nothing. Vex frames were scattered in pieces across every scorched surface, their radiolaria bubbling and evaporating away in the residual heat.
A thick curtain of smoke had risen above the crater, marring the horizon a dark, murky brown.
Only three things had survived intact.
Cabal heavy legionaries, the ones whose shields had gone up in the seconds before impact, stood in isolated clusters across the field, their armour scorched black at the edges but holding, their formations broken but their numbers present.
Hobgoblins that now kneeled exactly where they had been standing when Rasputin fired. Their invulnerability subroutines had triggered at the precise moment the strikes landed. Their rifle-limbs were still raised toward targets that no longer existed.
And finally, the Titan dome that shielded every guardian present against the strikes.
But now, a thin fracture spread from the dome's peak downward in branching lines that let white light bleed through before the whole structure gave at once, shattering outward in a wide dispersal pulse that rolled across the crater floor and faded into the smoke. The Guardians inside it exhaled as one.
Jason rolled his shoulder and looked out across what remained of Freehold. "We...made it."
"Barely." Edith coughed and wiped the dust on her visor.
"Eyes up." Cory cautioned, already scanning the field, moving his eyes methodically across each quadrant. "Cabal remnants are regrouping on the western edge. Vex count is..." He paused, doing the math. "Forty? Rasputin wiped hundreds of them. We've only got a few left."
"For now," Bandit replied.
"Taeko, what's the status on the cage?" Pahanin urgently triggered his transponder, unable to see through the clouds of dust obscuring his vision.
Taeko's strained voice answered, "Cage is holding! But not for long, Alemyr's running out of fuel. We don't have much time."
"Alemyr! What's your condition right now?" Pahanin's urgency spiked.
"Its." Alemyr staggered, one hand still raised to maintain the cage as he stood next to The Stoic, "It's fine. I can keep going."
"Stop messing around." Isidel chided, she dropped to one knee as the dome shattered around them, unable to maintain her posture, "He's hurt. The strikes penetrated further on our sides than expected."
"He's not got long. A few more minutes and he'll collapse. There's a goddamn hole in his side." Uzoma clicked his tongue and dusted himself off.
"If that cage breaks, we're all done for." Pahanin gave a heated response.
"We have no healers on this side. There's nothing we can do!" Gallida cursed.
But just before their conversation could go any further, the Gatelord in its cage threatened to break out once more.
The Gatelord shrieked.
The sound tore across the crater without warning, a bone-deep frequency that bypassed the ears entirely and hit somewhere behind the eyes.
Inside its astral prison at the crater's centre, the massive form convulsed against the spectral chains, slamming itself against the containment walls with a violence that cracked the prison's surface in three places simultaneously. Alemyr and The Stoic staggered into each other, feet shifting, the threads of their shared magic straining as the containment flared against each impact.
A tremor rippled across the crater.
Pahanin steadied himself, "F*ck, we need a healer, now!"
"Leave it to us." Wei Ning grabbed his shoulder and walked past.
Pahanin's eyes widened as he witnessed her back.
Her armour was singed, broken and fused at the joints. Her gauntlets had long since shattered, and her knuckles had broken through the metal.
Sai Mota and Eriana walked side by side behind Wei. The Praxic Fire squad parted the crowd and hurried to the centre of the crater.
Eriana brought about her wings of flame that radiated a bright light, healing everything it touched.
But as her light reached the skies above Freehold, the skies instead answered the shriek of the Gatelord.
Rifts split open across the crater's upper atmosphere one after another, each one bleeding violent light into the smoke above. Three at first. Then five. Then more appeared faster than anyone had time to count, the air above the crater tearing itself apart at the seams as the Vex network responded to its Gatelord's call with everything it had.
The Wyverns came first, tearing into reality with their characteristic shriek, leg-cannons already charging before they'd fully crossed through, screaming downward into the crater at full speed. Minotaurs dropped through behind them in dense clusters, hitting the ground and advancing without pause or formation. A tide of Vex frames moved forward with the relentless momentum.
And then the rift at the crater's centre tore wider.
Much wider.
Something large was pulling it open from the other side, forcing it outward with sustained, deliberate effort. The edges of the rift burned brighter as the thing crossed through, its chassis vast enough that even the widened rift barely admitted it.
A Vex Mind descended over Freehold, its body enveloped in a spatial matrix that isolated it from all damage. It rose above the crater floor and immediately turned its attention back to the rift it had come through, beginning the process of anchoring it open permanently from the inside.
On the western edge, the surviving Cabal heavy legions jumped into action and restarted the surviving imperial tanks. Their barrels swung upward and tracked the descending Wyverns, the first salvo cracking out and catching two mid-descent, sending them spinning into the crater wall in pieces. The legionaries reformed around the tanks, tightening their line, their own weapons coming up against the Minotaur columns now hitting the crater floor.
