Binary Phoenix
“Who, the guy with the red horns? Yeah, we met him. Weird little fella. Never got his name. Wonder where he is now?” -- Attila-5 to Ikora Rey, after the Towerfall event.
Thanks to @sedimentarydearwatson and @ir-anuk for the use of their characters, and thanks to everyone who’s been reading these fics consistently. Please enjoy!
She knew he’d seen it coming by the calm in his voice.
“So it’s this one,” Euclid had murmured, in an idle moment spent lounging in the shade of trees in the Tower courtyard. They spent their recharge periods together frequently, basking in sunlight to allow the solar batteries in their torsos a chance to recharge. Today clouds had blotted out the sky, and the hubbub of activity had made Yarrow suspicious… but not suspicious enough to end one of the precious few breaks they got to go investigating. Euclid had turned to her, given her hand a squeeze, and got to his feet. “We should go.”
“What?” She’d asked, exasperation and amusement playing xylophone with her throat and mouthlights- akin to a dramatic roll of the eyes, which she also performed literally a moment later as she let him haul her to her feet. “Go where?”
“It’s the end of the world,” he’d informed her softly. Questions and disparaging remarks as to the dramatic mystery of his statement bubbled up in her vocalizer, but they were squelched by a resonating thunder out behind the Walls. The clouds broke, and Yarrow’s mouthlights strobed alarm as the Cabal ships roared towards the Tower. She’d heard Euclid hum, curious, and as he tugged her arm and Blinked with her away from the incoming volley of explosive artillery she’d caught one last, passing comment. “A day or so ahead of schedule, too.”
*******
“Of the some two-million simulations I experienced during my sojourn on Venus,” Euclid explained to Yarrow, Jolly, Galatea, and a pair of other Guardians as they tromped through a side-alley, “Approximately forty-seven percent of them involved the destruction of the Tower. Of that forty-seven percent, an impressive half of these ‘Towerfall’ occurrences were perpetrated by Cabal aggressors.” Their group paused at the head of the alley, at Euclid’s behest, and Yarrow’s grip on her Pulse Rifle tightened as a Cabal dropship growled past.
“And you didn’t tell anyone about this because?” Galatea grumbled. “The Vanguard, perhaps?”
“Tell them what? ‘Ah, I th-think the Tower will be attacked, only I can’t tell you when, nor where the assault will originate, nor how, nor whom the perpetrators will be with any degree of certainty’. And that's setting aside explaining to them how-how- er- how I ‘know’ that in the first place!”
“Better to have been prepared for it, at least,” the other Titan traveling with them grumbled.
“To be fair, the Future War Cult has been clamoring about having predicted the fall of the city for decades,” countered the other Warlock.
“Yeah, but those guys are crazy!”
“Quit arguing,” Yarrow snapped at them. “Focus up. We have civilians to exfiltrate.”
They bounded across the street and Yarrow did her best to ignore the battle raging overhead; ships in dogfights, Cabal cruisers spitting drop pods and artillery shells down into the City as something aligned itself to the Traveler. She felt them all watching it in solemn silence, allowing themselves a moment of contemplation.
“What do we think it is?” Jolly asked, unusually quiet.
They all glanced at Euclid, who tilted his head slightly.
“... Well,” he mumbled, picking at his gloves. “I-I don’t know, err, h-how to- I suppose it’s- I mean, m-most likely-“
“It’s okay. Spit it out Euclid,” Yarrow said, patting his back encouragingly. She thought she knew what he was going to say but that didn’t make her feel any better about it.
“It’s m-most likely some sort of, ehh, d-device designed to c-cut us off from the Traveler’s Light.”
The implications made her reel slightly. Was that even possible? How could the Cabal do that? What kind of technology even had that kind of power? The Red Legion was from someplace very far away, indeed, if they had so much ridiculous crap none of them had ever seen before. Everyone else seemed to be speechless as well, until Galatea’s chin rose.
“Our Light is not what makes us Guardians,” she said firmly. “This is still our City. It is still our job to protect it.”
