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Chapter Text

{Faerun}

Sir John of Spartan looked at his Warforged (and wasn't that a joke that never got old) companion of over 50 years “Are you sure this will work Cortana?”
The blue living robot turned her head away from the runic circle she had been drawing for the last decade “I know it will get us home, but when we will arrive? That's anyone's guess. Best case scenario is shortly after we left but most likely months if not years after.”  

The two-and-a-half-meter tall Goliath gave a barely noticeable shrug to show his displeasure at the vague time frame, “Alright. Let's get this done then. Charge the crystal and let's go home”
It had been 50 years since the enigma that was the ‘haunted’ Goliath Paladin had appeared in Faerun, 45 years since he managed to get a Warforged body for Cortana, who had existed only as a spirit until then, and each of them going on to  make a name for themselves as individuals and even more so as a pair.
The strength of John's word had made him into a mighty paladin, devoted to keeping everyone safe.
His beloved machine spirit, Cortana had become an artificer of unparalleled skill, with designs no one had even dreamed of before let alone seen and built and it was through her genius that they were finally leaving for their home plane.  

John doffed his armour, watching as his wife did the same, they wouldn't be able to take anything through the portal with them, lest it interfere with the ritual.
Stepping into the circle, the large crystal started to glow and with a blinding flash of light, the two legendary heroes vanished.

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 {UNSC Frigate: Forward Unto Dawn}

John gasped into consciousness as the air inside his lungs froze, before rapidly warming to a breathable temperature. He heard his wife call “John! you awake? The auto release is stuck, pull the lever above your head”
True to her word, there was a red handle written, 'No that's not common, that's… English!', with the words Emergency Exit . with a slight tug, the handle came loose and he shoved the glass door open, raining small icicles down around him. He stared down at his wife, now reduced to the pale blue hologram that she had been before they had been sent to Faerun. “Where are we?” The Master Chief replied, the title settling on his shoulders as comfortably as his Mjolnir power armour, which he had missed dearly.

“Still aboard The Dawn, according to the ship's logs, we've been gone for over 4 years” Cortana replied, stretching out her senses through the ship's systems for the first time in 50 or 4 years, depending on how you looked at it. “John, I'm detecting movement in the upper decks and no IFF tags, we may have unwelcome guests”

Master Chief grabbed his assault rifle from its bay next to his cryo pod, “Unwelcome guests, with a ship. Come on, let's go say hi.” Cortana gave a small giggle before shrinking down into her chip. The Chip was unusually hot against his skull when he inserted it and the feeling of his wife on his neural lace felt a temperature more akin to molten lava rather than the arctic water that he remembered. “Cortana, are you alright?” Master Chief asked, his battle senses warning him of a problem,
“I’m fine John” the AI replied, not wanting to worry her Husband
“Meshla, you haven’t believed me when I said that for the last 40 years and I could heal myself. Don't think for a moment you can try and use my own tricks against me. I can literally feel that something is wrong. Now spill.”

There was silence over their coms channel as Master Chief made his way towards the elevator shaft “I… may …. Have made a slight miscalculation when I sent us back, in particular, back to our bodies instead of taking the ones we used to be in”
John paused, not liking where this was going, Cortana very rarely made mistakes in her calculations and when there were mistakes, they were usually very problematic
“Go on”
“UNSC AI matrices, the building blocks on what we store our knowledge on are rather limited, only having about seven to eight years of storage on them before we start going rampant”

It was like a giant had slapped him over the head with a tree trunk, again, “And you just imported fifty years or so of memories from Faerun” he took a breath, preparing for an unpleasant answer “How much time do you have?”
Cortana sighed “Right now? About 18 hours. If I could somehow find a way to extend my storage capacity? Maybe up to 28”
John gave a displeased hum, and resumed his march towards the shaft “What about The Dawn? Surely it must have more storage than my armour”,
“It does” Cortana replied “But the downside is the reactor is strained enough as it is and I would be limited to a half-destroyed husk of half a ship”,
“What about storage servers?”
Cortana blinked in the Master Chief’s Heads Up Display “What about them?”
This time it was Chief's turn to blink, him reaching a tech answer faster than Cortana was… concerning, to say the least, “Do you think you could rig up a server as an extended storage unit for me to carry on my back mag plate?”
“Dear lord that may work, head up to engineering, that’s where most of the main computer storage is”
John grinned, there was the lightbulb moment he was looking for “On my way, where is it?”
“2 floors up and 3 sections to starboard, I’ll start making a list of what I’ll need to make sure it won't fall apart with me in it”
It took 5 agonising minutes to get to the elevator shaft, every minute passing, a tolling bell in the back of his head, urging John to go. Just. a little. faster .

