#euclid319

Alathar slammed his shoulder against an invisible force barrier in the world and a towering convex shield erupted in front of them, soaking up Cabal fire as cracks splintered across its surface. He panted to himself and turned to glance at Viggo. “Where’s Moon?” He asked, voice rising as the noise of Cabal munitions threatened to drown them out once more. Viggo snapped his head up in a panic to search for the Hunter that had taken it upon herself to be his mentor, Moon-5, who had moments ago been on the roof.

The roof that had just gotten eaten by a massive line of molten solar fire.

His query was not long left unanswered, thankfully; Her body landed face- up in the muck about fifty feet behind them with a wet squelch, her cape fluttering down over her face and her Ghost spinning out in the open to assess the damage. Viggo held his breath for a moment before one of her arms popped up, thumb held high. “I am O-Kay!”

He sighed, exasperation and panic bludgeoning one another for prominence in his chest. “God! She’s nuts! She’s nuts, and I’m gonna die, and it’s because she’s a fucking loon!”

“Relax,” Alathar said evenly, lifting his rocket launcher onto his shoulder. “Deep breaths, young one. Cover me.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to shoot them with a rocket.”

Viggo whipped up and leaned his gun on the windowsill of the shack, firing precision shots into the crowd of Cabal escorting their latest horrible military death machine. Each triple-burst of his Swift Ride popped pressure seals or burned holes in brain stems, giving Alathar time to rise with measured patience from his crouched spot, step around his Barricade, and fire a warhead across the street into the crowd.

There was another boom of munitions as his rocket struck a Centurion in the chest and turned his torso into a gooey jigsaw puzzle, and the explosion scattered the procession. Moon vaulted off of Alathar’s shoulders and a raucous rush of Light adorned the ignition of her Hand Cannon. Six shots cracked out in three seconds and one of the rear thrusters keeping the massive wartank aloft crumpled and died.

Moon whooped as she wheeled around to cover, her cape singed nearly a foot shorter. “How’s that for a bit of adrenaline?” She asked savagely, thumping Viggo’s chest.

“Why are you so excited?” He shrieked, fumbling a new clip into his Pulse Rifle. “We’re going to DIE!”

“Who isn’t?” She retorted. “Load up, rookie, we’ve still got about forty Cabal out there and they did not bring party favors!”

“Move,” Alathar cautioned, grabbing Viggo by the scruff of his shoulder-length cloak and heaving him up. Moon scrambled under the hulking Titan’s feet and bounded across the clearing as the noisy hum of the tank’s main gun charging filled the air.

Seconds later the shack they’d just been hiding in was nothing but a molten crater, and the three of them were hiding behind a stack of ancient cars with the Dark Forest directly at their back.

“Oh Light,” Viggo hissed through his teeth. “Oh, I hate this. I hate this! Why did it have to be here?”

“What’s so bad about here?” Moon said, her voice forced into a chipper mask as she reloaded her handgun and pretended not to have noticed the oozing hole in her side. “Besides the tank, I mean.”

“Maybe ten more seconds until we have to move,” Alathar cautioned. “It will keep pushing us in the opposite direction of its advance until we can make it to that warehouse.”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it was the fact that the last time we were here, that headcase corpse-monster in the woods turned you into a modern art sculpture, and made Al blind!” Viggo spat. “With his MIND!”

“Only for a few minutes!”

“That doesn’t make it better!!”

Alathar’s rocket launcher spat heat again and the rocket crashed against the fore shields on the tank. The explosion still managed to half-incinerate the pair of Psions stationed by the vehicle’s primary thrusters.

“That Guardian,” Moon murmured thoughtfully; she stroked her chin in a peculiar way that Viggo didn’t understand, especially considering she was wearing her helmet. “The Corpse. Yeah.” He’d once seen Cayde-6 make the same motions and asked if she’d gotten it from him; Al had said that Moon was a great deal older than she seemed, and that it was the other way around. He’d gotten the mannerism from her.

“Yeah? What do you mean, ‘yeah’?”

Moon stood and checked the clearing for a moment. “Can you hold down the fort here, boys?”

Viggo blanched, appalled. “No!”

Alathar simply checked the ammunition on his auto-rifle as if he was used to this. “Why?”

“I have an idea. A bad one, but an idea.”

“Ikora told us not to bother that thing in the Forest,” Alathar reminded her mildly, stuffing a cluster-munitions rocket into the tube of his launcher. He dragged two fingers across the inside of the wrist that held the launcher by the grip and made a circle with his forefinger and thumb against the scuffed plating. Out. “Yeah, but these are extenuating circumstances.” She stuffed her hand cannon in its holster and crouched down in a sprinter’s crouch.

“Moon, you can’t just kite a bigger, badder monster in to solve our problems,” Alathar said pointedly. “Five seconds. I can hear the gun charging.”

“Why not? Either he gets vaporized or he turns that tank into mulch. Either way that seems like a win-win from where I’m sitting. One way or another a threat gets taken out of the equation.”

“I don’t like you talking about a Guardian like that.”

“Whatever he was before, he – Oop! Move.”

They scattered like rats as the tank discharged again. White filled Viggo’s vision until it went black and his legless torso splashed into the mud. Alathar slid to a halt next to him, suppression-firing into the crowd with his auto-rifle, until their Ghosts could channel enough light together to knit Viggo’s body back together from the ether. He dry-heaved inside his helmet and scrabbled on hands and knees behind cover at the edge of the cliff face that separated this portion of the Sludge from the road that ran past the Farm.

Moon helped him to his feet. “Are you okay?” She asked, gentler than she ever was in any other circumstance as he tried to get his newly-remade stomach to stop flipping end over end. “Can you breathe? Deep breaths. Stretch your knees. Roll your ankles. You’re okay.”

“Maybe half a minute until the tank re-emerges from around the warehouse,” Alathar judged.

Viggo slapped his hands against his helmet and successfully suppressed the urge to vomit in his helmet. “Green,” he rasped hoarsely. “Green. I’m reading green.”

“Good.” She thumped the forehead of his helmet with the side of her fist. “I’m off. Keep the light on for me.”

“Moon, wait!” He pleaded. “What if it just kills you?”

“It won’t! I’m too fast for that.”

“Okay, what if he kills us?” Alathar snapped.

“He – it – did once before, almost! Why should this time be any different? We’re Guardians!”

“I just got my legs vaporized,” Viggo mumbled queasily. Moon sighed, and took a moment to huddle with her fireteam.

“Listen,” she said earnestly. “We don’t have the firepower to break this thing before it breaks us. Viggo, you said it yourself, Dead Orbit’s radio-tech is scraprust-garbage. That means we either put this thing away here, or we pray to the Traveler that there are enough Guardians lingering at the Farm to stop it.” She put her hands on the backs of either of her teammate’s helmets. “And before they do that, it’ll vaporize a lot of stuff we can’t just Glimmer back together. This is us, Guardians. We smash the hard place with the rock we get stuck under. So trust me, okay? I’m moderately certain this will work.”

Alathar sighed, shaking his head slightly, but his expression was inscrutable behind his helmet. “Very well, Moon,” he rumbled. “It’s your call.”

“Thanks, Meat Mountain. Don’t die until I get back, ‘kay?”

“I will do my level best.”

“That’s the spirit!” She patted Viggo’s cheek and then turned and sprinted off towards the treeline.

“Think we’ll ever see her again?” Viggo said glumly.

“For at least a couple of seconds. Tether,” Alathar responded, hefting his rocket launcher.