Yarrow almost felt like there had never been a time when this many Guardians had been present in the Last City at once. Shamefully she couldn’t even name the district they were now patrolling; she didn’t know a single civilian that wasn’t employed at the Tower.
The city was seemingly in its death throes, and Yarrow couldn’t help but feel stunned as she witnessed the last gasps of a total stranger.
*******
A Cabal Phalanx’s shield wrenched forcefully from its owners’ hand on a flickering tendril of Void light and careened across the space between two buildings to slam headlong into a Centurion’s jetpack mid-flight. The ensuing ball of fire tumbled down to street level as Galatea and Jolly wheeled out from cover to pepper the defenseless Phalanx trooper with bullets. Euclid flicked his wrist and the sputtering Cabal flew sideways off the roof after its shield.
“Man, when the Cabal say ‘occupation’, they mean it,” Jolly muttered, slapping another clip into her submachine gun. One of the few good things about Shaxx opening up his armory, Euclid reflected, was that Guardians who had appreciation for weapons suddenly had a wide assortment of new toys to enjoy. Like Jolly and Galatea, for example. Jolly had a sidearm at her side and a sniper slung across her back; unfortunately the high-caliber ammunition the sniper required was sparse and hard to come by. Euclid passed her the rest of his ammunition for his submachine gun in exchange for some stray hand cannon ammo she’d come across, and the Awoken Warlock beside him turned with a chuckle to oversee the small caravan of civilians they’d gathered.
“How many of them do you think’ve spent this much time around Guardians before?” He asked, bitterly amused.
“Now now,” Euclid chided mildly as he reloaded his gun. “Not all of us were strangers here, right? I’m, err, s-sure some of us spent quite a b-bit of time in the City.”
The deafening silence from his other five companions made him chuckle uneasily. “… W-well, someone out there m-must have. I mean I’ve heard there are, ah, b-bars and the like that are specifically tailored to Guardians.”
“Anyway,” Galatea interjected. “We’re going to be encountering one of the designated exfiltration zones soon. We should decide who is going and who is staying- we have too many people to fit on one transport.” Euclid patted Yarrow’s shoulder and left the others to figure out their battle-plan- it wasn’t one of his strong suits.
The civilians were wet, tired, and forlorn. Euclid and the other Guardians had been slogging them across the City, up down and around, trying to find an evacuation craft that had not yet departed; he got the impression that it was a long trek for them, but it had only been about a dozen kilometers. Sometimes it was baffling, the differences between Guardians and regular civilians. He supposed it wasn’t their fault; after all, they didn’t have tireless mechanical limbs or armor that injected stimulants into your thigh muscles when you became fatigued, or a Ghost to help your circulatory system cycle unnaturally quickly and efficiently, or-
“M-mister Guardian?”
Euclid did his best not to jerk away as he felt something tug his robes but only half-succeeded, and the instinctive recoil did not seem to do anything for the ardent frown on the face of the child who had been trying to get his attention. He pivoted his body awkwardly to face the small human and crouched down the way he sometimes saw Jolly doing when she encountered a broken shank, to pull it apart for valuables. He was entirely unsure how to handle children; multiple Guardians had explicitly told him that it was probably best he stay away from them whenever possible.
But surely this couldn’t hurt. “How can I help you?”
“I’m tired. Are we gonna make it to the eva-evacliation point soon?”
“The evacuation point,” he corrected gently. “Yes. We are approaching one now. Presuming we arrive and find the exfiltration crews alive and in viable shape, you’ll be loaded onto an outbound transport.”
This did not seem to reassure the child. “But... Where’re we gonna go?”
“I am unsure.” He noted the particularly obvious surprise that blazed a trail across the child’s face. “Standard protocols have not been prepared for a catastrophe of this magnitude, but in similar situations a fallback position- or several- are often set up in designated high-Light-exposure areas outside of dangerous encounter spaces.”
The child was silent, seemingly digesting his words, and Euclid got the feeling many of them had gone over its head. Instead of trying to format an appropriate response it apparently decided to change tack slightly.
“... But you’re not... you’re not scared, right?”
