Chapter Text
Yoska hated Savathûn. She hated Savathûn's light, her treachery, but most of all -- at least, at that moment -- she hated Savathûn's dreadful, creepy ship. Despite all that vitriol, she was on that ship again, worry taking root in her gut as she gazed upon the blinking dot in her ghost's projection, representing the source of a location ping. A ping from a guardian. It was deep in the ship, past where they had explored before, but close enough that Yoska had felt confident enough to investigate on her own. Standing on the ship in the moment, however, incited a brief flutter of trepidation.
Yoska didn't always carry out missions of her own accord like this. More often than not, she was directed by the Vanguard, and she'd made a lot of glimmer doing so in the years since her rebirth. It was no secret that the so-called Young Wolf was good at her job and paid accordingly, but that wasn't why Yoska took all the Vanguard's most dangerous contracts. Her life, her light, and her heart were all tied to the Last City, and to the Guardians who'd fought alongside her. That family, no matter how scattered or flawed, was still her family. She'd kill gods for the last of her people. She HAD killed gods for them.
The Vanguard was best equipped to know when a god needed killing, so it was only natural that she'd built a close relationship with Zavala and Ikora when most hunters avoided the tower like the plague -- tenfold, since Cayde. Yoska's secret to avoiding the 'Hunter Vanguard Vacancy' lecture from Zavala lay in only approaching him when he looked grumpy and busy. Most people instinctually avoided him in such a mood, but it was actually the secret to dodging uncomfortable conversation. Yoska belonged out here, being where she shouldn't and getting into the kind of trouble people write stories about. Stories that always sounded way worse out of a context, by the way. Yoska maintained that carrying the raw fuel cell in her hands had been a perfectly logical and normal choice in the moment.
Her devotion to the last of Humanity was why she hadn't hesitated when Spectre had told her he was picking up a distress ping from a Guardian aboard Savathûn's vessel. Yoska had thought that she and Spectre, her ghost, were the only ones who had ventured onto the ship so far. Nobody else was supposed to be up there, to her knowledge. Technically, she wasn't supposed to be there, but she worried that Ikora might have tried to scout the place before sending anyone in. It was true that the unmapped passages were dangerous, but it may have been time that this mystery Guardian couldn't afford to lose. Besides, Yoska was a hunter. It was in her blood to explore, to get into places she shouldn't. This infiltration was an opportunity to put that energy to good use.
"Do you suppose it's one of Ikora's?" Spectre asked, filling the silence as Yoska made cautious progress past a dais covered in ceramic pots, the musty stink of rot lingering around it. So far they'd barely run into resistance on the ship. A pitiful spattering of Thralls, a few Acolytes. Nothing she couldn't handle.
Yoska considered the question a moment. "No, I don't. If one of hers was in distress, she would have contacted us long before we dove in by ourselves," she decided aloud. "Same with anyone else under the Vanguard, really. I think they must have come in alone. An overeager new light, perhaps." It wouldn't be the first time she'd pulled a newbie out of hot water.
Her ghost hummed in agreement, adding, "Or a freelancer."
Yoska chewed her lip, her steady footsteps faltering for a moment. She tried to refrain, but couldn't help asking, "Can you do me a favour--"
"I already checked in with the ones we know," he interrupted her. When she still shifted with unease, he added, "Glint said they were on Nessus doing some target practice, as of ten minutes ago," There was a hint of amusement in his voice. Yoska frowned but put it down to him making fun of how pedantic she was with her friends' wellbeing. "I didn't give away any hint as to what we were doing, don't worry. Unless you wanted Crow to come charging in here?"
"No," she affirmed, her unease growing at his tone. What was he insinuating? She suddenly felt very warm, despite the cold emptiness of the ship around them. "What about Drifter? Shaw?"
"Fine too. I'm 99% certain it's nobody you or the Vanguard knows much of. Your new light theory is currently our strongest bet, I think," Spectre declared, finally dropping the subject of Crow. Yoska didn't know what ideas he had in his head. It had been Spectre who brought him up first, not her.
She pushed her worries from her mind and focused on forward progress, stopping every few minutes to check their rudimentary maps. They were getting steadily closer to the point where their knowledge of the ship's layout ended. Only twice more did Yoska run into thralls, and only two at a time on each occasion. It was odd, but despite her position on the outer hallways that opened to the view of Mars, Yoska felt uneasy, as though she was deep in a tomb. It took her a few minutes to figure out why: The further they went, the quieter the ship seemed to become. No distant echoes, no far-off screams. No crackling knuckles of Hive barnacles, no hissing fungus, no arc moths. Nothing.
Under normal circumstances, Yoska would have welcomed the reprieve from the noise. Loud symphonies of sounds played havoc on her ear implants, and the Hive was nothing if not tactless composers of intense cacophony. She was quickly realising how foreboding the absence of it could be.
