Fragment: At Dawn (April writing prompt for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
nexus_crossings)
Apr. 30th, 2016 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rekindledtitanThis is an updated version of the prompt originally written to follow the Equinox Event/Battle for Spring in the Nexus.
The Warlock wouldn’t give her co-ordinates. Just a name and time.
So.
Mercury. Dawn. Her ship a spark racing down the terminator line between retreating night and oncoming sun. Shield systems complained about the temperature differential; solar furnace on port and inky void to starboard.
The Traveler had changed almost everything about this tiny world, given it unnatural gravity, atmosphere, fertile soil. Transformed it from a ball of iron to a tiny glowing paradise, before the Vex froze it back into sun-scorched metal. One thing that never changed was the rotation period. When one day lasted a couple of Terran months, you knew the dawn would wait for you.
They flew through a sea of comm ghosts, Vex signals whispering to one another from floating fortresses, plucking at the dimly-sensed trespasser above them. Maybe the signals were Vex.
Ulysses had warned them. To listen too closely was to invite infection. But her Ghost could sift them, with care. They scrubbed their comms and ran on with shielded ears.
They decided they’d found it when the echoing signals and sensor flickers went quiet. Blaze cut their thrust, brought the ship around. It was a pocket of silence in the Vex architecture. A hall as jumbled and irregular as the rest. But this one was marked out by Light: a scar in the unbroken machinations of the Vex world.
They went down, of course.
She knew it for an arena the moment her boots crunched down on glass-swept stone. The echoes of furious Light surrounded them, a hundred thousand outbursts marring the peculiar resonances of Vex energies. Then, the architecture was perfect for it: just the kind of interconnecting passageways and sneaky ledges and disorienting vantages Shaxx would love to challenge them with. She walked beneath brilliant guide beams, through circular vaults and seemingly-disordered halls. Found them all empty. Kept walking.
She came out onto a courtyard, the far side a cliff open to the rising sun. The light was just breaking over the eastern horizon; she could feel the coronal radiation already showering her detectors. This close to the surface they were sheltered from the worst, but their time was short.
//
//Yeah. Vex? Why aren’t they attacking already?//
//
At the cliff edge was a low platform. She strode up the steps, kicking up glass sprays. Her sweeping optics took in the carvings beneath her feet: the interlocking arcs and rays. But the Light called her attention to what waited at the center.
It was… almost invisible. A twist in the air above a dark well. The memory of fire beyond comprehension. She lifted a hand, reaching for it, entranced, but it was only an echo. An undying ember, waiting to be kindled. She could feel its demand. Expectation. It called to her, but it was maddeningly faint.
//Getting the feeling someone hasn’t told us something…// she muttered without thinking.
//
//Maybe it needs a reason to wake.//
//
//Don’t know, yet.// She lifted her gaze to the sun, the silent spires rising from the plain below her. //Bet we can find out.//
Easier said than acted on. Elder Guardians spoke of the Light as something with a will and purpose, something to be communed with. A source of guidance. Blaze had accepted that, though she didn’t know how much was metaphor. Light might come from the Traveler, but that was long asleep. She’d felt the visceral malevolence of the Darkness’s presence and believed in that. She’d felt something in her bristle and surge with something like strange joy when she fought- though as for how much of that was her own feeling and how much the instincts that came with her new nature, she didn’t know. Rarely had she felt anything that felt like the touch of something other.
Until the battle against Reynard. Until she’d wanted desperately to burn - and for a moment had, before it was lost in sparks and the Winter spirit’s wrath. The Light had changed for her. She hadn’t even thought a Titan could call Solar fire, and yet it answered.
So now she tried to call it again. She reached out to cup her hands around it, stared down into the glimmer of a wisp amid the ambient solar glow that surrounded her. She tried, though she barely knew how, to commune. She tried to reach for it the way she would for the Arc, but it felt remote and heedless of her. The only sparks that came dancing over her gauntlets were snapping and blue-white.
Frustrated, she finally drew away and took a good look at the architecture behind her. There had to be some way this place fit together. For a while more she explored it, but the key to it all eluded her.
//
//The Sunsinger must know more.// But she wanted to uncover the answers for herself. //We’ll keep exploring. As long as we can.//
//
//Then, if we have to- we will return.//
The Warlock wouldn’t give her co-ordinates. Just a name and time.
