Chapter Text
Robina couldn’t think of what to do. Just yesterday was a humongous siege on Battleon that they haven’t even begun to recover from. Now, there were thousands of refugees pouring in from the Last City.
She tried to question Zavala on what had happened, but he had been busy with the injured and scared, so he redirected her to somebody she didn’t know. He was a paralytic, rolling around in a wheelchair and trying to have people remain calm, so she simply waited until he was done before she questioned him.
What she learned was shocking. This morning, there had been a devastating siege on the Last City, and everyone had to be evacuated. The Traveler was abandoned, and multiple people were still missing, such as the Hunter Vanguard Lucy, the Green Paladin Katie Holt, and the Nohrian princess Elise. But before she could ask the man more, he had to attend to other business, leaving her with too many worries to count.
Those in Battleon did the best they could with the refugees, but there were too many to count. A lot of them were being sent to other kingdoms by all the carriages available, but even that didn’t feel like enough. All of their clerics were being overworked at the moment, and wounds were still untreated.
Out of stress, Robina found herself going away from the clearing many of the City refugees were staying at. The sun was setting by now, and Greenguard’s spiders will start to roam around. More lives could be lost tonight.
To her surprise, she found that where she was going wasn’t empty. There was a sword in the stone that Robina usually sat by to think over things. As she approached it, she also noticed a Guardian sitting there, laying on his back and staring up at the sky with teary eyes.
“Theo?” Robina called out.
“Huh?” Theodore sat up, and Daimyo curled up in his lap shifted accordingly. “Oh. Hey, Robina. Sorry if I’m in your spot.”
“No, it’s alright.” Robina sat next to him. As she did so, she noticed a tree having been toppled nearby. “Did you do that?”
Theodore looked. “Huh? Oh. Yeah.” He looked down at his fist. “I lost control of my emotions for a second.” He suddenly groaned with frustration and flopped back onto the ground. “We could have tried our best! I mean, that’s what Artix said, but we failed him. We all failed him! And I failed to protect Twelve.” He sighed. “I ain’t cut out for this.”
Robina frowned and asked, “Cut out for what, Theo?”
“Being Artix’s student,” he responded. “I mean, this could be me trying to be a quitter, which I ain’t, but...after losing another loved one of mine, I...I just want to go to bed and then wake up tomorrow, and find out this was all just some bad dream that took too long to end.”
“We all do,” Robina admitted. “We all failed, and I’m sorry. But don’t take it as if it was just you that failed.”
Theodore shook his head. “You don’t understand. Artix wanted the best of what I got, but I don’t have anything like that. I’m still just the same stupid, puppy-eyed kinderguardian I was all those months back.”
Daimyo gave a few yips from where he was sitting. Confused, Theodore glanced down at him and got some licks on the chin and nose as the little Pomeranian wagged his tail.
“Daimyo obviously doesn’t care,” Robina pointed out with a smile.
“He’s too optimistic for a dog.” Theodore began to pat him on the head as he sighed. “Much like his owner. Did you see him on the way here?”
Robina frowned. “Wish I didn’t,” she admitted. “I have never seen him as tired as I had when I passed him on the way here. He’s been one of the ones who’s been hit the hardest.”
“Did he lose his home?” Theodore bitterly asked.
“He might as well have, now that another one of his students is gone.”
“So he’s wanting to give up, too?”
Robina looked up at the sky. “None of us have ever suffered a unanimous loss like this before.”
“Well, besides the Red War, the Guardians had a moment like this before. Ever heard of the Great Disaster?”
“No. I haven’t.”
Theodore looked down at Daimyo. “It was when thousands of Guardians fought the Hive to reclaim control over the Moon. The Hive there were led by Crota. Son of Oryx, Monster of Luna.” Theodore looked over at Robina, who seemed engrossed in the tale. “All those Guardians...didn’t make it. It wasn’t a war. It wasn’t even a battle. It was a slaughter. And the Hive got what they wanted: the Moon.”
“You lost,” Robina murmured. “That’s one of the only stories I now know that the Guardians lost.”
“We aren’t indestructible,” Theodore pointed out. “And the Hive wasn’t done there. They wanted to take the Earth as their own, as well. But you can’t fight in home turf, now can ya?”
“No. It’s not easy to.”
Theodore huffed. “If only that happened back home...” He picked up Daimyo and gently set him down on the ground, standing up. “All of that training under Artix and with my closest friends, all of that, and it was completely wasted. All thanks to that asshole of a king. And because of him, we all failed to defend the City, save our friends, and I feel like I personally shamed Artix. I just want to lie down and let the sun cook me under my armor.”
Robina stood up as well. “You didn’t make him feel ashamed of you,” she declared. “He’s probably ashamed of himself.”
“Well, that’s even worse!” Theodore pointed out. “Because this is what the King wanted! Us to suffer and blame ourselves! Well...I say, he gets to have our tears. Because I’m done.” He began to turn and walk away.
“Theodore?” Robina called out but didn’t move to follow.
“Tell Artix that Theo’s letting the hammer fall.” Theodore gave a careless wave over his shoulder.
By Robina’s feet, Daimyo could read the mood well and whimpered appropriately. Robina winced at the sound, then knelt over and allowed the Pomeranian to jump into her arms. He cuddled up to her, seeking comfort and escape, but such a thing was hard to give from her end.
