Tunnels of Terror

Crota stood in his Throneworld, waiting for his vessel to appear. He looked upon his sword, The Doombringer, and wanted to carve another rune into it. Such a rune would bring his soul, and by extension his Oversoul, into the realm of Earth. Right on schedule, Ir Yut, approached him. "Speak," boomed the emerald Hive Prince.

"Crota, I bring you good news and bad news," said the Deathsinger.

"Proceed." Crota had no time for games. He wanted to see his father again.

"So first, we were able to send your commanders down to Terra."

"Good! Then proceed with the plan!"

"But, your Hand and Heart were destroyed mere minutes after we summoned them," croaked Ir Yut.

Crota was shocked. He looked at his right hand. 'It's crumbling before my eyes.' He felt it in his chest as well. Long after he stole this world from the Vex and tied it to the Ascendant Plane, he tithed a bond between his corporeal body to 9 Hive, bred from his blood, ages accelerated by his sorcery, and entrusted to keep him stable when he freed himself from his netherrealm and entered Earth's realm. 'My twins are my hand and fist, my triplets: my eyes, my daughter is the heart, my pet is my might, Nazra and his cult feed my blades, and my wife, Omnigul shares my will. I will endure, I must endure!' He turned to look at Ir Yut. "Summon the Fist, and the Blades." Ir Yut floated away, and returned 3 minutes later with Sardon, and the Blades of Crota. "You're about to embark on a dangerous mission," he said to his remaining lieutenants.

"You're not going to try to take Terra again, are you?" Sardon was tired of Crota's games. The Fist wanted to just relax in a fiery Throneworld of his own.

Crota bellowed, "This time, it's foolproof!"

"How so?" asked a skeptical Blade.

"Nazra!" shouted Crota. Nazra, The Sword of Crota, approached his father. Crota kneeled to give Nazra a weapon. "This is a Weapon of Sorrow, the Necrochasm." Nazra took it from Crota, and an Acolyte attached the Necrochasm to Nazra's back. The power of the weapon seeped into Nazra. He growled with satisfaction. "I shall guard your Soulstone, my lord."

"Then go, protect the site with Sardon, bring the foul Terra to its knees, and prepare it for my return."

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Leviathan looked around in the caves below the Cosmodrome, using his Ghost as a flashlight. "See anything, bud?" asked the Titan

"Nothing yet," replied his Ghost, "Except for the fact that you miscalculated where you'd land!"

"Easy, Gabriel. I thought that we'd land in a Fallen pit, not a musky labyrinth."

"Of course you don't think! You fail to mention that my name is Gabriela, NOT Gabriel!" she cried.

"Because you still sound like a man," the Titan scoffed.

"Because YOU still haven't fixed my voice box!" the Ghost quipped.

"I'm not having this conversation again," Leviathan just kept walking down the tunnel, his figure cast an ominous shadow in front of him.

"Then when will we?" she asked again, "You're an Exo, you're good with Ghost mechanics, I've seen you repair a Ghost before. Why can't we do this?"

"Because we're in the middle of-"

"No no no, not here, not right now. In the Tower, when you have all the tools and resources at your fingertips."

Leviathan sighed, "Because you're still a boy, and nothing can change that."

Gabriela angrily breathed, "UGH! Sometimes you make me angry!"

Leviathan gritted his teeth, "And you're still too emotional!"

Up ahead was a large underground room, no sunlight had a chance of entering the space dedicated to the Hive. In the middle of the room was a large crystal, dormant for now, and surrounded by 6 praying Acolytes. Two Knights stood off to the side, Hive swords in their hands, overseeing the ritual. Sardon whispered to Nazra, "What if they find us?"

Nazra shook his head, "Impossible! We're 10 feet underground! No Guardian could ever-!" Then he heard another voice, outside of the lieutenants and the singing Acolytes. Human!? No, it's electrical. Robot!

The Sword of Crota turned around, "Devout followers of Crota and Oryx," he chanted with a loud voice, "we have a tainted guest in our sanctuary!"

Leviathan chuckled, "Your sanctuary? I guess the Hive are as fanatical as they come!"

Sardon gritted his teeth, "YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!" and he launched himself into the Titan, slamming his sword into the ground, quaking the earth beneath it. Leviathan jumped and charged into the Knight with all the Arc Light he could muster, but failed to get a dent into his armor. Sardon made another swing of his sword, cleaving the air in its way. The Titan was launched back into the wall from this reverberation, but got back up quickly and threw a Flashbang Grenade at the Knights, blinding them. He drew his Auto Rifle and fired 20 rounds into Sardon's head, dicing it into pieces.

Nazra roared in rage, he drew his own sword and flew at Leviathan's neck. The Titan raised his hands, palms facing the blade of the sword. When Nazra attempted to strike, Leviathan gripped the sword by the blade and used all of his fists' strength to shatter the blade while keeping it away from his neck. Nazra was thrown back by the force of his exploding sword. The Sword of Crota growled once more and unhinged his own Auto Rifle from his back, bone dry but deadly with acidic bullets. The Knight fired at the Titan without stopping to reload at all. Leviathan ducked behind a rock with his own Auto Rifle and Ghost, parts of his armor scarred from the Knight's Rifle.

Leviathan quickly turned on the comms and said, "Lilli! I need your help! I've fallen into a Hive Death Trap!"

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Max and Lilli ran out of the Complex and back into the Mothyards. The Warlock asked, "Now, where exactly is Leviathan?"

Lilli shrugged, "No clue, but he did fall from Dock 13, so let's start there."

