Chapter Text
Silence.
Eerie silence filled the halls of the Orokin laboratory, its glittering golden and ivory walls stained with red. Bodies littered the shallow halls, from Archimedeans attempting to flee from the laboratory and the Dax to fight these shadowy intruders, all in vain as their attempt to survive the ever growing corruption consuming the lab was dimming. An Archimedean dashed through the labyrinth of his creators’ make, his breathing labored and frantic, as adrenaline had spiked, his survival instincts leading him as he desperately searched for escape. He stopped briefly, his tunic chafing against his skin, his breathing had slowed to a more reasonable level as he glanced around the intersection of the lab’s hallways. He let out a whimper as his eyes furled, and he glanced down at the device in his hands, a gold-trimmed black rectangular box.
As the Archimedean stared at the device, he heard a foul noise echo down the halls, a scream of sheer terror that morphed into screams of pain as the sounds of flesh being torn apart followed. The Archimedean began to run down the hall again, his hand clutched firmly on the device, as he found what appeared to be an open door at the end of the hallway. His mind raced as his face lit up in a mix of joy and exhilaration as he ran as fast as he could toward the door…
Only for a strange pentagram sigil to manifest in the door’s archway.
The Archimedean stopped in his tracks, and he let out several whimpers of fear, confusion, and panic as he tried to work his way around the sigil, which felt solid. Unusually solid, as if it was made of metal. He tried to grasp the sigil itself, in an attempt to pull it off or break it, but it was too strong. He looked all over the sigil and tried to crawl out through the openings, but they were too narrow for him to fit through. Behind him, he heard the animalistic cries howling louder, as he turned, his back pressed against the sigil. Panic settled in, as the device dropped from his hand, it clacked loudly on the floor, and his eyes driven mad with fright as the Archimedean noticed a large minotaur-esque creature turned around from its corner of the hallway, its eyes filled with ire and malice locked on to the fearful scientist.
‘N-no… please…’ the Archimedean whispered as his body quaked and his legs gave way. He slithered down to the ground as the minotaur menacingly walked toward him, its footsteps causing the hall to rumble. As the creature towered over the scientist, he could only let out one thing from his mouth, a scream of pure terror as the minotaur raised his claws on its right hand and swung downward.
----
Jera gasped. He had been asleep in the Somatic Link upon the Orbiter for a while, but was shaken from his slumber by strange dreams for the past several days. Memories of the New War are still fresh in his mind – visions of seeing Ballas attack the Lotus and casting her aside in a Void portal, meeting his alternate counterpart on the Zariman Ten-Zero, fighting off Sentients aboard the mothership Praghasa in his Voidrig, and then seeing Ballas, crowned Emperor of Narmer, on his throne as he forces the Lotus to attack them – all enough to make him vomit from the stress.
“Operator?”
A familiar voice rang out to him as he sat back up and readjusted himself. It was Ordis, his faithful companion who looked out for him even as the situation had grown hopeless. The Cephalon stared at Jera through his shell, his voice filled with concern as he saw the Operator breathe heavily. “Operator, are you okay?” the Cephalon inquired as Jera glanced upward at him.
“I’m fine, Ordis,” the Operator responded. “Just some bad dreams I’ve been having for the past couple of weeks.”
“Still haunted by the New War, are you, Operator?”
Jera sighed as he got up from the Somatic Link. “Yes, Ordis. The New War may be over for now, but I still haven’t shaken off those memories. I know I won’t be able to get over them for a while, but…” the Operator paused as he looked around the room, as he swore that he heard what sounded like a Deacon patrolling beside him.
“Operator,” Ordis began as he glided gently next to Jera, his Sentinel form’s eyes letting out a brief flash, “I know this goes without saying, but you won’t be able to just ‘get over’ these traumatic experiences so easily. You need to undergo behavioral conditioning in order to cope with the trauma. Besides, the Lotus is back, you two were victorious in your battles, and Narmer is still in shambles.” The Sentinel drifted a short distance away from the Operator as he wiped tears from his eyes, “Besides, I have received a message from the Lotus. She requests your attention once more.”
‘What could it be this time?’ Jera thought to himself as he sat back down in the Somatic Link, the shell closing in on him as Ordis’ Sentinel form flew out of the room. His mind popped with thoughts about who he could be facing this time – Grineer forces, Corpus scavenger teams, or even Sentient hideaways, all looking for a scrap with the Tenno once more, as he took control of his warframe, the old warrior Excalibur Umbra. With the frame’s mind subsiding in favor of the Operator’s, Jera made his way to the helm of his Orbiter and activated the leftmost console.