Setting up an emergency camp in the forest was a race against time. The human-sized spiders were already showing up, and the exhausted Alliance soldiers fought tooth and nail to keep them away. As available heroes set up traps for the invasive arachnids, they had to focus on setting up shelter for those who needed it.
Zavala oversaw it all as best as possible. But he was unable to provide much relief to those who needed it. He watched everyone go back and forth in the area they were allowed to set up base in.
He carried great guilt on his shoulders. He had to pull Carla through the portal when flying shrapnel from explosions within the city began to fly at them. Lucy had never arrived at the portal. He felt like he had betrayed Carla by refusing to wait any longer for her.
There was the squeaking of wheels, and Zavala looked over to the side. Adam was rolling up, a plaid blanket over his lap and his hair tousled. While struggling to go through the grass and mud with his wheelchair, he didn’t give up in heading over to the commander.
When he was about two feet away from him, Adam said, “About 70% of the survivors have been sent off to other kingdoms within Lore that have their gates open to refugees. The other 30% are staying here, in the camp or Battleon. What should we do?”
Zavala blinked, then looked away. “I do not know.”
“Huh?” Adam exclaimed. “How can you not know? You’re the de facto leader of the Alliance if the council as a whole is unavailable.”
“All of these losses,” Zavala answered. “All of these broken hopes. I think Shiro was right, Adam. I am a coward if I have failed the people I’m supposed to protect like this.”
“Commander, please don’t talk like that.”
Zavala turned further away. “I need some time to think.”
Adam reached out to the arm dangling by Zavala’s side. “Commander...”
It was retracted out of his reach. “Please, Adam.”
Adam couldn’t help but sigh, though he dropped his hand back into his lap. “Of course, Zavala.”
Lore was a wide and expansive place. When the portal was being closed, the direction that Warlic intended faded. Instead of going to a specific place in Lore, in the last few seconds it was open but unmanned by any mage, it would instead spit out anyone who entered into any part of Lore whatsoever.
Cayde woke up facedown in the dirt. He groaned, head throbbing as if he had been smacked in the face by a Cabal drop pod. He didn’t get up yet but instead rolled over onto his back to look up at the sky.
It was nighttime, wherever they were. The forest was equally pitch black, and he could smell smoke from something. What sounded like a wolf howl echoed in the area, but it was distant, so Cayde couldn’t feel any sign of danger. Yet.
Finally, after being awake for about half a minute, he forced himself to sit up. His body creaked in protest, and he hissed a little, orange light bubbling up from his throat. He could feel some cracks in his jaw, but it was nothing that Sundance couldn’t fix.
Speaking of, he opened his hand, and his Ghost appeared. “Sundance, what’s the status?” he groaned.
Sundance, who has yet to say anything about Cayde’s awakening, looked around. “I don’t think we’re anywhere we know,” she announced. “But it looks like we crashed here due to being rocketed into the evacuation portal.”
Cayde looked to the side. He could see one sparrow on its side a few feet away from him, and the other stuck in a tree about ten feet above him. Lying at the bottom of this tree were both Pidge and Elise, neither of them looking to be conscious in the slightest.
Forcing himself up on his feet, Cayde limped over to the two girls. As he did so, Sundance followed, healing him from behind. The scars from the Umbra Mondo were seriously beginning to ache again. How come they were never healed properly?
As he picked up Pidge, the sparrow stuck in the trees groaned, and there was the snapping of branches. Cayde looked up to see the nose of the sparrow tipping downwards, beginning to slide out of the grasp of the branches.
“Oh, shit!” Snatching up Elise, Cayde scrambled backward to get all three of them out of harm’s way.
A few seconds after he moved, the sparrow fell down the rest of the way. It crashed headlong into the ground, digging itself in about two feet and staying ramrod straight for about five seconds. Then, it tilted and eventually fell forward, ripping up more of the ground in the process. Smoke billowed from it in puffs, and a flurry of sparks danced out from its interior.
“That was close,” Cayde grunted, getting on one knee as his legs began to shake while still carrying the two girls.
Sundance looked around. “We went through the portal, right? So everybody else has to be nearby somewhere.”
“Can you get in contact with somebody?”
“Sorry, but that’s a negative, Cayde. Both my GPS and my communications are met with nothing. I don’t know what world we ended up in, and where anybody else is.”
Cayde looked around. “Well, wherever we are, I barely have a good feeling about it.” He shifted both girls onto his back. “Continue to try and establish contact for me, will you? Lucy had to have gotten through after we did.”
Sundance paused at that. “If she did, she would be here with us, right?”
“Well, obviously, she got flung somewhere else in these woods, so we gotta find her!”
Sundance didn’t like the way Cayde used Lucy’s name instead of his casual ‘Pinky’. It just sounded like denial of what happened on his end. But she said nothing more on the matter and began to try and establish contact with Echo, expecting the eventual result of static.
He was probably just frazzled after waking up in the middle of an attack after more than half a year of being in a coma. But he hasn't asked about anything related to that matter, or even what he missed during that time. Still, she wouldn’t press him on that and only followed him as he began to walk in a random direction with a girl under each arm.