On the Front S5: SOS Pt.2

(Read the previous part here)

The hooded figure leaped 10 metres into the air, his blade spinning up and down as he reached the apex of his leap, and began to fall.

Drew leaped into a blur of motion, from standstill into a roll as the angry red blade collided with the Vex structure we had been standing on.

I glided higher and higher, before spotting Drew, hand cannon blazing.

His bullets were absorbed harmlessly by a glowing aura around our assailant.

“Sword! Use a Sword!” I yelled across the space, drawing my own.

Drew rolled away as Mako rained blows down around him.

The rock shone with angry red streaks where the blade had made contact.

I landed on the slanted opposite wall, 3 streams of Radiolaria lighting the space.

Pushing off, I was in the air again.

My feet made contact with the small island and I swung at the hooded figure at its centre.

A red blade spun up from beneath my vision and parried perfectly.

The figure turned and held my gaze from beneath its hood.

“Drew!” I yelled, keeping the pressure on my enemy’s blade.

I saw a flash of transmat light before my opponent’s leg stepped inside mine, and I was pushed off balance.

I fell to the ground, and angled my blade into a perpendicular block.

My sword held back the snarling, angry, blade even as its wielder applied more pressure.

Suddenly, a new, green, blade slid between my visor and the crossed blades.

I followed its length to Drew’s hand.

He pushed back towards Mako, and the momentum shifted.

I pulled myself to my feet and quickly executed a downward slice, with a similar motion from Drew.

A perfect parry from our opponent couldn’t stop the momentum.

As we pushed the fight forward, his feet retreated in perfect step with the momentum.

As his foot missed the edge of the small island, and slipped into the Radiolaria.

He recoiled in pain, enough for the very tip of Drew’s blade slashing into the robes of the figure.

He was on the defensive.

Over our heads, he bounded into safer territory.

Drew aimed a thrust of his blade towards Mako’s torso.

The entire figure recoiled in an unnatural motion, and watched the thin sliver of hadium flick by him.

He pivoted elegantly, and leveled his blade, aiming jabs at me, as my active, crepitating blade pushed his furiously red implement beside.

Drew’s blade seemed to hiss as it passed through the air, Solar energy dissipating as it passed.

Suddenly, Mako spun a full 360 degrees, and a wave of Mites forced both of us back several paces.

A huge red circle appeared around him, before absorbing him and disappearing.

Drew and I looked around anxiously, before sighting the edges of his cape as he disappeared into a new chamber.

We followed, sprinting through an agap oculus in the wall and into a new hallway.

Our vision was diminished as a Vex Storm suddenly appeared in the hallway.

Paying them no head, we charged on, before finding Mako in a giant empty space, a sort-of dais at the centre.

It was clearly missing something.

Mako was shaking his head, facing the dais.

His head whipped round as we stepped into the room proper.

With a yelp, he ignited his blade and swung it across his body, before plunging the pointy end into the stone.

Tendrils of red shot through the floor from the incision site.

It began to devolve in boxes of white, and it began to hum.

The floor disappeared, and the 3 of us fell through.

No light reached the downward slope of the tunnel we found ourselves in.

Mako slid from his feet and shot downwards into the dark.

I started at a run, before allowing my feet to fall out from beneath me.

The insides of this bizarre centaur flicked past as we slid further and further into the artificial crust.

After a fair length of time, a soft orange glow began to fill the slide, as there was no better description.

The gradient rounded a corner.

The slope had ended in a balcony, of sorts, overlooking a massive, sunken, Cavern.

The core of this tiny world pulsed at the center of the huge space.

Mako had stopped at the edge of the balcony, surveying his options, I didn’t doubt.

A golden sword appeared in my fist as I heard Drew slide into position behind me.

Something tiny appeared in our adversary’s free hand.

I leapt into the air, held aloft by golden wings, and I slashed my sword.

A bolt of red sailed through the air below me as the first blast of solar light hit his guarding blade.