“Tenno,” rang a familiar voice from the console as Jera stood at attention. The transmission screen displayed the Lotus’ face as she began to speak, “I need you for an important mission. A while ago, I picked up some strange phenomena occurring at the moon of Ganymede, near Jupiter. Corpus ships have flown in to investigate the source of the disturbances, but intercepted broadcasts have reported that those ships went completely silent by the time they have reached Ganymede.”
Jera frowned. Strange occurrences on one of Jupiter’s moons? Could it be more of the Void’s corruption spreading to a closed-off sector of that moon, or did the Corpus awaken something that they should not have done by the time their ships went silent? He pondered what could have happened as the Lotus’ transmission continued, “I need you to go down there and see what is happening on Ganymede. I’ll send you the coordinates for the Corpus’s last seen ship. Get down there and report anything you can find. And Tenno, please be careful.”
The screen went blank as Jera leaned back. He tried to piece together the details again just to make sense of the situation. ‘Strange phenomena, ships going dark and possibly those ships’ personnel dying on Ganymede… or worse, possessed.’ Jera walked toward the navigation console as a map of the solar system manifested on the display, then set course for Ganymede. “Ordis,” the Operator began as he got up and prepared his landing craft.
“Yes, Operator?”
“Patch me in with the Lotus. I’m about to head down to Ganymede.”
----
The Mantis landing craft flew in towards Ganymede as Jera steeled his nerves. By the time it flew close, the pod underneath spun around to release the Excalibur Umbra, and the warframe landed gracefully as he glanced at the area in front of him. Before him stood a large, gilded archway with the familiar gold and ivory architecture seen on Lua. ‘Orokin facility… great.’ Jera frowned as he got up to his feet and made his way to the entrance. He thought that Lua would have been the last of the times he stepped foot into derelict Orokin facilities, his gut twisting slightly as he knew that there was nothing but bad news in those facilities. His transmitter rang as he heard a familiar voice speak to him.
“Tenno, be careful. I am not detecting any life signs anywhere in this area, nor am I picking up any signals from the ships docked nearby. Proceed with caution,” the Lotus called to Jera, her voice laced heavily with concern. This did not reassure Jera as he equipped his Felarx shotgun and readied it, as the door began to open. The Excalibur Umbra surveyed the interior of the area, and Jera felt a sense of dread fill him as he looked around. Bloodstains paint the walls as pools of blood and dead bodies of Corpus crewmen cover the floors of the halls, the air heavy with the stench of decaying flesh. The halls expanded onward to reveal rooms containing Orokin defense systems, more Corpus bodies, and, oddest out of all of them, tables containing laboratory equipment, many of which have been damaged and rendered nonfunctional.
‘This is a research facility. Possibly dedicated to experiments for Continuity or some other deranged Orokin nonsense,’ Jera mused as he continued to patrol down the halls and labs of the derelict moon base. He turned a corner and stopped in his tracks as he noticed a rather peculiar sight in front of him, a bloody message painted on the wall in the die-cast language of the Corpus…
SAVE YOURSELF FROM HELL
‘What happened here?’ Jera mused to himself as he noticed the corpse of a Tech in front of him. His helmet is missing, and his face has been mutilated beyond recognition, and Jera gasped as he saw that the Tech’s eye sockets are empty and bleeding. ‘This is horrifying. What possessed this Corpus foot soldier to gouge his eyes out and scribble that on the wall?’
Before the Operator can ponder this situation any further, he heard something echo down the hall, a strange whisper calling out to someone. His warframe jumped up and raised his Felarx, ready to pull the trigger at anything or anyone that stepped out from around the corner of the hallway. Yet nothing came out, and the whisper continued to echo down the hallway as Jera listened in.
‘Save me…’ was all the Operator could make out. He shuddered for a moment, but steeled himself as he continued to patrol down the halls of the facility. As the warframe turned right to another hallway, Jera stopped as he discovered that the hallway was blocked off by a strange metallic barrier with a pentagram pattern in the center of it. First whispers, and now a barrier with an unfamiliar design blocking the way from him, just enough for Jera to lower his weapon as he surveyed the metal barrier. He turned on his transmitter and tried to call the Lotus.
“I found a barrier with a strange pattern in the middle of it. It’s made of solid metal, and I can’t get past it,” Jera said, only to hear nothing but static. “Lotus? Are you there?”
Still nothing but static. Jera turned the transmitter off as he looked around and wondered what was preventing him from contacting the Lotus and telling her what he had found.
‘Must be a signal jammer somewhere in the facility. Damn Corpus.’ Jera thought to himself as he resumed his patrol through the halls. He turned another corner and ran into a room, only to be greeted with another strange sight. A red marble wall with a window, sealed off by another pentagram barrier, with the window pointing out to a vast crimson expanse, all in place of a gold and ivory door. Whispers emanated from the marble window as the warframe approached it, then glanced outward.