"Something doesn't smell right here." Spectre's voice was grave, echoing Yoska's thoughts. The dark cathedral of Savathûn's ship was as eerily quiet as it was empty. Something dripped to their right, breaking up an otherwise perfect serenity, but the guardian didn't give it a second thought. Yoska had long since kicked the habit of stopping to investigate dripping in Hive areas. More often than not, it was something gross but otherwise unimportant.
Yoska paused in her advance, looking up at her ghost. His white and gold shell reflected the low light, tinging him a sickly shade of green. Sickly, like the rest of this place. "Has that guardian signature moved at all?" Yoska asked, concern knitting her brow beneath her helmet.
"Not even a little," Spectre replied, displaying a hologram of the little they had mapped of the ship since first arriving. The signature was far below, present but entirely unmoved since the first time she'd looked at it.
Yoska clicked her tongue. They'd been walking for a few minutes now, deeper into the labyrinthine halls of the vessel, and her unease was only growing. A guardian's signature, alive but unmoving. Savathûn was a master trickster, and Yoska couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't as it seemed.
"We should consider our options," Spectre suggested. "But at the very least, if you insist on continuing--"
"I do," she cut him off firmly. Trick or no trick, if a guardian was in trouble, she wouldn't leave them behind.
"Okay," he replied, a little impatiently. "At the very least, we should tell Ikora and Eris where we're going. We don't know everything about the ship yet. There are a lot of variables to consider. I think the time is past poking around on our own." He wasn't wrong. Yoska was independent, but she prided herself on knowing when to call in backup. Shaw's mistakes had taught her that lesson once -- thankfully not with his life, though it had been close.
Yoska nodded her assent. "You're right. Try and signal them." She glanced around, her gaze landing on the ornate arch at the end of the hall they stood in. Beside them, the wall opened to the sky, with the surface of Mars so far below that it appeared as though it was shrouded in a milky haze. "I'm going to see what's ahead."
Spectre's shell began to spin as he scanned frequencies, reaching out below. "That's weird. It's difficult to get a signal... I didn't have any trouble getting through to Glint before," he told her, troubled. "Did this happen last time we were here? Hey, don't go too far!" He began to float slowly after her, distracted by his attempts to communicate.
Yoska nodded over her shoulder. "We're not moving forward just yet. Just peeking at the next hall so I can plan our next move," she reassured him. While she felt uneasy at the stillness, it at least made her think there weren't any enemies nearby. Thralls tended to screech and charge in, after all.
The new corridor opened to a glassless window at a dead end, much like the window in the previous chamber, letting the light in at an angle. It allowed her to see part of the way down the next hallway, but nothing of note could be seen there, except for what might have been an opening to an intersecting passage. It was just at the limits of her vision, and hard to discern for certain. It could just as easily be a decorative alcove on the wall.
"I'm having real trouble," Spectre updated. "It's like something is jamming the transmission. I sent out a ping, but who knows if Ikora and Eris received it?" He spotted her at the archway and spun nervously. "Don't move any further ahead, okay? I'm going to get closer to this... Gaping chasm over here." He floated towards the opening, slowly. "By the light, that's high."
"Let me know if you get anything," Yoska called. Cautiously, she took a step closer to the precipice where the light faded. It was still impossible to discern if the arch was decorative, or a true opening in the hallway.
Two more steps.
Yoska blinked, trying to adjust her eyes. She felt no closer to the mystery opening, despite her advance. Another step. It was a hallway -- no, it was a wall. Yoska clicked her tongue in frustration, swearing under her breath.
Having now heard her expletive over the comms, Spectre radioed to her from the previous room. "Hey, why are you on comms now? I told you not to go too far!"
Yoska bit back her annoyance. She loved her ghost, but sometimes he was a little too protective of her for either of their sakes. "I didn't! I only took a few..." Yoska turned as she spoke, but the words died on her tongue as she beheld the square of light from the outside, and the arch she'd come through. Both were an easy twenty paces away. Maybe more.
"That's impossible," she breathed. She'd only taken four steps! Her mind reeled as alarm bells began ringing in her head. "Spec, I'm coming back. I'm going to transmat us out of here, we'll return with reinfo--" Yoska cut herself off with a shout as green light surrounded her, a summoning circle lighting up the darkness around her feet.
A horrible screech made her wince, the high-pitched sound distorting in her earpieces. All around her, wizards rose from the burning, corrupted fire. No, not fire: Light. With horror, Yoska recognised these wizards as Savathûn's Lightbearers. They were corrupted warlocks, their oppressive light pressing down on her. "Spec..." she said through comms, her fingers twitching over the Orpheus quiver on her thigh as she reached for the bow on her back. Beyond the wizards, towards the hall where she'd left her ghost, she saw three more wizards, their gazes upon the archway. They knew where her ghost was, and she'd spent the last visit to Savathûn's ship crushing the ghosts of their sisters. Dread laced itself through her ribs and coiled around her heart. "Spec, hide now. Hide!"
