Daughter of the Void

by Elchen_Warmage

Summary:

A collection of Warframe ficlets related to my OC Tenno, Tesul, from my Warframe/Mass Effect crossover: Commander Spectre.
The basic premise of most of them is that the main quests happened to someone else and these will deal with how my OC came to learn what we learned in those quests.

Notes:

This is my answer to the question, "What about all the other Tenno? Did they also do the Second Dream?"

Chapter 1: Awaken

The zephyr warframe stood at the front of their orbiter and stared out. The sight before them was even more wondrous than when they had witnessed the void for the first time. The earth’s moon was real. It was broken with large chunk threatening to leave, but it was there none the less. It had long been thought to be destroyed during the old war. They had tried asking Ordis about the old war but he could not remember anything.

The word spreading among the Tenno was that Luna had been hiding in the Void. Why would anyone hide Luna in the Void? What was on Luna that it had to be hidden in the Void? Ordis advised caution but something was calling to them.

They weren’t the only ones drawn to Luna. Grineer patrolled through the ruined halls, looking for whatever they could loot from this treasure trove of Orokin artefacts. The first group was blown apart by the powerful blast of a hek shotgun. The grineer returned fire but their bullets were swept aside by a turbulence surrounding the zephyr.

They moved through the halls, room by room, eliminating grineer. A knox got in their way. They knocked it down with a burst of air and jumped on it. The front plate was shattered by several clips from their aksomati., revealing the twisted putrid head of the knox. The released toxin cloud rose upwards started to chew their flesh, bypassing their shields. Their systems started to shut down, saved last minute by their wyrm sentinel.

On through the halls they wound, until they came to a large pool with several long submerged pods. The call came from the pods and it was getting louder. One moment they were looking at a pool with pods and then there was darkness.

 

---

 

A bright light shone onto her eyes. She blinked and looked around. She was sitting in a seat facing a collapsed zephyr warframe. She was confused, who was she. She remembered escaping the grineer and finding Ordis, the Lotus guiding her to where she needed to go. She remembered fighting the grineer and corpus. Salvaging infested ships and clearing the infestation from taking over colonies. She was zephyr. No, she wasn’t zephyr. She was looking at zephyr. What was she? She had thought she was zephyr.

She got up and tried to go over to zephyr, but her legs were weak and collapsed under her. Bit by bit she dragged herself over to the zephyr frame. She touched the warframe with her left hand and she felt it respond to her touch. She could feel what zephyr sensed. She willed zephyr to pick her up and carry her. She could feel the zephyr’s arms as if it was her own.

She started to cry. In those moments, her world had been shattered. She was not who she had thought she was for all those years. She had thought she was zephyr, but zephyr was just a puppet she controlled.

She willed her puppet forward, to carry her back to her landing craft. She looked back at the other pods. Did they also contain others who thought they were their puppets? Tenno who had been lost just like her, asleep in their pods, dreaming they were something they were not.

A straggler grineer came around a corner and she reacted without thinking. A bright beam of light shot out from her other hand and cut the grineer apart. The pain up her arm was intense, like using a limb again that had not been used for a long time. The pain caused her to let go of the warframe and clutch her right arm.

At the loss of contact, the warframe collapsed, dropping her on the ground. She rolled forward down a short set of stairs. She turned to climb up the stairs back to her warframe. She spotted a movement to the side and fired the beam of light from her hand again. It did nothing to the trinity that stepped out of the shadows. A rhino followed just behind.

“It’s okay sister,” she heard the voice around her. She could hear it but she knew no one else could. The voice was meant for her alone. “You are not alone. Now that the moon is out of the Void we are awakening. Like us, your world has changed and everything you have believed about yourself turned out to be false. We will take you back to your orbiter.”

The rhino came and picked her up. She started to cry again. “Hush sister. All will be fine.” She could hear him talk to her, her brother. “Your world is not over. Soon you will know the truth about who we are.” The rhino took her back to her zephyr frame and placed her in its arms again. She willed her puppet to stand up and carry her. She followed after the trinity and the rhino fell in behind her.

No one came to attack them and they safely made it back outside where their landing crafts could pick them up. The rhino’s craft went off in a different direction, but the trinity’s followed her back to her orbiter.

