Before Sorran could so much as gasp, the camouflaged Sangheili jumper crashed through the glass pane in the room and slammed into Sorran's chest feet-first, sending him sprawling back on the floor. The attacker drew out a rifle, looking around and spotting Gilyi close by. He pulled the trigger. Suddenly the volley of shots were veered off-course as a tiny object crashed into the jumper, staggering it back slightly. Sorran's hearts pounded as he realised that tiny object had been Kemyn, trying to protect his sister. "No!" he screamed, bolting up to his feet and moving to drive his blade into the jumper. Too late. The attacking Sangheili, wrestling with the child at his feet had finally wedged his rifle free, aimed it down at Kemyn. The rifle rattled. Plasma discharged. Kemyn was thrown against the wall, violet streaks streaming from his small form. Seconds later, the Sangheili of seven years collapsed. Dead. Gilyi was screaming, and rushed over to her brother. Before the jumper could so much as move onto the next target, Sorran had driven the tip of his sword into the attacking Sangheili's face. The mess was considerable. All this had taken place within less than ten seconds. Tossing the corpse aside, Sorran rushed towards the body of Kemyn, knowing he could do nothing. His mind was clouded by grief and shock, and so he didn't think to check for any other jumpers. A mistake. Sorran heard the thrusters behind him and tried to dive towards Gilyi to protect her, but before he could even move a muscle he felt a huge pounding in his back, as if he had just been stricken hard by a hammer. "Kill everyone in the house, then torch it," he heard a voice order without the slightest hint of emotion; it may as well have been an associated intelligence speaking. Sorran tried to move but found himself pinned to the ground by whatever wound had been inflicted upon him. "The girl too?" "Yes," that same robotic voice replied without hesitating for so much as a tenth of a second. Dimly somewhere in the back of his consciousness Sorran could hear Gilyi screaming. He managed to move an arm, reaching around his back to where a rifle was clipped to his armour. His hand shook like a building caught in a quake as he did so, eventually collapsing from lack of strength. As he looked down at it, he saw it had come away wet with the purple of blood Regardless, he strained once more for his rifle, wishing for all the world he could suppress the serotonin in his system with adrenaline and ignore the pain like the Jiralhanae. As if granted a miracle, his fingers finally wrapped around the hilt of the weapon. He picked it up, finding it suddenly weighed a tonne, and with effort managed to point the barrel at the attacker moving to take Gilyi's life. [i]Pain![/i] exploded through him as heavy force was suddenly pounded onto his arm, in the form of the one of the boots of the attackers. He saw black, and suspected he would have faded into unconsciousness there and then had the situation not been so dire. "This one's alive," the faceless assailant remarked to the emotionless voice, almost sounding impressed. "I'll fix that." Sorran was spun on his back, and stared up at the attacker. He wore a blank, dark helmet which obscured his face. A few seconds later, he lost consciousness. The last thing he heard before falling into the murky pit were the muffled sounds of gunfire, screaming and cries of pain. * * * "Come out of your hole, demon! We have unfinished business, you and I," Zharn shouted through the mouth of the cave, standing exposed. No reply. Not even gunfire. [i]Odd,[/i] Zharn thought to himself, signalling to the special operations Sangheili all posted at the craggy sides of the entrance to move up on his flank. With the resignation of a dead man, Zharn began to push into the cave. A hundred metres of so in, the response finally came. From the shadows, a hand shot out. Gauntleted in forest green, it punched through Zharn's shielding as if it weren't there, wrapping around his belt and using it as leverage to throw him across the stretch of the cave. He smashed into a wall heavily, expecting to be impaled by stalagmites. It didn't happen. Instead he merely crashed into the unnaturally-smooth wall of the cave, before falling with pain to the ground. Through half-blurred vision, he looked up and saw the demon make short work of the special operations Sangheili. A flurry of failed blows, knife-strikes and weapon fire came from his lance, each evaded, blocked or turned back upon the Sangheili by the merciless killing machine. He saw within those deft movements familiarity, and knew for sure now this was the demon who he had thought dead upon Eridanus II; who had nearly killed he, Ahkrin and Sorran. Who had killed countless Covenant soldiers. And he realised that fighting it was futile. The Spartans were called demons for a reason. One Sangheili fell, his own sword spun back upon him and lodged within his upper abdomen. A malfunctioning shielding system was preventing the auto-heal function of the combat harness he wore from working properly, frying the small nanobots before they could seal bleeding tissue, administer painkiller and possibly save his life. Zharn slowly rose to his feet, legs uncertain beneath him as if they were not his. Another of the three remaining spec ops Sangheili met the abyss as the demon grabbed its neck whilst leaping over the eight-foot tall Sangheili with impossible finesse, almost taking the head with him. When he landed on the other side, the Sangheili's neck was bent at an almost mirrored-angle, as if some cosmic jester had placed his head upon the wrong way around. At that, one of the two still alive finally broke rank and attempted to flee. He didn't even make it ten metres towards the exit of the cave before the demon brought out an M6D, aimed it at the fleeing Sangheili and pulled the trigger, the round puncturing through the weakened shields and tearing through the most tender part of the Sangheili's neck with surgical precision. Only the commander of the special operations team remained. With arms like jelly, Zharn fished around by his side for a rifle. His hands met only his pistol, but it would have to do. He drew it out, and fired a few emerald-green bursts at the Spartan. They crashed into the demon's armour, eating away at the toughened plates a little with a snake-like hiss. The demon's head snapped around to face Zharn, and even through the reflective visor Zharn could feel its rage. Seemingly driven by this anger, it balled its gloved claw into a fist and threw it at the spec ops commander. Bone buckled beneath the blow in a strike that even a Mglekgolo would have struggled to match. The spec ops commander seemed to fold in two, coughing up blood. He turned to look at Zharn, a resolute look on his face even in death. Then the spark behind his eyes died, and the Spartan's attention turned fully upon Zharn. "We meet again," it finally spoke, looking around at the four corpses around him. Zharn shrank back against the wall, looking at the exit of the cave. Seeing the body of the one who had tried to flee soon ended that train of thought. "Fleetmaster now? You've certainly risen from the major domo who damn near killed me. But I recognise your face all the same." "If you kill me, my ships will bury both our corpses in this stone," he informed the demon, who shook his head curtly. "I don't think so," the demon replied, walking up to Zharn slowly. Although the Spartan was a few inches shorter than Zharn, it made no difference at all to how he was feeling. Through the holes in the green armour Zharn had created through bursts of the plasma pistol (now hanging limply at his side along with his spirit), the fleetmaster could see ghostly-paled skin layered upon dense weaves of muscle tightly. "Why?" was all Zharn could breath out. In response, all the demon did was bring out a small stick from a satchel on his person. A flame was struck in the darkness, gently applied to the small wick upon the red stick. It blazed with a sudden ferocity, casting a red glow upon the walls of the cave. The demon raised a finger, and pointed it behind Zharn at the wall. The fleetmaster turned around, not quite knowing what to expect.