Chapter Text
Her Echo barely had time to bark out a warning before the shot penetrated her shoulder.
Hernix dropped to her knees and swore in seven alien tongues as she reloaded her rifle before the pain caught up to her brain. Her sword was the strongest on Fundament, or had not yet found something stronger, anyway, but it wouldn’t be of much use at this range.
Once she was safely behind a rock, her Echo, Season, popped into being in a haze of blue light. She wasted no time in baring her teeth at him and growling, “Thanks for the warning.”
“Sorry I can’t see into the future,” he replied lazily. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Hernix swore again and finished reloading. The fingers on her left arm were beginning to tremble, and the molten fire running down her veins began to spread. Whatever it was, it had punched through her armor without issue, and she’d been too arrogant to keep her shields up. “You know how you can make it up to me?” she asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, and started to scan the open wound. At once, the pain lessened, and by the time Hernix dared open her third eye again, it was mostly gone.
“Thanks,” she grumbled.
Her Echo didn’t have time to respond before another blasted shot rang on the rock above her head, and skidded magnificent into the sky. Hernix ducked a little lower out of instinct, and Season vanished into nothing once again. She felt his presence like sunlight on her mind. She couldn't tell what the shot was made of, but she guessed from the smoking crater left on the rock that it was energy-based.
“Any information?” she asks, her voice a whisper.
“Hard to say,” he said. “I only got a glimpse, but I think they’re Krill.”
Brilliant. Helium Drinkers, maybe, or raiders. What made them think they could challenge a Guardian she didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to wait around to find out.
The sword she had strapped to her back was a fine old thing, but not very good for long-ranged combat. Which was a shame, because her gun – cobbled together from debris from around Fundament – was the inferior weapon by a stretch. She unsheathed it, and considered its unfamiliar weight in her hands as her shields began to recharge.
The firing stopped. Hernix didn’t hesitate, and swung herself around to point her gun at her enemy.
Whoever it was, Season was right – it was Krill. It bared its mouth at her, before a round cut right through its head.
As it fell, four others popped up, apparently under the impression that there was safety in numbers. She grinned wickedly, and fought.
There was not much left of them after that.
She hopped over the rock and made her way towards the remains. She spun the little gun around on her finger and holstered it.
“Smooth,” Season said.
“Thanks,” Hernix said, and laughed lightly. “I didn’t know which one shot my shoulder, so I had to pay them all back five-fold.”
“Absolutely charming,” Season replied. “You should keep in mind, though, that these Krill were after something.”
“Raiders?” Hernix asked. She crouched by on their bodies, and searched it for any sign of allegiance. She didn’t see raiders very often. More often she fought Frames, and she could never feel very badly for their dead.
This was different. She didn’t feel guilty, per se. She did what she had to. Sadness, she realized. These Krill didn’t have to be her enemies. They could have sheltered with them at the Osmium Court, could have partaken in the Sky, as was the heritage of those chosen by the Traveler. Instead, they’d chosen to live like outlaws, stealing what they wanted and meeting their fate on the wrong end of a Guardian. She sighed, and stood up, finding nothing of use on the body.
“Nothing?” Season asked redundantly.
Hernix sighed. “We should head back.”
“I’d wait just a moment on that, if I were you.”
She frowned. “Is something wrong?”
Season hesitated, which was unlike him. Another flash, and he appeared beside her. His eye was narrowed, and he floated out towards the marsh without thought.
“Ho-o-old on,” Hernix said, and edged in front of him. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“I think,” Season said lowly, “that I know what the raiders wanted. And I’m not sure, but I think I know where it is. Trust me?”
Of course she trusted him, but it wasn’t especially difficult to fool an Echo’s sensors. Whatever he thought he saw might be a trap. Still, if it wasn’t for him, she would’ve been dead a hundred times just from stupidity alone, so she thought that she rather owed it to him to provide the same service.
