Chapter Text
A common misconception was that tenno have no sense of humor. That their war of a thousand fronts was conducted in perfect silence, with grim efficiency.
That’s a lie. The tenno had a sense of humor, and it was terrible. Falcon’s clan? The worst jokes. Unacceptable. A stain on their honour, even.
For some reason, every time Ki'teer's inventory was not to their liking it was because of ‘Void Magic,’ every missed headshot was ‘eternalism’ and technically, in a parallel universe, they never tripped over that Domestik Drone.
Now Falcon's current situation was actually because of the Void. They would never let her hear the end of this. All it took was the slightest lapse in her attention, a poorly timed bullet jump, and a spontaneous portal while on a Derelict mission. Her clanmates would hold this over her head for the rest of their ambiguous lifespan.
Of course, this assumed she made it back to them alive.
Falcon stared into the heavyset blast door set in her way. Good for making a shockwave, but not for finding a way back to real space. The style of its construction was unfamiliar to her, angular, unlike the gilded biomimicry of the Orokin. Vaguely reminiscent of the Corpus, but unnerving in its details. The result of some strange, convergent evolution.
The Origin System was vast and there was room for novelty, but with the Void involved, who said this was the Origin System at all? Maybe this was what the Sentient did for fun, in Tau. Put right angles everywhere.
“I'm sorry I dragged you into this. I should've brought Gauss.”
She waited for a response, the impression of emotion through Transference, a feed transmission paired with it.
<Mission_Start: 06:11:03>
<Run_Diagnostics: ”Warframe_Excal_U”
Frame_Integrity: %87.0
Shields: %100
Transference_Str: %98.6>
<Orbiter: Signal_Null>
<[System]: The Operator is advised to refrain from unaccompanied deployments.>
“I’d have Gauss.” Falcon said. In response, Umbra re-sent their initial analysis of the energy fields present in the derelict.
<[System]: Warframe “Gauss” requires a stable Transference signal to remain operable. Strategic vulnerability of the Operator; overextension.>
Attached was a statistical breakdown of Falcon’s deployment history. Whether it was Orokin handlers before their fall, or the Lotus and her many faces, Falcon would forever be the spark best grounded by a steadfast presence. Accompanied in battle by those who could best rein in her impulses.
She did not appreciate the mission reviews being shoved to the forefront of her interface. They gave an unfavorable impression of her. Also she lacked the patience for them. This was, perhaps, part of the problem.
Maybe she did work better with a partner. But if she were to fall in battle, she’d prefer it to be alone. The day she returned to the Void, let no other walk alongside her.
Falcon stepped aside, and Umbra took her place. He drew an Exalted Blade in a single, clean motion, before piercing the edge of the door. Slowly, the blade was drawn through the metal, leaving a molten trail in its wake. When the work was done Umbra too stepped away and let the excised door fall to the ground with a ringing slam.
Behind it? A tangle of Void-poisoned roots. Grown so closely together she could not catch a glimpse of what lay beyond.
Falcon allowed herself a sigh, then readied for a second attempt. Void welled thick and smothering in her chest, as she poured it into the Skiajati's power banks. That is, until Umbra sheathed the blade.
<System: Void energy expenditure has been assessed as unsustainable.>
“I’m not done.” Falcon said, though it did little to stem the flow of assessments and strategy evaluations that filled her hood's display. The Orokin may have stolen Umbra's voice, but he made his will known. This, she would respect.
Though it left them at an impasse.
Falcon's antipathy for dead ends stemmed from many sources, but the standout among them was a simple one; it was more difficult to strike a target in motion. She idly nudged at the fallen door with her boot, a growth of Voidshell spread from the corners like mold. White, fractal, scarring that led to the remains of a Void Angel, slumped against the far-side wall.
It hadn't gone down easy. A glance at Umbra revealed the extent of the Angel's parting gift. A scattering of cuts, a chunk of Umbra's helm blasted away, armour of grey and gold revealing the seething red of Helminth underneath. An eye, blinded by cataracts and rendered vestigial by his neuroptics. In spite of the Orokin's best attempt at purging the data, old muscle memory remained. His expression appeared strained.
“Does it hurt? I could try something.”
<Shields: %100>
<[System]: Damage assessment; cosmetic. Recommendation; resource conservation.>
<[Operator]: Note.>
<Frame_Integrity: Entity “Umbra”: %87.0>
Falcon re-sent the integrity diagnostic again, this time with an increased priority marker, for emphasis. If Umbra could have sighed, he probably would have.
The conversation was tabled as Falcon fell into a few rounds of anxious pacing. The Void was agitating old scars, on both body, and mind. She had to move, needed it the way she used to food, water and restful sleep. Of course, a tenno didn't survive as long as she had without developing some self-awareness - she knew her madness. A problem could not be left idle. She had to run forward, even if it was an unknown. Even if it was a jagged danger.