Viggo spun out from behind their cover and pulled a short leather-wrapped handle from his belt; a phantom bow curled off the material component of his Nightspell and he drew the drawstring as swirls of void-light pooled at either end. “Choice of dispersal?”

“Center mass.”

“Yes sir.”

The arrow careened through the air like a twirling angelic mortar, burst just above the crowd, and sent a spiderweb of branching void-tendrils snaking through the crowd, binding them to the pulsating globule of Void Light that dragged them all inward.

Alathar’s cluster missile turned thirty more Cabal into so much Solar dust. And so the dance continued; Viggo and Alathar darted from cover to cover and left a molten pile of slag behind everywhere they crouched, trying to keep up with the thankfully now much slower ultra-tank as it trundled along through the Sludge. The forward Cabal guard clashed with Taken and Fallen while the tank and what was left of the battered rear guard tried in vain to deal with a pair of wily Guardians. Lives were on Viggo and Alathar’s side. Firepower was on the Cabal’s. The battle was pitched, and Viggo eventually passed Alathar his shotgun so that the Titan could charge the tank and blast the other rear thruster pod to smithereens with it, but the result was Alathar’s exasperated Ghost muttering ‘Why do you enable him?’ To Viggo while Viggo fed it enough Light to unscramble Alathar’s molecular waste and return him to the world of the living with a saucy chuckle and a light dusting of ash.

After almost twenty long minutes of following the tank, which now drove at a snail’s pace with the back half grinding along as it dragged thrusterless behind the front end, Viggo heard something from the abyssal trees and looming Shard behind them.

“Oh, shit,” he whined; a ghastly wail had picked up, wavering and rising with the wind. Even Alathar had to shudder at the sound of it, swiftly growing closer. Viggo felt it like a shadow blotting out the sun, or a demon chasing him through a bad dream, just behind and growing ever-closer in his Nightstalker senses. This thing, this once-guardian, it trembled in the bloom, suffuse with Voidlight unlike any Voidwalker or Sentinel he’d ever encountered before. Ikora was a bottomless well of stillness. The Corpse was like a slavering black hole.

Moon came ripping out of the Forest, one of her arms missing from the shoulder down, metal curled into springy strips and her hand cannon conspicuously missing.

“Run!” She shouted gleefully as she tore past them, dirt and mud flying up in a mist under her heels.

Behind her the Forest lurched, gravity-distortion waves bending the world momentarily as the Corpse screamed out of the treeline, jittering forward as if Blinking soundlessly from point to point. Viggo turned and sprinted out into the open after his mentor, panic seizing his heart, and heard the surprised grunt and thundering footfalls of Alathar just behind him. Moon laughed like a lark into the open air as she ran, her remaining arm flying into the air over her head. She was running so fast that her hood had fallen back, and Viggo kept one hand clapped to the crown of his head to keep the same from happening to him.

“WHAT DID YOU DO!?” Alathar roared, uncharacteristically fussed, as the Corpse’s screaming behorned form chased them across the ruined city street.

“I SHOT HIM!” Moon called gaily back. The Cabal were so stunned by the sight of them that for a moment none of them fired; the tank’s main cannon warmed, gurgled with heat so intense that Viggo watched the foliage peel and blacken off the slagged cars on either side of it, and slowly came to bear on them. He took a split second to glance over his shoulder. Sure enough, a bright violet wisp was drifting up and away from the Corpse’s torso from both sides, the singe of golden fire undoubtedly from Moon’s Golden Gun already dimming as the Corpse was slowly filled in as if time had decided to reverse course around the wound.

Viggo dodged and weaved for his life through Cabal slug guns, rockets, and Bronto-shot. He did his best to stay calm. Hit the hard place with the rock you’re stuck under. Viggo sucked his breath in through his teeth. The Corpse overflowed with Void Light. It was like the thing’s anchor. He could feel it pulling at the gravity under his boots as it glided like a nightmare after them. Okay. He could work with that.

“DOWN!!” Viggo shouted as he leapt upwards, vaulted off nothing, then triple-jumped for maximum height. Moon and Alathar dove to either side as he drew his Bow once more, reached into the Möbius quiver at his hip, and fired as many tethers as he could across the tank and the crowd of Cabal. The second his feet hit pavement he dove and rolled for all he was worth, holding his breath, feeling the Corpse fall upon them –

“I AM! Legion! Crimson tide! Forgotten army! Self-deluded castoffs lost and cowering away from Calus’s love/hate!” The Corpse rocketed past them, tattered robes fluttering in the wind. “WALLBREAKERS! CITY IN CINDERS! Ghaul’s pathetic final whimpers drain away like scattered dust in the vastness of the Datasphere! Yarrow says GO HIDE IN A HOLE SOMEWHERE, YOU UGLY FROGS! I AM NOT!”

The cannon fired and Viggo gritted his teeth and forced himself not to look away as the massive beam of solar power streaked towards the new biggest threat; but before it could impact the Corpse and turn it into ash, the magnetic field shaping the superheated energy unspooled in the fathomless Void, and the cannon’s discharge looped and spun away into nothing. The yawning nothing within the Corpse stretched out, and the massive cannon crumpled, screeching metal upon screeching metal, peeled open like a flower.

The Cabal unloaded their full retinue of fire on the Corpse, but the munitions spun away into the Vortex crowned above the creature’s umbral horns. It held its arm out, palm forward, wailing into the sky, and Viggo’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets with how hard they bugged as he watched the tank begin to buckle from inside. It let out a sickening groan of metal straining against gravity, crunched, bent in half, and then began to crumple like a tin can, dragged inwards as a second Vortex spun up from a pinprick somewhere in the bowels of the great machine...

Viggo blinked and it was gone. The sudden still and quiet was deafening to his ears and when he brought himself to pay attention, he noticed that all of the Cabal were now dead, too; they lay here and there, some in heaps, some sprawled alone in the middle of the street. All grey, as if the very color had been leeched out of them, with staining rust and green moss crawling across their armor as if they had been dead for decades.

The Corpse shuffled quietly back the way it had came, hugging itself like a lost civilian, hunched and small as if it were just a ghost. Viggo got to his feet first. He felt a pang of... emptiness. Longing. It was incomplete, he thought, and he approached it warily but at a firm pace.

“Hey,” he mumbled, trying his best to ape Moon’s ‘comforting Rez-sick newbie Guardian’ voice. “Can you hear me? Is– is there anyone in there? Hey.” He reached out, but the moment before his fingers touched its shoulder it began to fade, its image vanishing right before his eyes as if it had walked behind an invisible shroud and out of sight.

The oppressive weight of its presence instantly guttered and went out.

The three victorious Guardians stood in a silent triangle, alone with an empty crater and fifty dead Cabal.

“We need to talk to Ikora,” Viggo said breathlessly.

Did you KNOW??

DID YOU KNOW, IKORA!? Did you know about the reservoir that slumbers here beneath the surface of Mercury? This databank, this world within a world, these multifarious branching pathologies? More of that ‘forbidden knowledge’ you so smugly coveted before the fall of the Tower. Forbidden knowledge; a delightful oxymoron. You kept these things like precious gems away in your hoard. I have transcended the banal moral necessities you and your fellows wrung your hands over. There are those who have been banished for the simple questing towards the knowledge I now hold, but I have neither the smug overcalculations and grandeur of an obsessive jester nor the SELF-IMPORTANT OBLOQUY OF A PETULANT KNOW-IT-ALL!!

DID. YOU. KNOW!??