It was all she could do for him, as she flared her light and nocked her arrow, void dancing over her fingers. Arc energy danced between the three sisters around her, and as Yoska let her arrow loose, so too did the wizards unleash. Yoska's body burned with white-hot fire as the wizards suffocated her with poison and ozone alike. Her tether slowed them down, but not enough to matter as she was surrounded.
Tears stung Yoska's eyes. She hoped her ghost got away. If he didn't, she'd find only a little comfort in the knowledge that she was surely about to follow. Her hands shaking, she fired her void arrow one last time before the darkness consumed her.
----
When she regained consciousness, the first thing Yoska did was call out to her ghost, expecting her breath to echo in the rebreather built into her helmet. Instead, she felt only naked air, and her unbridled voice echoed against hard walls. Yoska jolted awake, her head throbbing, and heard the clank of chains as she tried to swing her legs and sit up. With panic rising in her throat, she tugged at her arms, stretched tight above her head, with the cotton of her base layer sleeves scuffing against the shells of her ears.
Her ghost did not respond. She reached for the light, planning to burn her way out of her restraints. That was when she felt its absence like an oppressive, heavy blanket over her. Either she was being suppressed, or...
"No," Yoska gasped, despair gripping her and choking the air out of her. "Spec! Answer me!"
Again, no reply.
Tears stung her eyes. She hadn't cried in a long time, not since Cayde. The lightless fragments of Sundance were a vision that came to her unwarranted, and she didn't like the similarities her mind was connecting between her situation and Cayde's. A dead ghost was the path to a Lightbearer's end, and here she lay: In the breath between gunshots.
Maybe Spectre got out.
"You worry for your ghost," crooned a voice that filled Yoska with dread. There was little light in the room where she lay on cold, hard stone, and it was soon blocked by the looming form of Savathûn. Yoska couldn't discern if the Witch Queen was real or a vision. She wasn't sure there was functionally much of a difference when the Queen reached down, settling her fingers around Yoska's throat one by one. "Worrying didn't help the last one," she continued gravely.
At first, Yoska was confused as to her meaning. Then she saw the wall behind her captor, and if the pressure on her neck wasn't already inhibiting her breathing, the sight of a dead Exo would have done the job. They were strung up like she was, but on the wall instead of whatever platform she lay on. A faintly glowing crystal hovered by the body, but the glow seemed to be fading. Yoska felt the whisper of light and knew that this Exo was the Guardian she'd come here to find.
"You already have light," she hissed through her teeth, her words catching on her partially closed throat. "What do you want me for?" Why did that guardian have to die? What was Savathûn's goal here?
"Charging right to the point, just as I trusted you would," she mocked with a sigh, almost sounding relieved. Yoska felt sick, realising how easily she'd been lured into the web of a spider. Lifting a talon, the Witch Queen tapped the spot between Yoska's brows, lightly. The gesture might have been playful in any other context. "I need you for your secrets."
With no further warning, sharp pain erupted right where the God had touched her, and Yoska realised Savathûn was trying to press into her mind. She strained, resisting with all of her willpower. She felt the claws of Savathûn's mind at the edges of her being, poking at memories and prodding at feelings, like a child's hand trying to fish a cookie from the bottom of a deep jar.
Ikora was Yoska's saviour at this moment; If not for her insistence on meditation and resisting this very kind of attack, Yoska would have succumbed. As it was, the Queen withdrew after only a few moments, although that was long enough for Yoska to regain her senses and find herself shaking from the effort and exhaustion. How much longer could she keep this up? She was rattled by a cough, and she was fairly sure she'd been screaming, but was so far away from herself that she couldn't hear it.
"Your resistance is impressive, but expected," The Queen declared, almost sounding bored. She backed up, almost entirely out of Yoska's field of vision, which was limited by her arms preventing her from turning her head. "I shall return."
Yoska wondered when, but even as Savathûn faded out of the room, she felt something else stirring in the room with her. A Hive Wizard appeared at her feet, raising its gnarled hands in a spell. Like mist from the earth, a haze of black smoke spilt up and over the platform upon which she lay. Yoska jerked violently as the acrid poison met her unarmoured flesh, her scream breaking through the restraints of her clenched teeth into an animalistic howl that echoed off the unsympathetic walls, reaching no one. After moments it abated, and seconds stretched to minutes as she watched the blistering on her bare forearms slowly fade until her freckled skin was unmarred once more.
Her light, even as suppressed as it was, still healed her painfully slowly as the wizard hovered, holding her under its unrelenting, unblinking stare. Spectre wasn't dead. Yoska clung to the idea of her little light, her only hope, as the wizard raised its arms once more and began again.
Yoska knew what was happening; Her willpower was to be burned away, over and over again, until nothing was left between her mind and Savathûn. She could only hope that Spectre was smarter than she was, smart enough to get off this forsaken ship while he still could.