Euclid glanced between the child and the back of Yarrow’s hooded head, wishing now that he had gotten someone else to handle this situation. “Err...” He glanced back at the tiny human and pulled off his helmet, attempting to produce a reassuring smile in his mouthlights that did nothing but gently illuminate the child’s elevated levels of surprise when it realized he was an Exo. “... W-well, of course I am!” He said. “But that doesn’t mean I- oh dear.”
He hurriedly pulled his helmet back onto his head and stood up as the child’s eyes brimmed with tears and it let out a clogged sob, the parents hurrying over firing scathing looks his way as he felt a wash of unease drift over him, and he turned back to the others. He wasn’t sure why, but somehow he knew he’d given the small human the wrong answer.
*****
“FLY FIVE MILES OUT PAST SPLINTERWIND CREEK,” the second Warlock in their group called from the bay of a repurposed cargo transport that was being used to evacuate civilians. “THERE’S A CLEARING OUTSIDE THE RANGE OF CABAL SENSORS WHERE THEY’RE STAGING A SECONDARY FALLBACK POINT.”
“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRIMARY?” Jolly called back, cupping her hands over her mouth to make her voice audible over the thundering roar of the cargo hauler’s engines.
The Warlock shook his head, and Jolly winced. Nearby, Galatea was standing with the other Titan, silent and forehead to forehead, neither Guardian apparently fazed by the proximity of their helmets. It was some small Guardian ritual, but Euclid couldn’t begrudge them the scarce moments taken to perform it. His own anxiety was flaring as civilians were loaded onto the ship.
They’d arrived somewhat late. The hauler had been almost full already when they’d gotten to the LZ, and so only about half the civilians in their complement could be squeezed into the ship, packed in tighter than they probably should have been- but there was no time or room for error to find another ship. The two Guardians they had picked up on their way down from the Tower had elected to go with them, in order to keep them safe; as the other Titan caught the Awoken Warlock’s hand and hauled himself up into the ship the Warlock turned back to them. “BY THE WAY,” he shouted, “WE NEVER GOT YOUR NAMES!”
“SAVE IT FOR WHEN WE MEET BACK UP!” Jolly replied, grinning widely. “I’LL BUY YOU BOTH A DRINK!”
“Naive,” Galatea mumbled as she came back over to stand beside Euclid. Yarrow was busy shepherding civilians back towards the City. They’d gotten the coordinates for the next district’s evacuation points and there was, thankfully, one not that far away. “To assume we will ever see them again.” She watched the bay doors close, and Euclid watched her take her helmet off her head. The faceplate was cracked, deeply enough that the internal mechanisms were undoubtedly fried. As she tossed it aside, the ship lifted into the air; Jolly waved after it emphatically with both hands. Her face was impassive as ever as she watched Jolly’s arms fall to her sides, still watching the ship vanish into the smoke and smog. Galatea’s lips tightened ever-so-slightly at the sight of Jolly’s clenched fists, and she closed her eyes with a soft sigh.
“I’ll get her,” she said. “We should get moving.”
“Everybody’s in a bit of a rough mood, but they’re still hopeful,” Yarrow informed him as Galatea strode off to get Jolly. “I am too, for the record. Aster, you got any hard info on our next destination?”
“Not so far off, all things considered!” Aster unfolded from subspace into view by Yarrow’s head, and the two exchanged a brief glance. Even Euclid could detect the faint strain of anxiety in the Ghost’s voice. “I mean, it’s ah... it’s certainly doable! We made it this far, after all.”
“B-barely,” Euclid mumbled sourly. “Th-there have been several instances in w-which our only, ehh, saving g-grace, as it were, has been luck.”
“We got four strapping Guardians here,” Yarrow said, patting Euclid’s shoulder. “I’d say ‘young’ but I know you’re like a hundred and six, and well, I have no clue how old Galatea is.”
“I’m 129.”