She was led to a door at the back. It had never opened before and she had long stopped giving it any thought. However, now it opened for her. Behind the door was a large with silver tendril trees similar to what could be found in the Void. A long narrow object sat in the middle, about a third of the way from the back. She approached it and a cover slid away to reveal a seat similar to the one she had woken up in.

Trinity motioned toward the seat. She walked over to it and willed zephyr to place her in it. Trinity came forward she again heard her sibling speak to her. She was told everything about the past she had forgotten. They were touched by the Void. Unable to control their power, the orokin had locked them away until the Sentients had attacked.

She remembered Margulis. Unable to control their power, they had hurt her but she still cared about them. The orokin had killed her because of her love for the Tenno. The only way their power could be contained was by sending them to sleep and channelling their power through the warframes.

Even the Lotus wasn’t who she thought she was. She was shown that the Lotus was actually Sentient. She had defied her father to adopt the Tenno as her children.

She had lost her world but gained a new larger one. She wasn’t her warframe, she was a Tenno, ancient masters of the gun and blade. She had always had a small feeling that something wasn’t right, but know she knew what it was.

She needed a name. Maybe she had had a name all those years ago, but she couldn’t remember. Tesul, it sounded right. Did it have a meaning? She didn’t know and it didn’t matter. She would give it new meaning.

Tesul stood in the front of her orbiter and stared out at Luna. She was awake but others were still asleep and others were still lost. Slowly the Tenno were waking up from their dream. They would be lost and confused as she had been. But not for long. She would go out there and help her sibling like she had been helped. The Tenno would awaken and remember who they were.

Chapter 2: Sentient Hunting

Summary:

Sentients get in the way of a group of Tenno

Notes:

Just another event in the life of my OC Tenno, Tesul. I'll write more as inspiration strikes.

Tesul kept watch from a zip line above the somatic pods. She peered through the scope on her vulkar, checking the entrances to the room, always alert for intruders in the halls of Lua. Down below, three clan mates were waking up two dreamers. The process of waking others was proving to be a long one. Some refused to be woken, so lost in what they thought they were.

Korta, Dartan and Virtu calmed the two dreamers down. Hopping down to a lower line, Tesul peered down a long corridor. She spotted a stray group of corpus that had crawled out of whatever hole they had hidden in when the Tenno had cleaned the place out. She lined the shots up and systematically took the squad out. Except for an osprey that drifted around a corner and out of sight. Activating her navigator power, she guided a shot around the corner and nailed it in the engine.

She did the same with the corridor on the other side of the room, just to scout it out. “Korta, we got a problem,” she called down.
“What is it? We’re almost ready to get the dreamers back to extraction.”
“Sentient fighters inbound. They’re blocking the passage we need to go through.”
“Void damn them. Those bastards are everywhere.”

The dreamers were up and carrying themselves. However, their movement was slow and nowhere nearly as fast as a Tenno in full flight. “Dartan can rift us and we can just go past the sentients,” Virtu said.
“Not happening,” Dartan said. “We need to remove the sentients or they might go after sleeping dreamers.”

They surrounded the two dreamers and started to escort them towards extraction. The hall that Tesul had spotted the sentients in was empty. “They were here,” she growled. “You think they learned to go invisible?”
“I hope not, it’ll make hunting them that much harder.” Korta took his scanner out and checked the room. “Nothing here.”
“Is it too much to hope that they left entirely?” Virtu asked.
“Unlikely.”

They moved from one hall to another and ran straight into the sentients. Korta was in front and took a direct blast that stripped his iron skin. “Dartan, shield the dreamers,” he ordered. Dartan cast banish at the newly awakened Tenno. Just for extra measure, Tesul shot a cloak arrow at them, not that it protected them from a sentient light show. Korta charged into the sentients, immediately casting iron skin afterwards. Tesul cloaked herself and jumped up the wall. She cast a zip line, placing herself above the battle below. She didn’t even bother aiming down the scope, just shooting to weaken the sentient fighters.

Virtu was the first to go down. A conculyst attack stripped the shields from her Excalibur and knocked her back against the wall. “Sorry guys. I just got the frame and I’m still learning how to use it.” Dartan slipped into the rift and started to resurrect her.