HOW COULD YOU HAVE KEPT THIS FROM ME!?

What could I have done with all of this, I wonder? How many things might I have divined given access to a truer and more powerful variation on my MUNIN simulation program? How selfish and short-sighted of me to delete it without a backup. Had I known then –

What would I have done with all of this? Even as I tangle myself in the intricacies of this Vex code and the Infinite Forest beyond I wonder, would I have done good with this? When did I become so... inflated? Here I sit immaterial within the network of a Guardian’s ship, small as a speck of sand and also larger than this beach upon which Osiris’s slavering cult has made its lighthouse. Have I not always been such? Have I really changed that much for this death on all the others? I cast my stones at Toland, at Osiris, yet here I am after a grave miscalculation sneering in my glass egotism over a relationship I give far too much credit.

I know what I am now, after the dragon and the Crypt, after so much time spent in thought, after dreaming in the satellite.

Did you know, dear Ikora? Did you know that without all the things that made me mortal I would scarcely be more than a seething shade? Such power rests here, at my fingertips, and nowhere a more suitable source than I to decipher and manipulate. The Vex algorithms lay upon my palm like a Gordian knot; and here, at my side, an Alexandrian sword of my own divination in years spent culling data from the Vault of Glass and the Corrective on Venus. But I am not the oracular conqueror. I am not a Warmind, I am not a Guardian, I am not a Ghost. I Am Not.

Who could have known I would be a poltergeist and not a pleasant reverie?

Did you know?

Galatea, and 20 other Guardians, have been out sifting through the wreckage of the destroyed districts of the City for three days - since the Red Legion’s occupation broke. Mostly Hunters, of course; a couple of Titans around for heavy lifting, a Warlock around to disintegrate debris. Galatea volunteered for this district, specifically. There’s a specific Guardian she’s looking for.

The Ghost in her hand is only half of that equation.

“Sun’s going down!” The shift commander calls in from a block ahead. Galatea doesn’t look up from Constant’s twisted shell. “Last dig, then we go home!”

“The body. The Guardian’s body.” Galatea indicates Constant’s shell. “Did you find it?”

The Hunter hums a soft negatory, offering apologetic palms and shaking his head. They are standing in a crater, glassed smooth, filled like a basin with debris from the surrounding buildings. “Just the shell. Maybe it can be revived? It might be able to find the body.” He sighs and folds his hands behind his back, scanning the rubble for another of the strange phantom leads Hunters use to find what they seek. “Wouldn’t do the poor sod much good now, but at least we’d have him for the memorial.” If Galatea didn’t know any better she would’ve guessed the crater to be just the site of another orbital bombardment; but the crater is perfectly circular and the glass is too even.

That, and she saw the beginning of its creation.

“No,” Galatea murmurs, turning Constant over in her hand. “Were he here, they would’ve been together.”

He snorts quietly. “I mean, it’s not like he got up and walked away, right?”

The urge to reach out and backhand this impetuous runt is quelled by a melancholy, bitter amusement at the thought that she’d seen him do stranger things.

The Hunter finally realizes why she is so invested and his body language becomes stiff and awkward. “... You knew the Ghost?” He asks carefully, hands flexing self-consciously.

“And the Guardian,” Galatea murmurs. Beneath her helmet, her lips tighten. “Keep searching.” As the Hunter takes his leave, Galatea glances around and remembers the crater before it was a crater, and the solemn glance she’d exchanged with a Guardian she had purposely kept at arms distance. Now, she wants nothing more than to have the uneasy comfort of at least knowing what has become of him.

“Where are you, Euclid?” She whispers, and paces the perimeter of his last stand. She finds the trace remnants of the Cabal who had stood against him, but all she finds of her friend is the quiet acceptance he has left etched into the glass.  

•••  •  •••••••••

“Hate this shit.” Viggo stirs the fire with a stick as Moon-5 surveys the small camp they’ve set up, and Alathar tugs the pauldrons on his Titan armor to make sure they’re secure. “Vanguard sends us out on a wild goose chase, for what? The civvies at the Farm who refuse to move back to the City?” The Black Forest is an ungodly uncomfortable place to be at night, especially for a Hunter; his instincts scream over every shadow and there are too many stray impulses in this place. Everything feels like a tacit threat, not the least of which the Shard looming over their heads venting strange energy into the clouds overhead.

“Devrim has good eyes, Viggo.” Alathar turns his own eyes on the Hunter, and he squirms under the Awoken’s luminous green irises. “If he says there’s lights in the forest, there’s lights in the forest.”

“Maybe we shoulda told him to point his sniper at it,” Viggo shoots back sourly. “He seems to think that’s good enough for the Fallen in Trostland.”

“Don’t mind him,” Moon pipes up, examining one of the strange, gravity-deficient chunks of rock that hang in the air like omens. She pokes it and it drifts off into the dark; Viggo feels it strain his perception of their surroundings as if it were slowly tearing its way through spiderweb. “Viggo’s still a newb, hasn’t learned you gotta trust eyes.”

“Trust eyes?” Alathar questions. A strange gossamer energy flickers through the clearing. The fire tinges violet for a moment.

“Somebody says they saw something, you believe ‘em until you have proof,” Moon explains. She chuckles a bit and rejoins the others at the fire, sits cross-legged across from her young ward. “You don’t trust another Hunter’s eyes, nobody’ll trust yours.”

“Yeah, but Devrim’s not a hunter,” Viggo protests. Moon waves him down.

“Nah, but it’s just a saying. Goes the same for Warlocks, for Titans. For Civs. Falls under the Golden Rule-“

“Don’t be a dick,” Alathar and Viggo both parrot simultaneously. Moon chuckles again.

The night wears on, and Moon feeds the fire her Light every once in a while to keep it going. Viggo doesn’t let the tightness in his shoulders go for a second. It’s not that there’s nothing in the forest. It’s that there’s too much in the forest. Is that a Fallen, a Taken, a stray Psion, or just an empty shadow? Alathar spends his time meditating and Moon spends her time spinning her Hand Cannon on her finger without lighting it aflame, trying to master some obscure trick. Viggo keeps his eyes on the perimeter and tries to pretend he’s not being watched from all angles.

The Shard towers over their heads, making Viggo nauseous whenever he looks at it for too long. Eventually, though, the warmth of the fire and Alathar’s rhythmic breathing lulls his attention until he’s zoning out.

You must go back.

Viggo’s head perks up. “Did you guys hear that?” He whispers, rising to a crouch and unslinging his rifle.

“No,” Moon says, amused. “Jumping at shadows, Vigs? I didn’t hear a thing.”

“You’re not a Nightstalker,” Alathar points out, and lifts his shotgun off his knees.

A violet light flickers somewhere deeper in the forest behind the two of them, so Viggo points silently and frantically. When Alathar and Moon whip around, guns raised, the light vanishes.

“Shit!” Viggo whispers.

“Rookie!” Moon teases.

You can never be what you were.

“I heard it that time,” Alathar murmurs; Viggo isn’t great with Awoken body language but the steel prickling smell of fear reads the same on any organic. “What is that?”

The light is dim when it winks back into view, this time almost fifty feet closer than before, and this time both of his companions see it. Moon’s gloves grip her hand cannon so tightly that Viggo hears them creak. Alathar puts on his helmet.

There is something in the dark.

“There it is again!” Viggo hisses; his sidearm shakes in his hands. “What is that?! We’re not- that’s not- we’re not hearing that right?”

