Guardian
a Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 39: Into the Mouth of Hell
The question had been percolating in the back of her mind after the ambush on the eighteenth floor. It had followed her down each flight of stairs, after the rasp of each overly-careful step. Where the hell was all the enemy? The near-endless hordes, the virtual tides of screamers, the booming thunder of the big ones? It wasn't the silence or the growing heat that was ratcheting up the tension in her team. It was not knowing. Expecting an attack on every floor and not getting it. It was the blood and the stench of death and the not fucking knowing.
It almost came as a relief, then, to reach the lobby. If only for the sense of progress. They'd set up inside the door. Taylor had her rifle, a short lever-action of red, brown and gray, held in a tight grip. She was on the left side of the door. Foil had her crossbow, and had pressed herself to the wall on the right. Grace stood right in front of the door, barehanded.
This seeming absence of concern sharpened Taylor's whisper into a hiss. " The hell are you doing?! Get behind me! "
Grace did not. She waved her hands at Taylor. " Trust me, I'll be fine. They won't see me until I want them to. "
She wanted to object. Make the argument that maybe the enemy were somehow able to see through whatever it was that made Grace hard to see. Then she remembered how Grace got her powers in the first place. She still didn't like it. To the point where it almost hurt to whisper, " Fine, but you vanish before we open the door. Got it? "
Grace smiled at her, tight and humorless. " Got it. Don't worry, I got this ."
Taylor didn't think she'd worried this much in her life, and they hadn't even gotten to the bad part yet. She took a deep breath, then nodded. She saw her team settle in. " On three. " Foil nodded. Grace wavered slightly, like a mirage, then disappeared from every one of Taylor's senses. " One. Two. Three! "
On three, Taylor strode forward and turned to face the door. Her cloak swirled out behind her as she mustered all of her strength and planted her boot in the middle of the solid, wood-and-metal door. It tore free of its hinges, fragments of screws flying like shrapnel through the air, and soared into the room. The instant the door cleared its frame, a watermelon sized ball of plasma hit her in the chest and exploded.
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Her world swam back into focus, accompanied by the smell of smoke and foul, burning something in addition to the high-pitched whine of her destroyed hearing. Seconds passed, and her sight cleared enough to see Foil empty a bolt canister into the lobby. Each fired dart had the unearthly black glow of being touched by her power. There was an angry red burn down one cheek, and a snarl contorted her lips.
The moment of deafness passed, and her hearing came back in a roar of incoming plasma and the atonal bellow of the enemy. She groped for her rifle, finding it lodged beneath her and twisted to pull it free. After that effort, it was easy to haul herself into cover and slump against the wall.
Foil ducked back to reload and saw that Taylor had moved. "You okay?!" She was shouting, almost screaming, but there was no need for silence anymore. The cat was well and truly out of the bag.
Taylor nodded and waved. Then she grit her teeth and heaved herself to her feet. The pain was extraordinary. Worse than anything she'd felt since reaching Vegas. Her skin unburning itself, broken ribs stitching back together, it was...bad. The muscles in her jaw flexed as she worked the lever on her rifle.
Breathe.
She did. Short, hissing breaths. Bracing breaths. She waited for the incoming fire to lull and, when it didn't, spun into the open frame.
The lobby was destroyed. Every piece of furniture was shattered and cleared out. They couldn't advance from cover to cover because there was none. Further, the empty space wasn't so empty. It was crammed to bursting with the enemy. More than she'd ever seen in one place and they were, to a one, facing their direction. Even as she fired, working the rifle's lever as fast as she could and killing with every shot, she counted.
Fifty screamers. Twenty five and dwindling shooters. Another twenty five big shooters and twenty five big blades. Her rifle clicked dry and she ducked back as a blast of plasma scorched by, close enough to singe her eyebrows. "Where's Grace?!" she shouted over the roar of battle.
"In the room!" Foil screamed back. Then she ducked into frame to fire. The arms of her auto-crossbow worked in a blur of back-and-forth as they spat black, physics-ignoring bolts into the enemy. "She's on the radio!"
As she fed bullets into her rifle, Taylor called, "Grace! Talk to me!"
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Grace didn't respond.
Taylor slid the last bullet home, worked the lever, and waited for Foil to run out of bolts. A quartet of plasma comets, so close together as to look like one big one, scorched a furrow in Foil's hair as it passed overhead to detonate on the back wall. Heat washed over them, dry and nearly unbearable, but not harmful. Foil howled, a stream of vulgarity spilling from her lips, and ducked back into cover. She looked to Taylor. "Go!"
