[Ashwinder] Chapter 7 - A Faustian Bargain

AN: Graphic depictions of violence, death, and cruelty.

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Loud battle cries came from the hundreds of Grineer troops perched atop the dropships as they let themselves fall from heights over 10 metres or more.

Harry's stomach twisted, and his hands clenched into fists as he watched with a pale face how the Grineer troops opened fire upon the civilians.

He and Darvo understood then why the Corpus military base had been almost deserted. All the Corpus personnel had rushed to Martialis to defend against the Grineer's invasion.

But this was not a skirmish against the Corpus. It was a massacre of the civilians.

⁂

Once the force field protecting the colony was obliterated by the Galleon’s skyscraper-sized cannons, the Grineer descended upon the colony like a swarm of locusts. Hundreds of dropships, each one of them carrying half a dozen units.

Screams of terror filled the air as the Grineer Bombards and Napalms fired their rocket and grenade launchers at the civilian flying cars, shooting them down from the sky.



Over a thousand Lancers, Butchers, and Scorpions jumped off their dropships from heights of 10-15 metres effortlessly, landing amidst the terrified population and started shooting their Grakatas and swinging their plasma machetes and cleavers into the crowds ruthlessly, killing people left and right, regardless of whether they were men, women, children, or elderly.

Fiery explosions engulfed the streets and set entire buildings aflame as the Lancers threw plasma grenades everywhere and Napalm units fired their Tonkors, Ogris, and other grenade launchers with wild abandon.

This was not a war against the Corpus. It was a massacre of the civilians. And that was the scene upon which Harry, Valkyr, and Clem had stumbled.

Despite that all the Grineer were technically his ‘brothers’ (they had all been created from the genes of one single progenitor), Clem charged at the closest Lancer, swinging his electricity-coated machete at his back; it was a Prova machete that he had picked up from one of the dead Corpus wardens in the military base.

The Grineer Lancer’s armour was not easily pierced, and Clem had to hack at him four times before killing him, despite the fact he had attacked from the back. Once he downed the Lancer, Clem snatched the Grakata from his stiff hands and the ammo packs at his belt.



“Clem! Clem!”

Had Darvo been there, he would have been able to understand his words, but Harry could only watch what was happening numbly.

He had never seen such cruelty. He had never seen such chaos, terror, killings, and suffering. The massacre that Valkyr had committed in the Gas City on the planet Jupiter was nothing compared to this.

However, while he had frozen up, the Warframe herself did not remain idle. Valkyr brandished her Venka claws and started tearing into the Grineer.

Truthfully, Harry was fortunate that his Warframe was different from most and that she could act on her own. If not for Valkyr having regained her sentience as a result of their continuous transference, his current lapse in judgement would have spelt his doom.

The pink-haired Tenno girl’s words rang at that moment in his mind:

“I couldn't help but notice one thing. Why are you always fighting against MOAs? You’ve never spawned any Corpus Crewmen or Grineer Lancers or any other humanoid enemies. Not even once.”

Harry swallowed the node that appeared in his neck with difficulty as he spectated how Valkyr shoved her claws into a Grineer’s back, puncturing his armour and ripping his spine out.

"If I were to guess, it's because you can't bring yourself to kill people. Am I wrong?”

He had been unable to contradict Angie because it was, indeed, as she said. He was just a 15-year-old boy. He was not a warrior. He had not grown up on the battlefield. Although he had had a tragic past and an unpleasant childhood, Harry had been shielded by the horrors of war. He had grown up in Great Britain. In the end, prior to jumping through the Veil of Death, he had been a mostly normal boy. Because of that, he had not felt comfortable with killing humanoid Grineer and Corpus even in Cephalon Simaris’ virtual world. He had always practised his abilities on the MOA robots.

“Listen up, Harry, I'm saying this for your own good. I don’t know how it was in your timeline, in the place where you were born, but, in this world, that half-baked determination of yours will get you killed.”

Still in a state of shock, Harry was not able to react in time, and a Scorpion, a female Grineer unit, threw her grappling hook at him, clamping it around his ankles. He yelled in panic as the Grineer woman yanked him to her with terrifying strength. His stomach lurched as his body seemed to become weightless for a brief moment before he crashed painfully in front of her.

When the female Grineer raised her skinny but deceptively powerful arm above her head, time slowed down to a crawl in his eyes. As she chopped with her plasma-edged machete at his head, Angie’s words echoed in Harry’s mind one last time:

“In this world, nobody gets to live without getting their hands dirty. If you want to live, you have to harden your heart.”

