The WARSATs struck. Carpet bombing Freehold from one crater edge to the other without pause, each impact erupted into the next in a continuous chain of eruptions that left no ground untouched.
Every combatant still standing was thrown back; Guardians, Cabal soldiers, Vex units, Hive Knights, all of them were swallowed by the same roaring shockwaves. Four walls of fire closed inward from every direction at once, each one feeding the others as they converged, the heat compounding with every metre gained until the air above the crater was no longer air but a ceiling of churning orange pressing downward.
The shockwaves compounded, then rolled across the crater floor in sheets, consuming everything in its path. It passed over the Cabal wreckage, reducing it to rubble; the vex in its path boiled to death, and the hive facing it burned alive.
As the walls of fire closed in, towards the furthest end, all the Guardians ran ahead of it.
Shiro-4 and Sai Mota moved first.
Arc lightning rolled off their figures, and they darted, two thin bolts of lightning jolting from the fire, biting at their heels, racing away from the boiling tremors,
Across the distance, Elsie enveloped herself in a translucent barrier.
And just as it seemed that everything beside her would be consumed and burned to ash, the world greyed.
Time drew a breath and held it.
The eruption's leading edge hung frozen inches from the nearest Guardian, its fire suspended mid-bloom, reaching and reaching and going nowhere. Dust motes hung in the air between, a collapsing shockwave stilled completely, frozen in space and time, akin to a sculpture.
Space rippled.
It stretched outward from a single point, warping like molten glass pulled at both ends, until it tore open a portal. From within its maw, two figures walked into the frozen world.
Ouros clicked her tongue. "We're late."
"Late?" Osiris scoffed. He stepped through without hurrying, his faded golden cowl settling around his shoulders as he moved through the greyed world. He reached out and pushed a Hunter gently away from the eruption's nearest edge; the Hunter's body drifted backwards through the frozen air. "What the hell are you talking about? We're right on time to save them."
"Tsk." Ouros followed him, her Sunbreakers filing through the portal at her back. "You wretched old thing. Admit your mistakes sometimes."
"Never," Osiris spat back with a cackle.
He turned from Ouros and sighed with a shake of his head. Osiris surveyed the field.
His eyes settled on Omnigul first. Her body was held in the stopped time like everything else, but her soul was not; it moved behind her eyes, watching him, aware, calculating. He knew whatever his power held over this moment, it did not hold over her.
The Gatelord was a step beyond Omnigul. It moved even through the frozen time, its lattice energy cycling steadily; its awareness had already oriented towards Osiris with cold patience, as if it now ran endless calculations in its mind.
Finally, Osiris's eyes settled on Elsie.
He looked at her longer than he'd looked at anyone else. Standing unfettered and unharmed against the fire, rifle raised, till she saw him, and her eyes narrowed.
"There are far too many surprises in this crater today," he said quietly.
"Stop the cryptic speak." Ouros moved beside him, great hammer in hand. "All I need to do is prevent that explosion from hitting them, yes?"
Osiris nodded. "Though it may be more complex than it appears, let me form a barr—"
Ouros was already raising the hammer.
"Fight fire with fire, Osiris." She glanced at him sidelong, lips curving. "I'm shocked you haven't heard of it. Old as you are."
"Ouros, don't—"
Light gathered at the hammer's head, and Ouros slammed it down.
Time unfroze.
The eruption surged forward and met Ouros's channelled light head-on; a second detonation rose from the impact and swallowed the first entirely, fire consumed fire in a collision that reduced both to a wide bloom of ash settling harmlessly across the crater floor. The shockwave that followed rattled the Guardians; they were staggered but held their footing.
Time exhaled.
The eruption surged; Tevis raised his arms to block what he could, but just as he'd thought he'd be hit, nothing happened.
Caught off guard, Tevis hesitantly lowered his arms, and his eyes widened.
His gaze found the golden cowl first, then the frayed dark robes and the unmistakable presence he had encountered before. Around him, the other Guardians felt the same, in varying degrees of recognition; some straightened instinctively, some could only stand there, slack-jawed.
Osiris swept his gaze across the assembled Guardians, his eyes evaluating everyone present stringently. He'd long lost his position in the vanguard, but habits died hard.
"Handle the rest," he said, looking to Ouros over his shoulder.
But she hadn't waited for his words and was already moving.
Osiris walked closer to the guardians, then his eyes settled on Pahanin. The silver Hunter stood a few metres away, his clones long since dispersed, his breathing still uneven from the bombing. Osiris looked at him for a fraction of a second; something moved behind his expression, his brows furrowed, and there was a brief flicker of something that sat between recognition and pain.
He pressed two fingers to his temple, shook them off, and turned away.
"So? Where's the so-called Ghostsword?"
"Inside the Vex rift," Tevis said, stepping forward. "Trapped; the exit was destroyed from outside."
"What?"
Levi rushed forward before Tevis finished. "Can you get him out? Can you open another rift?"
Osiris frowned. His brows knit; this was something even he hadn't expected.
Across the crater, Ouros had reached the battlefield.
Rasputin's bombardment had burned through Omnigul's fog, leaving behind wide scorched corridors, leaving her exposed where the strikes had been heaviest. Ouros crossed the open ground fast, her Sunbreakers fanning wide on both flanks.
She charged forward, the heat rolling off her body boiling the very air around her. Ouros raced and drove into Omnigul before the Witch could fully reconstitute her defences. The witch shrieked; her counter spell came half a second too late; Ouros had already reached her, her giant hammer already swinging.
The hammer struck the witch.
Omnigul's arm was crushed away in a cascade of dark energy, her shriek splitting across the crater as her own magic finally hurled Ouros backwards across the stone. Ouros rolled to her feet without stopping and planted the hammer.
She taunted the witch with a cheeky flick of a finger.
Omnigul raged, hanging above the crater, her remaining hand pressed to the wound, her fog contracting rapidly around her. Her eyes crossed the battlefield, sweeping the horizon till she found Osiris.
She was moments away from victory, and yet, his appearance changed everything.
The look she gave him was wretched, but brief. Osiris himself could only cheekily smile in response.
Then, Omnigul turned and rose, pulling her ascendant fog with her as she ascended toward the Tomb Ships above, pulling the two Ogres away with her. Kinox and Voshyr read her retreat without a word exchanged between them; their chains dissolved, their magic retracting, and the two daughters of Crota rose after their mother without looking back at the Guardians they left unchained.
The Hive's ascendant power was gone.
What remained of the Hive army on the crater floor felt the absence immediately; their momentum collapsed, and with the Gatelord unchecked, it drove through the disorder, its lattice barriers snapping shut around Hive units in clusters, overwhelming them.
Eriana and Sai Mota moved through the crater, reviving the guardians that had died. Ouros crossed to where Shaxx and Wei Ning had fallen; both Titans had died immediately after Rasputin's volley of warsats.
The Tomb Ships shuddered above Freehold and began to rise.
One by one, they ascended back through the atmosphere, their shadows shrinking across the crater until the sky above Freehold was its own again; battered, smoke-choked, but no longer dark with chitin hulls. When the last ship cleared the crater's edge, the Hive were gone.
But with no one left to stop the Vex, their armada moved.
The Gatelord turned from the last Hive line and oriented toward the Guardians and the Cabal; its lattice power cycling, the three Vex Minds repositioning behind it in formation. The Vex's full attention again turned against them.
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