She went, spinning into the open door frame and dropping to a knee. As she dropped she fired and worked the lever, fired and worked the lever. Two shots, two kills. The first shot hit a screamer in its gaping maw and tore the back of its head off. The second hit a shooter's gun arm just as it was about to discharge. That was when Taylor found out what happened when that happened. The explosion vaporized the shooter and turned the half dozen screamers around it to charred, carbonized skeletons. The big blade nearby had its trio of eyes burned away. The pain and the rage drove it mad and it was bellowing loud enough to rattle her bones. It went berserk, striking all around it with blade and huge, clawed hand.
"Do that again!" came Grace's voice in her ear.
" Grace?! " Taylor growled as she tracked the big blade's flailing charge across the room, waiting until it closed on a pair of shooters flanked by six screamers. When it did, she put a bullet where the ear would be on a human being. It stumbled, maybe not dead, and plowed the eight smaller enemies into the ground. The pile began to convulse, as if they had suddenly turned on each other and were fighting. " What are you doing?! Get out of there! "
Grace didn't respond again. Taylor wondered what the purpose of such incredible radios was if one-third of her team didn't use it . If they survived this, she would be having words with Grace. Strong ones.
She overcharged her next shots with Light, each one becoming a lance of spinning solar power. A brilliantly glowing dot, trailed by flame, that exploded magnificently on contact. With that, she ducked back into cover, calling to Foil, "You're up!"
As if she had been waiting for it, Foil turned into a firing position and commenced shooting. Black-hued death flew into the room, reaping a considerable amount of casualties before their imbuing faded.
While she reloaded Taylor chanced a peek at the enemy's numbers. What she saw was encouraging. There were still a considerable number of them, no mistake, but the number of shooters were dwindling, and they were the big problem right now. She and Foil were working on that, Grace was in there doing...something. They could do this.
That was when the floor – all of it – rumbled.
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It was a curious thing, that rumbling. Both sound and sensation. The sound – like the enraged snarl of a mountain. The sensation – like an extremely localized earthquake. The false marble tiles of the lobby floor cracked and rattled. Loose tufts of stone shook violently. And – maybe she was imagining it, but...there was a direction to the sound. Or a kind of motion. It started across the lobby, near the far wall, and ended not far from the staircase door.
"What was that?" Grace asked.
The enemy had stopped. Moving, fighting, and if she wasn't paying extremely close attention to them she'd swear they'd stopped breathing. Stillness. A lead ball settled in Taylor's stomach. She remembered the sewers back home, and the giant that had awaited her at the very bottom. Knowing she was too late, she screamed, "Get out of there!" and started to move. She didn't know what she was going to do, but she had to do something.
The floor collapsed.
It buckled up, the inflexible floor turned flexible by overwhelming force. Screamers lost their footing by the dozen and slid, like sluicing water, in every direction. Shooters, the six left living, followed. The big ones, blades and shooters, managed with more grace, but they still came crashing down onto the pile of their smaller compatriots. The entire building shook, and the sound of shattering glass came distantly.
Then came the inverse. The dome fell around some thing as it rose into the destroyed lobby. As it stood the debris of its entry dripped away, falling like water from a breaching whale. It was revealed in all its terrible glory, and Taylor was disheartened – to say the least – to learn that she had been right. This was another of the protector giants. This one was different. If she had to guess why, she'd say it was more developed. It stood taller, more upright in its posture. Its fetid, weeping pus cluster of eyes had been covered by a filmy skin material. Bone protruded from its shoulders, elbows, and knees like armor plates. It skull had a more human shape, and when it roared, it did so with a human-like mouth. It was considerably taller, to boot, its head scraping the tall ceilings while still half in the hole it had created.
Grace said, "God help us."
It wasn't a sentiment Taylor shared. Just as before, when she looked at it, all she could feel was hate. All she wanted was to fight and kill it. Her Light hummed beneath her skin, eager and bright. Her worries fell away, and she bared her teeth. Solar fire curled down her arm to the rifle in her hands, seeping into and infusing it with a furious, orange glow.
"What do we do?" Foil's voice was tight, controlled, but on the verge of dissolving into panic. "Guardian, what do we do?"
Taylor didn't recognize her own voice when she snarled, "Take it out."