 The button for the elevator wasn't working, not surprising considering the state of the rest of the ship, so Chief jammed his armoured fingers into the door seam and with the strength of 10 men, pulled
“Umm, John,” Cortana began, realizing what Chief was doing, “Be careful!” There was a sudden vacuum as the doors opened fully, nearly pulling The Master Chief into the shaft before he magnetised his boots to the floor.
There was a screech as metal started to slide against metal and The Master Chief groaned as he realized the crates behind him were moving and, not wanting to risk getting knocked in without a good handhold, tensed his legs and jumped. 

The climb itself was simple, jump from one handhold to the next and dodge the falling debris dislodged by the change in air pressure, rinse, repeat, and climb up through the right floor's elevator door.

The Sangheili who was exploring the ship cloaked in adaptive camouflage made the fatal mistake of roaring his challenge as he swung his plasma sword at The Chief’s head. Acting on instinct honed over decades of practice, The Master Chief grabbed the Elites wrist with one hand, just below the blade, and with the other, raised his now glowing fist up and swung. The impact of his fist was expected, he couldn't have missed the Elite's head even if he tried. The Elite's head exploding with a flash of yellow light, however, was not.
There was a moment of silence between the two of them before Cortana asked “What was that?”John looked back down to his hand, now no longer glowing, and panted slightly, finding himself strangely winded… “I think that was oath magic, in particular, my smite… I thought we were leaving magic behind when we came back”
He unslung his rifle and continued onwards. It wasn't until he reached engineering that Cortana spoke again “Maybe magic was here all along and we just didn't know it? It would explain some of the forerunner tech we have seen. Anyway, we can worry about that later. I’ll mark the things you need on your HUD”. 

It was a remarkably simple thing to build for his wife; a data storage container she reformatted, along with a wireless connector to let her connect with it from her chip and finally a fusion battery to power it, all connected to the magnetic hard point on his back. It would mean he wouldn't be able to holster his assault rifle anymore, but that was a small price to pay for keeping Cortana alive, even if only for a few more hours.
The AI’s face appeared in his HUD, looking much less stressed, “Well, it's a bit roomier in here, current estimations are at 25 hours until total degradation. Now. Shall we go see if our visitors have been kind enough to leave us a ship?”

The Chief said nothing, but the grin on his face would have sent most beings running.

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It was a standard counter boarding strategy to get to the observation deck, only interrupted by a strange burst of High-frequency energy that had The Chief’s shields complaining as it washed over them “What was that?”
“High-frequency scan, unknown data configuration. Definitely not the Covenant!” Cortana's voice sounded strained, “It's playing hell on my circuits. I'm going to go on low power for a moment and see if I can reinforce the firmware”
Chief dropped a couple of grunts with headshots “Take a look at my rear shield emitters while you’re at it, I doubt that the jury-rigged server box is rated for any kind of damage.” He proceeded towards the final elevator to the observation deck, activating his Mag-Boots again as he pressed the call button. 

Fortunately for the pair of them, the elevator came without complaint and smoothly opened up its doors, “So, do you think the Covenant are back at war with Earth?”
Cortana hummed for a moment “Unlikely, these individuals didn’t seem to be very well equipped, possibly a salvage operation?” the doors to the observation deck opened and they could look through the transparent titanium, “or we may have just stumbled onto the whole reformed Covenant fleet”

One of the Elites must have gotten out a message of his resistance as 2 Phantom Dropships proceeded to attach EVA boarding pipes to funnel troops into the observation deck.
Needless to say, The Covenant was only momentarily surprised when Master Chief hurled a Plasma grenade at the lead Elite's head, trapping them all with nowhere to go until detonation. After the immediate threat was taken care of; John took a moment to look outside of the observation window.

