The neon embrace of Neomuna was a delightful change of pace from the icy desert they’d endured in the last few days. Ikora had taken her time interrogating Nina, who balked at laying bare every Hive secret. Her presence next to them as they traipsed through the Ishtar Collective facility was silent testament to the use her information had been. Suki and she had enjoyed comparing notes on the various useful things solar energies could accomplish while the titan explained how the properly wield the void. Soon enough, Nina would be a shadowy assassin just like the hunter assigned to watch them.

Hilda had taken to mumbling angrily every so often as she stalked the concrete and steel carapace of the facility. She flew down elevator shafts, hand wreathed in solar flames as she encountered yet another Shadow Legion barricade. The empty husk of Calus’ legion had burrowed deep into the city, infesting it as maggots to decaying flesh. Extricating them would be a tiresome and extensive task.

As Suki and Nina made their way to the bottom of the shaft, their warlock companion barked out a warning. Training hit them both like a hurricane and they flung themselves behind cover. Shadow Legion guns rattled in the depths. The guttural, feral barking of the war beasts they had grown closer as they ran from behind barricades.

“Hey Hilda! Snap your fingers at them! It’ll be funny!” Suki shouted from her position, manifesting a solar hammer. Nina rolled all three of her eyes, using a strange Hive sniper rifle on any Legion brave enough to show a weak point.

The warlock didn’t question it, pressing her fingers together. In that friction, her Light gathered. With a growl of exertion, she sent sparks flying with a snap like tinder to kindling. The war beasts were set alight, incineration leaving nothing but embers for their pyres. Suki’s hammer gusted the wind down the corridor, falling upon one of the barricaded Legion. With a mighty ignition, a twisting flame began to singe and consume any who attempted to help their fallen companion.

Hilda winced as the smell of burning flesh hit her nostrils, even through her helmet. She staggered back, revolver clattering to the floor. A towering Legion butcher, with both cleavers aglow, surged forward. His great elephantine feet toppled the crates the warlock had been using for cover, hoping to overwhelm the sniper shredding his soldiers.

Suki shoulder checked him with a grunt, almost crushing Hilda while she recovered. The blonde barely managed to roll out from under him before he crashed to the ground. The titan shouted to her partner, telling her to end him. Hilda hopelessly groped for her revolver with a noise of panic as the butcher got to his feet, raising a cleaver. Suki wrapped her arms tightly around the butcher’s midsection, paralyzing his arm while shouting for aid.

The aid came in the form of Nina, who’d dispatched the psion suppressing her, levelling a shot between the butcher’s eyes. With a spatter of black blood, a rushing decompression from his helmet and a guttural death rattle, the severus fell to the ground. Seeing their commander fall, the remains of the battalion fled through an armoured door.

“I get the pacifism, really I do, but could you not Gandhi out on a guy trying to kill us?” Suki asked testily as she slung her machine gun down from her back. Allowing them to escape had likely hardened their defence. Whatever Hilda wanted, the Shadow Legion clearly did too. Enough to divert forces to a rear guard, at least. 

“Restraint in the face of the enemy is weakness. They must be cloven from the shape, or you must be.” Nina agreed as she sidled past. She rifled through a few of the Legion’s affects, taking ammo and the odd trophy in the form of a tooth or tusk. A grisly little shrine had formed in the back of their ship since the Hive’s inclusion onto their fireteam. Suki soon followed, not waiting for Hilda’s rebuttal.

“I just dropped my gun!” The warlock shot indignantly at them as she followed. She picked up her revolver as she passed it, looking forlornly at the full chambers. Flicking the drum back into place, she sighed and slipped it into its holster.

The trio continued their way through the facility, Hilda secretively reading every element of signage. One of the city’s citizens had been very helpful in pointing them to this Shadow Legion intrusion. A voice in Hilda’s mind, perhaps her own, remarked how useful Calus’ faithful hounds had been in sniffing out her prize. There was a connection, a truth that eluded her since her time upon the ziggurat. Without thought, her hand extended to the satchel on her other hip. Her fingers curled about the rectangular object within it.

Their quarry inevitably led them downward, throwing up increasingly ramshackle barricades. Suki and Nina broke them all down, their companion following obediently. They eventually came upon the cul de sac, the inevitable terminus of their chase.

The battalion had had precious little time to prepare. They hunkered down in a circular room with the appearance of a viewing deck. Its glass walls silenced Suki’s machine gun before it had even taken a shot. The reinforced concrete to the party’s rear leant voices to the muzzles of their enemy’s guns.

It was not Suki nor Nina who responded to their trap first. With a defiant shout, Hilda held her hand aloft. A brand of solar fire clanged to life and its tip was soon buried in the ground. Around them became wreathed in golden flames, bullets simply evaporating in the nuclear inferno the warlock commanded. Suki looked back with wide eyes as her companion pulled the hammer of her revolver back, spattering the contents of a psion’s helmet soon after.

“Shadows won’t last long in the sun.” The warlock snarled to her companions. With a volley of grenades, hammers and flares, the room about them was laid to waste. A fine layer of ash sifted down from the remains of their would-be ambushers.

Without pause, Hilda made her way toward a ladder. Suki looked down to see a strange pulsating, undulating colour pattern set within a circular border. She looked to the ladder, then to Nina with concern in her eyes. Nina, though Hive, nodded with understanding.

“Come! The Veil awaits!” Hilda shouted from the bottom of the ladder.