"Taiki, what's your current status?" Zavala asks.
"We've reached the inside of the keep!" Taiki replies. "But you're breaking up on me Zavala. I don't think we can keep in contact if we go any further in."
"Understood. Going dark, stay safe in there." Zavala says before the comms cut out, leaving Taiki, Spe-7 and Suzuka on their own to find Eris. There they find that the light is suffocated by darkness as something weighs down on them.
"What the...?" Suzuka mutters as she finds it hard to stand straight. "This is... Much heavier than the other times... It's almost like somebody tied me to a tire..."
"I'm scared..." Spe-7 whimpers as she gently clings to Taiki's arm. The exo uses his free hand to aim the Ace of Spades, ready to shoot whatever comes their way, and Suzuka brings out her cabal gun, covering their rear. That's when they see what they think is a thrall up ahead. "Huh?!" The thrall doesn't even notice them as it rushes off, but much to their horror the thrall seems to vanish into thin air, like it was a ghost.
"What was that?" Ghost asks, not sure of what he just saw.
"...Your guess is as good as mine..." Taiki replies as they continue to head further down. Suddenly, Suzuka rushes over to Taiki, hugging him tight. "Huh?! Suzuka?!"
"What was that?!" Suzuka asks. "I just saw it out of the corner of my eye... It looked like... A guardian, but it wasn't... It was red and it was floating like it was dead..." It's then that Taiki and Spe-7 also see what Suzuka saw earlier, and they hurriedly take a step back- and then it vanishes.
"Something's not right here..." Ghost says. "But we have to keep going, to find Eris." The three continue on, finding that it's so dark that they can't even see each other, forcing their ghosts to come out to bring some light.
"It's so dark here... I don't want to lose you two in this... Place." Taiki says, and Suzuka slowly grabs his hand. "I've never felt... This close to the darkness since Crota." Suddenly a red mist appears before them and it begins to warp, shaping into a group of thralls! "What the?!"
"They just materialized out of thin air!" Spe-7 shouts as she blasts the group of thralls with her shotgun. Instead of dying like an actual thrall these ones simply dissipate back into the red mist from whence they were formed.
"That was an energy reading that I've never gotten before." Fang says. "More incoming!" And just like that more thralls appear out of the strange mist, having even more tenacity and ferocity than their living counterparts. Fortunately they're not as strong as all it takes are a few wild punches and kicks from Taiki and Suzuka, and they press onward.
"I've never seen anything like it before... Are these... Ghosts?" Ghost asks.
"Not sure if I want to know... I'm hoping that Eris is down here somewhere..." Taiki mumbles as the three finally see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. As they head out though, they see something that doesn't belong on the moon- it's gigantic, it's black and it's shaped like a pyramid.
"What... Is that?" Suzuka asks.
"That should not belong here..." Ghost mumbles and suddenly the air feels even heavier than normal, With Suzuka and Spe-7 struggling to move forward, and Taiki is forced to fall back and help them advance.
"It feels like I'm walking through mud..." Spe-7 says, struggling to lift her feet.
"Am I stuck?" Suzuka asks as Taiki helps them advance through the sudden pressure.
"What the...?! Something's trying to invade my light!" Twinkle calls out as the three guardians manage to jump down to a platform, and the heaviness of the air seems to dissipate. "Do you think Eris might have gone inside there?"
"I hope not." Taiki mumbles as they continue on the platform. They reach more solid ground, but just up ahead is a strange mass of red tendrils. It almost looks like an amalgamation of ghosts, and Spe-7 refuses to move forward.
"I'm not going anywhere near that... Thing." Spe-7 says, and Suzuka also stays back.
"I'll check it out then." Taiki replies.
"Be careful." Suzuka says as Taiki slowly brings out his sword and carefully walks up to the strange mass of tendrils and ghosts. He's only a few feet away from it when the mass suddenly starts transforming, blinding Taiki and knocking him to the ground while Spe-7 and Suzuka shield each others' eyes. When the light finally dissipates, the equine guardians scream and Taiki looks in horror.
"No... IMPOSSIBLE!" Taiki screams. "YOU- YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD CROTA! I KILLED YOU!" The gigantic hive deity known as Crota doesn't even talk, instead it only swings with it's sword, nearly bisecting the exo had he not dodged. The equine guardians immediately unleash their energy, hitting Crota with a nova punch and jabbing at him with an arc spear, but once their energies expire Crota turns red and tendrils begin to emerge from his body.
"What?! I thought that would kill him!" Spe-7 shouts, and from the looks of it, Crota appears to be regenerating.
"How are we going to beat him?!" Suzuka asks, but any further questions get cut off as Crota drives his sword into the ground and two more masses emerge, taking on the form of Ghaul and Fikrul.
"We can't win this! We have to get out of here right now!" Taiki shouts, and suddenly, a voice begins to bellow throughout the entire battlefield.
"COME! WITH! ME!" The voice shouts out before it begins chanting. Before the trio knows it they find themselves feeling lighter than air and their vision blacks out.
YOU ARE READING
Destiny 2: A Lost Soul
FanfictionTaiki and the equine guardians may have survived the Red War and defeated Ghaul, but as time goes on so does the rest of the world. With the darkness advancing on the traveler's location since it woke up, and with new people in the fray that aren't...