“Whatever. Look.” She nodded to her Ghost, who spun out of view, and turned to look at him as Galatea and Jolly approached. “We’ve had harder challenges. Besides; this is what we put on the boots for. If we’re ever going to come back here and stomp these wrinkly toad-headed monsters, we gotta get as many people out as possible. And we will.” She hefted her rifle on her shoulder and turned to look out at the next district. “Don’t worry, Euclid. We’re going to make it.”
*****
“Not going to make it,” she muttered grimly, emptying another clip in her sidearm into a Cabal’s faceplate. “They’re not going to make it.” She could see Jolly cresting the hill as she and her Titan partner brought up the rear of their group; the other Hunter was struggling with her sidearm, and Yarrow saw her drop her rifle, pick up a stone and slingshot it with a burst of desperate golden fire through the torso of one of the Cabal chasing them. Galatea had a civilian under one arm and a shotgun in the other, perched precariously against the crook of her elbow while she jammed more shells into the gun with an animal snarl on her ordinarily stoic and ethereal face. They were moving fast… but they weren’t moving fast enough.
Behind them, the district’s last transport was loading up. All but five of the civilians they’d been guarding were scrabbling unchallenged into the ship, dirty, weary, and finally nearing the end of their long trek. One LZ after another had turned up dry or overrun; and they just didn’t have the time or the supplies to move into the next district over. Already they’d seen artillery shells fall on the City in other districts, passed Guardian holdouts that lay barren under the unstoppable onward march of the Red Legion. To her side, Yarrow heard Euclid let out a tense huff.
“How you holding up, Screwloose?” She called to him, sticking her sidearm back in her belt and dragging her pulse rifle off her back; she checked the mag with a second’s glance and bitterly wished she had about a thousand more bullets before she positioned it properly in her hand. She glanced over to Euclid, who still had a palm clapped firmly over a wound in his side; his mouthlights strobed discomfort, but he flipped the cylinder on his hand-cannon out.
“I’ve been better,” he admitted, “But this is hardly m-my worst day.” The spent casings in his gun shot out and away, and six new bullets filed neatly into the cylinder in its place seemingly of their own accord; Euclid tipped his head sharply and the cylinder spun with a series of soft clicks before he snapped the gun back to the right and the cylinder clacked back into place. He cocked the hammer and turned back to Yarrow. “We need to help J-jolly and Galatea!”
“Easier said than done! You got enough bullets to hold off the Cabal?”
“I’m, err, down to, uhh, m-maybe sixteen.”
“Triffick.” Yarrow’s eyelights narrowed slightly. “I’m almost fresh out on Pulse Rifle clips. Before long I’m going to be down to Sidearm and not much else.” And that was hardly good for a confrontation like this.
She tensed as a pack of the Cabal’s War Beasts came howling towards them, and saw the two straggling Guardians try to hurry the remaining five civilians they were shepherding towards the dropship behind them. Galatea was still loading her shotgun; Jolly skidded to a halt and spun around to her partner, tearing off to intercept the War Beasts. The foremost animal let out a triumphant shriek and tackled her, sinking its teeth into her elbow.
“CARTER!” Galatea roared, dropping the civilian under her arm to try and bring her shotgun to bear- but it wasn’t going to be fast enough, nor would it have the range necessary to stave off the beasts from where she was. Yarrow saw Galatea’s eyes widen in genuine terror, but she didn’t have the energy left to muster more than a few crackling tendrils of lightning.
“Damn it all,” Yarrow grunted; she dropped her Pulse Rifle and snatched Euclid’s Hand-Cannon out of his grasp, drawing a surprised squawk from her companion. She didn’t have time to ask- the weapon burst into flame, and Yarrow leveled the Golden Gun at the beasts about to rip Carter ‘Jolly’ Jackson to shreds. She fanned the hammer desperately, each fiery burst aimed on instinct, and the six slavering beasts fell in six smoldering heaps. Jolly saluted her with two fingers and sped past a thoroughly relieved Galatea to help herd civilians onto the ship. When she went to hand Euclid back his gun she found him hunched over, fingers digging into the seam at his throat.