In the distance, Dredgen Yor laid himself in the prone position, aiming a sniper at the pair of Guardians. 'Finally! I can kill these Light-bearers, steal their souls, and sacrifice them to my Lord.' He placed his finger on the trigger, aimed at The Hunter's head, and squeezed.

Lilli looked at the ledge of the Dark Hunter and shouted, "DUCK!"

*VANG!*

Lilli and Max ducked for cover behind a large rock. "WHAT THE HELLMOUTH WAS THAT?" cried Max.

"SHH!" Lilli covered his mouth and whispered, "We need to get out of here! Hold on to my back!"

"What!?"

"Just do it!" She grabbed his arms, wrapped them around her waist, then summoned a hoverbike below her torso, gripped the handles, and sped into the valley to the left. Max held on for dear life while Lilli was shouting, "WOOO HOOO! ISN'T THIS FUN!?"

Max looked like he was about to vomit, "CAN WE SLOW DOWN!?"

"NOT IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!"

Max turned his head to the right and threw up away from the bike. "ok," he said weakly, "i'm good." He later asked, "so who was that back there?

"The Dark Hunter, the one who killed my first mentor."

Max was confused, "Wait, there are Dark Guardians too?"

"Yeah, they all forsake the Traveler, the City, and their people from their lives. But no one knows why."

Lilli revved the engines of the bike, Max gripped Lilli tightly, drawing himself close out of fear, just as they reached a graveyard of rusted ships known as the Forgotten Shore, all the way into a secret area off to the Shore's right which led to the Hive Grottos.

The Hunter aimed her bike at Nazra and charged into his head. The Knight turned to face the hoverbike in shock, awe, and terror, just before his head was cleaved away from his shoulders. Leviathan poked his head from behind a rock melting from acid. "Is it over?" He stood up walked to Lilli and Max, "Wait a minute," the Titan looked sternly at the Warlock, "since when were you dating my girl?"

"Your girl?" Max asked.

"HOLD UP!" Lilli shouted, "Does it look like he and I are dating?"

Leviathan raised an eyebrow, "Your cuddling position on your Sparrow suggests otherwise."

"I told him to hold on! And furthermore, in what way am I your girlfriend!?"

Leviathan gritted his teeth, "Is that how you talk to your leader, missy!?"

Max hopped off the Sparrow and marched over to the Titan, "Ok, sir. You've been nothing but a pain in the ass ever since I arrived here in the Tower, and you've terrorized Lillianna since Traveler-knows-when!"

"5 years!" she added.

"So here's my question to you: Why do it?"

Leviathan stomped over to Max, "Listen, bucko. This is MY team, MY missions, MY rules, and WE do things MY way from now on! Got it?"

"And if I refuse?"

Leviathan picked up the acidic Auto Rifle and aimed it at the Warlock's head, "I'll kill you, Lilli, Jess, and anyone else who stands in my way! Deal?"

Max began to shiver, "D-d-d-deal..."

The Titan smirked and sheathed the Rifle, "Then let's kill some Fallen."

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Almost 4 centuries ago, a Titan by the name of Kabr ventured into a Vex stronghold known as the Vault of Glass, a massive confluence of Time running deep into the core of Venus. No one knows how it ended up there, only that it was both "appearing out of nowhere" and "deeply rooted into Venus's history" at the same time. Such was the purpose of the Vault and the Vex.

Osiris, the Warlock Vanguard preceding Ikora Rey, ordered Kabr and 2 other Guardians to find and destroy the Vault before it could reach into the fabric of Time itself. Praedyth, Kabr's Warlock, spent the previous nights reading Osiris's books on the Vex, including his thesis: "The Nature of Time Travel." The Hunter of Kabr's Fireteam, Pahanin, was busy cleaning his fingernails while Kabr polished his weapons. The next day, Praedyth told his teammates, "I am not too sure about this. What if we get lost in the Vault, or lost in Time?"

"Oh relax, Praedyth," said Kabr, "You worry too much."

Famous last words, Praedyth thought.

And he was right, very right.

They barely got past the main door and the Praetorians guarding it, to begin with. When they passed that, Kabr began to hear voices from the rock tunnels leading to the Templar's Well. If they thought the entrance was a challenge, then they were in for a nasty surprise.

When they reached the Well, the Templar itself appeared and summoned all its yellow Oracles, gyrating cubes that could rewrite your future in an instant. Kabr grabbed one, trying to destroy it, but it felt like water to him, rushing through his mind and bringing back his past, of the Venetian waves coursing past his body as he swam in the ocean, admiring the scenery of a once bright future. "I remember... happy times," he said.

Praedyth, the only Exo, knew better than to touch the Oracle and kept his distance. The Templar still infiltrated his mind and filled it with the secrets of the universe, beyond what his mind could comprehend. "AUGH!" he cried, "It hurts! IT BURNS!"

Pahanin was easily spooked and tried to run away, but 5 headless Fanatics found him and negated him. Praedyth, with his quantum CPU and memory drives melting, attached his circuits to another Oracle, and backed up his entire life into the framework of the Vault. 'I will save the City from this place.'

Kabr, however, slowly transformed into a Vex as centuries passed. His flesh melted into radiolaria, but it didn't leave his bones. Instead, the radiolaria gathered itself inside his rib cage, while a new set of armor grew from the Oracle, enveloping the skeleton inside a suit of armor made from glass and metal. The suit grew larger, as tall as the Well itself, spikes of glass adorned the armor in an orderly manner.

Atheon, Time's Conflux and the Essence of the Vault, was born.