So.
Mercury. Dawn. Her ship a spark racing down the terminator line between retreating night and oncoming sun. Shield systems complained about the temperature differential; solar furnace on port and inky void to starboard.
The Traveler had changed almost everything about this tiny world, given it unnatural gravity, atmosphere, fertile soil. Transformed it from a ball of iron to a tiny glowing paradise, before the Vex froze it back into sun-scorched metal. One thing that never changed was the rotation period. When one day lasted a couple of Terran months, you knew the dawn would wait for you.
They flew through a sea of comm ghosts, Vex signals whispering to one another from floating fortresses, plucking at the dimly-sensed trespasser above them. Maybe the signals were Vex.
Ulysses had warned them. To listen too closely was to invite infection. But her Ghost could sift them, with care. They scrubbed their comms and ran on with shielded ears.
They decided they’d found it when the echoing signals and sensor flickers went quiet. Blaze cut their thrust, brought the ship around. It was a pocket of silence in the Vex architecture. A hall as jumbled and irregular as the rest. But this one was marked out by Light: a scar in the unbroken machinations of the Vex world.
They went down, of course.
She knew it for an arena the moment her boots crunched down on glass-swept stone. The echoes of furious Light surrounded them, a hundred thousand outbursts marring the peculiar resonances of Vex energies. Then, the architecture was perfect for it: just the kind of interconnecting passageways and sneaky ledges and disorienting vantages Shaxx would love to challenge them with. She walked beneath brilliant guide beams, through circular vaults and seemingly-disordered halls. Found them all empty. Kept walking.
She came out onto a courtyard, the far side a cliff open to the rising sun. The light was just breaking over the eastern horizon; she could feel the coronal radiation already showering her detectors. This close to the surface they were sheltered from the worst, but their time was short.
//
Do you get the feeling we’re being watched?// //Yeah. Vex? Why aren’t they attacking already?//
//
I don’t know. They must know we’re here.// At the cliff edge was a low platform. She strode up the steps, kicking up glass sprays. Her sweeping optics took in the carvings beneath her feet: the interlocking arcs and rays. But the Light called her attention to what waited at the center.
It was… almost invisible. A twist in the air above a dark well. The memory of fire beyond comprehension. She lifted a hand, reaching for it, entranced, but it was only an echo. An undying ember, waiting to be kindled. She could feel its demand. Expectation. It called to her, but it was maddeningly faint.
//Getting the feeling someone hasn’t told us something…// she muttered without thinking.
//
It’s an incredibly powerful source of Solar Light- I think it’s connected to the sun itself. But it seems to be dormant.// //Maybe it needs a reason to wake.//
//
What kind of reason?// //Don’t know, yet.// She lifted her gaze to the sun, the silent spires rising from the plain below her. //Bet we can find out.//
Easier said than acted on. Elder Guardians spoke of the Light as something with a will and purpose, something to be communed with. A source of guidance. Blaze had accepted that, though she didn’t know how much was metaphor. Light might come from the Traveler, but that was long asleep. She’d felt the visceral malevolence of the Darkness’s presence and believed in that. She’d felt something in her bristle and surge with something like strange joy when she fought- though as for how much of that was her own feeling and how much the instincts that came with her new nature, she didn’t know. Rarely had she felt anything that felt like the touch of something other.
Until the battle against Reynard. Until she’d wanted desperately to burn - and for a moment had, before it was lost in sparks and the Winter spirit’s wrath. The Light had changed for her. She hadn’t even thought a Titan could call Solar fire, and yet it answered.
So now she tried to call it again. She reached out to cup her hands around it, stared down into the glimmer of a wisp amid the ambient solar glow that surrounded her. She tried, though she barely knew how, to commune. She tried to reach for it the way she would for the Arc, but it felt remote and heedless of her. The only sparks that came dancing over her gauntlets were snapping and blue-white.
Frustrated, she finally drew away and took a good look at the architecture behind her. There had to be some way this place fit together. For a while more she explored it, but the key to it all eluded her.
//
The mechanism built into the architecture here… do they feel incomplete to you? I don’t think the Vex built all of this.// //The Sunsinger must know more.// But she wanted to uncover the answers for herself. //We’ll keep exploring. As long as we can.//
//
And what then?// //Then, if we have to- we will return.//
