[url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/93582232/0/0]Part 1[/url] [i]Wherein Jarrod and the warlock speak of Mercury and a new Vex threat.[/i] [b]“No one has ever gone to Mercury.”[/b] The warlock smirks again, a response I have learned is his way of rolling his eyes. “Osiris - ” “Osiris was hardly ‘no one’,” I cut him off, downing another shot. “And in any case, he was crazy.” His blue hand brings the glass to his lips again, and returns the empty receptacle to the bar top. “He IS most certainly crazy. He has also been to Mercury.” I shake my head and glance around the room. No one wants to be caught eavesdropping on a keyed-up hunter and a smirking warlock. Nevertheless, I see heads quickly turn away, eyes jumping to empty corners. He leans in close; closer than anything not loaded with high-powered ammunition has a right to be. “You doubt me on this?” He almost sounds hurt. “I’m sure you’re good at whatever it is warlocks do when they aren’t burning down monsters. But Mercury?” This time I smirk. “No one goes to Mercury.” Instead of a smirk, he smiles. “Ah! Now you say that there’s no reason to go, rather than that we can’t go. Now we’re getting somewhere.” “Is it a point?” I look away, trying to get him to drop whatever it is he’s about. “The sooner we get to that, the sooner I can say ‘no’ and send you on your way.” He pours us each another shot, the last of the brownish liquid now in two smudged tumblers. “Fair enough, Jarrod, no more riddles – for now, at any rate. Plenty more to come when we get to the Burning Shrine.” He looks around tentatively, then leans in again. “I have found your Violet Mist.” Violet Mist consumes me drains me ensnares me drags me down down down Words slowly croak from my mouth, suddenly parched. “You found it…” The awoken nods. “Yes, and much more. It is a shade of sorts, a chromoplasmic residue marking the passage of something not material. There were traces of it on Koriann’s breastplate - ” My hand snaps towards the collar of his robe. “Watch it, spell-speaker.” He continues, barely fazed. “There were traces on her armor. I was tasked with looking more closely. I was supposed to ascertain its elemental composition, but in so doing I learned much, much more.” I release him, sheathing the blade I had unknowingly drawn. I incline my head, just enough for him to know to continue, but also that I am not to be toyed with. “It is Vex, or at least it is Vex-like. But it is Vex in a way we have never observed. Just as engrams are energy freed from the bondage of crude matter, so is this a Vex mind that has taken flight from the constraints of a Vex vessel.” My head angles slightly away as my eyes scan the dirty wet-bar opposite me. “You mean - ” “I mean that your colleagues were killed by a thought, Jarrod.” He finishes the shot in front of him. “And your actions afterward? Something like mind control, I’m afraid. My theory, rushed though it may be, is that it wanted to use you as an agent of sorts; a way to infiltrate the Tower, the Last City, and start to break us from the inside.” He sets the glass on the bar and gently pushes it away. “Instead it drove you mad. Your ensuing escapades with the Fallen are a bloody testament to its failure to compel you.” “Just a theory…” I respond, trailing off. I hope it is the truth; I hope that my brutality on Venus can be somehow explained by this theory. I hope that I am not the monster they say I am. “Yes, just a theory.” He pushes away from the bar and makes his way to the canvas flap. Night has fallen and the street lumens have flickered to life. He stands in the doorway and holds the flap open. “Care to help me test it out?”