[Hunter Pahanin - Chapter 1] "We'll all die in the end" He exclaimed. "So why the hell does it even matter? Why try now?". Kabr looked at him long and hard. "Because what those Vex are holding down there is controlling their time construct. Massive spacetime energy distortions all originate from deep within those walls. If we don't go after it now, the Vex could wipe us out." "We need to do this now, and we want you to join us" Praedyth added, looking at the undecided hunter. Kabr trying to coerce the Guardian, "Pahanin, you are one of the best Hunters we have" "No. I'm sorry. I'm no use to the Tower if I'm dead in some deep Vex pit. They need me here". Kabr and Praedyth shrugged in disappointment. "Fine" Kabr states. "We'll get [unknown] to join us". As they both begin to walk away, Pahanin stops them, "Kabr". Praedyth and Kabr turn around. "Tell me you'll try and get out alive". "That's not part of the job." Kabr responded. "We don't fight the darkness by trying to keep our light safe all the time. Sometimes sacrifices need to be made... Keep the Tower safe Pahanin". With those words, Kabr and Praedyth turn and leave the under level ship parked in the hangar. Pahanin, distressed and worried, sits back down next to the fire and rests. His Ghost next to him. Both unknowing that would be the last they would hear of the two for the next seven days. "I hope they will be okay" his Ghost states. "Me too...." responds Pahanin. ------------------------- [Praedyth - Chapter 2] Running through tight computerized stone corridors, Praedyth breaths hard, looking behind him constantly, his weapon forward. He arrives upon a cliff overlooking a massive cavern. The strong wind brushes his shoulder. His Ghost... gone... Taken from the Vex. "Okay... Where to now?" He mumbles, looking for a way across. Noticing a ledge leading to his left, he decides to hug the wall and slowly move alongside the cavern. Looking down, he's unable to see the bottom of the endless cavern pit. Upon reaching the platform, he stops to catch his breath, making sure everything is clear around him. Thinking back at how he may be the last one alive since he got separated from Kabr at the Templar's Well... He sits, going through his mind how he got here. Trying to remember those who came in with him besides Kabr. He can't remember. "Son of a bitch, the Oracles must've gotten to them..." he thinks. "But then how the hell am I alive? Passing through that gate can't be possible.". Praedyth begins to realize that he may be stuck in some sort of looping timeline, outside of space time. "I have to find a way out... I need to warn the others I'm here". Seeing a lone Vex gate sitting in the distance down below, Praedyth hugs the wall, inching his way along the cavern side. Until reaching a point he looks down. Closing his eyes, he breaths in, then jumps. The flowing wind begins to howl the faster he falls. He activates his thrusters, slowing his fall, allowing him to move closer to the lone gate hill. He hits the ledge with a yearning echo. Breaking his collar bone, he yells in pain, barely holding on to the rocky side. Getting a grasp, he painfully pulls himself up. Blood begins to seep through his armor. The bone must have pierced through his skin. Looking over, he decides to make another jump to reach the main rocky platform. Staggering, he jumps, flowing through the air. Reaching the wall of the rock platform, he grunts in pain, trying to hold on. Looking up, he begins climbing. The wind howling louder than before, the fog covering the distance. Each grab more painful than the last. Finding the top ledge, he pulls himself up, coming to his knees next to the Vex gate, trying to catch his breath and deal with the pain. Praedyth's mind flowing through the past, thinking of being pulled through time by the Oracles in an attempt to erase him. Realizing he may only exist in his own timeline, and have been erased in all the others. Standing up, Praedyth looks at the gate. "I must show them I am still here". He walks up to the gate, pulling out a Vex mind core he managed to rip away from the ancient corpse of a Vex carcass some time ago. He puts his two main weapons on the ground in front of the gate. Walking up to the middle, he begins to infuse the programming nodes inside the rock of the surface into the Vex core. Fusing them together with his light. The gate suddenly turns on with a massive spark of energy. The light grazes through the holes in Praedyth's helmet. Grabbing his weapons, he looks upon the gate, takes a deep breath, and steps through. Massive light can be seen passing through... Suddenly everything turns black. Slowly regaining consciousness, Praedyth sits up, wondering where he is. Seeing a strange bright red sky. He pulls himself up from the sand, looking around, he sees nothing but a bright red barren landscape. "Am I on Mars?" he wonders to himself. He stands up, grunting in pain over his broken collarbone. Reaching back for his weapon, he can't find it. Looking around, he notices his weapons are gone. "Dammit!" he exclaims. He turns around, seeing the familiar Vex rock structure that lay in front of him. "What the hell...". As he walks closer, he realizes it's the entrance to the Vault of Glass... "How is this possible? How can this be Venus?", he looks around at a loss for words. Falling to his knees, the reality begins to sink in. That vex time-gate threw him deeper into the past, long before the Traveler's arrival that turned Venus into a green lush landscape. "Oh god...." he says out loud, staring at the dusty Vault of Glass entrance. Realizing he may never find a way back to the present... --------------------------- [Kabr - Chapter 3] In the end, he saw his light drain. He knew it was over, that there was no getting out. Holding the shattered pieces of the Gorgon and welding them together, he molded them into a shield. A shield to be used against the darkness, against the vex, and to guide those who enter after him through the conduits of time. However, there was one missing piece to be added... his own light... a sacrifice he realized he was willing to make. "Kabr?" a voice came from behind him. Turning around from the edge of the descending cliff, Kabr sees a Hunter standing there. "Pahanin? But how... How did you get here?". Pahanin walks closer, "I looked for you, you delved into the Vault of Glass and disappeared... I came to find you". Kabr, bleeding and broken, can barely sit up straight. "Then take my last words with caution. You know not of what is down here. The horrors I have seen, and the power of the Vex. They control time, and they do the unspeakable with it. Wiping us out of existence. You need to carry my final words to the Tower, let them know of what is at stake here.... We were far wrong, the vex have something much worse down here...". Pahanin heads his words and pays close attention as Kabr continues, "I have destroyed myself to do this. They have taken my Ghost. They are in my blood and brain. But now there is hope. I have made a wound in the Vault. I have pierced it and let in the Light." Kabr looks down at the fashioned Gorgon shield that lay in front of him. "Bathe in it, and be cleansed. Look to it, and understand: From my own Light and from the thinking flesh of the Vex I made a shield. The shield is your deliverance. It will break the unbreakable. It will change your fate. Bind yourself to the shield. Bind yourself to me. And if you abandon your purpose, let the Vault consume you, as it consumed me." At that moment, Kabr takes a shard of rock that lay next to him, and thrusts it into his chest as hard as he can, ripping it open, leaking the light inside of him into the shield. Blood and light splatter on the ground. The Aegis shield then begins to glow with the light of Kabr pulsing through it. Pahanin watching in a state of shock. "Now it is done. If I speak again, I am not Kabr." As he mutters his final words, Kabr falls off the cliff, knocking the Aegis off as well, both descending into the darkness of the Vault. Pahanin runs over and leans over the edge just in time to see both disappear in the lone fog. "Oh my god..." Pahanin says nearly frightened. A loud vex noise echoes throughout the caverns. Looking around, stunned, and frightened, Pahanin runs back towards the entrance, no longer wanting to be alone in the Vault of Glass...