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Fall
Posted By: The Jaded<cuchoosnest@cox.net>
Date: 11 August 2007, 6:20 am
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Throughout High Charity, a long battle was coming to a close. Trusted rifles fired off the last of their shots, and grenades, made more deadly by the cramped corridors, rang out their last blasts. High above, or rather all around, in the void of space, burning weapons surpassed the last barriers protecting the key segments of ships. Cannons let loose their ammunition, but to no avail. Dying screams rang out in the bloody (and in some cases burnt) corridors. Gurgles came and went, and with each step made by the victors a squish was heard. All had gone as planned.
In a sanctuary, a High Prophet sought refuge, his guard sacrificed to bring him to his abode. Oblivious to the noises that still managed to tear through the thick walls, he read through an old tome that was for long his favorite, and with a shadow of a smile he held his finger down on the control panel, causing the holographic text to move on.
The gods would leave their world one day, demons crushed under their heel. Thou who were gods among gods opened the doors to the heavens, and at the head of their people would they walk off of the circle of life, traveling into the forever. Behind them would be left tools, living and not, and knowledge to help those they deemed heirs, and by strict law would they be used to slay any new demons. The gods named themselves the Forerunner, as they were the first to ascend.
In time a warring people would find these gifts, and with them and their teachings ruin their foes. In a moment of mercy, the victors interpreted the words of the gods, and spared the defeated if only they would hand over their lives through means other than death. Blind as they were, the losers accepted with grudge, but it would be whittled away in time.
Ages would pass, and sacrifices would be needed. In a frigid swamp would they come. Feral beasts would claw and bite, grunting and howling as they would, pathetic as they knew not of the gods' language and thus were automatic failures. Their might would succomb, their will brake, and their streams of pink light would fade, drowned under their blue blood.
A heartless people who stole and loved the material would encounter the gods' interpreters and their followers, and their shields would fail to protect them from defeat as they would fail to halt a blow coming from a path other than directly ahead. Though they smote from distance afar, they would crumble also.
Behemoths of orange would best the people of the gods' on the ground, yet from the heavens would the behemoths be struck down. As a sign of their warrior blood, the orange ones admired and respected such a deed, and they too joined.
The future would yield vicious zealots, brutes and savages, who would ally with no hesitation. After them would be found at last new demons to taint the world. They would be mindless and skill-lacking, and with ease they would fall.
But among them would come ancient demons not banished, killing the faithful and tarnishing the holy even in their failed efforts to save their lesser fiends. One who would lead them all would bring about a grand tragedy, and the Covenant would break away from the unholy. An Arbiter would become a traitor, and with his denial of opening the path to the gods would he force his race to be new demons.
and the remaining Covenant, led by the gods' interpreters, the Prophets, would lead the faithful to the Forerunner's home. And all would be--
A firey blast tore down the doors protecting the Prophet. Startled, he turned to only realize that in his distraction, he ignored the close rumblings from outside. Moving his chair back and putting the console between him and the door, he looked with fear.
In came a host, armored and holding their weapons. At their head were warriors whose garments only told that they were the best of their kind. One of them walked to the console, brandishing his weapon...
...and fired into it, destroying the tome with it. As the sparks died, the black-clad figure in armor slighty form-fitting turned to the Prophet. Behind him soldiers dressed as he and those of lesser rank spread throughout the room, weapons raised. As the Prophet watched in fear, the demon lowered his black weapon, and for only a moment did the Prophet catch a glimpse of the number 52 in the reflection of the demon's smooth, featureless black face.
"They called you the Prophets, huh?" The demon spoke, with a hint of an accent entirely unknown to the Covenant.
"Well, seeing as how your huge-ass holy city is ours, I guess you were false ones."
In the battle-hardened eyes of the less-armored humans, the Prophet of Truth saw a tint of relief and happiness. It sickened him more than he would have thought, and he was not even one of the Covenant led like a lamb. With no tome indicating the power he held over his people as comfort, the Prophet of Truth turned to the ODST.
