Major Faction Humbarine Dawn: IV. Shadow Puppets

A Voss mystic, bound, frail, exhausted, and a relic taken against his will, had spent months in the torturous company of a Covenant inquisitor. Every day, the inquisitor would drag the mystic to the vergence hidden beneath the temple, and demand from him his visions. At first, the seer resisted. Oh, how he hated. Oh, how he defied. But over time, the vergence corrupted... He wanted to die. Freedom from his torment... and in a miraculous bit of insight, the mystic saw his escape. One day, the inquisitor would ask a very specific question, and the answer would finally cost the mystic his life.

"Tell me, seer!" Spat the hateful Sith. "Pull back the veil, and show us!"

When Mercy had returned from Jutrand, she brought with her cryptic concerns centered around the fate of Humbarine. But Star-Arm was only concerned with one thing: fulfilling a promise to eradicate the ex-Alliance rats that hid and grew fat beneath the imperial banner of the Governorate.

The mystic fell on his hands and knees before the vergence; the Dark Side welled in his eyes.

Impatient as always, the inquisitor pushed - he demanded. "Tell me!"

A cold, unnatural darkness fell over the room, casting away all sources of light save for the ethereal fire from where the Force flowed. It flickered and burned, the mystic groaned, and shadows danced on the walls. When the inquisitor turned and watched, pieces of the future etched deep within his mind, as if old memories returned to haunt him. He saw the polluted planet through the eyes of a soldier clad in white armor. His eyes looked up at the sky; red-hot pillars streaked across the atmosphere, raining death, and deafening like thunder inches away from his ears. He saw his own comrades, who should've been dead, shambling and possessed. They tore through the living, as more and more of his platoon fell around him.

The inquisitor screamed. He could not detach himself from this vision. To him, it was real. Too real.

"Stop! Stop!" Screamed the inquisitor.

But the mystic only laughed... a sickly, hoarse cackle, as what little water left in his body mustered as beads of bloody sweat upon his face. Then, he collapsed. No more answers to give... At last, the only vision he yearned for had come true.