Titania hovered over Emrys as he shook off his dazed expression. "What happened here and who are you?" The ghost then spoke in a soft female voice. "I'm a ghost. I was brought back when a burst of light from the traveler crashed over this facility. You are now a guardian of that light." Emrys looked over at the table next to him, taken energy had spilled over it. Splotches of the energy shown like a well of stars and flashes of a memory came back. "I was an awoken. I came here to give myself a new body because..." another flash and sparks flew from his hands onto the table. "...I was being corrupted by the taken energy. That body should still be here." He got up and tested his new legs until his ghost flew over. "There is something you should know. When I got here there was something standing over you. When I came in it looked at me and then vanished into a portal. It had dripped some of that stuff onto you. It actually took me twenty-three times to reboot you then revive you." Emrys took a breath, if you could call it that, then sighed. "That burst of light must have jump started that body somehow. Further research is needed. I must go to the reef to investigate something first." With that Emrys and his ghost Titania set out to the Reef.

A dry wind blew over the desolate planes of the Tangled Shore. In the twilight glow of the sky above, a group of Fallen and Scorn skirmished near the Fallen encampment, neither really gaining a foothold over the other. Nearly two thousand yards from their brawl, Crow-13 sat nestled into a rocky outcrop with her eye to the scope of her sniper and her finger on the trigger.

"Come on you bug-bastard, I know you're there..." She muttered to herself. From the folds of her cloak's hood, her ghost Pidge peeked out blinking his optic as if he were just waking from a nap.

"Didja get him? Can we go yet? I hate the wind up here, it's so dry and cold..." He asked plaintively, causing Crow to snort.

"No, he hasn't reared his ugly head..." As she spoke, the Cheiftan she'd been hunting transmatted into the fray and she smiled within her helmet.

"There you are, come to mama..." And with that, she lined up the crosshairs and took the shot, landing it neatly between his glowing eyes.

Andoran felt the Light again. He perched on an outcropping from the Wall, not far from the new Tower. It was a welcome feeling, like a part of himself was missing and now it was back. Iris, his ghost, bobbed up and down and around. She was happy to have the Light again as well. During the time without the it, Andoran was fighting the Red Legion. They turned up on Venus, studying the Vex. Without his powers, he kept to guerrilla tactics. He manipulated the Cabal and Vex into fighting each other more and more. Andoran would always come in and clean up whoever was left.

"I can't believe the Traveler's awake," said Iris.

"Neither can I," replied Andoran.

"What does that mean next?"

"In a greater existential way? Who knows. Now? We go back to the Reef and see how the Awoken have fared during this Red War."

The busted old ship rattled over the tangled shore. On scanners it showed a group of fallen warring with... what were those other creatures?

"Titania what are those fallen fighting?" The ghost hovered over to the screen. "I'm not entirely sure to be honest. Why don't we land and find out." That last buy had come out a bit snippy and he turned to her. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the light." If ghosts could glare she definitely was. He smirked and turned the ship towards the groups. "Time to go Titania. This clunker wasn't going to do us any good after this trip anyway." He grabbed his ghost as she let out a yelp and then he blinked away. The ship was now below him rocketing towards the ground and fast enough that atleast some of them below couldn't get away from the blast. Titania yelped again as they fell. "Relax the transmate was out anyway so we were going to have a rough time of it." She kept screaming as the ship hit the ground hard and exploded. With that Emrys blinked to the ground and let go of Titania. "You idiot! We could have died!" He looked at her with a blank expression and she then winked out of existence but held a connection to his mind. "Oh don't be made my fairy queen. We had to do aomething. Besides it handled a problem for me." He walked up to the crash site and began picking through the wreckage. Finding a body of the unknown enemy he started to drag it behind him towards a glowing tower in the distance.

Crow watched in disbelief as the dilapidated old ship fell from the sky and landed directly on to the skirmish and her bounty, her mouth agape.

"What the shit..?" She breathed out, again watching in shock as the unknown exo drifted down on to the flaming wreckage.

"What the shit!?"

Pidge, who was still nestled in her hood, looked very confusedly on the scene.

"Why in the world would you land a ship like that?" He asked "That doesn't seem very safe..."

Crow growled, slinging her gun on her back as she hopped down from her ledge.

"Pidge. Sparrow." She said, hopping on when he summoned it up. She rode over to the newcomer, seething with anger as she hopped off and had her hand on Crimson, which was holstered just right to keep the illegal weapon from view.

"Hey!" She barked out as she strode to him

Andoran sat in his ship as it flew through space. Iris floated next to his head.

"Pretty quiet the last month or so," noted Iris. "Do you think the Reef will have anything other than rounding up supplies?"

"Who knows," replied Andoran with a shrug. "It seems like the Red Legion mostly ignored them and still will."

Just then, the comms blinked with an incoming message. Andoran reached over and hit the button to accept.

"This Andoran," he said.

