Their strengh is my humility

            Today was a humbling day.

            Hmm... Who am I fooling, this happened to me shortly after the Gravidius Dilemna, but other plans got in the way before I had time to tell you all this. On that day, I crossed the deep void to the far ends of the system, where the Infested have swarmed on the Grineer, taken their bodies and infested their ships. One of those ships was closing on Eris, in the Kuiper Belt. We don't set foot there, but prevent whatever lurks on the surface to expand much further. It was a time when the sector was held by the Grineer, long before we let the Corpus get their greedy hands on the sector.

            One of those ships is drifting in an area called Cyath. The Lotus told us she needed to get into the still fonctionnal Grineer network. All we had to do was to take a linking device to a few terminals and defend the place while the Blind Lady was getting in. We had done it before.

            That the Grineer and the Corpus don't like us getting into their systems, that I can understand. But the Infested? I cannot wrap my mind around their interest in such matters. Maybe they just swarm and attack because we are there, but frankly, I rather doubt it. With all that we know and guess about them, I don't think this is a coincidence. But educated guesses are not what made this day a humbling experience.

            This time, I was still in the flesh of the Volt. I applied a forma to this warframe, so it was not yet as strong as it used to be. Alongside me were two Tenno I have never met before. I cannot recall their names, but they wore the skin of the Vauban and the Rhino. As usual, we ran.

            The Infested were strong here. Were I be alone or teaming with Tenno as strong as I were then, slaying and shooting our way through  all these infested would have proven a near impossible task. But with the Vauban and Rhino I went with, the endless horde met a wall of bullets, entered a stasis field set by the Vauban or were sent flying by the rhino's stomp. My overload electrified and paralyzed the infested, frying the wounded and slowing down the others, but didn't do that much damage compared to the rampage the two others were waging.

            Everything was going smoothly, and we were closing on the terminals where the Lotus was to enter the Grineer systems. But, suddenly, I heard a voice, crawling in my head. A voice who said "Huitzilopoltchi, you can't run from your past."
           I stopped running and said his name. "Stalker".
            The two other Tenno stopped short. In the silence, all I could hear was their recharging guns. My two akbolto became twitchy in my hands and the Stalker talked to me again.

            The shadows between the thick rock walls of the asteroid became ominous as the lights started to flicker. There was only silence. Then, the smoke, and he was here. I've met him before, fallen before his might and defeated him once, in an epic setpiece in my life as a Tenno. We were four, teaming against the grineer in one of their secondary command center. The Stalker came, and we repelled him and ther Grineer in the same movement.

            This time, we were alone, as if the Infested wanted to let us settle this among ourselves, getting away from us as far as they could.

            The Stalker dashed towards me. I dodged, and hi scythe sliced nothing but air. Then, the Vauban and the Rhino opened dire. A few seconds later, the Stalker was forced to retreat. In a puff of smoke, his whisper slipped in my ears.

 

            At first I couldn't believe my eyes: the Stalker is a formidable adversary, feared by many for very good reasons. Yet he was powerless against those two.

            Like nothing happened, they started running again. I followed, mind in awe, with a newfound respect for them. The mission went down the hard road. Cakewalk for those two, but no walk in the park for me. They looked as if they vaguely tried to stop the infested hordes and the packs of ancient swarming on us, yet we protected the systems the Lotus was intruding with flying colours.

            Let alone the time I warned them about the Stalker, we did not exchange a single word. But those two humble me. They reminded me the long path I still had to walk.