Just as the plasma edge of the machete was about to cleave through his skull, a bright blue light exploded from Harry. The plasma machete flew out of the female Grineer’s hand, and she was blasted backwards violently, too.

Despite her skinny and frail appearance, she was a Grineer. She was a superhuman soldier with strength and durability 10 times higher than that of a regular person. Although she had crashed painfully against a nearby building, the Scorpion picked herself up from the ground with minimal injuries, her armour doing a great job at protecting her.

Alas, regardless of what kind of armour she was wearing, it could not protect her from the power of the Void. A Void Beam tore through her armour, bisected her from the waist, and left a deep laceration in the wall of the building behind her, too.

Forcing back the bile that rose to his throat, Harry gritted his teeth as he started rushing in the direction of the closest group of civilians he could hear. His body became invisible to the Grineer as he entered Void Mode and flew with a Void Dash above the buildings.

A father tried to shield his young son with his body, but a Grineer Scorch unit aimed his Ignis flamethrower at them, setting them both on fire. Agonising screams came from the father and child as they were burnt to death.



A middle-aged woman tried to hide underneath a car, but a Grineer Bombard suddenly grabbed the half-a-ton heavy vehicle with one hand and hurled it to the other side of the road as though it were weightless. The woman didn’t even have the chance to scream before the Bombard kicked her in the head, exploding her skull like an egg.

No matter where he looked, there was only fire, blood, and death.

The father and the child who had been set aflame were already dead, but their screams still rang in his ears, and the cries of terror and agony coming from the innocent people as they were torn apart by the Grineer and as they watched their loved ones die in front of their eyes were too much.

Something inside Harry snapped.

It was rage.

An overpowering feeling of anger surged from within like never before.

A storm of Void Energy erupted from him like a volcano, alarming all the Grineer units for half a kilometre around.

Two Grineer Flameblades teleported right next to him and tried to swing their Twin Basolk at him, but the rampaging Void Storm around Harry ripped their bodies apart before they could fully raise their fire hatchets.



As the intoxicating power of the Void flooded his body, Harry stopped hesitating. His fears disappeared, and so did his doubts. He stopped thinking about anything.
He threw himself into the midst of a group of Lancers and thrust his hands outwards. Two Void Blasts exploded from his palm. . . but it was not a telekinetic attack.

The tough and heavy armour of the Grineer units that were caught in the range of his attacks crumbled like sand, and their internal organs were turned into paste. Nearly 40 Grineer collapsed on the ground with blood bursting from all their orifices. It was an instant death.

⁂

Mesa, also known as the Vagabond or the Gunslinger, was a very famous and popular Warframe among the Tenno. Most of the Tenno had cloned this Warframe at least once, and they loved to use her in any sort of mission that did not require stealth.



Axel, a Tenno from the Gladiators Clan, had been in the middle of a trade with a Corpus merchant, haggling over the price of a MOA companion, when the Grineer Galleon appeared above the city.

What was supposed to be a relaxing outing in a beautiful colony on Mars had suddenly transformed into a hellish warzone. Nonetheless, Axel was a veteran of the Old War. Despite the army of thousands of Grineer, he did not despair.

He returned into the body of his Warframe and bullet-jumped on the rooftop of the closest building. Perching himself that high up, in the open, had made him a target for dozens of Grineer, and they opened fire immediately. After all, the Tenno were their mortal enemy. Killing the Warframe was far more important than massacring civilians.

Axel didn’t panic. He activated Mesa’s Shatter Shield ability, and all the Grakata bullets and even plasma grenades thrown his way were repelled and reflected to his enemies. Right after that, he also took out Mesa’s twin Regulators. 

It was then that it became obvious why so many Tenno loved Mesa: Peacemaker. 

In a feat surpassing common sense, Mesa’s body appeared to become a blur as she started turning and twisting, firing hundreds of bullets per second from her twin pistols, with not even one of them missing their mark. It was as if she didn’t need to aim. And she definitely did not need to load; her pistols had infinite ammo as long as the Tenno supplied her with his Void Power.



Having killed nearly 50 Grineer in a flurry of his Peacemaker, Axel sent a transmission to inform the Lotus about the Grineer’s attack on Martialis and a distress signal to any Tenno that happened to be nearby. After all, 50 Grineer were like a drop in the bucket to this limitless army of clones; he would need all the help he could get.