“No...” Alathar murmurs, head turning slightly. Surveying the forest for an ambush. But it’s all silent now, holding its breath, waiting. Far overhead, the Shard watches.

This is not right.

“Stop it!!” Viggo shouts into the dark, and Moon hisses for him to shut the hell up. The light whispers out, and when it goes, so does the campfire. The three of them are frozen in place, but the absence of the fire light makes Viggo’s heart thunder as if it were about to burst.

A violet light illuminates his companions’ faceplates from behind the trees at the edge of the clearing. Viggo’s breath sticks in his chest; despite himself it is beautiful. A single figure’s obsidian silhouette steps into the glow. For a moment Viggo fancies he sees teal mouthlights flicker.

“Just some nutbar Warlock,” Moon mutters with strained relief in her voice. The hand cannon lowers, just slightly, and she stands fully upright. “Hey, Guardian!”

A horrific tremor races down the figure’s body from horns to boots and the light vanishes; the guns fly up. Ghosts spin out of nothing and cast flashlights into a murky blackness beyond the clearing.

“Oh, what the fuck?” Viggo whines. “What the fuck?!”

There is a ghastly molecular squeal as Moon’s gun- and her arms up to her elbows- shred in spiral patterns, and at the same time Alathar howls and goes blind. They fly in opposite directions and Viggo wails.

This is not how the subroutine should have actualized. This dream begins before the war, not after it. The tragedy makes me feel like weeping but I have no tear ducts and thusly I will not weep. I walk away from the tower because I am lucid and I do not want to go to the tower right now. I think it will tell me something I don’t want to know.

I recognize every face.

What part of me remembers everything? I do not know if that part is here. I cannot name these faces nor do I remember who they are but I recognize them, and as they stare up at me the sun sets and the stars come out, and the Abyss climbs into the sky and stares down at me, all awonder, and awaits my next move.

This is progress, at least. I do not know everything, but I know that something is missing, at least. I know that there are several parts to me, at least, and some of them are not here. A part that knows this Awoken Titan with voidscars in the cavern of her torso, which smells like understanding and regret and duty when I pass her by. A part that knows this human Hunter with her bow broken in half, bowstring snapped, the feathered fletching of her own arrow pinning her cloak to her spine. A part that knows this human man impaled on a pike that sounds like broken promises when I touch it, and the name on his insignia reads ‘CRESSEL’. A part that knows this-

Soon the bodies bear the same face. One I do and do not recognize. They are machines, and they contort and languish in poses that best suit a work of art, a painting or a large sculpture installation. Some of them are dusky blacks and greys and when I pass them they whisper numb, logical things to me, and it is hateful, and I loathe them very much. Some of them are splashed with teal and red and they stutter quiet, pleasant things to me, and it is bemusing, and I do not loathe them as much.

There is a sleek, black shuttle in a smoking crater that has peeled open at the rear like a metal flower. The machines stand on either side of it, one grey and black, the other teal and red.

“You m-must go back,” says the teal.

“You can never be what you were,” says the grey.

“What was I?” I ask.

“I don’t remember,” says the teal, apologetically.

“I remember everything,” says the grey, solemnly.

“Well, what am I now?” I ask, frustratedly.

“I sup-pose that’s up t-to you now,” says the teal warmly.

“Something you have no choice but to become,” says the grey coldly.

“Which of those answers is true?” I ask.

“Both,” says the teal.

“Neither,” says the grey.

“What is the truth!?” I cry.

“Everything,” says the teal, and I throw out my palm, and he is gone in a flash of violet.

“Nothing,” says the grey, and I throw out my palm, and he is gone in a flash of violet.

I walk away from the sleek, black shuttle; soon there are no bodies, there are no craters, there is no war, and I must return. The tower does not pay attention to my presence but I will climb it. As I climb, the tower tells me that I am a figment of a lonely satellite’s furtive imagination, and this makes me weep. I climb, and I climb, and I climb, until I think I am not climbing the same tower and have gone somewhere else. I can see out past the mountains where the sun has gone, but beyond the mountains there is no land and no sun. Only the starlit Void.

At the top of the tower, I find the dragon. It is long and bent into an impossible fractal shape like seven Möbius strips inseparably tangled, and I cannot see its head but its eyes know me from behind the coils of its body.

“You must go back. You can never be what you were,” says the dragon. Its voice is familiar to me.

“What was I?” I ask, desperately.

“Why do you want me to tell you?” responds the dragon.

“Because I don’t know!” I cry.

“Don’t you?” says the dragon. “Maybe you’re not asking the right questions.”

For a long while, I THINK.

“Who is behind the mirror?” I finally ask.

The dragon self-references and its prisms become a tesseract. I Am.

“Nobody,” says the dragon simply. “Sometimes there is just a mirror.”

“Why won’t the Void let me go?” I beg.

“Who won’t let go of whom?” the dragon challenges.

The dragon is undecidable. I Am Not.

“I am scared,” I whisper.

“That’s okay,” says the dragon. It floats over nothing, and I am standing on a precipice above the vast Abyss.

“What am I?” I plead.

Isn’t that the important thing?

“I think, therefore I am.” Isn’t it more important that I think? Does one necessitate the other, or simply imply it? Is it possible to think without being? That’s what an AI is, isn’t it? But an AI has quantifiable influence over the physical world. Data, numbers, they relate to physics and electricity and the interchange of information behind a screen. At their weakest an AI can still open a door. At their strongest, an AI can obliterate a celestial body.

I THINK?

I think I was something else, once. I think I used to be something important. I think I used to feel love. I think I used to feel joy. I think I used to feel fear. I think I used to feel frustration. I think I

I THINK!

WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME I CAN HEAR YOU ALL IT’S ALL SO INSIGNIFICANT IT FEELS LIKE NEEDLES IN MY BRAIN DO I EVEN HAVE A BRAIN I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ALL CARE SO MUCH IT’S SO EMPTY AND POINTLESS YOU’LL ALL BE NOTHING IN WHAT AMOUNTS IN THE LONG RUN TO THE BLINK OF AN EYE OF AN EYE OF AN EYE OF AN EYE WHY DO YOU CARE I USED TO KNOW I USED TO UNDERSTAND BUT NOW I

I THINK...

“This is the shape and point of the tooth. Nothing has ever lived that will not die.”

I have lived, and I have died.

The Void Still Rings Hollow Within Me. It Will Not Let Me Go.

I THINK...

it’s okay. it was meant to be this way.

i used to be so smart, i think. what happened to me? when did i become so pathetic? why do i even bother?

please please please i will do anything to understand i just want to understand. i promise i can be better than before. if i could just grasp it. if it could just be explained to me. just a little.

HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME I THOUGHT YOU LOVED US I THOUGHT WE WERE YOUR CHOSEN I THOUGHT

this cant be happening to me.

I THINK...

304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319.

I THINK.

The Taken represent an interesting paracausal malfeasance. Oryx Eats the idea of a thing and then, simultaneously, holds up a mirror to that thing and says ‘What have I Eaten? What were you? What do you wish to be? How may you become Better?’ (Herein ‘better’ is a word that must be considered by Oryx’s definition and not our own.)

How may he Eat the idea of a thing, which is to say destroy it and twist its molecules all about and flay it and turn it inside out, utterly unmake it, but then hold up a mirror to it? What is in that reflection? Has anyone ever seen it? Oryx cannot have seen it, for he is the one behind the mirror. Only the Taken have seen it, and it obliterated everything that they are. Then, Oryx filled something into the empty outline.

