The Solar Terminus

1:5

We then found ourselves deep inside a dark cavern, whose roof was looming far above us. It was a large cavern, spanning onwards down into a cave, cut by a stream that flowed continuously and furiously between rocks as it rambled and babbled down into the darkness. Hall stood proudly on his two feet as Mall perched himself on his Titan's shoulders.

"Is everyone alright?" Hall asked in his deep and commanding voice. "Sound off!"

"Aye. I'm here." Dyan exclaims, pulling himself up as well and holstering his weapon, his own ghost shining a light in front of him.

"Still alive!" Spitter groans. "Sorry guys. That conflux was so hard to decrypt!"

"You got us through, that's all that matters." Hall told her. "Where are we, exactly?"

"Inside the vex network." Spitter answered. "Though exactly where is a complete mystery."

"What does 'where' even mean inside the vex net?" I asked. "When is a lot more accurate of a question."

"Geological scans confirm these rocks match the makeup of what is found on Nessus." Mall confirms.

"Isn't Nessus basically nothing but vex structure though?" Dyan asked.

Spitter floated hurriedly over to him, proceeding to berate his ears with a lesson on all the things her and I had learned about Nessus in all our time here. "Well actually, Hall... the dirt on the surface is in fact a collection of soil deposits and dust pulled in and manipulated by the traveler..." I tuned her out after a second, and I didn't blame Hall if he did the same. Once you got Spitter talking it was pretty hard to stop her, hence her name.

The three of us climbed down the steep hill and followed the flow of the small creek all the way to the bottom, where it fell into a perfectly circular pit. The three of us peered over the edge of the pit, noticing a tunnel far down that looked like it branched off further down a path.

"Well... let's keep going." Dyan commented, sparing no hesitation to jump directly into the pit. Hall and I looked at each other, our ghosts dematerializing, and the two of us followed after him.

Our pathway deeper into the cave seemed to keep going and going, and it didn't take long for us to come across a few stray vex. Dyan lobbed a grenade out of his rifle in between all of them and they exploded without much worry. We took careful steps to avoid the splatter of radiolaria as we walked by.

Continuing on, we stumbled into a larger part of the cavern glowing red with simulated sunlight that bled through a crevice above us. The place was crawling with vex, from goblins to minotaurs, Dyan even pointed out a Hydra he could see all the way in the back of the cavern.

"I'll set up overwatch. You two get in there." I whispered to them, jumping up the sheer wall of the cavern and finding purchase on sufficient footing. "Go on ahead. I'll cover you."

The two of them continued on, and I sat silently watching with my Borealis, tuning it to the void.

The two of them immediately got to work. Hall spared no time running directly into a group of goblins and exploding them with a fistfull of arc light. Dyan followed up behind him by sending another grenade from his rifle directly into the belly of a charging minotaur. I opened fire on a hobgoblin that was about to fire on them, sending parts of its chassis down from its perch high on the opposite side of the chasm. The surrounding vex began to funnel in, all simultaneously pouring in on their position. A few more hobgoblins set their sights on me, the red glare of their charging line rifles giving me their position. I dodged out of the way of their shots, and shrouded myself in the void as a repositioned somewhere they would be unaware of me.

"You gonna handle those Hobbys?" Hall screamed out over the comms, putting up a barrier of light just in time to block a shot directly at the back of Dyan's head.

"I've got 'em." I reassured him, lining up one in my sights.

"About a hundred yards. Half a tick up." Spitter whispered to me.

Without as much as a word of confirmation, I took a deep breath and fired the rifle, shattering another one, the explosion forcing the one next to it to shield itself from the shrapnel. As soon as it raised its head, it was dead too.

"Cover me!" Dyan called out to Hall, moving wide around a large metal pillar that supported the roof. My sights on him disappeared after he didn't come around the other side, but he momentarily reappeared behind a few goblins, where he loaded a few of them full of rounds before kicking one of them into the others. Hall lays his fire into a few remaining goblins that push towards Dyan, who responds in kind by firing a grenade into another minotaur that was rapidly approaching behind his titan friend.

"They work surprisingly well together." Spitter comments as I take a shot at a few vex to thin the herd.

"They're both a lot older than I am. More experienced." I told her, as I loaded a new magazine into my rifle.

"Don't discredit yourself. You're an excellent sniper."

"Only 'cause you're an excellent spotter. C'mon, herd's thinned enough. Let's get down there." I slung my Borealis around my back and unholstered my hand-cannon, jumping off the perch I had found and running in to assist the rest of my fireteam.

My boots hit the Nessus soil hard before I broke into a full sprint towards the rest of my fireteam, getting closer, I launched myself into the air above a group of vex and threw an explosive charge of solar light at them, feeling the shockwave of the explosion behind me as I shot my handcannon at three more that were pushing my the side. As they fell back from the shot, a minotaur ran mercilessly towards me. I waited for just the right moment before unslinging my sniper and shoving the barrel down the minotaur's chest, pulling the trigger and killing it in one high powered shot. Another goblin to my right caught the corner of my vision, I quickly focused my light into a blade and threw it at the oncoming monster, landing a perfect throw directly into the center of its abdomen. I took a deep breath as I looked around for a second, gathering my wits while I checked for more oncoming vex. At least for the moment, there was nothing more.

"Well now you're just showing off." Spitter joked.

"Tell me about it. Those were some nice moves." Dyan laughed, stepped up and patting me on the back. "You've come a long way from me finding your freshly rez'd ass out here."

"I can't sit back and let you two have all the fun." I told him.

Hall chuckled and put his gun to his hip. "You two seem close."

"You wouldn't believe it, man. This guy is hardly even a year old. He came running up to me one day just begging me to take him to the tower. It was great. This dude had no idea what was going on." Dyan proceeded to spill every last detail of our initial encounter all that time ago, and the three of us shared a moment of rest as we continued our way deeper into the cavern, coming up on a vex plate that was seemingly already activated.

"Any idea what this thing does, Spitter?" I asked.

Spitter materialized and floated out from behind my head towards the plate, bobbing around it back and forth and scanning it. "Seems to be a teleporter. It connects to a point deeper down into the cave."

"Well... who wants to go first?" Dyan asked.

Hall chuckled again. "Aren't you the guy that just leaped into a pit with no idea where it went?"

"That was different. It was physical. You never know what you're getting into with these teleporter things."

"Technically none of this is physical." Spitter interpolated. "We're in a simulation. All of this is technically digital."

"Well the vex in here still technically hurt, Spitter."

"He's got you there." I laughed. "I'll go first. I've got some decent experience with vex simulations. I shouldn't get too off-kilter."

"We'll be right behind you." Hall affirmed.

I nodded and pulled Spitter back under my cloak, where she fizzled away, the feeling of her shell in my hand completely vanishing. "Well... see you both on the other side."