Korta stomped, briefly stunning the sentients. He aimed at them with his opticor and fired. He fired again but the sentient had already adapted. “Tesul, focus on the conculyst. I’m switching to the battalyst."
“Got it,” Tesul said, switching targets. Once the sentients had adapted to one type of damage, they always adapted to the next one faster.”

With Virtu back on her feet, she and Dartan joined the fight. Everyone cycled through their weapons and finally, the sentient fighters went down. “Why do I always end up fighting them when I have the same damage type on all my weapons,” Dartan moaned.
“Because you never think about that when you loadout,” Kortan admonished him.
“Oh cut him a break, Korta,” Tesul cut in. “He never really had to think about it. Remember when we found him, he hadn’t even left the orbit of Venus.”

And so the friendly bickering carried on all the way to extraction. Fortunately, to further sentient fighters where encountered.

Notes:

If you have a suggestion for a chapter feel free to comment it. Just please take note that I'm stickler for lore.

Chapter 3: Index

Summary:

Tesul hits Nef where it hurts, his wallet.

Tesul hated the corpus for all their greed. After visiting Fortuna, Nef Anyo replaced Alad V as her least favourite. A few hours of his prophet of profit speech and give unto the void, she wanted to show him just what his precious void could do and tear him apart. But the bastard hid well. If he ever showed a hair where theTenno could find him, he would be obliterated. She only hoped she would be in time to get a shot in.

She heard about the Index while orbiting around Neptune. After a few hours of raiding corpus vaults for information, she took some downtime and sorted through her mods. She had her radio scanner set to pick up random transmissions. Occasionally something she heard paid off. Like the time a freighter had gone down over Phobos and she’d scored a few hundred credits from the wreckage.

“This is Cephalon Sark your unbiased host. And the Brokers are off. Ooh, loose points make a tempting target.” She put the mods away and listened to the broadcast. It sounded like the commentary for an arena. Cephalon Sark was one of Teshin’s commentators for Conclave. But there wasn’t a nearby relay for her to pick up.

She sent a message to the clan. “You guys know anything about an arena in the Neptune area?”
“Nope, I haven’t left the Jupiter region for the last few months.”
“Wow, man. There’s an entire system out there to explore. Sorry, Tesul, haven’t heard of an arena in that area.”
“I’m still on Jupiter because I’m still exploring the place.”

“I think I know what you are talking about. Is the announcer Cephalon Sark?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the Index. You place a bet and then proceed to kill some pretty tough corpus units. Reach your goal and you get a hefty payout of credits. The best part? It’s run by Nef Anyo.”
“We are so having a chat at the next dojo meeting. You knew of a place where we can take credits from Nef and you didn’t tell us?”

Now she was ready to enter the arena. Fifty thousand credits had entered her into the highest reward tier. If she was going to bleed Nef dry, she was going to take as much as she could. Three others stood alongside her.

“You done this before?” one of them asked her.
“First time. Only heard about it an hour ago.”
“Well, Rhino was a good pick. The points that the brokers drop has a serious effect on warframe health.”
“Good to know.”
“Oh and they drain energy. So watch out for that.”

“You collect the points, and we’ll kill them,” the mesa motioned between it and the banshee. “You and limbo just focus on staying alive.”
The limbo laughed, “They can’t kill what they can’t hit.”

The platforms rose up until they came to a long indoor arena. The timer counted down and then they were off. Tesul saw broker and charged into him and knocked him down. she turned her hek on him and blew his head off. Two more brokers behind her were shredded by mesa’s peacemakers. She ran over the floating green dots that they had dropped and instantly felt her warframe systems weaken.

“You weren’t kidding about being bad for your health. I’m starting to feel like glass over here.”
“It’s not so bad. You get used to it. It gets really bad when you have about eight or more points.”

The game continued until she had eleven points and couldn’t take the feeling of weak skin anymore. She ran over and turned the points in. “Hey, the score went up by fifteen. I turned in eleven.”
“You get bonus points the more you turn in. The best number to turn in is about fifteen.”
That was delightful news. Maybe she could handle the feeling that her skin was going to tear if it meant more points.