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The first of Taylor's Light infused bullets dug into the filmy skin over the giant's eye cluster and smoldered for a moment before winking out. The second one she aimed at its mouth, shattering a number of dripping fangs and shark-like, serrated teeth. It vanished down the gaping maw and, moments later, plumes of smoke issued from around its ruined teeth. Her third went into its elbow. Her hope was to destroy the joint or maybe even tear the arm off entirely, but this giant was even tougher than the one she'd faced. That wasn't to say it did no damage, it did plenty. Tore a great, burning hole in the meaty, cadaver pale skin and sprayed tissue and ichor all around the place.
The giant roared. Though it was less of that and more a wall of sound that exploded away from it and sent a sharp pain stabbing into her ears. After that, she heard nothing, and it took a few seconds to realize her eardrums had just been burst.
Foil followed her example and sent a glittering array of bolts that cut clean through the monster's flesh, leaving surprisingly small wounds to mark their passing. From the way the giant thrashed and swept its arms around, they had definitely left their mark. It then slammed one of its massive hands into the ground, sending tremors through the building, and reached towards their cover with the other.
If it were able to reach them, in this little space that had thus far kept them alive, Taylor suspected their fortunes would quickly turn. That, she couldn't allow. So she turned her aim to the looming palm and set about destroying the joints in the long, tapering claws that passed for fingers. It roared again – her hearing hadn't returned, but she felt the rumble in her chest – but didn't stop. She worked the lever, aimed at base of its palm, pulled the trigger, and – click.
Fuck!
She dropped the rifle and quick-drew her pistol. A spike of pain in her head preceded the muted return of her hearing just in time for her to damage it again by putting six shots in an inch wide cluster right in the center of the base of its palm. She stepped back as she spun the cylinder out and rained spent brass on the floor.
That was when something hit the giant's wrist with enough force to tear the hand clean off. The whatever-it-was had been heralded by a tearing, high-pitched scream that was in no way a natural sound. The meaty rrrip, however, was. The giant recoiled, drawing its stump back and cradling it briefly against its chest. The motion was disturbingly human.
"Best Chinese ninja ever." Grace panted into their radios. "Fuck, that took forever."
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" Grace?! " Disbelief or her partial deafness had Taylor shouting. " What the hell was th – where have you been ?!"
"Is now really the best time to answer that?" Grace asked.
"Fucking – get out of that room, Grace! Now!"
The giant ended their brief conversation by trying to bring the stairwell down on top of them. As a way of flushing her and Foil out, it was brutally elegant. It also worked. A torrential downpour of bricks chased them out into the ruined lobby. Into the ruined lobby with the massed, smaller enemies and the giant.
Shit shit shit shit shit!
Now what?
Her brain spun in the scant seconds of peace and stillness that had followed. It wasn't a lot of time, but then there weren't a lot of options, so as Taylor turned to throw herself into the remaining horde of screamers, shooters, and big ones she drew and ignited her knife before screaming, "Foil, Grace, kill the big one!"
"How?!" Foil screamed back.
Grace answered, appearing for the first time since the battle started, standing about twenty to Foil's left. "Shoot it in the fucking head!"
It went against every instinct she had to turn her back on the giant. Every microsecond she exposed her back to it she spent tensed for the claw to tear her apart. It didn't happen, and she dove into the knot of smaller enemies with a bright blade and a burning gun.
"Shoot it in the head." Foil muttered as Taylor quickly turned her opponents into a cloud of ashes. "Of course."
During the fight that followed she only caught glances as the members of her team killed the giant. It took them about the same amount of time to kill it as it did for her to finish and eventually, for the first time since entering the lobby, silence fell. It was over.
Taylor walked up to the corpse of the giant, reloading her pistol as she did, before sparking solar Light into the weapon and putting three shots into it. This time, the fire caught, and it began to burn without smoke or – thankfully – further stench.
"Holy shit." Grace sounded both incredibly winded and impressed. "We did it. We actually did it."
Foil shook her head tiredly. "All we did was reach the lobby. The mission is," she pointed down the tunnel the giant had come from, created, or both. "down there."
Taylor retrieved her rifle and fed the last bullets into it. She took a deep breath. "Okay. Vanguard-Prime."
The synthesized female voice from earlier spoke, "Vanguard-Prime."
"We've encountered heavy resistance, including one of the giant forms, but are proceeding on mission. Nobody's hurt."
"Roger that, Vanguard-1. Proceed on mission."
"We're on it." Taylor then cued the radio back to her team by saying, "Vanguard-1...let's do this."
And so they proceeded on and down. Into hell itself.
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