So she stood aside, and approached the marsh alongside him. They were near Fundament’s soupy ocean, now, and Hernix could feel the liquid slop against her armored feet. It would only take a particularly persistent tide to drown this place, and from the looks of it, it had already happened a few times.
“At least let me carry you,” she whispered to Season. They were at the threshold now, and the thick trees, twisted from age and stress, closed in on her at all sides. The Echo shook his head, or his body, and drifted onward. A growl of consternation emerged from her throat, but she continued with him. Carefully, she placed her hand on the hilt of her sword, and felt the Sky that humed within it respond, eager to turn into an inferno.
It helped that there were no enemies here. Not that she was questioning her Echo (except that she was, very much so), but if she were a raider, there wasn’t much here that was worth raiding. She felt the viscous tendrils of the trees curl around her feet, but they gave way as she moved forward, slithering back into their old positions with ease, as if to commiserate with their fellows that they had done their best to trip her, and there was really nothing to be done from there.
Season was suddenly batted back. Hernix’s grip on her sword tightened, but Season instantly shook himself around, and she realized he was surprised.
“What?” she asked.
Season shook again. “Come and see,” he said, and nodded towards a grove that lay just ahead of them.
Hernix entered, and wiped the slimy branches of the surrounding trees off of her helmet with a groan of disgust. She surveyed the area. It was cramped, and filled with the small, tough grasses that one normally found further inland.
“Where?” she asked, hushed. She didn’t know why, but this felt like a place that you whispered in.
Season drifted to the north, and looked back helplessly once he reached a clump of grasses.
“Need me to open it?” she asked, approaching.
“Yes.”
“Is this a request, or a demand?” she asked wryly, but started sifting through the plants before he could give her an earful. Season huffed in annoyance anyways.
Then, she ran her hands over a dead Echo.
All three of her eyes widened. It was cold, and covered in dirt. It had been here for some time.
Correction – not dead. Hernix ran her hand over the smooth surface of the tiny machine, and as she did, she could feel remnants of the Sky still hidden within. This Echo was still alive, but it wouldn’t be for long.
“This is it,” Season confirmed, as if she needed to know. “I thought I could feel it back during the fight, but I wasn’t sure. What happened to it?”
Hernix almost answered, but Season wasn’t talking to her. Carefully, she took it in one hand and used an end of her cloak to wipe it down. It didn’t respond to her ministrations, but Hernix thought she may have felt the Sky within it burn a bit brighter at the touch of kin.
She reached down just a little bit further. The core of Sky that was within every Echo was surprisingly strong, but it was small, and with some alarm Hernix felt this one gutter before returning to stability.
She ran her fingers over it. “Hello, friend,” she whispered. “We mean you no harm. We are of the Sky as well, and we seek only to help a sibling in need.”
The light on its eye flashed a bit, and Hernix focused.
Giving Sky was not easy. It took skill, and patience. The Sky within her did not want to leave, not even to help another, and it was not something she’d practiced very often. She knew that there were Guardians at whose very touch you felt your soul bolstered, but she was not one of them. She focused the power into the Echo. Two of her eyes narrowed, and the third shut entirely. She could feel an almost physical exertion wracking her body, although she knew that was ridiculous.
With a nearly audible gasp, its eye went blue, and it was alive again.
The Echo rose out of her hand. It looked confused. “Oh!” it said. “Oh!”
Season stopped whatever the Echo equivalent of pacing was, and hovered over to the other two. “You did it,” he said. He didn’t sound surprised, but he did sound relieved. “I knew you could.”
“I knew you knew I could,” Hernix teased.
“We’re not doing that.”
“Right.”
They watched as the Echo turned to Season. “Where am I?” it asked.
“About thirty miles west of the Osmium Court,” Season answered. “Just on the coast.”
“Ah,” it said. “Yes, that sounds like a place I’d go! Who are you two?”
“I am Hernix,” Hernix said. “Hunter of Sathona, slayer of the Golden Warlord, and possessor-" she turned, to make sure it was clearly visible. "-an incredible cloak."