"You bastards were shallow and heartless. Conquering entire planets for power alone, making Grunts, Jackals, hell, the whole lot of them think you were chosen by gods. You even told them they'd become gods at the end, didn't you? An easy genocide, and the Pearly Gates--sorry, I guess you don't know that term--would open for you. But some would be left behind, and they wouldn't even know why."
The human spoke in a voice that revealed through the helmet an angry, vicious, and pleased smile. Clenching the grip of his assault rifle, the ODST went on, raising the always accurate weapon to his shoulder, staring down the iron sights placed above the small ammo counter at the Prophet's face.
"But you long-necks were blinder than bats. You thought the human race was composed of fucktards. Pussies, wimps, idiots, more mindless than monkeys yet somehow able to reach space. You believed that our weaponry was weaker than hurled rocks." The human interrupted his monologue with a hoarse chuckle that remained in his next two sentences. "You actually bought your own bullshit and thought that it would take 'Green, Metal-Skinned Demons' to match the Elites. Well, I guess our whole damn race are green robots to you then.
"You actually thought we'd just run around like dimwits, standing in the open while you shot us with that half-assed plasma of yours. You thought our ships, each packin' a MAC gun that fires a molten shot used to break meteors, would do shit to you. I'm not even going to guess how you ignored nukes."
The Prophet of Truth snarled with fury, unable to paralyze his face and resist giving the human warriors, marines, satisfaction. He was too enraged to admit the ODST's words, statements that rang oh so truly. The humans were smart, adaptive, strong-willed, and annoyingly persistent. They had become one unified race once they crossed the stars, with no petty arguements dividing them or lack of action to help those in need, no matter where they were. Their days of foolishness and self-brought failure were behind them.
The Covenant was also unprepared. The Prophets always knew that their weaponry was never truly plasma from the first day they tested it. It did not burn everything with ease. It was not a destroyer of all. The training for the Elites was poor as well. They fired from the hip, sending off shots terrible in comparison to the humans, and their zeal drove them on to foolish charges and leaping over cover to continue the fight. Their armor was absent over the vital torso and the neck.
The Grunts were too broken. They fled often and cowered on the battlefield, afraid of the humans who would shoot them or their masters who would do the same if they did not suicide themselves on the "demons." They could not even use their needle-like weaponry correctly any longer.
The Jackals were perhaps one of the only worthy foes, though they fired from the hip as well and complicated matters for themselves. At the very least, they were wonderful snipers.
The Brutes were surprisingly the best, causing chaos and destruction with minimal difficulty. They had skin as durable as any armor, and with their habit of holding weaponry out in front of them level with their shoulders they were one of the more accurate races. They went beserk at the drop of a feather, and were better than the Hunters then.
At last the Hunters, proud and mighty warriors--and traitors. Though the texts stated so, the Hunters never did see the Elites as bold and brave warriors when threatened by orbital bombardment. The Hunters saw the Elites as cowards, unwilling to fight their war on even the planet, and spoiled warriors who threw away all honor and tried to win even when already beaten. The Hunters were valuable, to be sure, but their armor was too great a burden to ultimately best the swifter humans, and they were quick to betray.
Now, as the Prophet of Truth stood among his collapsed empire, High Charity fallen, he could appreciate the irony. The Covenant believed the humans to be fools and easy prey, but in the end they had set themselves up to be such victims for the humans. The humans always had the better plans, strived to win at all battles, and did not hold back at any time. With the survival of their whole race at stake, and extinction as the price of failure, how couldn't they care enough to give it their all? Their motivation and dedication brought them their victory, and it was final.
In the iron sights of Antonio Silva, the Prophet of Truth (now a title not deserved) lowered his scowl into a bitter grimace, hatred and fury painted in his black eyes. As the Helljumper smiled beneath the helmet, he had one last thing to say before he pulled the trigger:
"Semper Fi, bitch."
And with that, so fell the Covenant, and with them all hope for a second galatic genocide via the Forerunner's Halo rings, which would be destroyed, taking with them the ancient Flood. As one Avery Johnson impaled the newest Arbiter with his own plasma sword, as Pete Stacker took off the head of the Brute Chieftain Tartarus with a shotgun, and as the flagship the Truth and Reconciliation was bested by the aged Admiral Cole and Captain Jacob Keyes, the Covenant was ended.
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