‘These savages!’ he cursed under his breath when he saw the Grineer shooting down flying cars and mercilessly killing the helpless civilians.

In a desire to help as many people as he could, Axel started bullet-jumping in the midst of clusters of Grineer, keeping his bullet-reflecting ability active at all moments and triggering his Peacemaker. It was a far more reckless style of fighting than what he should have employed with a Warframe like Mesa, but the situation was too dire to play it safe.

Employing this style did not come without consequences. Not only was it dangerous to get so close to the enemy as a ranged Warframe, but it was also extremely taxing on his stamina and mental strength because he had not allowed himself to rest and recover for even a minute. Every minute he rested, dozens or maybe even hundreds of civilians would get killed.

‘Still. . . I should fall back for now and recover,’ he thought when he realised that he had run out of energy. Mesa’s Exalted Pistols may have had infinite ammo, but only as long as he supplied her with his Void Energy.

As much as he wanted to save more people, he couldn’t do so if his Warframe died.

However, just when he thought about making a temporary retreat, a bad feeling crept up his spine.

“Oh sh-” he began to say when he spotted the Grineer Commander hiding among the Lancers. Axel’s killing spree had attracted too much attention from the army of Grineer.

He couldn’t finish his words before his body was suddenly yanked through space. The Grineer Commander had Switch-Teleported him.

The next thing he knew, Axel found himself in front of a Grineer Napalm, the wide muzzle of his Tonkor grenade launcher being aimed straight at his face. As for the Grineer Commander, he now stood in the place where Mesa had been before.

The abrupt teleportation had messed with Transference momentarily, stunning him for 2 seconds. Unfortunately, 2 seconds was too long to remain still when surrounded by the enemy.

‘Oh shit! Oh fuck!’ he cursed. 

Mesa was not a tough and tanky Warframe. Now that her Shatter Shield ability was not active, a blank point range blast from a Tonkor grenade launcher would be enough to kill his Warframe.

However, at that moment, a powerful Warcry covered all the screams and sounds of explosions in the vicinity.

The Grineer Napalm, who had been just a split second away from blasting Mesa’s head off, found himself losing control of his body, and he aimed his Tonkor towards the newcomer.

It was Valkyr, and her Warcry ability had effectively forced all the nearby enemies to disregard whatever they were doing and focus their attacks on her.

The Lancers shot their Grakatas with wild abandon, the Napalm fired his grenade launcher at Valkyr, the Scorpions threw their grappling hooks at her, and the Butchers and Flameblades charged at her with their plasma cleavers and flaming hatchets, but none of their attacks could even scratch her skin.

She was in Hysteria. 

Valkyr stomped her foot hard, and spiderweb-like cracks spread all over the street. Along with her stomp, a portion of her energy shield exploded, pelting all the Grineer within a radius of 20 metres around her.

Regardless of whether they were light, medium, or heavy units, all the Grineer hit by Valkyr’s energy shield explosion were Paralysed by the shockwave and then pulled towards her through the air.

The clones’ bodies had yet to land on the ground when the female Warframe turned into a whirlwind of death, her long energy claws slicing through their tough armour, flesh, and bones like a hot knife through butter.

‘Damn, that’s one crazy melee guy. Or girl,’ Axel thought in amazement, assuming that Valkyr was being controlled by a Tenno. He had not seen such smooth and violent melee attacks in a very long time.

By the time he recovered full control of his transference, all the Grineer around him had been killed, and Valkyr was gone. Getting back up to his feet, Axel controlled his Mesa to seek the next group of Grineer to kill.

⁂

Harry's breath came out in gasps as he fired a Void Blast, blowing away half a dozen Grineer Lancers who were about to kill the people who had taken refuge inside a supermarket.

“Where are all the Corpus?!”

He had thought that the military base from where he rescued Clem was empty because the Corpus came to Martialis to defend it against the Grineer invasion, but he had yet to encounter even one Corpus soldier.

“Run!” Harry shouted at the terrified people while bracing himself to fight against another squad of Grineer.

“Where to?” one of the less panicked men asked. “Where is the safe place?”

A Void Beam burst from Harry’s palm, cleaving a Grineer Butcher diagonally. Afterwards, he moved his arm in an arc to the right, the beam of energy annihilating anything it touched.

“Run towards the big tower! The Grineer can't approach that place for some reason!” Harry told them, and the group of civilians broke into a run towards the Orokin Tower. 