“I am Season,” Season said. “I’m her Echo.”
The Echo looked between them. “I'm..." it said, then hesitated. "I'm not sure who I am."
Season looked at Hernix, then back at the Echo. "You aren't?" he asked.
If the Echo could have shrugged, she would have. "I can't remember much of anything from before you woke me," she said anxiously. "Only a few glimpses. But those are from long ago."
Hernix laughed, surprising the Echoes. "Well then," she said. "I suppose you'll have to name yourself."
The Echo drifted back a couple of inches. "Name myself?" she asked, hushed. "Oh. Yes, I suppose so." She glanced around.
"Echoes are often named after existing things, or phenomena," Season explained. "Like myself. You might consider-"
"I'm Pool," she said abruptly. "That feels... right." Hernix grinned, wide and predatory and happy, and Season looked pleased as well.
She looked at Hernix, this time. “What happened to me?” she asked.
Hernix shrugged. “We’re not sure,” she said. “Season felt you from the coast. We tracked you into the marsh, and here you were. Your Sky seemed wounded.”
Pool bounced up and down without seeming to notice. “Wounded?” she asked. “Oh, dear. That’s not good. Perhaps I was shot!”
“It’ll come back to you,” Season suggested, even as Hernix was about to say that there was no bullet wound in Pool’s chassis.
“Probably,” Pool agreed. She lapsed into silence, and turned to stare at the sky. Hernix made a face at Season, who indicated that he would have made one too, if he had a face as such.
She turned back around, and looked at Hernix expectantly. Hernix’s uppermost eye widened in surprise. “Er,” she said. “I think we should take you home. Maybe a closer proximity to the Traveler will help you remember.”
She doubted that. She’d been all around Fundament, and she never felt her Sky diminish in any way. She could have stood on the exact opposite pole, and she suspected that nothing would have changed. Still, she wasn’t an Echo.
“Well,” Pool said, brightening up, “you are very intelligent! That sounds like a great idea!”
She made haste for the coast. Hernix shrugged at Season, and they followed Pool’s lead.
…
The Osmium Court was, Hernix thought, even grander in the fading morning light.
Not much sunlight got through the layers of cloud that shrouded Fundament’s surface, but what did was enough to keep the poor creatures that lived within illuminated. Morning was faint and pale but, Hernix thought, still beautiful.
It took barely a look, though, to see the swollen Traveler hanging in the sky above them. It was half the size of the what the Court had become, but Hernix was old, and remembered when it was half again the Court’s width. They had been weaker, then, and Hernix only remembered those days with a rueful grimace.
“Oh,” Pool said, drifting. “It’s… different than I remember.”
Hernix felt a twinge of unease at that, but pushed it aside. “Welcome home,” she said.
Pool turned around. “Thank you for bringing me home, great Guardian!” Pool said.
“Don’t,” Season said drily. “She thinks well enough of herself as it is.”
“And you as well, luminary among Echoes!” Hernix laughed as Season’s eye widened.
With that, Pool took off for the Court. Hernix watched her recede into the distance, before she vanished over the great wall entirely.
“Come, Luminary of Echoes,” Hernix said to a still-stunned Season. “We should recuperate as well.”
…
The market of the Osmium Court was the vastest in the world, and Hernix hated it.
It felt like a million enemies were pressing down upon her, even though she had no enemies here. She glared at the crowd, and then at Season, who sprung up without a word next to her in a flash of blue light.
“We should see the Vanguard,” and Hernix recognized the something to do as a mercy. She nodded in gratitude, and made her way through the crowd.
It was like wading through the ocean. The people, Krill mostly, seemed to get even thicker, but she focused her attention on the stout iron doors that guarded the Vanguard’s keep. They were open today, as most days.
She forced herself inside. Despite the open doors, there were not that many people in the keep. The Hall of the Vanguard stretched before her, entirely empty.