"Good, I got a hold of you," replied the voice.

"Petra, good to hear from you," Andoran greeted with a smile.

"The Tangled Shore is more chaotic than usual. And I'm reports of strange new creature. Go take a look at what's going on," commanded Petra.

"Will do." Andoran punched in new coordinates and sped off at FTL towards the Tangled Shore.

Turning around and drawing a side arm with one of his hidden arms Emrys looked at the person drawing closer.

"Hello there fellow Exo. I'm fine. Just need to borrow the gentleman or...thing rather to discover what it actually is. Is there something you might need?" He asked.

Just then Titania popped out. "She is a guardian E. Her ghost is hiding but all the same we have encountered another guardian. Hello. New awakened over here and I'm still working on his manners. Is everything ok?" Titania asked genuinely.@Witchy Babe

"Hi, welcome back to the living, you just crashed your ship on my goddamn bounty." Crow snapped, drawing her weapon just as quick as he had

"That Cheiftan you're trying to haul off is mine."

((I said it was a captain initially and didnt catch it. It was supposed to be a scorn cheiftan.))

"Andoran," began Iris, "I ran different scans after what Petra said. There is something different there. My readings are close to ether, but different."

"Different how?" asked Andoran.

"I'm not sure yet. A closer scan would help. But we need to get right next to it."

"Alright we're almost there."

The ship pulled out of FTL and asteroid littered the space in front of them. Many were crudely lashed together. Andoran knew which one to go to and steered the ship toward it. They would be at their coordinates in minutes.

@Witchy Babe

He looked to the dead thing. "A chieftain huh? You know of these beasts? Can you tell me more? You can have it. I just want to study it.

Titania flew back over next to Emrys. "She seems to be in a foul mood. Hmmm..." Titania expels a scan beam to the creature. "...it seems to have DNA of a fallen but the ether that fuels it is..." she then let's out a small gasp "...corrupted." Titania then stayed next to Emrys waiting to see what would unfold.

Crow narrowed her eyes, bolstering her gun before reaching up to pull her helmet off. She studied him, her golden optics sizing him up.

"Hmph, you must've been out for quite a while... Or just blissfully ignorant." She said walking over to the corpse of the Cheiftan. She nudged its head with her boot, facing it up as Pidge floated up and spun his shell.

"Get his good side, Pidge. Cratix will want pictures for his wall." She said, and Pidge began snapping away with a little hum. She looked back to the newcomer, still perplexed.

"This here is a Scorn, for lack of a better term they're Fallen zombies, resurrected with corrupted ether. They're an infestation here on the shore."

Andoran's ship swept low over a battlefield that had since decided the victor. He transmatted out of his ship with Iris in his backpack. He spotted two exos talking over the wreckage and corpses.

"Those are guardians," stated Iris.

"What are they doing out here?" asked Andoran to no one in particular. He walked the last ten yards, his hand ready to grab the Telesto on his back if need be. This was the Shore, anything was possible.

Once he got close enough, he called to them, "Guardians out here? What would Zavala say?"

Upon the newcomer approaching he drew a handcannon with his other stowed arm which kinda surprised Emrys himself for a second. "If you mean Zavala of the Vanguard then I could care less about what he thinks. What do you want cousin?" He said without taking his eyes off the other Exo.

He then spoke to her again. "So this thing is a Scorn? Fallen zombies and coruppted ether ehh? Well this is all very new. Titania how long had I been out before being revived?" He asked the ghost quizically.

Titania flew over and a thought popped up. "How do you know that? Or remember anything from your previous life? That shouldn't be possible. I mean granted the wave of light might have had something to do with it along with that thing that was standing over you but still." He gave her a look that said it all to her. She wasn't supposed to be talking about that in front of others. "Oh I'm sorry. Umm from my calculations you were out for a year maybe two? I'm still a bit fuzzy from everything.

Emrys sighed and dropped the chieftain and scratched his head with his two arms that weren't busy holding the other two at gunpoint. Realizing this he decided that since these weren't enemies he best stow the weapons. The arms and weapons they were holding folded back under his robes. Then he bowed to the exo across from him and to the awoken cousin off to the side. "My apologies for being rude. I am Emrys-23. I was on the way here to see what had become of the watch tower till I spotted the battle and just had to grab a specimen for research. For now it seems that I have made a mess of things." He then waited to see what each would say.

Crow scoffed as the warlock approached, quickly bolstering her sidearm.

"Well Zavala wouldn't be too happy about a nosy warlock down here either, now would he?" She quipped, kneeling by the corpse. She drew her knife and used it to pick up the pouch slung to its side, slicing the cord tying it down as she grabbed it.

"In any case, I have what I came for so you don't need to worry yourself about my being here." She said, standing up as she began to walk back to her sparrow. As she did, the air began to crackle and whine with the telltale sign of incoming Scorn and before she could take a step further a swarm of various Scron burst into view, as well as a hulking Corrupted Abomination. Crow's eyes got wide and she yanked her helmet on before drawing her gun again.