Harry crouched and Void Dashed towards another location, but, after flying for 15 metres, his dash was unexpectedly cancelled, and he crashed into the ground painfully from a height of 8 metres.

Due to the fact that he was an unknown variable, the Tenno and the Lotus could not fully trust him. Therefore, the Tenno had not shared all the secrets of wielding the Void with him. They had not told him about the Five Focus Schools and the special powers each school taught. They had also not told him about the existence of Focus Lens, devices that helped focus their power and strengthen their minds. Because of that, he reached his limit much faster than a regular Tenno would have.

Somehow, he had not suffered any injuries from the fall, but he had used so much Void Power that his mind couldn’t keep up.

A Grineer Bombard popped out seemingly out of nowhere and fired his Ogris at him.

Harry let out a cuss, and he quickly crouched, entering Void Mode. He did survive the explosion of the rocket, but, unfortunately, he could not maintain that state of invulnerability long enough to Dash away.

Fire engulfed Harry’s clothes and hair as the inferno raged around him. Leaving behind the fiercely burning pit made by the Bombard’s rocket, he broke into a frantic sprint, fighting to escape the flames.

Harry hit the ground, rolling wildly across the street as he shouted in panic, struggling to smother the flames consuming him. But before he could recover, the Grineer Bombard jumped over six metres in a single leap, the earth trembling as he landed right beside him.

Harry crawled up to his feet and started running, but the Bombard pressed the trigger of his Ogris again and let out a laugh.

“Tenno skoom!” 

To his terror, the rocket launched by the Bombard homed in on him, making it impossible to dodge it.

In desperation, left with no other solution, Harry shouted:

“Protego!”

Miraculously, his magic answered his call despite that he did not have a wand, and a translucent sphere of light appeared around his body just as the rocket was about to hit him. The rocket exploded, and Harry’s Shielding Charm was shattered, throwing him back violently. However, that spell had saved his life.

Having run out of ammo, the Grineer started reloading his rocket launcher, but Harry wasn’t going to give him the chance to fire it again. His temples throbbed as though they were about to burst, but he squeezed the last drop of power in his body and raised his hand.

A Void Beam pierced through the Bombard’s chest, leaving a football-sized hole in his torso.

After firing that Void attack, it was as if his brain got short-circuited. Thoroughly exhausted and with 3rd-degree burns exposing his raw flesh, Harry’s arm dropped, and he fell on his back, lying on the ground powerlessly.

How long had he been fighting for? One or two hours? He had lost track of time. Empowered by his feelings of rage, he had gone on a rampage, killing over 300 Grineer. But, despite how many Grineer clones he had killed, he did not feel any remorse at that moment. He could not bring himself to care about those murderers, not when so many innocents had been slaughtered under his very eyes.

‘How many did I manage to save?’

He must have rescued a few hundred people. . . But that number was not even 1% of the total population of the colony. Too many had died. He had tried his hardest to protect them from the Grineer, but he was just one man. He was not strong enough to protect them all. He was not powerful enough to destroy an entire army of superpowered clones.

A moan of pain came from his disfigured, burnt face. Second- and third-degree burns covered his entire body; Harry had no illusions about what was going to happen next. Leaving aside the mutilated state of his body, the biggest problem was that he could not move even an inch from the place he stood. He probably had only a few minutes left to live – only until the Grineer found him.

Darvo had warned him that that was how it was going to end. He had told him that it would be suicide to try to save the colony. However, with his stupid spirit of self-sacrifice, his “saving-people thing”, he had discarded any other thoughts and rushed headfirst into danger.

‘Did I make a difference?’

Despite that it was in the middle of the day, the sight in front of his eyes started darkening, and although his body was covered in severe burns, he felt the chill of death approaching.

He closed his eyes.

However, all of a sudden, a torrent of feelings of anxiety, worry, and anger flooded his mind, and Harry opened his eyes to see Valkyr rushing to his side. The berserk Warframe looked as scary and savage as the first day they met: her white armour had become crimson from the blood of the enemy, and pieces of flesh and gore hung off her arms and helmet, but he found himself smiling at the sight of her. Since he arrived in this terrible, futuristic world, Valkyr had been his lifeline. She was his closest and probably only friend.

Valkyr knelt to his side, and, after brandishing her Venka claws out, she dragged the blades of the weapon across her left palm.

Bewildered, Harry watched how a dense vapour of red blood poured out of the Warframe’s self-inflicted wound, splashing him from head to toe.