The force sent him flying over the edge of the balcony, and down into the cavern.

I too jumped over the edge and plunged my sword downwards.

Mako landed softly on a floating piece of rock below me.

The tiny floating isle rushed up to meet my blade, and shattered into a million pieces as I dove through it.

I floated back up, and looked for Mako.

He had left the rock that had just met a fiery end, and had drawn his blade.

I floated through the air, hurtling blast after blast of solar Light at any rock he stepped on.

He leaped into the air, and one of my blasts hit him dead center.

He flailed wildly mid jump, and stretched out a hand.

His fingers curled around a tiny ledge on the side of a Vex structure.

I floated over to above the massive ledge that housed a small figure, smoke radiating off him.

He had pulled himself up onto this ledge.

In addition to the smoke, I saw dead Mites drifting from his shoulders, a death shroud.

Slowly he began to whistle, out of key, and then sang,

“Welcome my son.” A ragged breath,

“Welcome, to the machine.” He finished.

I drew my Hadium Blade from my back, and Arc leaped from hilt to tip instantaneously.

“Where have you been? It's alright son, we know where you've been.”

Io. The Pyramidion.

A howl of pain from behind me as Drew scrambled to his feet on the ledge, Quickfang drawn.

I looked back at him briefly.

He seemed to wince in pain, and the tip of his sword dropped slightly.

I looked back to the weakened figure before us, who began to raise his hand.

Drew gritted his teeth before dropping to his knees with a grunt.

I ran over to him, and looked him over.

Active Mites buzzed harshly around a small wound in his lower abdomen.

Mako hadn't been shooting at me.

A scream as the Mites flared up again.

Mako’s silhouette disappeared through a triangular doorway.

“Go! Get after him!” Drew’s mangled voice snarled.

Ghast popped out.

A quick scan, and he refraged within my armor.

“It’s not good. SIVA’s tearing through the his system. His Ghost’s trying to slow its progress, but it’s taking everything he’s got. If something kills him, well…”

I got the message.

“Sit down.” I laid him down against a wall in this space.

“I what, NO! I’m coming with you!”

Pain wracked his body.

He slumped a little against the surface behind him.

He breathed heavily.

“Actually, yeah, I think I’ll stay here.”

I chuckled and pulled a sidearm from my belt.

He took it, and pulled back the slide.

“I’ll be back.” I said, following Mako’s trail.

I jumped over a large crevice, and through a Gate on the far side.

I moved through a small room filled with green foliage, and ducked into a small triangular opening.

A huge tube of blue light filled the space I found myself in.

“The well seems to have been inverted, it’s travelling upwards.”

I followed the shaft to its height.

A small Vex gate was open at the summit.

I jumped into the well of light, and was carried upwards, and through the gate.

It dropped me in a small valley, babbling brook of water at the lowest point.

The left wall of the valley was a massive sheet of metal, certainly not Vex in origin.

My eyes landed on the defining feature of the space.

A ship from the Exodus program filled the space, its engines pointed into space.

A black robed figure was running towards it.

My Sparrow appeared beneath me.

I gunned it towards the figure, who briefly looked back, only to be hit with the full force of my vehicle.

My legs carried me into the air above the figure that had been knocked to his feet.

My blade was already ignited as I fell atop the figure, whose own blade ignited.

He kicked hard, and I was thrown a few feet.

Mites continued to leak off him.

I found myself with the ship behind me.

I understood then. He wanted the SIVA that almost certainly lay aboard the ship behind me.

He raised his blade, and began to sing.

“Happy little day,” A slash at me, “Jimmy went away.”

A downward strike parried with a horizontal block.

“Met his little Jenny on a public holiday!”

He was mocking me now.

I ducked under a slash and thrust into his lower torso.

My blade dug through his black armor, and cut through his skin.

Arc lashed from my blade all through his body.

A cloud of grey, dead mites burst forth from the wound like blood, and bounced harmlessly off my armor.

This battle was ending.

I ducked, and rolled past a downward strike accompanied by a screech.

