A/N: WE'RE BACK BABYYY!!!! I AM ALIVE! (At least I think so). Anyhow, I was very sick for the past few weeks. Feeling much better now, so back to the grind. Regardless, LEAVE A REVIEW! AND THROW SOME STONES!
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[Core Galleries, Hellmouth]
Omnigul's fog rose like a tide; it crept over stone and chain, curled around the kneeling Knights, climbed the Wizard's robes and buried thousands of Acolytes face-down in their own reverence.
The chamber darkened a shade at a time until the crystal's wretched green hue was the only colour left.
As the fog filled the room. One Knight's eyes gleamed.
Its shell sat a tone paler than the rest—too clean at the seams, too still. When the fog reached it, the helm tilted a fraction toward Omnigul's back. The Witch hovered at the edge of the dais, searching the air with her head cocked, attention fixed outward, hunting the thing that had just struck her walls.
The pale Knight did not move again. It did not need to.
Void watched through it and measured the distance from the door to the crystal.
Crota's presence bled from the seal like a gelid chill, akin to an infection from a wound—no sound, only pressure, ominous and wrong. It reached for him, beckoned him closer, the way deep tides do for a body that falls in.
One step over the threshold and Void knew where he would wake: in the Prince's throne world, on ground that belonged to ruin. In a world that answered only to Crota, in a world where he was at the worldbreaker's mercy.
Void heaved a sharp breath; his bones shuddered as he snapped out of his own thoughts.
His eyes flicked towards the walls. Omnigul still hovered above the legions of Acolytes, searching. Void's muscles tensed; this was his only chance.
He flickered. The Knight's shell emptied; a pale light cracked across the inner balcony and darted as it became a man running. Void turned from the sealed door and bolted towards the galleries that led him upwards.
But the Witch was far too cunning. The subtle sway of the fog alarmed her senses; her head jerked back.
Omnigul had already felt the movement.
She spun, but caught nothing, but she knew she had to give chase. She thrust her palm forward, and the fog clawed at the floor and followed, sluicing back through arches and down long aisles, climbing after him.
Omnigul chased after the trail of fog that had bound itself to Void. She flicked her wrist, and all of Hellmouth began to shift and re-drew itself to her measure.
Void darted through the tunnels as they shivered, rocks trembling, restructuring and changing each passing second.
Long corridors, a breath ago became stairs that led nowhere. Bridges recoiled, stone unrolling from their ends and snapping tight like ligaments reattaching. Void ran from one end to the next as all the roads ahead kept changing.
He ran until the shaft mouths narrowed and then opened in new places. Void ran across a ledge and watched the ledge change its mind beneath his boots.
«Go right!» Zamyr cut in, pale light emanated from Void's figure as it forcefully held the ledge in place for a fraction of a second.
Void sprinted, racing to the right as he jumped into a new tunnel. The fog hit the previous corridor and stalled for the time it took to learn the new turn. But Omnigul flicked her wrist again, and Hellmouth answered.
The very ground Void ran on, and the entire span he had just crossed began to shudder as it pulled back toward the core like a chain being reeled in.
"She's disconnecting the core!" Void said, panting as he ran.
«I got it!» Zamyr replied with a burst of energy, «Don't stop, go!»
The last open corridor ahead of him tried to fold back. Void coiled, springing forth as the floor peeled underneath him; the world hinged; he raced time itself and took three long strides.
Void leapt and looked back as the mouth of the tunnel reeled toward the centre, stone rolling like a serpentine drive drawing everything home.
It all slowed down. The air took him, Void's eyes darted looking for the next step, the next jump, the next turn.
But for an instant, there was no ground, only air; he glided towards the dark. His arms sprawled outwards as Void reached for a jut of rock in the distance, but his fingers scraped and missed.
He jolted, twirling as he fell towards the abyss. Void unsheathed his sword on instinct and deftly drove the blade's edge into a rib. The blade bit and held. The shock ran up his shoulder as he ground his fall to a stop.
Void hung there while the gallery he had just leapt from had unwound itself and became a wall that merged back into the rock. But as the rock settled, he still felt Omnigul's presence closing in. Void cursed under his breath.