The chill of death disappeared, and, much to his shock, he felt all his pain vanish as his terrible, bone-deep burns started to close up rapidly. He was not aware of it, but his disfigured face was healed too, and even his burnt hair and eyebrows were regrown.

Once she finished treating him, a feeling of deep tiredness came from Valkyr through their transference. As valiant as she may have been, she had been fighting against the Grineer for hours, and now she had shared her lifeblood with him. Even a Prime Warframe like her was momentarily drained.

As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours, and misfortunes never come alone.

Mere moments after Valkyr finished treating his wounds, exhausting herself in the process, a squad of a dozen Grineer jumped off two dropships, surrounding them from all sides.

‘Fuck! Why now? Move! MOVE!’ he shouted at himself.

But his body wouldn’t listen to him. Although Valkyr had healed his wounds, overusing the power of the Void had left him incapacitated all the same.

‘Valkyr! Run away! At least you should escape!’ he sent his thoughts to his Warframe. 

Valkyr stood up with difficulty and unsheathed her Venka claws once more, putting herself between Harry and the Grineer. She made her intentions clear. She was going to fight until the end. She was ready to protect him with her life.

Cyan sparks flickered at Harry’s fingertips as he desperately tried to summon the Void’s power, but a sharp, blinding pain split his skull like an axe. His vision turned white, and his body convulsed in a violent seizure.

When the seizure came to an end, he heard the sound of gunfire, Valkyr’s roars, and the Grineer’s death throes screams. Moving his hand with great difficulty, Harry activated the chip at his belt.

It was the chip that Cephalon Suda had gifted him before leaving the relay with Darvo. Out of a total of 10, he had used 9 of them until then. There was only one Shield Osprey left, but that was the only thing he could do to help Valkyr at that moment. He hoped that the energy shield recharge provided by the flying robot would aid his Warframe against the Grineer.

“Go, protect Valkyr,” he croaked out, and the Shield Osprey followed his command.



At that moment, the sound of laughter suddenly came from his right side, and Harry’s heart rate spiked as he recognised them by the voice alone. . . it was his own voice.

“How pathetic you look right now, haha!”

A 15-year-old boy with messy black hair and a thin face sat cross-legged on the ground, resting his chin on his palm as he looked at Harry, smirking in schadenfreude.

He looked and sounded identical to Harry… …except for the disturbing pair of eyes. Those eyes did not belong to a human. They were dark purple, with myriad lights shining in them like a nebula in the night sky. 

It appeared that neither the Grineer nor Valkyr could see him because they did not react to his sudden appearance. Harry was the only one who could see his doppelganger. 

“You failed to protect the others once again. Just like you failed to protect your godfather.”

Harry’s doppelganger stretched his arms above his head, and after that, he lied down on the ground on his side, resting his head on his palm as he continued to look at Harry with a wide grin on his face.

“Not only did you fail to protect what was important to you, but you once again ended up needing to be protected. Now, your precious Warframe will die for you. . . just like your godfather died.”

His doppelganger started laughing as though he were unhinged, beating the street with his palm.

But just as sudden as his laughter had been, just as abruptly it ended, and he spoke in a light-hearted voice:

“Your sweet and beloved Valkyr. . . I can save her. I can give you the strength to save her and the 2 million people who are still alive in this colony. You can save them all."

His voice abruptly lost its light-hearted tone, becoming deep and terrifying as he continued:

“But you have to want it.”

Returning to his previous, light-hearted tone, his doppelganger said:

“So, how about we make a deal?” 

To Harry, the doppelganger’s words sounded no different from a devil’s whisper, but in that moment, he would have shaken hands with Voldemort himself if it meant saving Valkyr’s life and stopping the Grineer from butchering the innocent people of Martialis.

‘My life for Valkyr’s…and two million souls.’

Even if this eldritch horror demanded his life in return, the choice was obvious. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“What. . . do you want. . . in exchange?” Harry asked, barely squeezing those words out. 

The Man in the Wall’s grin became impossibly wide as he spoke:

“Zx4#tz$@.”

Harry’s facial expression did not change at his demand.

“So what do you say? Do we have a deal?” the doppelganger asked in a chipper voice and raised his hand for a handshake. 

Still not capable of moving his body well, Harry struggled with all his might to raise his hand.

As they shook each other’s hands, a blinding light came out, sealing their deal and flooding Harry with the power of the Void.