The Churn whispers to ‘Elite Force’ Idris as he scouts inside the most mysterious place on the Fold: the Halcyon Well. Will he succumb to the evil that lives within him?

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MODEL CHANGES

Three-pointed glowing spear

Environmentally sealed ballistic armor and mask

HMD combat helmet with multi-spectrum optical cameras

Geometrical armor patterns

ALTERNATE FATE LORE

The Voices

Idris…

The tech alliance gathered at the Halcyon Well, their somber faces hidden behind masks. Idris climbed onto the lip of the well and stared through his own tactical mask into the well’s swirling mist, shaking his head to remove the voices from his mind.

Come down to us.

A mercenary clipped a rope to his waist and gave instructions. “I’ll hold onto you. Pull once for stop. Two pulls for all’s well. Three for more slack. Four or more for emergency.”

Idris climbed inside the well without a word and dangled as the rope lowered him into the mist, leaving the alliance behind. In the fog he could not see his gloved hands by his face. His helmet mount displayed only fog, and he was glad for his sealed armor.

He expected darkness, but instead a faint blue glow shone through the mist, and the whispers grew louder:

We have waited so long for you.

The mist dispersed as the well opened into a large cave, stalagmites and stalactites jutting down and up from the floor and ceiling, all pure blue crystal, glowing with the power that flowed upward from a hole blasted in the center.

He swung to land on a jagged stalagmite, then switched on his multi-spectrum optical helmet camera. The rope slackened; he pulled on it once and it stopped.

Nothing but tendrils of mist moved on the helmet display. He climbed down to the floor, yanked three times for more slack on the rope, and scouted around the crystal teeth of the cave. The voices echoed off of the walls, coming from every direction:

You left us too long. Never leave us again.

At the edge of the hole in the ground, blasted open millennia ago by the seraphim, Idris stared down into the foggy, roiling abyss of the Churn. There, half-buried in sand, he saw what he had come to find, what would power their tech for far longer than the shards mined from the surface: a crystal worn into smoothness from constant pressure of the Churn at its origin, infused with so much energy that it shone like a beacon.

The Shatterglass.

Idris plucked up the Shatterglass and then, a step closer to the hole, found another. Then another.

He yanked twice on the rope for All’s Well, and the commander’s jets stirred the glowing fog as he descended into the well.

The voices danced with his mind, beckoning.

You’re so close.

The closer he came to the edge of the hole, the more Shatterglass he found. His foot slid and one of the precious crystals slid into the hole and disappeared. Idris gathered his wits and stepped back.

Don’t go.

The sand quivered under his feet.

Movement played in his peripheral vision. He spun around and something broke free of the sand by his foot, then another, and then more burst from cracks in the cave walls and fell from the ceiling onto his shoulders: a mass of wide-mouthed worms, pulsing with blue energy, their spiny bodies as long as he was tall.

The voices.

They opened their greedy, toothless mouths and clamped onto his feet, pulling him down.

We’re bringing you home, home…

Clearing his mind, he willed himself there, traveling in a blink toward a stalactite with handholds, but there was not enough slack in the rope and he was yanked back. He landed just shy of the sharp point of a stalagmite below and fell onto his back, the worms threading up through the sandy surface and whipping their glowing spiked tails. His breath came fast and hard as he pulled his chakram from his back and swung. The worms on his feet split in halves and the blade returned to him covered in blue goo, but hundreds more replaced them as he yanked the dead monsters from his armor, bursting from every surface to hiss and sing:

You belong with us, with us…

Above, the commander appeared below the mist.

“Go back!” cried Idris, yanking on the rope, one-two-three-four-five-six; he yanked and yanked and it was too late. The commander dropped down into the cave.

Read Part II: Disarm!

Read Idris’ canon lore:

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