“We’re nearing the portal.” The ghost’s voice was deadened and flat; it was the first either had spoken since leaving the cell. As she groped down through the caves, the air grew thinner, and a new kind of light came up through the glistening underworld of wet limestone columns; vibrant, colorless, permeating everything. The sandy dirt smoothed to stone beneath her feet; the world became translucent, as the light grew, until it was blinding.

“Now you must trust my eyes,” said the Ghost, somehow in front of her. He sounded like he spoke from some distance, far away, and she struggled to follow his voice. The air was so full of white light now that she could not even see her hands.

“Where are we?” she shouted after him.

“In the fissure between dimensions. We’re almost through, keep running!”

Shapes began to form out of the light as she chased him: great crystalline formations, like giant diamonds, jutted up from the stone floor at jagged angles. Then the light fell away, and she was running on a great bridge, across a vast black expanse below. The air was thinner still.

“Are we on Luna?” she yelled.

“Up here!” He called. She could see him floating on the far side of the bridge, moving under his own power. He seemed refreshed; his voice was the strongest she’d heard it. “We’ve reached the abandoned staging ground of Crota’s last invasion.” They were in a vast cavern. Towering rock formations led up to a ceiling, far above, invisible in the darkness.

“If we are on Luna…how will I breath, on the surface?” The idea had been troubling her. It was already difficult to breath.

“What atmosphere there is in these caves seems to be supporting you now. Beyond this place, you’ll have to trust me,” the ghost offered, dryly. “I can preserve your light just as your ghost did, but you’ll expire on the surface before I can bring our ship to the hellmouth.”

“Not exactly the most appealing prospect,” she replied. “I will remember you if you do, won’t I?”

“Sarcasm aside, it’s something I’ve done numerous times, and I’m confident I’ll be able to restore you as you are now,” the ghost rejoindered. “Unless you’d like me to leave you alone down here?”

“Expiring sounds preferable,” she smirked half-heartedly.

They made their way through the murk of the abyss as the light faltered, then failed, behind them. The broken path leading through walled garrisons and abandoned sentry posts was a whisper or suggestion in the choking black air. The cave was mawkish and thick with humid soot. Far overhead, strange lights hung like stars in a dead sky.

“More portals?” she asked the ghost.

“Their network sprawls across the moon. They had retreated of late, but I fear our incursion may spur their activity.” They crossed pools of oil and navigated huge pits that shot down for miles. A light grew in the distance, and as they approached, the columns supporting the great chamber became less ordered, more jagged and natural. “That’s the path out,” the ghost whispered.

They crawled down embankments, sloshing through pools of brackish black slime. The portal out was a pedestal, gleaming in a broad beam of sunlight, alone in the abyss. Eris stood up upon it as it glowed to life.

“You’re sure I’ll remember, ghost?” She smiled as she asked, and to her it seemed the ghost smiled back.

“Nothing to fear, I’m quite confident you’ll–“

He stopped, staring directly over her shoulder; as she spun around, a figure loomed from the black, just outside the bright ray of sunlight where she stood. Its face was the ragged face of a silver-haired man; once he may have been handsome, but now his features were stretched and misshapen, as if he’d been stuffed by some cruel taxidermist. Long, spindly, malformed fingers stretched down from distended hands that fell nearly to the ground, hooked to gangly, rippling arms, as if snakes writhed beneath their surface; the undulating trunk of his freakish frame hovered, swathed in wet crimson robes, like bandages, while rivened and mangled flesh sloughed down where his legs should have been, swaddled in the torn remnants of his vestments. The abomination seemed to float there, half man and half monster in the half-light, strange shadows sneering on its horrific face, as it leered with a ghastly smile.

“Toland!” stammered the ghost. “How…? What are you!?”

“Now, now, child of light, is that a way to greet your once master?” The creature spoke in a whistling, hollow rasp, its voice somehow thin and booming at the same time, as if two voices spoke in unison. Sound escaped before its lips began to move, words coming too soon for the mouth that was forming them. Its eyes bulged from its head, oozing black fluid. It turned to Eris. “And you, our queen, is it so soon you would part from your devoted? We chose you, our sweet monarch, for our own divine purpose!” It came forward, arms raised in supplication, then lurched back from the light; it moved as though on strings, circling round them like a giant moth, as though some horrible machination propelled it back and forth at the edge of the light’s reach.

“What are you, wretch?” hissed Eris, crouching, knives out. “What purpose would you have to ply me with my dead comrade? You are not Toland!”

“Oh no?” the sickening aspect of the voice whistled, a second too soon for the marionette’s lips. It spread its frail fingers out in an enormous span, as if to offer open arms for her to embrace. “You do not remember us, who opened your eyes to this transcendent passage? We chose you expressly, sweet Eris; you were to be our gift, our prize!” The corpse wobbled; it seemed to fear the light, to strive against it, rounding the light for a way in. “The mystic claimed he could bring you to us; he wanted only to sing the dirges of our realm, to understand our living tongue, not this dead language that you speak!” It seemed to move further into the light as it spoke; or the light shrank from it. “We were happy to give him all he asked, if he only brought one such as you to us. We have seen you in visions at the genesis of our age!”

“And some reward you’ve given him,” she spat back, edging backward as the creature advanced. “Did he beg you to disembowel him as well?”

“Such was the price he paid when you escaped,” it clucked back. “We thought for certain you were lost but joy alone is in our heart to see you again!” It lurched forward, its outstretched claws grasping nearly within reach of her.

“Ghost, take us back!” screamed Eris. She shrank backward from the monster, too close to the darkness: behind, the evil hands of Toland’s puppeteer reached out of the black for her. Horrid emerald fingers grabbed around her face, digging into her eyes. White pain shot through her head as onyx claws extinguished her green orbs, black blood jetting out from the sockets with a hiss into the air. The world was black, and she cried out in anguish and agony, drowned out by the sudden, sundering wail of the abomination. Then she felt herself being snatched upward, torn from that horrible grip: with a blind rush the air dissipated as her scream became the hiss of evaporate and she gasped and breathed nothing and collapsed and the sound of the vacuum rushed about her exploding eardrums. Then she was dead.

****

****

“Eris?”

The voice was warm and deep, and in the darkness she felt fresh air and life around her. She heard soft breezes blowing in through an open window, felt the same wind like breathe on her cheeks, and outside the whistle of crickets and a wren lifted her spirits. The voice of Ikora hung over her, half a song of joy and sorrow. “It’s good to have you back this morning.”

“Am I dead?” asked Eris. It was more a plea than a question, and she could feel in the darkness that Ikora took it for the former. Her voice was regret and pity.

“We did what we could to restore you,” she offered. “But I’m afraid we couldn’t repair all of your injuries.” Eris turned away from the sympathetic voice.

“You did what you could, Ikora,” she sobbed. She listened to the birdsong out the window. The sound of Ikora’s departure was muffled by a soft hum near her ear.

“Tell me, ghost,” she spoke softly. “You were there with Toland and you knew his thoughts.”

“What do you require, Eris.”

“Tell me. Tell me of Crota.” Her voice was a growl in the dark. “Tell me all you know.”