For possibly the first time in his life, the large covenant fleet wasn't the object receiving his main focus, “Cortana, this might just be me hallucinating from the jump back, but is that a metal planet?”
There was a slight burst of static as Cortana sputtered “Well, if you're hallucinating, then my cameras are broken too. Because I see it on the Dawn 's scopes as well, however, those Covenant ships are starting to send fighters. Plug my chip in so I can interface with the weapon systems. Maybe make them think twice about us”
It was the work of moments to plug Cortana back into the ship so she could prepare the missile to fire “John, we have a problem. The missile is ready to fire but the launch door is damaged, we're going to need to do some EVA. I'll mark the nearest airlock”

John exchanged his Assault Rifle for a Battle Rifle that was floating conveniently just outside the airlock and used its scope to nail the Jackals with Carbines and Beam Rifles in the head.
Cortana had helpfully marked the damaged portion of the launch cover that he needed to remove and made use of his EVA thrusters to help build speed to shove the debris out of the way. John was then directed to a manual override terminal to reset the launch cycle, popping seals on Covenant as he went, without any atmosphere around, a simple breach of their armour was fatal.

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The missile destroying the Covenant Frigate wasn't anything that John hadn't seen before. That being said, he had never seen it happen so close and Cortana seemed to agree “Well, let it never be said you didn't know how to show a girl a good time Chief,” John hummed in lieu of a reply before turning back to head inside.
He had just launched himself towards the airlock, when the same orange energy scan blasted from the planet's surface, bathing him in its light, “Time to worry about the metal planet?” he asked, manoeuvring himself back through the door.

His suit’s sensors detected a gravitational surge as the doors began to cycle and he turned his head to see that the metal planet had opened up some kind of aperture in its surface, releasing an ominous white light. He leapt through the interior opening as Cortana replied “Definitely time to worry about the giant metal planet, that gravitational well will tear the Dawn apart, I'm marking the nearest escape pod, go!”
John took off like a MAC round, reaching his top speed in under a second as he raced through the decaying ship, already the gravity well’s effects beginning to show as decks began to collapse. The Covenant scavengers were ignored as The Chief figuratively and literally ran over and through the various Elites and Grunts. “John!” Cortana said, marking a second point on his visor, “That wall is showing serious signs of damage, you should be able to charge right through it!”
There wasn't much that could withstand a solid ton of Spartan hitting it at 88 kph, and an unreinforced wall that was already damaged as it was, was not one of them. The Chief went straight through the wall, staggering slightly before getting his feet back under him and taking back off towards the life pods. 

It was a close call between him throwing himself into the pilot's seat to take off and the launch bay being torn apart behind them. He guided the pod down as safely as he could, wincing as various pieces of debris impacted the pod’s sides as they accelerated towards the surface.

  A splinter of one of the ships embedded itself in the rear of the pod, sending it violently tumbling. The readouts that were displayed on The Chiefs HUD let him know that while they were now essentially in free fall, the piece of ship lodged in the pod was doing a remarkable attempt to replace the air brakes it had destroyed, “You know,” Cortana began, a sarcastic tone attempting to hide the nervousness in her voice “I bet none of the other AI have this much trouble with escape pods.”
John said nothing as they finally broke through into the atmosphere, the whole pod shuddering as ships rained down with them towards the unforgiving ground.
He braced himself as he activated his mag boots to angle himself at the cracked viewscreen “That may be true, but you wouldn't have had nearly as much fun with Douglas or Linda now, would you?” The screen shattered as he launched himself up and through the glass, gaining as much distance from the pod as he could.

“No, but it would lower my stress levels, calculating optimal decent plan”

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{Forerunner Planet}

If there was anyone alive on the ground to see the gravity well’s opening up close, they would have seen a tiny splinter of metal and assumed it to be a piece of ship. They would have been wrong.
The Master Chief slammed into the ground back first, arms wrapped around Cortana's storage case, having moved it to his stomach to try and protect it from as much of the impact as possible before blacking out.