“Too quiet,” Euclid hissed, fumbling with the clasps of his helmet. “It’s too quiet, too quiet, too- too-“ a seam at his neck hissed as the Obsidian Mind disconnected from his undersuit, and Yarrow felt his other-sight wash across her as the limiters in his helmet shut off. The sudden swell of Light made her drop the hand-cannon in surprise- she’d never have guessed he still had so much power left in him.
Euclid whipped his helmet off his head and tossed it aside; Jolly scooped it up as she ran past, dropping her empty sidearm and clubbing a Psion aside with the obsidian bucket in her hand. Yarrow’s sidearm was already in her hand to cut down the Psion’s Centurion handler with the fullness of her second-to-last clip. Jolly scrambled aboard the transport and climbed to her feet, waving Galatea aboard after her. She pulled the last civilian into the bay and then clasped Galatea’s gauntlet with both hands, straining to haul the heavily-armored Titan aboard. She turned and called something Yarrow couldn’t hear into the dropship, and the engines began to warm up as people scrambled to find seats and strap in.
A trio of Colossi crested the rise and brought their massive guns to bear on the dropship, and their rockets splashed across the ship’s shields. Euclid cast out his arm and threw a Nova Bomb at the rise; it crashed into the chestplate of the lead Colossus and carved a black hole into the world for a moment- but it shrunk and vanished surprisingly quickly for a vortex created by Euclid. Even with so much Light left in him, he must have been growing tired.
“Yarrow!” Jolly’s voice crackled over her comms and snapped her back into focus. “We got everybody onboard. Grab Euclid and let’s go!”
“If those Cabal take the LZ, they’ll turn the ship into slag!” She snapped back, taking a few potshots from cover to keep the incoming Cabal Legionaries honest. “Make sure everybody’s strapped in and ready to go. We’ll- we’ll figure something out.” She clicked the comm off and clacked her jaw shut in irritation. A streak of fire from a Cabal Legionnaire nearly sheared her helmet in half and she winced and threw her now-smoking hood back. When she reached for her belt to find more ammo, a grenade, a knife, anything- she came up empty.
“We can’t hold the line like this!” Yarrow shouted to Euclid, ducking back behind a chunk of rubble big enough to shield both of them. He dropped down next to her with a peculiar expression of contemplation in his throatlights.
“No,” Euclid murmured, turning for a moment to survey the oncoming tide of Cabal with his other-sight. “… No, we can’t.” The staggering reality of facing death- possibly actually permanent death- for the first time struck them both. She knew that not everybody would make it out of this catastrophe. The fall of the Tower. She’d prepared for the possibility of being one of those who were left behind; it hadn’t occurred to her that Euclid might be there with her. Laughable, in hindsight- as if Euclid would ever willingly leave her behind. He turned his head to look at her, seemingly calculating something. He took her head in both hands, and let their foreheads meet for a brief moment.
“COME ON!!” Jolly screamed to them as the transport’s engines spun up from an idle hum to a dull roar. “WE GOTTA GO NOW!”
“It’s the only way to give them time,” he said, his voice so low she could barely hear it. “You know it is. I h-hope you know- I hope-“
She froze a selection of her non-primary functions, letting her optics blink off, and let herself occupy the moment; her hands came up to clasp his shoulders, fingers digging into the seams of his maroon pauldrons, balling in the odd khaki-and-saffron of his robes. He still smelled like his flowers, even after all this time spent away from Venus. “I know,” she muttered back. She allowed herself a moment of sincerely solemn contemplation. “Me too.”
His mouthlights flickered in relief. “G-good.” There was a brief pause as he collected himself. “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
Yarrow didn’t have time to react as Euclid’s hands darted away from her and he shoved her backwards; she didn’t have time to think or process what was happening, but everything seemed sluggish as she continued to move away, away, away- and she realized he hadn’t shoved her with his hands but rather with his Light, and she was hurtling backwards through the air with arms outstretched. When she collided bodily with Jolly time seemed to snap back to its proper progression as the other Hunter let out a heavy ‘Oof!’ and the two were knocked out of the doorway.