He pulled, curled, kicked off, and flickered to the next secure edge of rock as the rib trembled under the Witch's pull. The fog boiled up the shaft a breath later and washed past the place where he had been.
Omnigul shrieked again. The sound shook the rocks around him.
«Hurry left!» Zamyr whispered, « She's lost our trail. Do not let her catch you.»
Void pulled himself up into the new tunnel and sprinted. He felt the fog brewing below, like a storm that had decided to chase only him. But Void didn't look back; He couldn't afford to.
He just ran with all he had.
Omingul's magic kept trying to change the structure of Hellmouth, and at the same time, Void let Zamyr bend the world— Void was running into a maze of tunnels that changed with every step he took, rocks that moulded into archways, gaps that strung into bridges.
But no matter what he changed, no matter how fast he ran, he still felt the presence chasing him down. Void's lungs burned. He was slowing down. What he had done was not enough to lose her.
«We must hide!» Zamyr said, suddenly and with certainty. «Go right!»
Void didn't argue. He slipped inside the low opening and darted to the ends of the new chamber. He flattened himself in the dark and squeezed through the fissures in the wall till the weight in the air changed.
As he kept going, Void felt the hum of Hellmouth grow fainter, as if something had suppressed the noise. He took a breath, braced his back against the wall and fell silent.
Omnigul slid across the entrance of the chamber.
She slowed at the threshold and looked in. Her gaze swept the room and did not enter. For a heartbeat, it felt like she might. Void's jaw clenched as he watched from the narrow opening in the walls.
A heartbeat later, she drifted past.
Void let air out of his lungs in a thin line. He did not move yet.
«She won't stop,» Zamyr said. «We cannot outrun that kind of intent. We must lie low for a while. We'll leave when the Witch can no longer track us down.»
"Agreed," Void said. He let the stillness settle on him until his pulse found its own pace again.
He looked properly at the place they had chosen to borrow.
It wasn't like the rest of the Hellmouth. The walls weren't ribs, and the ceiling wasn't adorned with odd teeth.
The stone had been planed smooth and then etched deep with marks that hadn't dulled even under centuries of breath. Massive pylons stood where pillars should have been, square-cut and black, their faces set with black stone that drank light without reflecting it. At the centre was a dais with nothing on it.
"Where are we?" Void asked, though he already felt the answer in the way his skin tightened.
Zamyr's presence shifted, a fraction heavier. «An old shrine,» he said. «This residue of energy, it's similar to what caged your light when you entered.»
Void's eyes tracked the nearest pylon. Each side bore a different character; One for the throne, and one for the crown. Together they formed a bind. "The Taken King," he said, low.
«Yes.»
"Then why didn't Omnigul enter?"
«Authority,» Zamyr replied. «Not hers. The King's presence still weighs this room. His claim masks you, and it warns her bones. Even angry, she knows not to take a step she cannot finish.»
Void rested his palm on the edge of the dais and felt cold climb into his glove. "Damn, I guess for once we gotta thank that old monster.."
«Temporarily,» Zamyr said, almost dry. «His shadow is thick; it masks you and me. But we must not stay long, lest the King's presence returns.»
Void nodded. He uncurled from the wall and stepped further in.
"Guess we're stuck here for a while." Void heaved a wry sigh of relief.
Zamyr answered. «We are. Best make use of it. Study this shrine and how it affects the place. Perhaps, we can uncover how to break the King's suppression.»
Void moved around the dais and read the inlays without touching them—old Hive script cut to a depth that felt more like chiselling through than drawing on.
The characters in the stone seemed familiar. A language he could understand once he had experienced the visions of the scrolls, and all of them were about hunger made into law. Void kept reading, and characters began to sprawl across the stone, as if aware they were being watched.
Void's finger brushed across the surface, and the runes flashed in his mind. The sensation was familiar to him, and he embraced the pain.
Finally, a vision flashed in his eyes. A vision of Oryx, the Taken King.
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A/N: Thank you all for reading! Hope you enjoyed the chapter.
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