I do not think I am Taken. The Taken are like an umbra, and Something eclipses them from the sun. But I cannot help but wonder if I Am because of some similar mechanism.

I beheld a mirror, and in my reflection was

I THINK.

I drift through an Abyss.

All around me there are stars but there are no planets and I do not recognize these constellations.

I should. I have downloaded several hundred unique star charts and have memorized every one. But these stars do not arrange thusly and the patterns I behold tell me things I should not know. I am bathed in the antumbra.

There is something in the dark.

I am asleep.

I drift through an Abyss.

I THINK.

I beheld a mirror, and in my reflection was 01000001 00100000 01000111 01100001 01110010 01100100 01100101 01101110.

I THINK,

She knew he’d seen it coming by the calm in his voice.

“So it’s this one,” Euclid had murmured, in an idle moment spent lounging in the shade of trees in the Tower courtyard. They spent their recharge periods together frequently, basking in sunlight to allow the solar batteries in their torsos a chance to recharge. Today clouds had blotted out the sky, and the hubbub of activity had made Yarrow suspicious… but not suspicious enough to end one of the precious few breaks they got to go investigating. Euclid had turned to her, given her hand a squeeze, and got to his feet. “We should go.”

“What?” She’d asked, exasperation and amusement playing xylophone with her throat and mouthlights- akin to a dramatic roll of the eyes, which she also performed literally a moment later as she let him haul her to her feet. “Go where?”

“It’s the end of the world,” he’d informed her softly. Questions and disparaging remarks as to the dramatic mystery of his statement bubbled up in her vocalizer, but they were squelched by a resonating thunder out behind the Walls. The clouds broke, and Yarrow’s mouthlights strobed alarm as the Cabal ships roared towards the Tower. She’d heard Euclid hum, curious, and as he tugged her arm and Blinked with her away from the incoming volley of explosive artillery she’d caught one last, passing comment. “A day or so ahead of schedule, too.”

          *******

“Of the some two-million simulations I experienced during my sojourn on Venus,” Euclid explained to Yarrow, Jolly, Galatea, and a pair of other Guardians as they tromped through a side-alley, “Approximately forty-seven percent of them involved the destruction of the Tower. Of that forty-seven percent, an impressive half of these ‘Towerfall’ occurrences were perpetrated by Cabal aggressors.” Their group paused at the head of the alley, at Euclid’s behest, and Yarrow’s grip on her Pulse Rifle tightened as a Cabal dropship growled past.

“And you didn’t tell anyone about this because?” Galatea grumbled. “The Vanguard, perhaps?”

“Tell them what? ‘Ah, I th-think the Tower will be attacked, only I can’t tell you when, nor where the assault will originate, nor how, nor whom the perpetrators will be with any degree of certainty’. And that's setting aside explaining to them how-how- er- how I ‘know’ that in the first place!”

“Better to have been prepared for it, at least,” the other Titan traveling with them grumbled.

“To be fair, the Future War Cult has been clamoring about having predicted the fall of the city for decades,” countered the other Warlock.

“Yeah, but those guys are crazy!”

“Quit arguing,” Yarrow snapped at them. “Focus up. We have civilians to exfiltrate.”

They bounded across the street and Yarrow did her best to ignore the battle raging overhead; ships in dogfights, Cabal cruisers spitting drop pods and artillery shells down into the City as something aligned itself to the Traveler. She felt them all watching it in solemn silence, allowing themselves a moment of contemplation.

“What do we think it is?” Jolly asked, unusually quiet.

They all glanced at Euclid, who tilted his head slightly.

“... Well,” he mumbled, picking at his gloves. “I-I don’t know, err, h-how to- I suppose it’s- I mean, m-most likely-“

“It’s okay. Spit it out Euclid,” Yarrow said, patting his back encouragingly. She thought she knew what he was going to say but that didn’t make her feel any better about it.

“It’s m-most likely some sort of, ehh, d-device designed to c-cut us off from the Traveler’s Light.”

The implications made her reel slightly. Was that even possible? How could the Cabal do that? What kind of technology even had that kind of power? The Red Legion was from someplace very far away, indeed, if they had so much ridiculous crap none of them had ever seen before. Everyone else seemed to be speechless as well, until Galatea’s chin rose.

“Our Light is not what makes us Guardians,” she said firmly. “This is still our City. It is still our job to protect it.”

Yarrow almost felt like there had never been a time when this many Guardians had been present in the Last City at once. Shamefully she couldn’t even name the district they were now patrolling; she didn’t know a single civilian that wasn’t employed at the Tower.

The city was seemingly in its death throes, and Yarrow couldn’t help but feel stunned as she witnessed the last gasps of a total stranger.

          *******

A Cabal Phalanx’s shield wrenched forcefully from its owners’ hand on a flickering tendril of Void light and careened across the space between two buildings to slam headlong into a Centurion’s jetpack mid-flight. The ensuing ball of fire tumbled down to street level as Galatea and Jolly wheeled out from cover to pepper the defenseless Phalanx trooper with bullets. Euclid flicked his wrist and the sputtering Cabal flew sideways off the roof after its shield.

“Man, when the Cabal say ‘occupation’, they mean it,” Jolly muttered, slapping another clip into her submachine gun. One of the few good things about Shaxx opening up his armory, Euclid reflected, was that Guardians who had appreciation for weapons suddenly had a wide assortment of new toys to enjoy. Like Jolly and Galatea, for example. Jolly had a sidearm at her side and a sniper slung across her back; unfortunately the high-caliber ammunition the sniper required was sparse and hard to come by. Euclid passed her the rest of his ammunition for his submachine gun in exchange for some stray hand cannon ammo she’d come across, and the Awoken Warlock beside him turned with a chuckle to oversee the small caravan of civilians they’d gathered.

“How many of them do you think’ve spent this much time around Guardians before?” He asked, bitterly amused.

“Now now,” Euclid chided mildly as he reloaded his gun. “Not all of us were strangers here, right? I’m, err, s-sure some of us spent quite a b-bit of time in the City.”

The deafening silence from his other five companions made him chuckle uneasily. “… W-well, someone out there m-must have. I mean I’ve heard there are, ah, b-bars and the like that are specifically tailored to Guardians.”

“Anyway,” Galatea interjected. “We’re going to be encountering one of the designated exfiltration zones soon. We should decide who is going and who is staying- we have too many people to fit on one transport.” Euclid patted Yarrow’s shoulder and left the others to figure out their battle-plan- it wasn’t one of his strong suits.

The civilians were wet, tired, and forlorn. Euclid and the other Guardians had been slogging them across the City, up down and around, trying to find an evacuation craft that had not yet departed; he got the impression that it was a long trek for them, but it had only been about a dozen kilometers. Sometimes it was baffling, the differences between Guardians and regular civilians. He supposed it wasn’t their fault; after all, they didn’t have tireless mechanical limbs or armor that injected stimulants into your thigh muscles when you became fatigued, or a Ghost to help your circulatory system cycle unnaturally quickly and efficiently, or-

“M-mister Guardian?”

Euclid did his best not to jerk away as he felt something tug his robes but only half-succeeded, and the instinctive recoil did not seem to do anything for the ardent frown on the face of the child who had been trying to get his attention. He pivoted his body awkwardly to face the small human and crouched down the way he sometimes saw Jolly doing when she encountered a broken shank, to pull it apart for valuables. He was entirely unsure how to handle children; multiple Guardians had explicitly told him that it was probably best he stay away from them whenever possible.