“There's a vent in the back-left corner of the room.” Falcon said, putting to voice an observation she'd made on first entering the chamber.
<[System]: Acknowledged. Query; Relevance?>
“I'm smaller than you are.”
<[System]: Denied.>
Falcon opened her mouth to speak again, only to be hit with three more permission denials in a row.
“We can retrace our steps, see if we missed something. But I doubt we did.” Falcon crossed the room, to stand beneath the air vent. “Time does not favour us, here.”
<Run_Analysis:
Transference_Str: %98.6
Transference_Str: %44.0
STransference_Str: %97.7>
Transference_Str: %98.6>
<Assessment: Transference signal highly volatile.>
<[System]: Concern; fatal injuries sustained while Transference is nonfunctional. Outcome; destabilization of Operator's Void superposition. Outcome; Operator rendered unrecoverable.>
“I would not allow the Indifference to kill me.” Falcon adjusted the hood of her Transference Suit, enclosed around her face like a flower yet to bloom. There was the slightest scratch of claw on chitin, Infested flesh repurposed by the Helminth aboard her Orbiter. She wanted to leave on a lighter note. “I'll be quick, always am. Be back before you have the chance to miss me.”
<[System]: Good hunting.>
Bracing, Falcon blasted away the grate, before disappearing into the vent system in a flicker of cold fire.
Dark tendrils cut through letters stenciled above the hangar door.
Y■■■ ■■WE■
RES■D■■■■: ■■■■■■■ III
The rest was an unknown, a word that could also apply to the derelict ship as a whole. Though in the silence, ‘tomb’ was equally fitting.
“Glint, can you get me a scan?”
“On it!” Eager as ever, Glint flew up and cast the tendrils in the faint, blue light of his scanner. In the meantime, Crow gave another sweep of the room, nothing new.
The ship could've been a museum exhibit for the Golden Age, if it were for the dust, shattered consoles, and scorch marks. Admittedly, two of those three were his fault, as well as the bodies of five Scorn. Fresh as his still-smoking gun, and yet as always smelling as if their decay had been weeks old.
Crow checked his comms again. Still dead.
Restlessly, he pulled up his mission briefing.
Target Faction: Scorned
Location: Rheasilvia, Dreaming City
Fireteam: Young Wolf + Little Light, Crow + Glint
Petra Venj reports renewed Scorned activity throughout the Dreaming City. A new faction claiming to be the Disciples of Hiraks the Mindbender, seen tempering with Ascendant portals.
Annotation, YW; Hiraks the Mindbender? Seriously? Feels like they got to the party a little late. There's gotta be better options for a cult leader than a dead man. (No offense.) (Some offense.)
When he pushed to be put on this deployment, he’d said it wasn't personal. The lie was so obvious no one even bothered calling him out on it.
“Scan's up!” Glint dropped down, slowing to hover at Crow’s eye level.
“What are we working with?”
“It says - oh that's weird.” Glint's lenses unfocused, as his concentration was set on the data. “I thought this would be egregore, or some other construct of the Darkness. But there's nothing.”
“As in, the scan failed?”
“No, it's weirder than that. No temperature, no molecule makeup, no paracausal signatures. It's more than just empty air, it's like those tendrils are a vacuum. They don't exist.”
"That’s… new.”
“I don't think we're on the Ascendant Plane.” Glint said, killing their working theory for wherever this was. Was it too much to ask, that the acolytes of a Ascendancy-obsessed Scorn Baron opened an unstable portal to the Ascendant Plane? Evidently.
“Then we'll have to trust the Young Wolf will find us, regardless.”
“And in the meantime?”
"We do what we can. Finish the mission.”
Crow looked past the doorway, a hall extending into yawning black. The only light came from the fading trail of Dark Ether, spilled from the remaining Scorn in their retreat. The softly glowing lure of some ambush predator, content in waiting for him to step in its teeth.
Not the creepiest situation he’d stumbled into. But it was getting up there.
“Um. What do you think happened to the crew?” Glint hovered just above Crow's shoulder, the light of his eye catching on airborne dust to a reduced visibility. “You know what, scratch that, I'm sure they turned out perfectly fine.”
Rows on rows of habitation suites, extending into the shadowed distance. The repeating pattern of grey on gunmetal grey, interrupted only by more tendrils, breaking through the walls like roots through concrete.
Crow looked to Glint, a silent exchange between them. Too many rooms to properly clear on any practical timespan. Glint would keep his eye on ambient levels of Dark Ether, and they could only hope the habitats weren't hiding any other surprises.
“Well, at least we have the trail if we need to backtrack.” Glint said, giving the trail of blood another scan.
