Well of Secrets

Max, Shin, Jess, Kaden, Cass, and Leviathan landed on Venus, just in front of the Waking Ruins. "Welcome to the Vault of Glass, ladies and gentlemen," Leviathan said defiantly.

"Great," Max said quickly, "We've seen it. Let's go!"

Leviathan quickly whipped out Thorn and shot it in the air. The sound it made was a quick *VANG.* Max and Shin ducked. "Nobody is leaving until I say so!" the Titan shouted, "Now, open the Vault!"

"How!?" Shin asked.

"You know how. We've been here to strike back against the Wolves, you opened the Black Garden and destroyed it."

"That proves nothing! The Wolves opened the Vault on their own!"

"But, the Garden was of Vex origins; Crota merely perfected it. The Vault was created without him but holds similar mechanisms. So open it."

Max looked at the Ruins and the circular door on top of it. It's very similar. Almost congruent. He stared at his scarred hand, the 'X' shaped wound refused to heal, even after his revival. He walked up a long semicircular staircase, stretching from the left side and reaching the door in the middle, before ending on the right side, never to touch the ground again. As soon as Max reached the door, he pressed his wounded hand on the cold metal, a few feet below the center, and the door shot a beam of light from the center to a solid glass sphere inside a metal cube on the ground in the center of the 'U'. The cube enlarged itself to the height of the Guardians, then floated up to face the door, shedding its cubical shell bit by bit, until only the sphere remained. The ruins hummed to life, and 3 large metal rings formed on the left and right sides of the 'U', as well as right in front of the door.

Leviathan grinned, "Alright! Jess and Shin, go to the right side. Cass and Kaden will guard the left side, and I'll keep an eye on Max in the middle."

As they kept the Vex away from the rings, Shin asked her sister, "Why are you doing this?"

Jess's only answer was, "Crota is our path to true salvation."

"But why!?"

"Crota is our path to true salvation."

Shin tried walking away, scared of what her sister had become, but Jess shot at Shin's foot mindlessly. "OUCH!" Shin shouted, "What was that for!?"

Jess motioned her to move back to the ring and said, "You will see when Crota saves you."

Max was busy shooting at Goblins while asking, "Leviathan, why do you do this?"

The Titan simply said, "Because you refuse Him. Crota showed me a better path. He saved me."

"Saved you!? How!?"

Leviathan chuckled, "You'll see soon enough."

The sphere hummed when a stone and metal pillar began to surround it, then it shot a beam of blue light into the door, opening the Vault of Glass. Leviathan called the team together and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the Vault of Glass. Your future awaits!" And he ran down with Kaden. Jess and Cass brought up the rear, dragging Max and Shin with them. Max whispered to Shin, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

A few minutes later, the team navigated a few floating platforms and approached a giant platform known as the Templar's Well below them. The Well was loosely divided into three lanes, connected by three different horizontal paths in the front, middle, and back, making the platform look like a square window with 4 pillars standing in the middle to separate the paths, and 3 additional rectangular spokes in the back, the left and right sides leading to nothing, while the middle spoke was locked in a tunnel behind another circular door.

A voice resonated throughout the Well, "Ah, Maxwell Prodigy, the Warlock from the Prophecy. Have you come to reclaim your memories?"

"What memories?" asked his Ghost, "His only memory is serving the City."

"Then you know nothing of his dark past, little light."

The Ghost sounded annoyed, "Don't call me that!"

"How can I have a dark past," Max asked, "when I am a Guardian of the Light?"

A metal Vex conflux materialized in the front of Well and the voice said, "Step into my Well and find out."

Shin shook her head, "No, no, no! This is too dangerous! Max, tell him!"

Before the Warlock could say a word or raise a finger, Leviathan said, "Shut your mouth, bitch!"

Max was too frozen in fear to respond. He was afraid of what will happen if he leaves, and afraid of what his past contains. 'The bad choice or the worse one?' He tried to turn around, but Leviathan pointed Thorn at him, the message was crystal clear. Max gulped and turned to face the Well again. Then he jumped out towards the Well below and glided towards the Conflux.