Suddenly Tesul came face to face with herself. An identical copy her rhino stood facing her. The weapons where wrong, the copy had dual cestra and she was using the hek. The copy brought their weapons up and she dived sideways while emptying her clip into it. Since when did the corpus suddenly have the ability to mimic warframes? She paid extra attention to her teammates every time she crossed paths with them.

The points racked up and they were sitting on seventy-three of a hundred points. A smaller model raptor decided to target her. She aimed for the rotors and fired. Instead of them being blown to pieces and tumbling down, only a few of the blades were damaged. Tesul somersaulted backwards to avoid the carpet spray of grenades. Figuring her gun had had a misfire, she took aim again and fired. A few scratches and holes, but no gaping hole in the chassis.

“Um, guys this raptor won’t die.” The mesa turned its attention on the raptor and the rotor blades were gone.
“Sorry, forgot to mention that they get tougher the longer you fight them.”
“Please tell me that they don’t plan to roll this technology out into the field?” She used her furax to beat up the next broker she came across. She emptied all eight rounds his head and scowled as he tried to get back up with half his face gone. He only stopped when his head was a bloody red smear in the cratered floor. “The bastards really don’t want to die.”

Finally, the last point was scored and the game ended. “That was both fun and rubbish at the same time,” she grumbled. “The credits are nice. This is more than I normally make in a week.”
“The credits certainly are nice. This was an easy round for me,” the mesa said. “Sometimes I come here with some friends and we just spend a few endless hours in there.”

“How? I mean they kept getting tougher.”
“They’re not so tough with the right warframe combos. As for how they get tougher, I have no idea. Running theory in our clan is that the corpus found a way to jam our weapons up over time.”
“I removed half of the one guy's face and he still kept trying to get up!”
“No theory on that. And honestly, unless I suddenly find them wandered the halls outside the Index in droves, I’m not overly concerned.”

Tesul received her payout and they split up. And that is how Tesul found the Index, the key to personal wealth and bankrupting Nef Anyo.

Chapter 4: Silence

Notes:

So this was a little something that I thought up this morning. It doesn't really mean anything.

He patrolled the corridors aboard the corpus freighter. The pay for such a job was much better than his previous job working maintenance in the conduits of the Jupiter gas cities. He was moving up in the world. Maybe in a few years time, he could get a promotion to Eximus.

Then everything went silent. Not just zero air silent, absolute abject silence. He’d worked in zero air environment before when a satellite had needed repairs. Out there you still had your heartbeat to keep you company. He couldn’t hear a thing. He stumbled forward, clutching his head. All around him, his fellow crewmen did the same. He tried to say something but nothing came out.

Red blossomed from someone chest, splattering the console he had been working on. A bullet tore through his helmet, destroying it. With no sound to give their position away, their assailant was tearing into them.

He trembled, he had expected grinner maybe. Not the silent demon that stalked them. He spotted a storage closet and ran for it. A crewman motioned and pointed, clearly he had spotted their attacker. The door opened silently and he ran to the back and hid beside the canisters of coolant.

Sound returned eventually. The silence had been horrifying, but the noise of crewmen dying was almost as bad. A fellow maintenance worker had once fallen into the fans in a vent and been shredded apart. He had hoped to never hear the squelched of a person being cut apart again. A body part landed against the closet door with a squelch.

Silence took over again. All he could hear was his heavy breathing in his ears. He prayed to the Void that whatever was out there would not find him and leave. The door hissed open and a shadow was cast across him. He looked up and stared at the faceless face of a Tenno. Their helmet spread outward in a large feathery crest.

It pointed its golden gilded rifle at him. He cowered where he was. It lowered its gun and walked back out. The indicator light on the door turned red. In the distance, he heard a moa screech and then it exploded. The Tenno moved on and he was left alone until the door was unlocked the next day.

And that was the day he met the Tenno. He got himself transferred back into maintenance into the most horrible place he could find, sewage works. The place stank but he was confident that there was nothing down here that the Tenno wanted, so he was unlikely to die by their hand.

Notes:

Don't expect too many updates. I'll add more stories as the inspiration strikes. In the meantime, I hope to keep a regular update schedule for my other fic, Commander Spectre.