But surely this couldn’t hurt. “How can I help you?”

“I’m tired. Are we gonna make it to the eva-evacliation point soon?”

“The evacuation point,” he corrected gently. “Yes. We are approaching one now. Presuming we arrive and find the exfiltration crews alive and in viable shape, you’ll be loaded onto an outbound transport.”

This did not seem to reassure the child. “But... Where’re we gonna go?”

“I am unsure.” He noted the particularly obvious surprise that blazed a trail across the child’s face. “Standard protocols have not been prepared for a catastrophe of this magnitude, but in similar situations a fallback position- or several- are often set up in designated high-Light-exposure areas outside of dangerous encounter spaces.”

The child was silent, seemingly digesting his words, and Euclid got the feeling many of them had gone over its head. Instead of trying to format an appropriate response it apparently decided to change tack slightly.

“... But you’re not... you’re not scared, right?”

Euclid glanced between the child and the back of Yarrow’s hooded head, wishing now that he had gotten someone else to handle this situation. “Err...” He glanced back at the tiny human and pulled off his helmet, attempting to produce a reassuring smile in his mouthlights that did nothing but gently illuminate the child’s elevated levels of surprise when it realized he was an Exo. “... W-well, of course I am!” He said. “But that doesn’t mean I- oh dear.”

He hurriedly pulled his helmet back onto his head and stood up as the child’s eyes brimmed with tears and it let out a clogged sob, the parents hurrying over firing scathing looks his way as he felt a wash of unease drift over him, and he turned back to the others. He wasn’t sure why, but somehow he knew he’d given the small human the wrong answer.

*****

“FLY FIVE MILES OUT PAST SPLINTERWIND CREEK,” the second Warlock in their group called from the bay of a repurposed cargo transport that was being used to evacuate civilians. “THERE’S A CLEARING OUTSIDE THE RANGE OF CABAL SENSORS WHERE THEY’RE STAGING A SECONDARY FALLBACK POINT.”

“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRIMARY?” Jolly called back, cupping her hands over her mouth to make her voice audible over the thundering roar of the cargo hauler’s engines.

The Warlock shook his head, and Jolly winced. Nearby, Galatea was standing with the other Titan, silent and forehead to forehead, neither Guardian apparently fazed by the proximity of their helmets. It was some small Guardian ritual, but Euclid couldn’t begrudge them the scarce moments taken to perform it. His own anxiety was flaring as civilians were loaded onto the ship.

They’d arrived somewhat late. The hauler had been almost full already when they’d gotten to the LZ, and so only about half the civilians in their complement could be squeezed into the ship, packed in tighter than they probably should have been- but there was no time or room for error to find another ship. The two Guardians they had picked up on their way down from the Tower had elected to go with them, in order to keep them safe; as the other Titan caught the Awoken Warlock’s hand and hauled himself up into the ship the Warlock turned back to them. “BY THE WAY,” he shouted, “WE NEVER GOT YOUR NAMES!”

“SAVE IT FOR WHEN WE MEET BACK UP!” Jolly replied, grinning widely. “I’LL BUY YOU BOTH A DRINK!”

“Naive,” Galatea mumbled as she came back over to stand beside Euclid. Yarrow was busy shepherding civilians back towards the City. They’d gotten the coordinates for the next district’s evacuation points and there was, thankfully, one not that far away. “To assume we will ever see them again.” She watched the bay doors close, and Euclid watched her take her helmet off her head. The faceplate was cracked, deeply enough that the internal mechanisms were undoubtedly fried. As she tossed it aside, the ship lifted into the air; Jolly waved after it emphatically with both hands. Her face was impassive as ever as she watched Jolly’s arms fall to her sides, still watching the ship vanish into the smoke and smog. Galatea’s lips tightened ever-so-slightly at the sight of Jolly’s clenched fists, and she closed her eyes with a soft sigh.

“I’ll get her,” she said. “We should get moving.”

“Everybody’s in a bit of a rough mood, but they’re still hopeful,” Yarrow informed him as Galatea strode off to get Jolly. “I am too, for the record. Aster, you got any hard info on our next destination?”

“Not so far off, all things considered!” Aster unfolded from subspace into view by Yarrow’s head, and the two exchanged a brief glance. Even Euclid could detect the faint strain of anxiety in the Ghost’s voice. “I mean, it’s ah... it’s certainly doable! We made it this far, after all.”

“B-barely,” Euclid mumbled sourly. “Th-there have been several instances in w-which our only, ehh, saving g-grace, as it were, has been luck.”

“We got four strapping Guardians here,” Yarrow said, patting Euclid’s shoulder. “I’d say ‘young’ but I know you’re like a hundred and six, and well, I have no clue how old Galatea is.”

“I’m 129.”

“Whatever. Look.” She nodded to her Ghost, who spun out of view, and turned to look at him as Galatea and Jolly approached. “We’ve had harder challenges. Besides; this is what we put on the boots for. If we’re ever going to come back here and stomp these wrinkly toad-headed monsters, we gotta get as many people out as possible. And we will.” She hefted her rifle on her shoulder and turned to look out at the next district. “Don’t worry, Euclid. We’re going to make it.”

*****

“Not going to make it,” she muttered grimly, emptying another clip in her sidearm into a Cabal’s faceplate. “They’re not going to make it.” She could see Jolly cresting the hill as she and her Titan partner brought up the rear of their group; the other Hunter was struggling with her sidearm, and Yarrow saw her drop her rifle, pick up a stone and slingshot it with a burst of desperate golden fire through the torso of one of the Cabal chasing them. Galatea had a civilian under one arm and a shotgun in the other, perched precariously against the crook of her elbow while she jammed more shells into the gun with an animal snarl on her ordinarily stoic and ethereal face. They were moving fast… but they weren’t moving fast enough.

Behind them, the district’s last transport was loading up. All but five of the civilians they’d been guarding were scrabbling unchallenged into the ship, dirty, weary, and finally nearing the end of their long trek. One LZ after another had turned up dry or overrun; and they just didn’t have the time or the supplies to move into the next district over. Already they’d seen artillery shells fall on the City in other districts, passed Guardian holdouts that lay barren under the unstoppable onward march of the Red Legion. To her side, Yarrow heard Euclid let out a tense huff.

“How you holding up, Screwloose?” She called to him, sticking her sidearm back in her belt and dragging her pulse rifle off her back; she checked the mag with a second’s glance and bitterly wished she had about a thousand more bullets before she positioned it properly in her hand. She glanced over to Euclid, who still had a palm clapped firmly over a wound in his side; his mouthlights strobed discomfort, but he flipped the cylinder on his hand-cannon out.

“I’ve been better,” he admitted, “But this is hardly m-my worst day.” The spent casings in his gun shot out and away, and six new bullets filed neatly into the cylinder in its place seemingly of their own accord; Euclid tipped his head sharply and the cylinder spun with a series of soft clicks before he snapped the gun back to the right and the cylinder clacked back into place. He cocked the hammer and turned back to Yarrow. “We need to help J-jolly and Galatea!”

“Easier said than done! You got enough bullets to hold off the Cabal?”

“I’m, err, down to, uhh, m-maybe sixteen.”

“Triffick.” Yarrow’s eyelights narrowed slightly. “I’m almost fresh out on Pulse Rifle clips. Before long I’m going to be down to Sidearm and not much else.” And that was hardly good for a confrontation like this.