She tumbled like a ragdoll into the bay of the transport and rolled back to her feet. She screamed something verbally and with full-throated lights that lit the inside of her visor for a moment before she was sprinting for the exit- but Galatea caught her around the waist. “Don’t be stupid!” the Titan hissed to her. The bay doors were already closing, civilians strapped uncomfortably into their seats.
“What’s he doing?” Jolly asked, panic in her voice as she clutched Euclid’s helmet in her hands.
“Galatea you have a SECOND to drop me before I-“
“Guys, what’s he doing!?”
“Before you WHAT?!” Galatea bellowed, dropping Yarrow and sweeping her arm around the dropship’s stunned-silent complement. Three Guardians, nearly twenty-seven civilians. “You and I both know that if we put up too hard of a fight, the Cabal will call down an orbital strike! Is that what you want?”
Yarrow’s jaw clacked shut angrily as she pushed herself to her feet. “So we’re just going to abandon him?” She shouted back, nearly chestplate-to-chestplate with the taller Titan. “Just gonna say, ‘Oh well! Guess he did his best!’ and let him cark it while we relax in the exfil transport!?”
“You’d just be going to your death!”
“Who CARES!?” Yarrow roared. Her fists knocked against Galatea’s chestplate but the Titan didn’t so much as flinch. “If we’re gonna lose our Light anyway, I’d rather lose it backing him up than moping in some empty warehouse in the Dead Zone! He needs our help!”
Galatea bared gritted teeth, furrowed her brow, but it wasn’t an expression of anger. “So do they,” She implored quietly, desperately, grabbing Yarrow by the shoulders. “Please. I-“
She was cut off by Jolly, standing at the doorway, who had gasped in horror at something outside- they saw her dart forward, but there was a sudden thunderous boom, an ignition of Light like a small sun that quickly spun into a violent purple vortex, and their argument was forgotten as they watched Euclid erupt with power, a Sunsinger and a Voidwalker at once. Yarrow began to move forward again, standing beside Jolly, but this time it was just to make sure she could see him for as long as possible before the bulkhead doors shuddered closed.
*****
As Yarrow careened backwards towards the dropship, Euclid felt as though he’d torn a piece of his internal mechanisms out and sent them with her. He stood as he watched her slam into Jolly, watched the two of them tumble backwards into the bay of the transport, saw Galatea’s surprise fade from her features as she made eye-contact with him. Or, as close as anybody could get, anyway. He nodded, and her face hardened with the realization of his intention. While Yarrow and Jolly were untangling themselves in the back of the dropship Galatea slammed her palm down on the panel beside the doors, and they began to grind shut as she turned her back on him.
It was more affecting than he had anticipated. Euclid hoped Yarrow would forgive him.
Moments later a Cabal slug rifle blasted his head to a thousand discreet pieces.
Before his body had even touched the ground his Light had warmed, sparked, and ignited; the incredible roar of fire and Solar light momentarily eclipsed that of the dropship’s engines as Euclid’s head reassembled itself and a pyre ignited from his collar, engulfing his head in a solar blaze. He pushed himself up with his hands and then rose off the ground without them, drifting into the air and turning to the oncoming Cabal, who had paused in unusual indecision as Euclid’s Light scoured the rubble around him and melted the chunk of metal he and Yarrow had been hunkered down behind.
He held his breath, hands balled into tight, trembling fists as he let every last drop of Light he had in him surge through his body; the fire cooled, swirled, and then leapt violet, the ball of fire engulfing his head becoming a ghostly wisp as Void Light suddenly replaced the inferno and lifted the Cabal’s front line off the ground- alongside every half-melted piece of detritus and rubble in his immediate vicinity. The Void howled counter-clockwise around him and Euclid’s hands snapped open; the foremost Colossus drifting helplessly in front of him dissolved instantly into its derivative molecular components and scattered into the vortex.
He exhaled, and the vortex resolved once more into a raging clockwise inferno that flash-incinerated the rest of the Cabal’s forward line, sending the rest scrambling for cover. Euclid’s extremities tingled, but he felt no discomfort as he dragged the Sun and the Void out of himself at the same time, battering the Cabal’s forces with blooming waves of heat-then-cold-then-heat-then-cold; it left him hovering above a star-glassed crater that superheated and cracked anew when he exhaled the brilliant Sun, and wept molten-hot molecular dust into the hungry dark whenever he held his breath and the Void swept away gravity like a strong causal tide.