  He awoke to Cortana 'tapping' on his visor “John? Can you hear me?”

The concern in her voice jolted him back to full consciousness, “Ow. Note to self, don't jump from the upper atmosphere twice without getting the armour looked over first, I think the gel layer was damaged,” he paused, head throbbing, “How long was I out?”
Cortana projected herself off his armours holo-emitters as he climbed back to his feet “Not long” her hologram distorted and her voice gained an unsettling digital warble “About half an hour”  

Chief winced as he put pressure on his right leg, he had landed badly. Hopefully, The Server! “Cortana, how did the server survive?”
Cortana was silent for a moment, running diagnostics, “minimal damage, cracked casing, but the components have survived. Hey-”
Whatever she was going to say was cut off as a flight of Phantoms flew overhead “We need to move. Are you ok with that leg?”
John was staring at his leg, which he had been trying to do what he remembered his healing magic felt like. It was harder than he remembered, “I’m surprisingly good. Did any covenant ships survive the crash?”

“I'm detecting several, why?”

John chuckled darkly as he picked up his battle rifle and began moving through the wreckage “Well, I figure that since they were the ones who got us in position to crash our ship, the least they could do would be to offer us a ride home”
Cortana's laugh was music to his ears.

The crash zone was a mess, both parts of the Forward unto Dawn and chunks of some of the covenant ships littered the landscape. He made sure to collect the few scattered rounds and magazines for his battle rifle whenever he saw them, even dropping his pistol to make room for the extra ammunition (the single magazine he had wasn't worth the 4 extra battle rifle mags).
The few scattered covenant troops littered around the crash site that weren't too dazed and confused to actually shoot at him were made short work of with the Chief's knife.
“Hold up John, I'm picking up IFF tags of a couple of warthogs nearby, a set of wheels might help speed up along,” Cortana said, marking a waypoint on his HUD, showing what was hopefully a working warthog around the next corner.

One of the motor pools had somehow managed to come down in mostly one piece and the shockingly potent suspension on the Warthog had ensured that at least two of the vehicles had survived, needing only minor repairs with parts from the scrapped ‘Hogs.
The seat and pedals felt disturbingly foreign to him as he sat down in the driver's seat. “You do remember how to drive right?” Cortana’s voice was 3 parts concern 1 part sarcasm, John switched on the engine and released the throttle break “Still a better driver than you. That cart from the Artificers’ Mecca wasn't ever the same after you tried to drive it”
Cortana sputtered in embarrassment “Which we both agreed never happened”
John made an indulging Humm and swung the Hog around in the right direction before the AI continued “And besides, that dwarf survived- oh look, a distraction. Let's focus on that” A sorte of Phantom dropships flew overhead in the direction they were going, “The covenant must have found a safe place to land if they're sending out drop ships. Maybe we could ask nicely when we find out where they're going to drop off their troops?”
John chuckled darkly, a soft sound that frequently made people flee in terror, “Asking isn't my strong point.”

It was harder than John was going to admit to keep the warthog on all 4 wheels as he navigated the wreckage and debris of the broken ships while still following the tracking point that Cortana had put on his HUD.
They spent several minutes swapping between discussing plans for “borrowing” a ship and companionable silence, weaving out of the way of wreckage until finally, they escaped the crash site.

A narrow canyon made for a makeshift path that led upwards until it crested at the entrance to a large plains area, crawling with covenant, “Don't suppose they'd be willing to let us ask for a ride first would they” Cortana mused while John clicked the safety off of his Battle Rifle. The warthog was spotted by a Jackal who let out an echoing warning screech before it opened fire with its Carbine.
“Doesn’t look like it,” John replied, jumping on the back of the reconnaissance vehicle and opening fire with .50 calibre anti-materiel rounds; it proved to be just as effective against the covenant soldiers as it did against its aircraft. “You know, you'd think that the Elites would have learned by now that our guns can run their shields down faster than they can get within plasma blade range” John commented conversationally watching as an Elite major (he thought, the covenant seemed to have changed their armour scheme) get gunned down while trying to get close enough to use his sword; Cortana sniggered, a slight digital distortion in her voice “Well, fortunately for us, they have-e-n't” Chief blew the last remaining grunt apart, the large-calibre rounds reducing it to little more than goo “you alright?”

