An Elite's Tale

"No!" the Arbiter yelled.

It's on.

Ludo pulled back on the trigger and let his spiker do the talking. The Imp that was standing behind Johnson did the same with both of the plasma rifles she was holding. The Arbiter and an Elite Major that had arrived wielding a brute shot both charged forward. Seeing them charging, Tartarus turned and hopped down off the walkway onto the middle of the three floating platforms.

The Arbiter's team made short work of the Chieftain's entourage. Once the final Brute Captain was dead, the Arbiter rallied the Elites with a raise of his sword and a battlecry, then hopped down to the middle platform to fight Tartarus. Not one to sit out a fight, the Shipmaster's Plague hurried after him.

The gravity intake on his jump pack was set just below twenty percent, which allowed him to float from the walkway all the way over to Tartarus's position. He showered the Chieftain with red hot metal spikes the whole way there. However, the Arbiter got to the Chieftain first and took him head on until Ludo eventually landed behind the Brute.

Ludo sliced at the back of the Brute's big head but, unlike conventional energy shielding, the violet energy shield generated by the Fist of Rukt acted as a forcefield. The instant the spiker entered the shield, the speed, and thus the striking power of the blow, was greatly diminished; it was as if he'd thrown a punch underwater.

He ducked as Tartarus swung for his head, which distracted the Chieftain long enough for the Arbiter to slash at its backside. The energy sword reached the same fruitless conclusion as Ludo's spiker blades.

Suddenly, someone was yelling, "Get back! Get back!"

It was the Elite Major. He was a little way from the fight, aiming his brute shot right at the trio. The Arbiter ran for cover. Ludo turned and vaulted over one of the many short wall barricades scattered about the platform. Four explosions rocked the position where they had been fighting and where Tartarus still stood, confused.

"Is that how you cowardly Elites fight?" they heard the Chieftain ask.

The explosions kept coming as Ludo made his way around the wall. When he finally got a line of sight on the target, the Major was moving in with his bayonet. Ludo broke into a sprint. He was closing in when Tartarus outplayed and smacked the poor Elite Major clean off the platform.

My turn.

Ludo dived at Tartarus with both arms outstretched and impaled him in the side. Before he could pull the trigger, the Chieftain howled and swung at him with a massive furry arm, so Ludo raised both forearms to block it and got knocked back a few feet. He felt himself teetering on the edge of something and glanced at the ground behind him. There was a huge hole in the floor of the platform, and it wasn't the only one.

He looked back at Tartarus and was caught by surprise. Instead of a hammer-wielding Brute, a purple Covenant supply crate was barreling straight towards him. There was no time to avoid it. Barely time to bring his arms back up to block. The crate smacked into Ludo like a bowling ball hitting a pin and knocked him down into the hole. His back, and more importantly the Jump Pack, hit the edge of the hole as he fell in. He didn't like the crunch sound that resulted from the hard contact and knew it couldn't be a good thing.

It wasn't. Even with the gravity intake at fifteen percent, he was still falling faster than he would have liked. One of the boosters had been busted, and the other was having a tough time doing double the work. The floor of the bottom platform came up quick. He aimed for one of the short wall structures. The Plague landed on his feet, though it was the furthest thing from a 'soft' landing. The incessant humming of the center energy beam caught his attention, so he hopped down off the wall and walked over to inspect it.

The beam was a bright and translucent periwinkle color and had brighter rays of blue light twinkling around it in a cylinder. Ludo could feel the warmth radiating off it. Through a simple observation, the beam closely resembled a gravity lift, save for the heat. Finding out if it worked like one was a serious gamble, but there wasn't much choice. Ludo tore off the damaged Jump Pack and flung it into the beam. Just as he suspected it would, the armor equipment ascended up to the other platforms.

What had Ludo concerned was what type of energy was at play here. He wasn't too fond of the unusual heat he felt coming off the beam. Normally, the rays inside gravity lifts had a sort of refrigerated feel to them, not unlike the sensation of jumping into a chilled pool on a hot day. This lift was more like a jacuzzi. But he couldn't stay down here. Without further adieu, regardless of the outcome, Ludo stepped into the energy beam intending to rejoin the fight.

Warmth like the glow from a nearby fire enveloped his whole body. He was ascending almost too quickly; something scraped hard against his armored bicep as he went up past the middle platform. At first he thought it might be his Jump Pack, caught in the lift, but he remembered the Icon. According to the Oracle, only a "Reclaimer", a human, was capable of removing the Icon once Halo's firing sequence started. Even with the speed the Plague had been traveling, the Icon probably hadn't budged an inch out of place.

Ludo exited the energy beam quicker than he had entered, though not of his own accord. He'd felt the energy beam's gravitational lifting capabilities lessening the higher up he got. Perhaps due to his mass, or simply the design of the beam itself, he found himself flying out of it a good ten feet or so over the top platform. He could hear and feel the commotion below as he ran for the edge.