Defender

“Osiris, stop this madness!” Saint-14’s grainy voice demanded.

They stood atop a spire, built from timeless rock and cubes of alien metal. The Saint’s armour glinted blindingly in the overpowering Mercurial sunlight. Osiris, all robed in cloth and shadow already had both his hands plunged into a stream of glowing energy, information.

It folded around his fingers like space seemed to around his mind.

“Osiris!” Saint repeated. “This whole planet is a mind, when you break into that channel it will awaken. You will be overpowered, destroyed in all likelihood.”

Osiris silently fought with a machine larger than even the traveler. Steadfast.

“Listen to me, brother! I will not lose you.” With wings of dark light, Saint rose to the platform Osiris was on.

The Warlock barked from every direction at once. “Leave. Leave me be. You are blind to the stakes, deaf with the Speaker’s sweet words.”

Saint-14, taken aback, stomped forward, within reach of his old ally. “Treason, Osiris. You are abandoning the city, and all humanity. Please, don’t make me stop you.”

The hero was bold, deep and strong. As void whipped his plate, and tenebrous energy tugged him away from Osiris, he wanted to cry out for the corruption of his ally. His friend.

“Another inch, Saint--” Osiris whispered in his mind, while structures screamed and moved around them. “A twitch toward me. You will regret it.”

Saint’s core suddenly dropped, froze.

“Brother…” His synapses racing to find a path, he mumbled sorrowfully.

“I am showing you mercy, Saint. Return to your endless war, I will not miss you.”

But Saint-14 had missed Osiris. It had been so dreadfully long since they last met. He couldn’t bear to see this. Nor to let it continue.

Saint’s arm lashed out, with mechanical swiftness and precision, to grasp the shoulder of the Warlock’s robe firmly.

Osiris roared in irritation, and a blast of negative pressure threatened to rip Saint-14 off of the thousand meter tower they stood precariously upon. But his titanic mass, his hard and sharp armour, and his mighty will all grounded him.

“Let it go!” His command was full of compassionate rage, and he yanked on the eerily frozen, misty Warlock, straddling the razor wire between existence, and something else.

This finally begged a reaction, and Osiris spun around. His visor was blacker than space, with stars even darker than that, light years within his mind.

“BEGONE!” The spoken word of rage carried the empty, implosive force of void light, and the strength of all of Mercury. Even the mighty Slayer of Kells couldn't resist the dying universe at his back, sucking him away with magnificent force.

His shoulder joints snapped out of place, his armour cracked and blistered away, his light flickered.

He fell.

There were seconds to think before he hit the ground, unless a wayward structure swung into his side. But he hardly could. Not for a head injury, but for the shock of it all.

He loved Osiris, and so did the Speaker. How did it get like this? How did allies in such a simple conflict become lost. How does a family break in the time they need one another most?

He was still falling. But a hundred meters above, he saw Osiris poke that frightening, purple helmet over the ridge. They both knew that Saint’s light had been knocked out of him, and that he would sprout no wings.

The whispering came back to Saint’s whirling psyche.

“I-- am sorry. You cannot stop this. I hope there is another world for you to save, beloved hero. This one is mine.”

A Vex machine snapped together from levitating components beneath the battered titan.

“Farewell, Saint.” Echoes. Echoes of thoughts.

He grunted painfully in his last second. “We loved you.”

And then the machine swallowed him with a chittering maw of blinding light.