“Everyone be seated,” Harris began without preamble or pomp to those at the Round. All of the Lord-Knights sat, the pressure put off by their Knight-Commander far greater than it had been just earlier in the day. Ned attracted a number of curious glances - most of the other Lords weren’t aware of the acute details of what had happened beyond the fact that there had been several attacks.

“Today we were attacked by three seperate congregated masses of biotics,” Harris led on, “due to the efforts of the Legion, I’m told that one of my Orders are relatively unscathed, is that correct?”

Penelope nodded at her cue, “Jeremy was instrumental in us knowing that something was wrong with the attack. We were attacked by a type of biotic we’ve never seen before. They were far deadlier in combat than anything we’ve run across before, and they were not in significant numbers. Only a dozen, and they’d managed to injure a handful of my own, even knowing they were coming.”

“As for the Rabbits,” Harris spoke, sparing Ned from having to recount the ordeal, “one Patrick Bentley, a premier leader amongst the Legion, gave his life for Lord. His valor will be remembered.”

There was a long moment as I sat there, sharing in the somber tone of that moment. To the Knights, to die in battle alongside one of their own was to become a brother or sister. If nothing else, I knew that they would truly appreciate the sacrifice Patrick made.

But it didn’t make it any more palatable.

“This meeting was not only called for such, though. Matthew-” he nodded to me, “-asked this meeting convened. A wise decision, but I wish to know what the Reaper wants to speak of.”

I nodded back to him, taking a steadying breath before steeling myself, “from what all we’ve learned, it’s clear that Argedwall was unusual. Multiple biotic life forms, attacking in planned waves, drawing biotics from far off lands… none of these are normal to our knowledge. The lack of Unique’s was also unusual from our experience.” I paused, allowing the Lords to follow my logic for a moment, “I expect that perhaps there are Uniques here. Or at least one. That this Unique may be the mind behind all of the oddities here, even possibly being responsible for engineering this war-form of a biotic.”

There was a long pause following my words, before I heard Garland humm thoughtfully, “perhaps… from the description, it almost seems as though these creatures are tailor bred to kill us.”

The candid admittance was accepted with startling ease across the table.

I blinked for a moment before I realized that this wasn’t so strange. More than likely they’d been considering the possibility themselves the moment they found out about our own situation.

“Cat form lower body and stealth, bone plating from the Carriers, flexible skeletal structure from the scarecrows, spiked tail with what appears to be the so-called Spindlies and bearing the ability to eject them, reaping talons of seeming generic origin, and an organic cannon that appears to be capable of firing acidic concoctions…” Garland paused thoughtfully, “they haven’t used all of their weapons. Perhaps this was a test run? If they truly are engineered, maybe they’re still learning?”

I shuddered to think what would happen when they knew how to use all of the tools at their disposal. We hadn’t seen them use the spikes, nor the caustic cannon in the fight.

“Let's assume for now that there is at least a higher intelligence behind this,” Harris began, “what then?”

I spoke up, “then we hunt it. The Legion has experience pursuing intelligent biotics.”

“Do you have any idea where to begin?” Peter asked curiously.

“Two of our Legionaries were dragged away in the last fight.” I looked around, knowing that they assumed the same as me. They were long passed. “We have their locations, we’ll start there with a scouting force, followed by a much larger strike force.”

“The Knights will lend their might to this effort,” Harris commanded his fellows, “we will keep half of our force here, however, to protect Argedwall.”

The rest of the prep work went rapidly. Most of the Knights had already been mobilized, seemingly expecting a counter-offensive of some sort. The Legion was also ready, the four Reaver gun-ships making rounds further afield. Regrettably, they lacked the sensor suite to be able to track the stealthy cats easily. However, they were able to give us a very high overview of the terrain we were walking into.

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We didn’t want them to fly low, however. If possible, we wanted to surprise the biotics this time, revenge at its sweetest.

With me were several other scouts, individuals who were highly mobile or were mobile enough to be capable of escaping. Normally, Richard would be with this group, a fact that Alice harbored with no small amount of simmering rage.