“Fi-I-” Cortana made a noise like clearing her throat “Fine, rampancy is starting to set in, it's just my vocal processor right now though”
John's heart ached “If there is anything you need me to do to help, just let me know”  

The terrain proved a challenge to navigate, but not one the warthog couldn't rise to, with the Chief working the wheels up a sharp ledge, promising to himself to keep the next ghost he found intact instead of indiscriminately shooting it.
His wish was soon answered when, after another plateau of covenant and a tight cave system that left scratches on the warthog's paint, they arrived outside a (relatively) small Forerunner building, crawling with covenant.
A 3-round burst from his battle rifle put a hole the size of his fist through the head of a Grunt piloting a Ghost; Jacking the Ghost from its former pilot's corpse, it was a simple matter of turning its plasma cannons on the remaining covenant, melting through shields and roasting flesh. The only challenge came from a grunt wielding a Fuel Rod Cannon, however, it was far too slow in getting the Master Chief in his sights and was promptly gunned down. John stared at the corpse for a moment, before he grabbed the cannon and, moving to slot his battle rifle on his back, remembered that Cortana’s new housing was already taking up that point. So, with a heavy heart, he left the cannon behind and began to climb the stairs that were too narrow to fit the Ghost up.

Only to come flying back down from the top, leaping towards the cannon to use against the pair of hunters at the top of the ledge. Someone had finally gotten the amazing idea to make an armoured panel that protected the back of the colony against small arms fire.
Though, looking at that joint, John thought a shotgun blast might also punch through. none of which helped in this current situation as he dropped his Battle rifle to pick up the Fuel rod cannon and began to circle the Hunters.

================================================

Stepping over the pile of now non-moving Lekgolo, John dropped the empty cannon and retrieved his rifle, pocketing some grenades that he hadn't seen earlier due to focusing on the hunters, and proceeded into the structure. 

As he finished dealing with the door guard (who must not have heard the racket he had made) Cortana flagged the corpse on his HUD with a waypoint “John, looks like that Elite dropped his camo module, bring it with us and I'll see if I can get it to work with your armours systems”
John paused for a moment before obeying and entering the temple. 

An electronic whine brought their attention to the rafters of the building,
“Ah, I was wondering when they'd show up,” Cortana mused, spotting the sentinels floating about their heads.
John gripped his Battle rifle tighter, keeping them in his sight at all times, they didn't seem to be paying him much attention, but he knew how fast those lasers of theirs could drain his shields.
“Relax John, I don't think they're hostile” Cortana laughed in his ear, he couldn't help the smile in his own voice as he replied “Not yet, wait till we meet the annoying floating glow ball, then they turn hostile”, Cortana paused for a moment “Yeah, that tracks”

  John continued through the building, walking towards the terminal that sprang to life as he approached, it was a surprisingly difficult decision to plug Cortana into the machine, but a decision he made regardless.

“I can never quite get over just how much data is in forerunner systems,” Cortana said, her avatar appearing on the console as she brought up what references she could about their location. Symbol after symbol flashed up before aligning themselves and building the tightly condensed sentence structure of forerunner writing. As it finished assembling itself, John snorted, drawing Cortana's attention “What is it?” she asked as He began to shake with repressed laughter “You remember how I took up Celestial as a hobby? And you said, and I quote ‘Why would you learn that language? Just because it’s vaguely familiar to you doesn't mean you should waste your time on a dead language’?”
Cortana was silent for a moment, “no.”
John sniggered, “Yes” 

“You mean to tell me that you can read this?”

“Uh-huh…”

“You can tell me you told me so later…” Cortana muttered, “Right since I was the one who wrote the Forerunner translation algorithm with Dr Halsey, what does this say? Let's compare notes”.