Shaxx stood on the furthest edge of the crater, watching the battle unfold in front of his eyes.
His shoulders rose and fell, his lungs sputtered with breaths. The skin of his palms had long ripped across the seams as he gripped his hammer.
"The Cabal can't hold that line." He murmured to himself.
But his words hadn't gone unheard.
Tevis's eyes darted to Shaxx, "What?"
"They don't have the numbers. The Vex are going to walk straight through them." Shaxx's eyes widened as he took in the battle.
A descending legion of Vex, held back by only a small cluster of Cabal and their tanks.
"We need to go in now!" Shaxx bellowed. Tevis gave him a brisk nod.
"Levi, gather the forces. We need to match the Cabal resistance. There's no time." Tevis barked his orders into his wrist.
From across the crater, a single shadow fluttered and sliced apart the dust with a kick. "You got it, boss. I've been waiting for this," Levi rolled his shoulders and fell into a low stance, shadows drifted off his figure.
"We're going in?" Bandit's eyes widened.
"We must keep the battle balance. The moment the Vex take out the Cabal, it's only us left." Shaxx turned to face the assembled Guardians, and his voice carried across the crater without effort. "Crucible squads, all Warlock orders. Move to the western line and fill the gaps. Effective immediately, suppress the Vex with the Cabal. Go!"
"All units." Levi's voice echoed on the comms channel.
He drew in a breath.
A spike of lilac light pierced through the dust, the noise and the smoke.
Levi looked up, void light bled into his eyes, his feet dug into the crater floor.
"Follow me."
Levi shot forward. Streaking through the crater like a fleeting shadow,
The void light that bled into his eyes poured outward, spreading down through his arms and into his fingertips as he ran, building pressure with every stride, his form darkening at the edges as the shadows pulled tighter around him.
The dust parted around him in thin curling sheets. The noise of the battlefield fell half a step behind, unable to keep up with his sheer speed.
He locked onto the descending Vex legions, hammering the Cabal's left flank, pulled the energy back into his chest and leapt.
Then he released it with a kick.
The ability tore out of him in a single violent exhale, a lance of lilac light that split the dust and smoke clean open as it left his stride, the air around it bending inward from the pressure.
It shot in an absolute straight line through everything standing between him and the far edge of the Vex formation, a light so concentrated it left a burning seam in the air behind it.
As the lance passed through the Vex legions and kept going, its void energy detonated in chain bursts as it crossed each consecutive target, each explosion feeding the next.
Levi hit the ground running, not slowing, the lilac light still bleeding off his figure.
"CHARGE!" Shaxx bellowed again.
Behind him, the Guardians came through the gap Levi had opened.
The Cabal legionaries stiffened when the first Hunters appeared at their flanks, weapons raised. But as they realised what was happening, the Cabal had no choice but to cooperate.
Crucible Hunters went wide immediately, drawing fire away from the Cabal regiments, pulling the aerial threat off the tanks so they could keep their barrels on the Minotaur advance.
Warlocks raised their own magical rifts in the Cabal formation, empowering the legionnaires enough to fight back effectively.
Wei Ning drove forward into the densest pocket of Minotaurs she could find and hit them at full force, her fists leaving craters in chassis that the Cabal legionaries beside her finished off without breaking stride.
Levi had climbed to a high position on the crater's rubble, his bow drawn, tracking the Vex Mind hovering above the centre of Freehold. His eyes narrowed.
"That thing holds the rift open much longer," he said over comms, "and we won't be able to close it. Its shields are still up. If I fire, nothing will happen."
"I know," Shiro-4 replied, zig-zagging and weaving between pockets of fighting. "Maybe we need more up there. Overwhelm its shields."
"Working on it," Cory said.
"Work faster," Levi replied, as the rift pulsed wider above them and two more Minotaur squads dropped through.
The Cabal tanks fired again, one salvo catching a cluster of Minotaurs square on before they could spread from their landing point, the detonation scattering chassis across the western edge in pieces.
A Wyvern broke from the aerial formation and dove at the nearest tank, its leg-cannons charging. Tevis raised his bow, and his Shadowshot caught it mid-dive and pulled it into the ground before it could fire.
Shiro-4 vaulted a piece of collapsed ruin and kept moving. Beside him, a silver spectre kept pace.
"Taeko," Pahanin called again. "I need to disable that mind's shields."
"Already on it," Taeko-3 raised a spell formation and replied. "Give me thirty seconds."
"You've got twenty."
The battle above Freehold intensified in every direction simultaneously. For the first time, the Guardians and the Cabal worked together to push back the Vex legions, as both knew that the enemy of their enemy was, for now, a friend.
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A/N: Slow release rate, as always...But we strive to improve! Times are tough and a stone or two will help.
A review too...maybe.
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