There was nothing but a red sky outside of the marble window, no sign of a landscape to be found. Just a seemingly infinite void of sky as far as Jera can see. His warframe’s hands started to shake as he heard a strange rumbling noise echo down the other ends of the room, and he spun around to find the source of the noise. An open door leading to another room, this time with stone tablets, terminals, and a corpse of a Corpus crewman hunched over a desk. Jera slowly walked into the room, his Felarx at the ready, as he surveyed the area of any hostile presence.
‘Clear.’ He observed the tablets lining up some of the walls in the room, which each depict images of humanoid figures engaged in combat with strange creatures, decorated with writings in an unfamiliar language. Jera looked around and noticed the terminal on the desk, next to the crewman’s corpse, and found that it was still powered on. He set aside his Felarx over his warframe’s shoulder and equipped his Parazon, then jammed it into the terminal.
Most of the terminal’s data is corrupted and inaccessible, save for a log that is still intact. Jera opened up the log as the display revealed an Orokin man, clad in the dark robes of an Archimedean, his arms folded below his chest.
‘This is Archimedean Udala, recording this for the Seven.’ The man began to speak as he looked around for a moment, then returned focus to the camera. ‘Day 121. I can feel it. I can feel my ticket out of here! Ahem, apologies. Didn’t mean to get worked up there. The miners here have managed to recover a series of artifacts from the ruins underneath Ganymede’s surface. Most of them were just stone tablets etched with pictograms and some strange language that I have yet to decipher, but two of the miners returned with something worthwhile. A tome of sorts, red with a skull on the cover. We have yet to uncover what secrets lie inside the tome’s pages, but I believe that we can gather a lot of information from this, in addition to what we can decipher from the tablets. I am eagerly anticipating my return back to the Seven, and I hope that my discoveries here can advance the Empire even further.’
The display shut itself off as the log finished. Jera pulled out his Parazon from the terminal as he processed this information. ‘Artifacts? A red tome with a skull on the cover? What in the world has Udala discovered down here?’ A loud crash rang down a short distance away from the warframe’s position, which startled Jera. He readied his Felarx and traced down the source of the noise, as more bodies lined up the facility’s halls. The warframe ran down more and more as the gold and ivory architecture of the halls gave way to red brick and green marble, whispers and faint screams filled the air as Jera found himself in front of the source of the loud crash. A stone tablet had fallen over as its metal frame collided with the ground, the tablet shattering into large pieces as the Tenno surveyed the room.
‘No signs of hostiles. What knocked this thing over?’ He kneeled down and observed one of the pieces of the tablet, which depicted what appeared to be a large gateway with a strange humanoid in the center of it. The Tenno put aside the piece as he notices a large elevator in the far end of the room, still operational. Jera got back on his feet and made his way to the elevator as its doors opened up for him to enter. He then pressed on the console as the elevator began to whir and head downward. As the elevator went down, Jera switched on his transmitter and tried to contact the Lotus again.
‘Lotus, are you there? Can you hear me?’
Static.
Jera let out a sigh of consternation as the elevator continued to move downward. What is preventing him from contacting the Lotus? He began to think of other possibilities as to what is blocking the signal from reaching her, as he is now certain that there is no Corpus signal jammer to be found. Just corpses and broken-down Orokin technology. He checked his Felarx once more as the elevator stopped moving, and the doors opened up to reveal a large dig site. Excavators and large lamps line up the exterior of the dig site, strange noises emanate from the tunnel before Jera. The Tenno began to head down the tunnel, and he followed the lamps that are still functional. The tunnel began to snake outward as caved-in ends and fallen debris blocked off other areas of the dig, much to Jera’s frustration, and the Tenno continued to patrol through the tunnels until he found himself in a large amphitheater.
Jera scanned the area as he readied his Felarx, but found nothing but more stone tablets and a few more bodies. The Tenno looked over one of the bodies, and gasped slightly as he had noticed some details about it. Its uniform was silver and gray with brass embellishments, its helmet expanded outward in a circular disk-like fashion, and it became clear to the Tenno that this, along with the rest of the bodies, was a Dax soldier. What few other features he can make out reveal nothing but desiccated, grayed skin. These Dax have been dead for far longer, compared to the Corpus crewmen up top.
‘Something doesn’t add up here,’ Jera thought as he got up and glanced at an archway leading out to another tunnel. He ran down toward it, through more tunnels and hallways, the dusty brown stone halls giving way to green marble halls, strange sigils etched into some of the walls and floors. The whispers and screams that filled the upper halls of the facility also filled the air in the marble halls of the dig, as Jera glanced at a wall depicting a grimacing face in front of him.