Threshers were yanked into the maelstrom and rent asunder, Cabal vaporized or ripped in half or both, and Euclid screamed soundlessly within the wisp as he felt his armor creak and groan, his robes burning to tatters. When the Cabal’s forces had all either fallen back or perished, and the dropship was airborne, he heard something click and buzz in his ear.
“That’s enough, old friend.”
Constant’s voice swept him out of his trance, and Euclid finally collapsed to the ground at the center of a blighted crater.
His optics had burnt out in the extreme discharge of energy. Lights in his mouth and throat sputtered in imitation of a swallow but only about half of them winked on at all. He sighed, his vocals dim and far away. “They made it,” he said; his voice had reduced to a harsh, crackling whisper.
“They did.” He felt Constant spin out into the physical world beside his head and he instinctually lifted his palm, not quite touching his Ghost, to let his fingers curl partway around the crimson shell. “Thanks to you. You did wonderfully.”
His Light was still thundering in pulses out from the middle of the crater, carrying on in aftershocks, a beacon and a warning all at once. As it ballooned outward and upward Euclid could faintly feel something positioned far overhead. He looked up out of reflex, but he didn’t need to see it to know what it was. “How long?” He asked. “Until their artillery is positioned, I mean.”
“A minute,” Constant said solemnly. He felt his Ghost’s segments whir centimeters from his fingers. “Maybe a little less. Euclid, I just-“ The Ghost paused, turned to survey the smoldering and broken skyline of the City. “… You know, I was searching for you for a very long time,” it told him. “I think I was part of one of the earlier waves to be released out into the world.” It stared up to the Traveler, and the machine that was now surrounding it. “I spent a long time looking for the right person.” It turned back to him, and Euclid felt the warmth of its gaze, his Light painting its lower foresegment tipping up in approximate expression of pride. “You are more than I could ever have asked for, Guardian.”
Euclid’s remaining lights flickered out a weak smile. “Thank you, Constant,” He murmured. He let his Light’s tendrils pull back, crossed his ankles, and let his hands rest on his knees. For a moment- just one more moment- he let his other-sight branch outward, taking in as much as he could, and thought of Venus. He imagined the white sand and dark stones in the back room behind his living quarters in a secret part of the Ishtar Academy, the smell of damp stone and old metal, all his maps and books…
“A garden,” he whispered to Constant. “Don’t you think? I think a garden.”
“Yes,” Constant replied, vanishing in a final whisper of molecular translocation. The first sound Euclid had ever heard. “I think so.”
Euclid withdrew. “A beautiful garden.”
The artillery shells fell from sub-orbit and razed the district. Inside the dropship, with both of her hands pressed to the bulkhead, Yarrow felt the swelling pulses of Void and Solar Light gutter and vanish.
*****
"Sight for sore eyes, as they say," Kass calls as the doors to the dropship peel aside to reveal its complement of haggard Guardians and frightened civilians. The presence of Yarrow-15, if not also Jolly and her towering partner Galatea, puts a brass smile on Kass's face. A fighting chance.
She realizes something is off moments later and cranes her neck and also the greedy tendrils of her Void Light, searching for the familiar, eager response and the pair of crimson horns that are never far behind Yarrow in a situation like this. The smile flickers. She notices, now, in the dim, disquiet reaction to her greeting; Jolly's head in her hands, elbows on her knees; Galatea's curt nod (Given, not that unusual- but the grimace on her oft-impassive face is); and Yarrow's strange, stiff spine, the clenched fist at her right side and the familiar black helmet gripped tight at her left.
"Euclid?" She asks, smile altogether gone now. She forces herself out of her stance to step to one side, an artificial performance of an act that tells her something she already knows. Jolly lets out a clenched sigh from behind her hands.
Yarrow shakes her head, jaw tight, mouthlights dead.