John stared at the symbols, trying to see how the language had changed over the untold thousands of years “Let's see, 'for the glory of the Forerunner ascendancy of this fortress? final stand? no… shield world is named remembrance to the dead, may they find purpose in death as they did in life.' it's a mausoleum, I think, but the wording of purpose has some interesting double meanings”
Cortana stared in shock “That's… a lot more than I got. The translation algorithm just says it's a shield world, designation: Requiem” She turned to look at John ''As soon as we fix this storage issue, you are so teaching me”, it was not a request, “Anyway. it looks like this place is a local cartographer; bringing up the map, let's see if it can show us where our friends outside are la-anding”.

John made no comment on the slight hitch in her voice as the holographic map displayed itself and was filled with the same symbol “Cortana, I thought we were looking for Covenant, why is the symbol for humans everywhere?” Cortana made an irritated sigh as the map flashed red “It's bouncing a signal around almost the whole planet and isn't letting me pinpoint its origin-” the map shut down “-and now it's crashed. I guess even forerunner systems have errors after a hundred thousand years of inactivity. I'm reading 2 power stations that look like they need to be reset. marking them on your HUD now” 

The “circuit breaker” that needed to be reset was marked by a floating metal box with a red light in the centre of it, turning green after John pushed it. The platform he was standing on began to descend as the energy beam re-activated, causing John's shields to splutter and drain, “Cortana?” John asked, a slight concern in his voice “Nothing to worry about John, the energy beam is charged with Ferromagnetic radiation, it's just interfering with your shields, nothing dangerous”

======================================================================

John glanced at his motion tracker that had just lit up red with hostile movement and ducked into an alcove while his shield finished recharging “You know Cortana, a thought occurs” Cortana made a noise of interest “By the way, I should have finished patching your armour to work with that camo module, try it out, but the power won't last long before it needs to recharge. What did you need?”

John grinned under his helmet before fading from view and sliding his knife through the jugular of an unfortunate Jackal who happened to pass by his hiding spot “How often have these shields been absolutely Red-lined? There was that fall from orbit, those times we used them as an improvised EMP, the 4 or 5 times I got hit with a Gravity Hammer and most recently the other fall from orbit, I'm just impressed that they're still functioning at full capacity”

An Elite Minor was next as John snuck behind it and rammed his knife into the base of its spinal cord.

Cortana gave a slight giggle at the pose the Elite fell in before replying “You have a point… I’m marking the other power relay on your HUD and going silent to do some diagnostics, give me a call when you’re done”

There was an unusual not-silence in the back of John's mind as Cortana focused her efforts on his armour. A red icon at the bottom of his HUD had him ducking into a shadowed alcove as his Camo finally dropped to recharge ‘ Right, limited time ’ he thought as he finally had to open fire at the Grunt that had spotted him, the first round of the burst going through the Grunts head while the second 2 flew past the now dead grunt and punctured the gas tank of the unfortunate Grunt that was standing behind it.

Camo recharged and with no eyes currently on him, John faded from view and looped around to the back of the group, again using his combat knife to deadly effect before using a Plasma Grenade to catch the Jackal on the other side of the room.

Staring at the now cleared room, John proceeded to the marker on his HUD to find an exact copy of the relay on the other side of the room.

A Button pressed, his shield drained from the radiation (and wasn't that concerning, it had held up to solar radiation and Uranium-235 that one time no problem…) and a short elevator ride down (Forerunners did seem to love their elevators) John was once again greeted with a squad of Covenant ‘ seriously ’ John thought ‘ you would have thought I would have heard a drop ship or even seen them enter on my motion tracker Where are they coming from? ’

Much like the first group, he vanished into his camo, this time paying more attention to its energy reserves and picking the intruders off one by one, starting with the Elites and working his way down the hierarchy until it was only a trio of terrified Grunts who fled screaming when he decloaked right in front of them, holding his bloody knife like the Hell-Spawn he had been named after in both this universe and, ironically, also in Faerun. 

He returned to the console and was working on seeing if he could reboot it when Cortana returned to his mind in full force “Right! I'm done with the Diagnostics, now, good news or bad?”; John twitched at the sudden and unexpected sound in his ear “I've just had fun clearing out the room twice, let's keep the good times going with the good news first”. He could hear the beaming smile Cortana was wearing when she began to talk again “Okay! Good news is I can re-work your shield systems so you won't explode!”