The Well hummed the usual Vex beep and whine. The scenery changed around Max, from a dark vacuum in the Venusian rocks into a brightly lit Terran environment. Max saw streets flowing through a suburban neighborhood, houses of similar builds, and different colors. A school bus would drive through the neighborhood, picking up kids of a similar age group as it went in the morning, then dropping them off in the afternoon. The smell of freshly mowed grass flooded the air, sometimes mixed with the putrid scent of gasoline or chemical fertilizer. Max took one whiff, one glance, and said one word: "Home."

Leviathan grinned, "Now we watch as history unfolds itself."

"But Max needs help," Shin cried.

"No," Leviathan said firmly, "He needs to experience his whole past, without any help."

"And what about the Vex encroaching on him!?"

Leviathan looked at the Templar's Well again, unsurprised at the approaching Goblins and Hobgoblins. He waved a hand with 2 raised fingers and said, "Minions, begin sniping."

Jess, Kaden, and Cass took up positions on the left, right, and middle sides respectively, then sniped each and every bipedal Vex frame.

Max never heard the gunshots as he explored the vision of suburbia. He found a house that was like the others, except the grass was yellow and its exterior colors dull. "Was this my house?" he asked. As he touched the front door, the house and the other houses crumbled into ash, the neighborhood slowly lost its color, and the streets became cracked and barren. Max asked in shock, "What happened!?"

A thin, mutated corpse began to rise from the ashes of the dull house. It pointed at Max and said in a hoarse voice, "You did, Maxwell."

The scene vanished. Max was back in the Templar's Well, standing in the left lane. The Conflux disappeared, another one appeared on the left side, and Max ran to it. Shin called out, "STOP, MAX! STOP!!" But it was too late, Max approached the Conflux and the scenery changed yet again.

This time he was in a city, different from the Last City in its structure and buildings, and the noticeable absence of the Traveler. It was the evening, and he was inside something made of wood and bricks. The place was well-lit with lamps, decorated with colorful stained glass bottles and windows, and in the center was a table with a hollow center and a person with a shirt that said 'Guinness' tending to the table. He was handing out foamy drinks of gold, bronze, and black to the people sitting at this table. The scent was a little less putrid than gasoline, but was pleasant nonetheless; booze and grilling blended in expert fashion. "A bar?" asked Max, then he remembered, "No, the Prancing Pony!"

Immediately, 5 other people greeted the Warlock, "Hey Max! Good to see you!" 3 guys and 2 girls, one of whom gave Max a small kiss on the cheek. The five sat down and began to look at their menus. Max looked at his for a moment while the others talked, mentioning how this bar was named after the bed and breakfast from Lord of the Rings. Max glanced at his menu, only to be surprised when it said, "YOU ARE A DEAD THING!" He looked up again, only to find 5 corpses staring at him with blank eyes, one of them had a scar running down from forehead to jaw. He screamed as they repeated the menu's words, "YOU ARE A DEAD THING! YOU ARE A DEAD THING! YOU ARE A DEAD THING!"

Max was so scared that he tripped out of the vision and back into the Well. Another Conflux appeared, this time on the right. When Max approached it, the scene changed dramatically into a ruined city, filled with corpses of the citizens that used to walk the streets. "What happened here!?" Max asked.

"You happened," said the voice in the Well, "You ruined the world, killed 7 billion people, and nearly destroyed humanity."

"Why would I do such a thing!?"

The scene disappeared, reverting back to the Templar's Well. "Why don't you listen to my Oracles?"

7 glowing yellow cubes lit up around the Well, one at a time. As they lit up, a single musical note was played, echoing throughout the Well.

Leviathan grinned, "This is the moment we've been waiting for, my lord!"

