Ember screeched down the hallway, skidding around a couple of Cephalon Suda operatives before crashing into a pillar next to one of the ducat kiosks where Frost and Volt were standing. She quietly picked herself up, stared at Frost and Volt, then started whimpering.
“I guess you saw the vision as well?” Frost grunted as he waited for Volt to finish. Volt always seemed to have a bunch of primed parts to dump at the kiosk and get converted into ducats.
“Have you?” Ember asked, her voice flickering with worry and confusion. “I mean… was he serious? Are we going to have to…”
Volt tapped the kiosk, informing Frost that he was done. Frost nudged Volt out of the way and started going through his own stash of prime parts. “Kill Natah? Quite likely.”
“Kill the Lotus? We…”
“I said kill Natah. That’s different!” Volt was quite obviously trying to be positive.
“Lotus is Natah though!” Ember abruptly wailed, not caring that there might have been younger, unbroken Tenno around. Tenno who might not have discovered the truth yet, Tenno who would have just woken up. The new relay was odd like that, filled with equal numbers of freshly new Tenno and veterans. “She’s evil! Maybe she was evil all along! And we’ve been serving her all this time! But she seemed to care for us as well! I don’t know what to think any more!”
Volt glanced around to see who else was present. Frost grunted again as he finished with the kiosk.
“Not quite enough ducats… What don’t you know about any more?” Frost tutted. “It’s all very simple. We see Sentients, we kill Sentients. That’s what we were built for, that’s what we were trained to do and that’s what everyone, from Teshin to the Quills to the Lotus herself, has been trying to teach us.”
“But what about Ballas?” Ember shrieked. “He was like, half sentient! Natah did that to him! Cut him in half and made his legs all sentient-y! Why?”
Frost shrugged. “Who knows. Who cares? It’s his fault all this has happened. If he had just left the Lotus alone, she wouldn’t have buggered off back home.”
“Yeah but…” Ember fell silent. “I don’t know any more…”
Again, Frost shrugged. “It all seems clear to me. The Sentients want a fight, so we’ll fight them. Ballas was spurned by them the same way we were, so he gave us a hand. We’re just returning to our long-lost roots of being Sentient slayers.”
“But what about Lotus?”
“She’s a Sentient. So we’ll slay her.”
Frost seemed pretty sure of himself. “Come on, Ember, we’ve known for like six months that Lotus isn’t coming back. Umbra basically proved that to us.”
“But what if she’s…” Ember stuttered, lowering her voice. “What if she’s doing this all as one big plan to destroy the Sentients? She’s kinda done stuff like that before.”
“Or she’s completely lost her mind!” Frost was getting annoyed. “The Lotus we all knew is gone. She’s not coming back!” With a sigh, Frost turned to Volt. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“Yeah, I know…” Volt admitted. “I just… don’t know what to think either. The Lotus is gone, possibly reverted to her old Sentient self. Ballas was betrayed by her. We were betrayed by her. There’s not much evidence to suggest that this is all a ruse. But everything else is so up in the air right now, everything’s still falling apart…”
“So what do we do?” Ember asked.
Volt sighed. “All we can really do is continue protecting the innocent, continue keeping the balance and keep our eyes open, I guess. And make sure we all build more of those Sentient Slayer swords…”
Frost nodded in agreement. “We’re going to need all the Sentient-killing tools we can get our hands on! One for every Tenno. Maybe even two for every Tenno.”
Ember shook her head, then checked her inventory. “I’m going to need more ducats then.”
“Then let’s go and farm for prime parts!” Volt beamed as he patted Ember on the shoulder. “We have time, we should use it wisely.”