‘I really need to get out of here once I’m done here.’ He thought to himself as he pulled down a chain switch next to the marble face, and the face slowly raised upward and revealed a large hall, rows of wooden chairs lined up in the middle of the hall as a marble pedestal sat at the far end of it. The walls were decorated with broken windows, all with strange designs forged from metal frames, each of them depicting different creatures – horned humanoids, quadrupedal creatures, and armored, knight-like figures. ‘This place is a cathedral,’ Jera observed as he made his way across the nave, past the rows of chairs and toward the pedestal where a gold chalice sat. He reached out toward the chalice, overflowing with a red liquid, but before he could even touch the chalice, the cathedral nave began to shake. Dust fell down from the ceiling as loud, inhuman roars rang down from the halls before the nave, followed by the rhythm of heavy footsteps.
‘Oh, you are kidding me,’ Jera cursed to himself as he ran from the pedestal and out into the halls, as the roars and heavy footsteps grew louder. Debris began to fall from the ceilings as the Tenno dodged around them, dashed past the cave-ins, and ran back to the elevator before whatever was hunting him down could catch up to him. Just before he could run around a corner, he heard a loud roar a few meters away.
Standing in front of Jera is a large, minotaur-esque creature. It extended its right arm out as a fireball formed in its palm, then swung its arm as the fireball flew at the Tenno. Jera dodged the fireball and fired his Felarx a few times at the beast, which recoiled back a few steps as the shots tore through its hide. The minotaur, however, glared back at the warframe and gave chase, forcing the Tenno to run as he hastily reloaded his shotgun. As Jera continued to run from the beast, more creatures began to pour out from the halls – large groups of shadowy beasts warped in and attempted to surround the Tenno, but he drew his Pangolin sword and sliced down three of the shadow creatures. More of the shadows began to swarm in and chased after the Tenno, but he summoned an ethereal blade and jammed it into the ground, and shortly after a storm of blades erupted from the ground, underneath the creatures and pierced them. With those shadows eviscerated, Jera continued to run through the halls, taking a left as he found himself back at the amphitheater, with a large horned demon at the top of the room, ashen orange and covered in spikes, as it roared at Jera and jumped down to the bottom level where he stood at.
Jera raised his Felarx again and fired several shots at the beast, but the horned thing shrugged off the shots and charged at the warframe. Jera dodged to the side as he opened up the hatch on the side of his shotgun, and the beast stopped and turned around to face him, then charged at him again. The Tenno dodged its charge again as he inserted the final shell into his shotgun, then slammed the hatch shut and began to open fire. The beast shrugged off the shots again as it prepared to run once more at him, but the Tenno drew out his ethereal blade again and raised it upward, and a flash of light burst outward and blinded the beast.
“Alright, you ugly beast,” Jera taunted the horned creature and extended his ethereal blade at it. “You are going down hard.” The beast roared in response as Jera wrapped his other hand around the blade’s hilt, and the beast charged at him. Jera slashed at the air as waves of energy flew toward the beast, dodging its attacks and jumping over it as it took a swing at him with his right claw. The beast turned around as the Tenno swung his blade again, releasing more energy waves at it, but the thing ran toward him and swung its claw downward at the Tenno. He blocked it with his blade as the beast roared in apparent pain, then he jumped back a couple meters as the beast began to glow a faint orange across its veins. It cupped its hands together and raised its arms upward as it prepared to slam the ground, but the Tenno jumped upward as he anticipated its attack.
The beast slammed the ground with its fists as Jera landed directly on its back, then drove his blade into the beast’s back. It roared in excruciating pain as it swung around in an attempt to push the Tenno off of it, but he held on to his blade as he sliced down its back. As the warframe sliced down to the small of the beast’s back, the creature grabbed onto his leg and threw him across the room, causing him to collide against a wall. Jera shouted in pain as he slammed against the wall and his vision started to blur, but he noticed that the beast was hunched over. He attempted to get back on his feet, but as he struggled to get back up, he collapsed back on his knees as the beast began to march toward him.
“I’m… not going down until you… are…” Jera struggled to taunt the creature again as his ethereal blade dissipated, the sword letting out a faint howl as it disappeared. The beast prepared to swing its claw downward as the Tenno glowered at it.
“Until… you… are… dead…”
The beast swung its claw downward, only for it to strike the Tenno’s Prisma Skana sword. Jera managed to deflect the beast’s attack long enough for him to get back on his feet, and the beast let out another angry roar. Jera slid underneath the beast as it swung its claws at him again, then sliced its legs off with his blade as it roared once more in pain. The horned thing collapses as the Tenno shakily sheaths his sword, then turns back around and spots the beast’s corpse on the ground spontaneously combust and turn into embers. He let out a small chuckle and a sigh of relief as his vision grew blurry, and whispers began to fill the room.
Everything went black as the whispers grew louder for him. The only other thing Jera could hear before he fainted was the sound of footsteps.