“That’s grea-Excuse me- What?!? ”

“Right, so… your shield systems have taken damage from… something… with the punishment you put your gear through it could have been anything really”

“Cortana?” John probed, trying to cut her tangent on hypothesising what had caused the damage (probably the fall from orbit on his return to Earth, but she didn't need to know that)

“Oh, right. It was one of the power relays responsible for supplying power to the frontal shield emitter, I have re-routed the power to avoid it, however, it will be lowering your shield capacity and strength by 12.89%”

John was silent for a moment “And where was the explosion going to come from?”

“Oh, yeah. That was from the relay bursting if you took too much impact damage at once. Say… a direct hit from a Hunter or a plasma grenade”

John was silent for a moment as the last hour flashed by, mentally tallying the number of grenades he dodged and how many times the hunter pair had shot at him and shuddered.

“Right, good to know. Anyway, the cartographer seems to be working again, but I can't access it myself. Ready to jump?”

The simmering heat that had been sitting in the back of John’s mind slid down his spine and through his arm until it vanished from his hand and Cortana’s Holographic avatar appeared on display “Alright, signal-that-claims-to-be-human, let's see if I can’t track you dow-oh hey it just cleared up, see John, sometimes you just need to turn things on and off again”

John flicked his eyes from his smug companion back to the map “Is it me misreading the map or do those coordinates show inside the planet?”

Cortana was silent for a moment as she analyzed the data in front of her “We technically are already inside the planet, someone else might have just made it deeper than we did”
“So, I have to ask” John began “Is there a teleporter network like the other installations, or do I need to find a shovel”

Cortana’s giggle was music to his ears “No, no, there looks to be a teleporter hub just down the hall. I'm marking it on your HUD now” 

It was a short walk down the hall, towards the building's elevator, which arrived at the same time as John did. “Going up?” he asked sarcastically, hitting the interface for the transport room.

It was a surprisingly long trip up the shaft before the doors opened on what appeared to be a bridge suspended over a seemingly bottomless chasm. 

John pulled his head back from the edge of the bridge “How in the nine- how on earth do the Forerunners manage to make so many bottomless pits? I should be able to see down to the lower level from here” Cortana gave a giggle before replying “Probably with the mist machines they manage to use to shroud the lower levels. I personally just think it’s to be dramatic”

A river of lava down his arm later as he plugged Cortana into the transport hub had John looking around the room, track record said there was something about to jump them. Cortana's hologram appeared on the interface, causing the giant machine to come to life as the platform they were standing on rose, while flat panels constructed themselves in an orbit around them. “According to the Cathedral, this building is just one part of a large transport hub that spans the entire planet…” Cortana trailed off, manipulating the hologram to program in a destination, “What?” John asked, giving the room another glance “Well, I was looking at the coordinates and the closest exit to where the signal was coming from” She brought up a familiar symbol “This showed up”

“Humans…” John muttered 

“Yeah, it's kind of convenient that we are just walking through this place, I mean, where’s the monitor?”

Cortana continued to work on opening a gate “Starting to think it’s a trap?”

John shrugged “Do we have any other choice but to spring it?”

“Probably not”

“Do it”

The Cathedral hummed to life as Cortana finished inputting coordinates, while hexagonal pillars rose from the mist “Cortana…” John began, tightening the grip on his rifle, “Yeah, got it, I'm picking up unknown energy signatures… work damn you!” John glanced back at her out of the corner of his eye as figures simply seemed to materialize on the tops of the pillars, Humanoid legs melding into a bulbous insectoid body, unsettlingly humanoid faces and a strange blue glow emanating from the edges and cracks of their chitin.

“Cortana, time to go” John reached towards the terminal to retrieve the chip that Cortana used as a link, before a portal opened.

“That wasn’t- you know what? Yank me and go!” 

A river of lava poured into his skull as John booked it into the portal. He didn't know what those things were, but track record said they were probably hostile. With only a moment's hesitation, he plunged into the portal.

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