[Fanfiction] Chronicles Of The Tenno - Traitor's Bones

[Gibblemung]

Chronicles of the Tenno #2 - Traitor's Bones

I still remember the first time. The day I was to receive my Warframe. I had jittered with barely-contained excitement, nervous energy, and profound pride. I was going to become a hunter! My training was complete, and I could bid farewell to the soft crèches, the stark training rooms, the barking of instructors, and the endless cycle of self-improvement. I had nothing more to learn! What's more, in a few more hours, my newly-forged Warframe would be fitted to me, engaged, and I would be assigned to a battle squad, helping to steer the future of the Tenno!

The Ancient called me. I thought I was to receive a commendation, or a final well-wishing before I was to be off. I was such an arrogant young fool. Young one, he called me. A battle-scarred veteran of more missions and campaigns, more cryogenic-sleeps, more jumps, more meals, and more losses than I would ever know. You have one more lesson here, before starting your true learning.

I laughed. I was ready for anything! Surely the missions to come would be easy, with the preparations they had put us though. He didn't even crack a smile. He just led me down a hallway, past the fabrication rooms. Past the sleep chambers. Past the waste compactors. Past the escape pods. He stopped short of a final door, turning to the left and opening another. In there. What do you see?

I strained, ocular and precursor implants focusing, as the harsh, unyielding light flared to full brightness. I didn't recoil. I was too well-trained for that. I simply waited for my vision to clear, stepping in to the latest challenge room eagerly... and stared. Who didn't know basic anatomy? A rib. An ulna. A scapula. Pieces of a femur. And in each case, with every small subdivision and closet, with every skeleton and pile of bones... a glyph. Traitor.

The bones of our enemies! I exclaimed, triumphantly, eager to prove my worth to the Ancient.

Yes... and no. I had never heard him sound so weary. So inconsolably sad. He sighed, a bone-weary, aching sound that resonated from deep within him. Look closer.

I dared not disobey. I did. The bones... too fine to be Grineer. Too powerful to be Corpus. Too straight and well-formed to be Infested. I gasped. Tenno. The Traitors were Tenno. As I looked closer, my holo-implant began playing the combat logs of the one before me.

I watched as the Tenno hid, his powerful Warframe squeezing into a duct while his companions were butchered. I heard his comrades calling for his help, asking for backup, wondering where he went... and searching for him as they were relentlessly cut down. Only then did he emerge, to slink away in the chaos and escape, leaving the bodies of his comrades behind.

The next was a female, her bright blood leaving a trail that the Infested followed. She shot one of her companions in the back so that she and the other two could escape.

I felt myself crying. I was shaking with rage, disgust, hatred, loathing... and fear. If such powerful Tenno could fall so low to betray their comrades, what hope did a weak young whelp like me have? Story after story of failure, betrayal, loss, weakness, vice, and idiocy assaulted me, yet I couldn't look away. I couldn't stop. I had to know how many ways there were to fail. How many traitors there could possibly be-

-and I bumped into the Ancient. He wore an identical holo-implant to mine, watching along with me... and yet, with the other eye, watching me. In that moment, I knew I had failed. I would never be a Warframe-wearing hunter. I would never succeed. My greatest efforts would be doomed to failure, as these once-noble souls had been-before he squeezed my shoulder with more affection than I thought he was capable of. Remember. He growled, voice thick with emotion. Don't you dare make me put you here, too.

What came next, you all know. You went through it as well. Maybe some of you have even been back to the Hall of the Exalted. The inspiring stories of the greatest of our kind. I'm sure you all remember the feeling of power and freedom as you stepped into the Warframe for the first time. You all remember the combat calibrations, the priming of weapons, the feel of working closely with your brothers and sisters in the thrill of the hunt, even the joy of a well done mission.

I, though, can never forget. I can never expunge from my memory the horror, the possibility, the raw fear I felt... at seeing the Traitor's Bones.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Gibblemung

[CheeseHasLeafs]

This is nice. I like this. Doesn't sound like the Stalker at all, which makes a change.

[Gibblemung]

I try to expand the lore a little bit in a way that won't conflict with what we see in the game. I have fun with the "off duty" interactions of Tenno.