grimoire: luther; besiegement
Five minutes in and out. That's the average response time for the Siege Dancers after popping an alarm -- which, Ghost sheepishly murmurs, we've just done. Serves him right. There's no point in keeping silent, now, so I stow the suppressed marksman-- sorry, scout's rifle (far as I can tell, the main thing that Collapsed between me dying and coming back was the standardization of combined arms) in favor of an auto-rifle. He pulls up the schematics ripped from a console, and we figure the quickest way to the core's through a ventilation shaft.
Good architecture, but terrible metal -- a superheated kick is all it takes to bash in some of the corroded steel protecting the way in. For Cabal, these vents probably seem claustrophobic, close. For a scrawny human, they're roomy as an aircraft carrier. The klaxon’s screams echo through the ven, but I keep moving, tuning out Zavala just the same as the alarm.
Ghost can't hold a gun, so I call the shots. This sort of heat-scanner is banned in the City, gotta get it from some of the kookier hunters or hope that the Nine's Agent is feeling up to wheel and deal. It is, as the Speaker has writ, inimical to the Light.
But what the Light don't know ain't gonna hurt it.
Warlocks like to play up the craft as crafting from the Abyss the means to Light. Horseshit. All I do is take the slightest, tiniest speak of the Sun, and move it somewhere else. The distorted screams of Cabal bounce around their hastily-built fortifications.
Used to think these guys shit themselves when they died. It was almost humanizing. Then some sapper told me it's some sort of oil that powers their armor. I preferred to think of it as shit. Some soldiers will like to tell you they’re all hard professionals, but at least on the inside, they’re just kids with guns. Wanna imagine that rhino-men are the same.
But the Sun don't care about armor. I miss, but the fusion reaction superheats his riot shield and he drops it, and I guess he would've sworn in pain but he's too busy getting shot in the face.
Lots of Warlocks talk a big game about what truth is and how Light is the pen to draw out the truths of the Golden ages. Here's my Truth: a man-portable missile launcher that true-seeks aimed targets. I offer Kant's theory of truth (agreement of cognition with its object) to a cluster of Psions unfortunate enough to come charging out of the same side-tunnel and Hegel's definition of truth (an external, self-moving object, though admittedly one that doesn't detonate on impact) to a Colossus trying to draw down a bead on me, and break for Socrates as I shove two more missiles down the tube.