She tensed as a pack of the Cabal’s War Beasts came howling towards them, and saw the two straggling Guardians try to hurry the remaining five civilians they were shepherding towards the dropship behind them. Galatea was still loading her shotgun; Jolly skidded to a halt and spun around to her partner, tearing off to intercept the War Beasts. The foremost animal let out a triumphant shriek and tackled her, sinking its teeth into her elbow.

“CARTER!” Galatea roared, dropping the civilian under her arm to try and bring her shotgun to bear- but it wasn’t going to be fast enough, nor would it have the range necessary to stave off the beasts from where she was. Yarrow saw Galatea’s eyes widen in genuine terror, but she didn’t have the energy left to muster more than a few crackling tendrils of lightning.

“Damn it all,” Yarrow grunted; she dropped her Pulse Rifle and snatched Euclid’s Hand-Cannon out of his grasp, drawing a surprised squawk from her companion. She didn’t have time to ask- the weapon burst into flame, and Yarrow leveled the Golden Gun at the beasts about to rip Carter ‘Jolly’ Jackson to shreds. She fanned the hammer desperately, each fiery burst aimed on instinct, and the six slavering beasts fell in six smoldering heaps. Jolly saluted her with two fingers and sped past a thoroughly relieved Galatea to help herd civilians onto the ship. When she went to hand Euclid back his gun she found him hunched over, fingers digging into the seam at his throat.

“Too quiet,” Euclid hissed, fumbling with the clasps of his helmet. “It’s too quiet, too quiet, too- too-“ a seam at his neck hissed as the Obsidian Mind disconnected from his undersuit, and Yarrow felt his other-sight wash across her as the limiters in his helmet shut off. The sudden swell of Light made her drop the hand-cannon in surprise- she’d never have guessed he still had so much power left in him.

Euclid whipped his helmet off his head and tossed it aside; Jolly scooped it up as she ran past, dropping her empty sidearm and clubbing a Psion aside with the obsidian bucket in her hand. Yarrow’s sidearm was already in her hand to cut down the Psion’s Centurion handler with the fullness of her second-to-last clip. Jolly scrambled aboard the transport and climbed to her feet, waving Galatea aboard after her. She pulled the last civilian into the bay and then clasped Galatea’s gauntlet with both hands, straining to haul the heavily-armored Titan aboard. She turned and called something Yarrow couldn’t hear into the dropship, and the engines began to warm up as people scrambled to find seats and strap in.

A trio of Colossi crested the rise and brought their massive guns to bear on the dropship, and their rockets splashed across the ship’s shields. Euclid cast out his arm and threw a Nova Bomb at the rise; it crashed into the chestplate of the lead Colossus and carved a black hole into the world for a moment- but it shrunk and vanished surprisingly quickly for a vortex created by Euclid. Even with so much Light left in him, he must have been growing tired.

“Yarrow!” Jolly’s voice crackled over her comms and snapped her back into focus. “We got everybody onboard. Grab Euclid and let’s go!”

“If those Cabal take the LZ, they’ll turn the ship into slag!” She snapped back, taking a few potshots from cover to keep the incoming Cabal Legionaries honest. “Make sure everybody’s strapped in and ready to go. We’ll- we’ll figure something out.” She clicked the comm off and clacked her jaw shut in irritation. A streak of fire from a Cabal Legionnaire nearly sheared her helmet in half and she winced and threw her now-smoking hood back. When she reached for her belt to find more ammo, a grenade, a knife, anything- she came up empty.

“We can’t hold the line like this!” Yarrow shouted to Euclid, ducking back behind a chunk of rubble big enough to shield both of them. He dropped down next to her with a peculiar expression of contemplation in his throatlights.

“No,” Euclid murmured, turning for a moment to survey the oncoming tide of Cabal with his other-sight. “… No, we can’t.” The staggering reality of facing death- possibly actually permanent death- for the first time struck them both. She knew that not everybody would make it out of this catastrophe. The fall of the Tower. She’d prepared for the possibility of being one of those who were left behind; it hadn’t occurred to her that Euclid might be there with her. Laughable, in hindsight- as if Euclid would ever willingly leave her behind. He turned his head to look at her, seemingly calculating something. He took her head in both hands, and let their foreheads meet for a brief moment.

“COME ON!!” Jolly screamed to them as the transport’s engines spun up from an idle hum to a dull roar. “WE GOTTA GO NOW!”

“It’s the only way to give them time,” he said, his voice so low she could barely hear it. “You know it is. I h-hope you know- I hope-“

She froze a selection of her non-primary functions, letting her optics blink off, and let herself occupy the moment; her hands came up to clasp his shoulders, fingers digging into the seams of his maroon pauldrons, balling in the odd khaki-and-saffron of his robes. He still smelled like his flowers, even after all this time spent away from Venus. “I know,” she muttered back. She allowed herself a moment of sincerely solemn contemplation. “Me too.”

His mouthlights flickered in relief. “G-good.” There was a brief pause as he collected himself. “I’m sorry.”

“What?”

Yarrow didn’t have time to react as Euclid’s hands darted away from her and he shoved her backwards; she didn’t have time to think or process what was happening, but everything seemed sluggish as she continued to move away, away, away- and she realized he hadn’t shoved her with his hands but rather with his Light, and she was hurtling backwards through the air with arms outstretched. When she collided bodily with Jolly time seemed to snap back to its proper progression as the other Hunter let out a heavy ‘Oof!’ and the two were knocked out of the doorway.

She tumbled like a ragdoll into the bay of the transport and rolled back to her feet. She screamed something verbally and with full-throated lights that lit the inside of her visor for a moment before she was sprinting for the exit- but Galatea caught her around the waist. “Don’t be stupid!” the Titan hissed to her. The bay doors were already closing, civilians strapped uncomfortably into their seats.

“What’s he doing?” Jolly asked, panic in her voice as she clutched Euclid’s helmet in her hands.

“Galatea you have a SECOND to drop me before I-“

“Guys, what’s he doing!?”

“Before you WHAT?!” Galatea bellowed, dropping Yarrow and sweeping her arm around the dropship’s stunned-silent complement. Three Guardians, nearly twenty-seven civilians. “You and I both know that if we put up too hard of a fight, the Cabal will call down an orbital strike! Is that what you want?”

Yarrow’s jaw clacked shut angrily as she pushed herself to her feet. “So we’re just going to abandon him?” She shouted back, nearly chestplate-to-chestplate with the taller Titan. “Just gonna say, ‘Oh well! Guess he did his best!’ and let him cark it while we relax in the exfil transport!?”

“You’d just be going to your death!”

“Who CARES!?” Yarrow roared. Her fists knocked against Galatea’s chestplate but the Titan didn’t so much as flinch. “If we’re gonna lose our Light anyway, I’d rather lose it backing him up than moping in some empty warehouse in the Dead Zone! He needs our help!”

Galatea bared gritted teeth, furrowed her brow, but it wasn’t an expression of anger. “So do they,” She implored quietly, desperately, grabbing Yarrow by the shoulders. “Please. I-“

She was cut off by Jolly, standing at the doorway, who had gasped in horror at something outside- they saw her dart forward, but there was a sudden thunderous boom, an ignition of Light like a small sun that quickly spun into a violent purple vortex, and their argument was forgotten as they watched Euclid erupt with power, a Sunsinger and a Voidwalker at once. Yarrow began to move forward again, standing beside Jolly, but this time it was just to make sure she could see him for as long as possible before the bulkhead doors shuddered closed.