“I appreciate you looking on the bright side.”
Crow stopped at a random scattering of doors, anyway. Most appeared unused, their passcodes set to a default ‘0000’, a sterile emptiness within. Others showed signs of life - furniture overturned, glass broken, always shoved against the right side wall as Crow stepped in. A crash before the ship turned ghost town. Scattered between them was the occasional sweeping bot, crumpled and deactivated next to their work. Piles of dust, a spilled drink evaporated until only the stain was left behind.
Nothing as obvious as blood or bodies, but by the time they neared the end of the hall, every one of Crow’s nerves were on edge. Something about this place coiled at the back of his mind, like a nightmare he couldn't recall.
Small details with implications that took time to settle in.
All the name plates were scratched out. That wasn’t Scorn.
So who was it?
“Have you managed to date the ship?” Crow said, barely suppressing a shiver of unease.
“These constructs are still messing with my scanners. Sorry.”
“It's alright. Wouldn't have been able to figure it out on my own, either.”
The hall opened up into a social space, ringed by multiple floors of balconies. Another construct spun down from the ceiling, this time metallic, swirling like eddies in water. Pale wisps drifted softly from its surface.
More immediately relevant was the railing directly ahead of him. Freshly painted in Dark Ether. Peering down to several floors below, Crow could see a single, motionless, body.
He looked to Glint.
“Where are the rest?”
“I'm sure we'll find them, or them us, but for now we should celebrate taking down another Scorn. I've been keeping score, and we’re officially tied with the Young Wolf and their Ghost.”
Glint played an audio clip of a party popper as Crow hopped an unbloodied section of the railing. A second jump was timed just before hitting the ground, sparing himself from a half-dozen broken bones. Idly, he remembered the first few mistimed, painful, jumps from when he was New Light - or well, Newer Light.
With his back to the alien construct, Crow looked over the Scorn.
“Vitals?” Crow asked.
“Dead, even more than usual.” Glint said, panels fluttering in slight micromovements, like an insect’s wings. “Scanners read nothing.”
Crow’s gaze lingered on the Scorn, even as Glint cut his scanner and returned to his side. He waited for it to get back up, and kept waiting until the silence stretched long. He’d already made a mistake, felt sure of it down to his bones and his Light - he just wasn’t sure what it was.
A thought repeated.
Nothing. Scanners read nothing.
“Glint, hide!” Crow barely had time to speak, and Glint to disappear into subspace, before the sound of skittering began.
Crow turned, drew, and fired. A screeb had barely crawled out from its hiding place within the construct before it was shot clean through, a burst chained through the Scorn that followed, tearing the structure from its mooring. Sent it to the ground in an explosion of black shards.
And from the wreckage, emerged an Abomination. Towering, mist pooled at its feet.
“Father…”
Crow didn't respond. Words caught, tangled, halfway between denial and apology.
It raised an arm, fist sparking, and Crow shot it off. It stepped backwards, hissing.
“Father. This power, if you could see.”
Crow stalled in his next shot, aimed towards the many boiling pustules rimming its neck. Putting it to rest quickly and cleanly was the least he owed it, but Scorn were rarely in the talking mood. This one seemed to know something, about whatever else was at play in this impossible space.
“What power?” Crow asked, pulling back his gun's hammer.
“Light… Darkness… it blinds you. To Them.”
Oh, that sounded really bad. A sentiment that was doubled from Glint's end of their bond.
“I will show you. You'll see, you'll see!”
The Scorn jerked to one side, screeching. Boils of Dark Ether swelled and burst, sprouting a new limb from the bleeding stump of its upper arm. A scything blade, iridescent like black pearl.
Crow fired two shots, neither found their mark as the Scorn disappeared into ashen light and teleported aside. Its form flickered in and out of perception, tangible as mist.
“I see you, I hear your song.” The Scorn spoke, but not to him, head tilted away for a moment before snapping back. “You will too.”
The Scorn cleaved outward with its blade. Crow leapt back, but he didn't need to.
The strike wasn't meant for him.
The Scorn lashed out at seemingly empty air, yet found purchase, sparks of Light. Violently, Glint was ripped from the safety of subspace.
“No!” Crow's gun wreathed itself in Solar flame.
The Scorn was ready for him, though, firing a blast of pale, teal energy that caught Crow's shoulder. He was sent to the ground, arm numb, vision spinning. He could only make out a single sound, clearly. That of his gun, scratching against the metal as it slid away from him.
He looked up to see the Scorn’s blade warp and constrict around Glint, the plates of his shell pressing into one another.
There was fear in their bond, but only flowing one way. From Glint, there was only certainty.
“Keep going -” His voice was staticky with strain. “I'll - find you - promise.”
And in a flash of cold light, he was gone.