You've Got Time ( a Destiny Story)

Run In Place

Time out, let's stop and think this through
We've all got better things to do
Then talk in circles, run in place
Answers inches from our face

Behind Closed Doors - Rise Against

-

It's not as if the Battle of Twilight Gap came without warning. We knew something was coming. The Fallen houses had been gathering troops for weeks. Attacks on our outposts had increased in frequency and strength.

It's not as if the City wasn't prepared for an assault. Our best and newest technology sat on the walls, right next to the old Dark Age hard-hitters that had seen the us through the years after Six Fronts. The walls were strong.

We weren't ready. The Guardians weren't ready. There had been decades of relative peace. It had been centuries since Six Fronts. How many Warlocks hadn't left the City for years? How many Titans had only fought in small engagements? How many Hunters hadn't fought alongside other people at all?

Nothing attacked the City directly in those days. There were easier targets to try or other enemies to deal with first. The Fallen had never given up their hunt for their Great Machine, though. Perhaps they were waiting for us to grow complacent. Perhaps they just needed the right leaders with the right amount of pragmaticism to allow for cooperation. Perhaps they just reached the point where they thought they could do it logistically. With our new allies in the Reef and our research into the Eliksni language, we may actually know someday.

What we do know now, is that in the April after a particularly warm (southern hemisphere) summer, Houses Devils, Kings, Winter, and Wolves gathered together in an unprecedented show of cooperation and force. They launched a desperate, ruthless attack on the City walls. The House of Wolves was intercepted by the Awoken of the Reef, but the other three would be enough to sack the City, once and for all.

Or they would have been, if not for a few brave souls who rallied at key moments. The stories will be told for centuries to come. The scouts who stopped the House of Winter's early flanking maneuver. The two Firebreak commanders and their sortie to recover the northern passes. Lord Shaxx and his desperate attempt to hold the line, and his counterattack that broke the back of the enemy.

In this book, we will examine the full course and history of the Gap, from its root causes, to the buildup, to the events of-

Azra closed the book with a sigh.

-

April 21, 2871, 07:01

It was five days into the Battle of Twilight Gap (as it would come to be known later), and Azra Jax didn't know what to do.

It was quickly becoming obvious why all of the more senior Hunters had rushed into the field the moment the Fallen reached the walls. She was too new, they said, (though she had nearly three years under her belt at this point). She'd lag behind on the ground. Alaia Ruse has given her a sniper rifle and directed her to the northern perimeter.

Azra knew now why the Hunter Vanguard looked apologetic. The wall was no place for a Hunter. She fought and fought and fought, but there seemed to be no end to the Fallen that held the mountains around the Last City. The gun emplacements fired near-constantly, trying to take out Fallen artillery that was always on the move, creating a perpetual backdrop of thunder. There wasn't one quiet place between Gheleon's Watch and the North Gate. Azra slept (when she could) on the wall, and ate on the wall, and spent long hours staring down a sniper rifle on the wall, trying to account for the tremors of the anti-aircraft guns.

Two days ago, she'd gone with a group to repel a House of Kings spearhead. They'd almost been overrun. Now her sidearm was a twisted hunk of metal and her armor was torn in several places. Her hands shook and her ears rang, despite Spark's repeated reconstruction of her cochleae. She didn't know how Titans could live in this universe of battle, just sitting and waiting as the enemy attacked again and again. Darkness weighed on her like heavy chains.