A sweeping strike across his back sent him to the dirt.

“O rock of ages, do not crumble, love is breathing still.” He screamed as he got to his feet and ran towards the ship again.

He seemed to stumble forward before stopping to catch his breath.

I caught him.

His angry blade ignited one last time, and he lifted the blade back to behind his head.

It would’ve taken my head off, but, I was quicker.

I pushed as hard as I could, driving my blade hard through his rib cage.

The blade stopped, stuck into a piece of metal behind Mako.

He screamed as a torrent of dead mites poured from the wound.

His body began to shake and twist. He coughed blood, completely normal, red blood.

“The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, but you forget, you’re a Rock and Roll Suicide.” He coughed.

Then after another round of violent spasms,

“Day after day, love turns grey, like the skin on the dying man,” he smirked, “And night after night, we pretend it’s alright, but I have grown older. And you have grown colder, and nothing is very much fun, anymore. I, feel, cold as a razor blade, tight as a tourniquet, dry as a funeral drum.”

“But why save me, in the Pyramidion?!” I blurted out at the impaled figure.

He looked confused.

“I…” he struggled, “I’ve...never been….to the Pyramidion.”

I knitted my eyebrows together, vehemently perplexed.

“But….who?” I asked.

A hand cannon shot broke through the silence.

The bullet burned a hole in Mako’s skull, and began to glow.

“Oh babe,” He rested a hand on my faceplate, “Don’t leave me now.”

And with that, the Light behind his eyes flared up, and died away, in silence.

The figure slumped against the wall, and I pulled the blade out.

I turned back in the direction of the killed gunshot.

On a nearby rise, a Hunter stood, brown cape fluttering in the alien wind.

It wasn’t Drew.

When I’d left my friend in the Cavern, he’d been wearing a red cape.

This new figure turned away, and a fire built in my heart.

I charged ahead, blade ignited once again, and leaped to the height of the rise.

The figure had stopped back turned to me.

Tears running down my cheek, I raised my sword.

The figure reached a hand to his belt and tossed a device to the ground.

It sprung open, and a triangular portal appeared, some blazing light pouring through.

The hooded figure turned slightly, and suddenly, holes appeared in his cape. 3 bullets ran through my torso as the figure stepped through the portal.

I crawled up, and watched as the strange device seemed to be eaten by the portal it had just formed.

I jumped and dived through the shrinking portal.

Tiny, brown particles of sand greeted me on the other side.

The sunlight was unbearably bright.

Mercury.

I stood up and looked around.

A huge triangular structure stood a small ways off.

The figure looked back at me, two bright blue EXO eyes shone under the hood.

He pulled out the strange device again, and tosse it to the ground.

A new portal appeared, Nessus visible on the other side.

He made move to enter the portal again, but I was quicker, and I beat him through.

Suddenly, the gate ate the device again, leaving me back on Nessus.

The figure was gone.

But I knew where I had to go next.

Mercury had the answers.

---

I burned Mako’s body at the foot of the Exodus Black.

Eventually, I found my way back to the cavern where I had abandoned Drew.

Thankfully, he was still there.

I picked him up, returned to the surface.

Tear marks still visible on my cheeks, I flew back home, and dropped Drew off with the med staff.

Tearfully, I found my way back to our apartment, where I collapsed into my bed and sobbed.

Maddie came home a few hours later, and dropped dinner off in a bag.

I sat staring at it, wondering what to do next.

I made up mind, and thumbed out a quick couple of messages on my DataPod.

Maddie kept her distance for a couple hours, before I blacked out in one of the chairs, I dreamed of her body, Drew bleeding out amid pillars of stone, and Mick, stumbling over a cliff edge. Then Mako’s grinning features reached me again.

//Curse of Osiris is only 3 days away! And yes, that is the end of Mako. Two Suns in the Sunset begins next week, and I still have a couple more surprises up my sleeve before the end of the year. Until next time!//

(Read the whole series here)