"Shit."

"Andoran," began Iris, "These are what Petra wanted us to investigate."

"Great, Fallen zombies and corrupted ether," replied Andoran as he readied his Telesto to fire on the incoming Scorn. Two bursts from the fusion rifle and six stalkers were already dead.

"You two," he said to the other guardians. "Get up on the wreckage, I'll lay down a rift." He blinked on top of the wreckage and with a wave of his hand, light poured out from him and onto the crashed ship, illuminating a circle. He left off two more blasts from his Telesto into the wave of oncoming Scorn. He switched to a scout rifle, not bothering to reload.

With the Scorn suddenly appearing Emrys sprang into action and redraw his weapons with blinding speed. He ignored the awoken and blinked behind the group quickly and began firing off shots. From his bottom arms and then bolts of arc light from his top. From behind him another wave started to approach. Emrys whirled around and he focused. For a split second his hand flashed then a beam of bright arc light spilled from his hand as he began to float in the air. The beam crashed down on the enemies killing the second wave. The beam stopped and he blinked back down to the ground. Right as he was about to turn around and start firing at the big guy that had came in a black smoking person stepped out of a portal facing him.

"Oh I see you are fully awake now Emrys. I thought you might be out for longer. To think you were just going to discard this body or rather ME. Now look what has happened. All your experiments and all your work. I am it's ultimately fruition! YOU didn't want the power but I am something more than Taken. What yet I have not discovered but one thing I do know is that guardians taste good." With that it lept at him. His old body. The ghost wasn't lieing. Dazed he didn't see it come at him until it was too late. It was one top of him and it's hand on his chest darkness began ago spread from it. Each second he felt weaker as the darkness had almost consumed him. Then Titania flew out of nowhere and fired a beam of light at the creature. It flew off of Emrys and back to its feet. "NEXT TIMW YOU WON'T BE SO LUCKY!" It then opened a portal and escaped. Seconds later Emrys passed out just as Titania flew back over to him.

Crow hopped up with the warlock without a second thought, not so brash as to think she would make it through this fight without assistance. She picked off the oncoming attackers one after another, the rapid shots ringing from crimson in succession. It seemed to be going alright, but that abomination was charging up its arc attack and without a moment to loose Pidge swapped the sniper slung on her back with her grenade launcher. She grabbed it and fired off all six grenades, and while the direct hits weren't enough to kill the creature it stunned it and interrupted its attack. As that was happening, the other Exo was having his bizarre encounter and it very nearly distracted Crow from the swarm of screebs and raiders teleporting in.

"Son of a bitch!" She cursed, taking a quick breath as she jumped up and drew from the void and fired at the heart of the pack. The Nightstalker's arrow flew true and tethered the group together and she swapped her weapon again for her auto rifle.

"Aim for the fat little blue ones, and don't let any get close!" She called over her shoulder to the Warlock

Andoran ignored the commotion with the exo and that, thing. He made each shot count with the scout rifle, taking down the screebs and raiders. Only a few more seconds and he could launch a nova bomb. One, two, three, eight. They dropped like flies thanks to the tether. He reloaded, and just as we was about to fire again, he saw a flash of purple, and then a totem popped up.

"Dammit," he seethed through his teeth. He fired two shots into the totem to destroy it, but those few seconds was all that they needed.

An arc blast nearly killed Andoran. He leapt from the wreckage as the rift dissipated. He consumed his grenade and healed from the attack. That abomination and chieftain were going to be a problem.

Crow was thrown back from the blast, landing with a thud on her back. She was stunned for a moment before a Raider ran up on her with its ether mace in hand, ready to strike. In the blink of an eye she lobbed a smoke bomb into its face, ducking out into the viscous smoke to sprint toward the remnant of her tether to gather up as many orbs of light as she could before they dissipated. Nearly there, just a few more precise kills and...

With as much light as she could absorb and bank she summoned fourth blades of void light, blinking from view as she cut through the horde like a deadly shadow. They fell one by one, thinning the group until it was just the abomination, the cheiftan, and two Raiders.

Andoran finished reloading his weapons. He heard the familiar sounds of the Spectral Blades. He ran around the wreckage to collect a few orbs of light, thus recharging his Nova Bomb. He blinked up and launched the bomb down on the abomination, chieftain and the two raiders. He landed on the ground again. Surveying the battlefield, he was content. Not one of these things were left standing. He raised his hand out in front of him, palm up, and Iris materialized. She floated out to the nearest corpse and began scanning. Once complete, she went back to Andoran.

"There ether is corrupted somehow. I'm detecting traces of darkness," she said, as if she was still sifting through the data.

"Great," Andoran sighed. "Fallen turning to the darkness." He turned to Crow and said "Nice job. You fight well." He then began walking back to the wreckage. "Now what happened to this guy?"