All chapters can be found in the [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/253302742/0/0]OoT table of contents[/url]
[url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/253302934/0/0]Chapter 2, Failure[/url]
[b]Chapter 3: Dark Corners[/b]
[i]Part 1[/i]
Shadow and silence were my only allies now. All sense of time and direction had long been lost in this shrouded prison. Oppressive walls of metal and stone erased all memory of sunlight, and nothing stirred except for the soulless dripping of water and my heartless captors.
The Vex were everywhere, and the endless labyrinths of the Vault held a chance of death at every turn. The Gorgon’s Maze was probably the most dangerous place in all of this domain, but it had so far proven inescapable. A single scuff from my boot or word spoken above a whisper would draw the Gorgons themselves to me. I had already evaded several and been forced to kill one, but their numbers never seemed to end and they patrolled every corner in their realm. There was no telling how long I had been trapped here. Hours? Days? Weeks?
At least I had Rush. He was just as lost as I was, but his company was probably all that kept madness from seeping into my mind in this infectious world. I had my Light, too, but the Darkness was suffocating. Time and space were twisted here, and although the Light was always present in varying strengths, the Darkness felt stronger at all times.
At the moment I sat between a cluster of rocks that the Gorgons did not check routinely. I stared down at my lap in the dim light, turning Sierra’s hand cannon over in my hands and looking at her blood that stained the weapon and my armor. Knowing that the most likely outcome for me was erasure by the Gorgons, I was tempted to sit here with Rush until our lives were taken or to turn Sierra’s gun on Rush and myself so the memories of us wouldn’t be stolen from the minds of our friends outside this accursed prison. But she wouldn’t want that. Sierra would’ve clawed and kicked until the very end, and I wasn’t known for giving up either.
“We need to get out,” I rasped as quietly as I could.
“We need to find a way first. You said it yourself, Will,” Rush replied, not having to worry about keeping his voice down while inside my armor, “We have no idea where we are. We can’t even find our way back to the Glass Throne.”
“We’re not going back there,” I hissed in both anger and fear, “There has to be something we haven’t tried. Thermal mapping? Echolocation?”
“I can’t do either of those with enough range to find anything,” Rush stated.
“And we couldn’t risk echolocation anyway,” I mumbled.
“So what will we do?” Rush encouraged.
“Anything but sit here,” I whispered, rising to my feet slowly.
“You’ll think of something, Will,” Rush told me, “You always do.”
Mentally thanking him, I crept up one of the rocks carefully and surveyed my surroundings for what may have been the thirtieth time just in this location. I saw a flicker of movement from a Gorgon disappearing behind a boulder, but it was far away and everything close by looked clear. My motion sensor detected nothing. This window wouldn’t last long.
Careful not to kick any pebbles around or scrape my boots against the stone, I took a single leap over to a neighboring boulder. When our group had passed through the Maze earlier, we had quickly found that the hiss of air from using our Light to jump was too loud. Staying high up was one of the best ways to avoid the Gorgons because they kept their eyes on the ground where intruders were most likely to be. Picking my way halfway down the boulder, I hopped over a path and landed precariously on the next one over, but managed to not make any noise. Once again I started climbing up to keep my altitude.
“William!” Rush warned quietly.
Halting instantly, I spotted a blip just behind me on my motion tracker. It was then that I noticed a faint beeping and the gentle whirl of internal machinery. Without moving my feet, I turned at the waist and neck to find a Gorgon drifting around the path I had just crossed. Its blue eye stood out in the dimness and against the dark grey metal of its body, but was matched by the softly glowing edges of its segments and tails. Never before entering here had I suspected such a small Vex could strike such fear in a person. After several agonizing moments, the Gorgon drifted far enough away for me to move safely.
With renewed adrenaline and caution, I scaled up the boulder and hopped across two others until there was nowhere left to go but down into the winding paths below. Checking the layout before sliding down, I spotted the Gorgon from a moment before heading away from me and another one just leaving after having swept the area. They would be back soon.
[url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/255567351/0/0]Chapter 3 Part 2[/url]