It was alarming to see the normally bubbly and happy woman like this. Her face was a rictus of grim determination, and as she moved, purpose bled from her stride.

Others went as well, Sammy on loan from Strauss’ team. Three dozen others, four of whom were Knights in a variety of slim armor that I’d not seen yet, flanked me on either side. We cast a wide net hundreds of meters long, covering each other and ready to initiate a fighting retreat at any moment.

In less half an hour, we’d reached the site of the first body.

“Looks like our pseudo-biotic friend got here first,” Sammy said, no amusement in his quiet voice. “The Digger, right?”

I nodded, looking upon the scene with a newfound mix of emotions. A stone was elevated above four others, each pointing to the diamond-shape and emanating almost a physical force. Beneath it, freshly upturned soil rested, and one other detail made it no effort to guess what would be beneath it.

A mechs helmet rested directly beneath the looming point of the diamond, a commemorative gravestone.

I noticed then that the other scouts had fallen into a contemplative, almost reverent silence at the sight.

‘Wait… is this?’ I frowned in thought, feeling for that similar dull sensation that I’d felt with Harris.

I barely felt anything, but barely was more than nothing.

“Alice, are you feeling any… emanations?” I decided on that word, not finding a more suitable one.

“Any what?” She frowned, before a moment of realization bore itself across her face, “wait, objects can be psychic?”

“I take that as a yes?” I tilted my head, watching as she moved forward, carefully, still reverently treading across the soil like hallowed ground.

Given that it was one of our own buried here, I supposed that it was, for all intents and purposes.

She pushed her hand against one of the stones, closing her eyes. We watched her for a few seconds before she sucked in a hard breath and staggered backwards. She coughed, and I found myself catching her as she stumbled.

“Alice? Alice, are you alright there?” I tried to talk to her, realizing that her eyes had clouded over white.

“Matt? What, ohhhh my head.” She muttered, clutching her temple, “ohhh that’s a headache.”

“What just happened?” Sammy sat next to us, checking her pulse and prying open her eyelids.

Both of us exchanged the look as the whiteness receded, exposing the color of her eye slowly.

“Something very unusual.” I shook my head, “Alice, walk us through what happened, or what’s happening right now.”

She shook her head “uh, yeah. I touched the stone and… another mind? Something? It was big, but it didn’t mean to hurt me? Uh, shit, there was also the flavor of purple? Fuck. That hurts to remember.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, at the description, “headache? Getting worse, better?”

Color returned to her eyes as she took her time to answer, thinking carefully, “better. Yeah, a lot better. Yaga was nothing like that.”

“No wonder why Harris didn’t want other people contacting it,” I hummed thoughtfully. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine that perhaps that could cause damage.

“Can you tell us anything about this?” Sammy gestured to the site.

She shrugged, “it’s a gravesite, man.”

Sammy blinked and then looked to me with a deep sigh, “you can’t blame me for wanting to double check.”

“Anything else?” I asked, helping her fully to her feet.

“It was like a snapshot slurry mixed with acid,” she shot back, “I have no idea. I’ll tell you when I know.”

“Right.” I sighed, turning my attention to the rest of the scouts, “we’ll continue as planned, there’s still the other marker.”

A few of the other scouts looked to the grave, and I only shook my head. We’d leave the Legionaire to rest for now, Patrick’s teammate earned that much at least.

We continued on, Alice griping about a headache and eventually taking a painkiller for the residual effects. Whatever had happened to her, I had to admit that perhaps being psychic was more trouble than it was worth. So far, at least.

It took us another thirty minutes to reach another point of interest, but not one that I’d expected to see.

We still had several hundreds of meters between us and the missing Legionnaire, but the wide, yawning crevasse that quickly turned into the mouth of a cave greeted us.

I turned my attention to the scouts behind me as we spread out, and as I stepped forward towards the cave system, I was met with a most unnerving thing.

The hissing of what must have been dozens of Centaur echoed from the mouth of the cave, promising murder and violence to any entrants.

“Likewise,” I grinned, gesturing to one of the scouts with a drone. “If you’re not gonna come out, then we’ll just have to see what you’ve got in store for us, eh?”