Shin panicked and plucked the crystal from her sister. Jess's eyes turned back to their natural blue and she too panicked. Shin covered her mouth and whispered, "Shh! Jess, it's me. I don't have a lot of time, so listen up: You were kidnapped by Leviathan to work for him, and now we're in the Vault of Glass again. I need you to shoot the Oracles."

With minimal options left, Jess simply nodded, then went back to sniping. Shin talked to Max on a private channel, "Max, you need to wake up."

Max looked around, confused as to where the voice was coming from, "Huh? Who's there!?"

"It's me, Shin! The Oracles have got you under a spell, and in order to break the spell, you need to shoot and destroy them!"

Max didn't completely understand, but he understood the words 'shoot and destroy'. "What am I shooting?"

"The glowing yellow cubes!"

Max instantly saw one of these cubes and shot it down. Slowly, the scene shifted away from his past and back to the present. As it shifted, he began to feel more and more grounded to reality, realizing that his past is distracting him from his survival. He shot at more Oracles, dispelling the illusions of the past.

Leviathan's grin slowly turned into a frown, then he screamed, "No no no no NOOOOO!!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

Max panted when the Oracles finally stopped spawning, "I needed to survive. Those Oracles were clouding my vision."

The Dredgen Bane descended into the Well and smacked Max so hard he knocked him down, "They weren't clouding your vision, they were opening it up! Your destiny is written in history, and it's your fate to repeat it!"

Max coughed and tried getting to his feet but was quickly beaten down again. "Ok ok," he wheezed, "just let me catch my breath."

Suddenly, a giant Hydra appeared behind them, its curved spokes on the head and horizontals of the spine were a display of power. Not only was this Vex the master of the Well, but it was also one of the few gatekeepers to the inner sanctum. The Templar growled and whirred, "You killed my precious Oracles!" and it fired at Max and Leviathan.

They took cover behind a pillar, and Leviathan shouted, "Don't shoot at the Hydra! We need it for Max's memories!"

Shin and Jess heard differently, and began firing at the Templar, only to find their bullets were being erased inches from the Templar's frame. Their eyes bulged, "What!? A circular shield!?"

Max stared at the Hydra closely, I can't see it, but the bullets... He looked around for something different, something to fight the Templar with. Then he found it, a diamond shield with 4 metal rods on each of the corners. When Max grabbed it, the shield emitted a crystal purple aura that extended the diamond to the ends of the rods.

The Templar gasped in fear, "Praedyth's Aegis! Supplicants! Stop them!"

Max was quick enough to use the Aegis against the red Harpies that spawned in. The snipers up top were too busy shooting at the Supplicants to hear Leviathan yelling, "Stop!"

Max aimed the Aegis at the Hydra, the aura dropped into the shield, condensing itself into a bright and fast Void bolt, destroying the Templar's own shields. The Templar screamed, the Guardians were trapped inside white spheres that inhibited their movement. Jess shot everyone free from these cells, then proceeded to snipe at the giant Hydra. Max saw a white circle pop up on the right side and ran for it. The Templar! He could teleport soon! He stood inside the circle and it turned red. The Templar screamed and fired at Max. The Warlock planted the Aegis and began absorbing the Templar's attacks. Shin and the snipers continued firing at the Hydra. Leviathan tried to say, "NOOO!!!" But it was too late.

The Templar screamed as its eye cracked, its spine began to break, and its weapons exploded. Max fired one more blast from the Aegis, this time with the equivalent of everything the Templar threw at Max, and the Hydra exploded. The Well fell silent, and the Aegis disappeared.

Leviathan came out from his hiding place and shouted, "WHAT THE TRAVELER WAS THAT!?"

Max said, "We were only defending ourselves."

"DO YOU WANT TO KNOW YOUR HISTORY!? DO YOU WANT TO KNOW YOUR FATE!?"

Max shrugged and said, "To be honest, I am a little curious now."

"Then we have no other choice but to go deeper!"

Shin gulped, "Deeper?"

"The only way out is through the inner sanctum!"