Hernix gave a look of confusion to Season. Season, if he could have, would have shrugged. “Sometimes they are away, you know,” he said. “They’ll be back soon.”
As soon as he finished talking, she caught a glimpse of something in the corner of her eye. Not entirely empty, then.
Pool had caught sight of her, too. She sped down the long table towards the two of them. “Hello, friends!” she yelled. “Are you here to see Vanguard as well?”
“Yes,” Hernix said shortly. Something about being in the Hall while the Vanguard were away was nerve-racking, although they were not breaking any rules.
“Good, good,” Pool enthused. “We can speak to them together! What did you want to tell them?”
“Well, about you, mostly,” Season took over. “And perhaps accept a new mission.”
“I’m here to tell them about me, too!”
Hernix rolled her third eye discreetly, but couldn’t help but smile. She rather liked the tiny thing. “Then we can wait together.”
Pool found this agreeable, and proceeded to describe in detail how agreeable she found it, exactly. Hernix slumped against a wall, and took the time to examine her gun.
Sky, she thought to herself. It was in worse shape than she thought. She was never a craftsman. Season bugged her to get it reforged by someone who, quote, “knew what they were doing,” but she hadn’t gained a reputation as a great Hunter without being as stubborn as the Fundament itself.
And then, Sathona was there without any of them noticing.
Hernix started upward as Season made an undignified sound. Sathona was always a bit unreal, but today it was particularly noticeable. She seemed hardly to be there at all, and when she looked at Hernix she felt as though she wasn’t, either.
“Hunter,” she said, sounding pleased. “You’ve returned.” Her feathers were drooped, but her cloak was fine, and Hernix relaxed at the sight of it. It was only time to worry when a Hunter’s cloak was out of shape.
She nodded. “We have a report,” she began.
“It’s me!” Pool said at the top of her non-existent lungs. “I’m the report!”
Sathona looked at the Echo. “Humm,” she said. “What, then, are you?”
Pool looked at a loss to answer to answer that question. Something was… not right with her, Hernix knew that. She meant well, as far as Hernix could tell, but there had never been a case of an Echo that couldn’t remember their past before.
Sathona seemed interested by the silence. “Yes,” she said. “Well, you’re an Echo at least, and that counts for something.”
“I’m Pool,” Pool said, quieter now.
Sathona nodded. “That you are,” she said. “Hunter!”
Hernix snapped to attention.
“What can you tell me about this Echo?”
Season looked at her, and so did Pool. Every eye in the room was fixed on her, she realized. She swallowed. “Er,” she said, and looked at the tiny Echo.
Pool was earnest, and kind, she knew that even now. She was afraid, too. Hernix didn’t know what of. It was too early to tell the kind of Echo she was truly, but Hernix knew what she wasn’t, and that was trouble. Pool’s amnesia was important, yes, but if the Vanguard caught wind of it, Pool would never be allowed to leave the Court, perhaps ever again. It was strange enough to catch Aurash’s attention, and while the Warlock Vanguard was not cruel, she was also not one to let a mystery, or a danger, wander free. She remembered the Echo’s eye when she said she didn’t have a Guardian, and Hernix wondered.
“Little,” Hernix said. “We’ve just met. This Echo was wounded, but Season and I have restored her to health, and I know of nothing wrong with her.”
Sathona’s mouth quirked upward, as though a theory had been confirmed. “Very well,” she said. “I suppose there is nothing more to say, except…”
Hernix waited.
“…you don’t have a mission, do you?”
“No, Vanguard.”
“Then I think I’ve found the perfect one for you,” she said, and her uppermost eye winked in conspiracy. “If this Echo is in danger beyond the walls, it only makes sense for her to have an escort, no?”
She could practically feel Season groan in her mind. Pool gasped aloud in seeming ecstasy, but silenced herself quickly. Hernix herself was…
Glad.
Yes. Glad.
This would be interesting, at least.