*****

As Yarrow careened backwards towards the dropship, Euclid felt as though he’d torn a piece of his internal mechanisms out and sent them with her. He stood as he watched her slam into Jolly, watched the two of them tumble backwards into the bay of the transport, saw Galatea’s surprise fade from her features as she made eye-contact with him. Or, as close as anybody could get, anyway. He nodded, and her face hardened with the realization of his intention. While Yarrow and Jolly were untangling themselves in the back of the dropship Galatea slammed her palm down on the panel beside the doors, and they began to grind shut as she turned her back on him.

It was more affecting than he had anticipated. Euclid hoped Yarrow would forgive him.

Moments later a Cabal slug rifle blasted his head to a thousand discreet pieces.

Before his body had even touched the ground his Light had warmed, sparked, and ignited; the incredible roar of fire and Solar light momentarily eclipsed that of the dropship’s engines as Euclid’s head reassembled itself and a pyre ignited from his collar, engulfing his head in a solar blaze. He pushed himself up with his hands and then rose off the ground without them, drifting into the air and turning to the oncoming Cabal, who had paused in unusual indecision as Euclid’s Light scoured the rubble around him and melted the chunk of metal he and Yarrow had been hunkered down behind.

He held his breath, hands balled into tight, trembling fists as he let every last drop of Light he had in him surge through his body; the fire cooled, swirled, and then leapt violet, the ball of fire engulfing his head becoming a ghostly wisp as Void Light suddenly replaced the inferno and lifted the Cabal’s front line off the ground- alongside every half-melted piece of detritus and rubble in his immediate vicinity. The Void howled counter-clockwise around him and Euclid’s hands snapped open; the foremost Colossus drifting helplessly in front of him dissolved instantly into its derivative molecular components and scattered into the vortex.

He exhaled, and the vortex resolved once more into a raging clockwise inferno that flash-incinerated the rest of the Cabal’s forward line, sending the rest scrambling for cover. Euclid’s extremities tingled, but he felt no discomfort as he dragged the Sun and the Void out of himself at the same time, battering the Cabal’s forces with blooming waves of heat-then-cold-then-heat-then-cold; it left him hovering above a star-glassed crater that superheated and cracked anew when he exhaled the brilliant Sun, and wept molten-hot molecular dust into the hungry dark whenever he held his breath and the Void swept away gravity like a strong causal tide.

Threshers were yanked into the maelstrom and rent asunder, Cabal vaporized or ripped in half or both, and Euclid screamed soundlessly within the wisp as he felt his armor creak and groan, his robes burning to tatters. When the Cabal’s forces had all either fallen back or perished, and the dropship was airborne, he heard something click and buzz in his ear.

“That’s enough, old friend.”

Constant’s voice swept him out of his trance, and Euclid finally collapsed to the ground at the center of a blighted crater.

His optics had burnt out in the extreme discharge of energy. Lights in his mouth and throat sputtered in imitation of a swallow but only about half of them winked on at all. He sighed, his vocals dim and far away. “They made it,” he said; his voice had reduced to a harsh, crackling whisper.

“They did.” He felt Constant spin out into the physical world beside his head and he instinctually lifted his palm, not quite touching his Ghost, to let his fingers curl partway around the crimson shell. “Thanks to you. You did wonderfully.”

His Light was still thundering in pulses out from the middle of the crater, carrying on in aftershocks, a beacon and a warning all at once. As it ballooned outward and upward Euclid could faintly feel something positioned far overhead. He looked up out of reflex, but he didn’t need to see it to know what it was. “How long?” He asked. “Until their artillery is positioned, I mean.”

“A minute,” Constant said solemnly. He felt his Ghost’s segments whir centimeters from his fingers. “Maybe a little less. Euclid, I just-“ The Ghost paused, turned to survey the smoldering and broken skyline of the City. “… You know, I was searching for you for a very long time,” it told him. “I think I was part of one of the earlier waves to be released out into the world.” It stared up to the Traveler, and the machine that was now surrounding it. “I spent a long time looking for the right person.” It turned back to him, and Euclid felt the warmth of its gaze, his Light painting its lower foresegment tipping up in approximate expression of pride. “You are more than I could ever have asked for, Guardian.”

Euclid’s remaining lights flickered out a weak smile. “Thank you, Constant,” He murmured. He let his Light’s tendrils pull back, crossed his ankles, and let his hands rest on his knees. For a moment- just one more moment- he let his other-sight branch outward, taking in as much as he could, and thought of Venus. He imagined the white sand and dark stones in the back room behind his living quarters in a secret part of the Ishtar Academy, the smell of damp stone and old metal, all his maps and books…

“A garden,” he whispered to Constant. “Don’t you think? I think a garden.”

“Yes,” Constant replied, vanishing in a final whisper of molecular translocation. The first sound Euclid had ever heard. “I think so.”

Euclid withdrew. “A beautiful garden.”

The artillery shells fell from sub-orbit and razed the district. Inside the dropship, with both of her hands pressed to the bulkhead, Yarrow felt the swelling pulses of Void and Solar Light gutter and vanish.

*****

"Sight for sore eyes, as they say," Kass calls as the doors to the dropship peel aside to reveal its complement of haggard Guardians and frightened civilians. The presence of Yarrow-15, if not also Jolly and her towering partner Galatea, puts a brass smile on Kass's face. A fighting chance.

She realizes something is off moments later and cranes her neck and also the greedy tendrils of her Void Light, searching for the familiar, eager response and the pair of crimson horns that are never far behind Yarrow in a situation like this. The smile flickers. She notices, now, in the dim, disquiet reaction to her greeting; Jolly's head in her hands, elbows on her knees; Galatea's curt nod (Given, not that unusual- but the grimace on her oft-impassive face is); and Yarrow's strange, stiff spine, the clenched fist at her right side and the familiar black helmet gripped tight at her left.

"Euclid?" She asks, smile altogether gone now. She forces herself out of her stance to step to one side, an artificial performance of an act that tells her something she already knows. Jolly lets out a clenched sigh from behind her hands.

“Constant. Constant? Constant!”

The Ghost glanced up from the console it had been flitting back and forth in front of to see its Guardian standing amidst a significant collection of dead Vex. Euclid-319’s gloves were smoking with the discharge of so much Solar light, and the molten embers of his Radiance were still glowing enough to provide an additional layer of lighting to the long-abandoned lab complex. Constant’s aftsegments contracted slightly and its eye flitted back and forth between Euclid and the console as Euclid spoke again. “Are you finished downloading the files?”

“Yes. I got distracted.”

That drew a tinny chuckle out of its Guardian as Euclid moved to take a step over a fallen Minotaur, and floated across the small pool of machine corpses to land silently at Constant’s side. “That is ordinarily my line.” Euclid tapped a few command lines into the console and then fried it, ensuring no Vex would acquire the same data they just had. “Are you alright? Your processing core has displayed an unusual amount of lag time in the past seven hours and twenty minutes. And you have out-and-out become distracted for the first time in…” Euclid paused to calculate, and Constant felt a grating irritation that prompted it to roll its eye and vanish with a hushed hiss of particles disassembling. “… Approximately eighty-three years, if I remember correctly.”

“The ever-looming possibility that you don’t remember correctly is nothing but a comfort to me,” Constant muttered. It was true, though; the Ghost was distracted, distracted by the data they had harvested from the console in the lab. They’d been trying to track it down for months; admittedly they had probably put it on the Vex’s radar purely by virtue of searching for it so hard, but ultimately the search was worth it. “I got the location. It’s in the building, just as we suspected. I’ll transmit it to you.”

“Excellent! It is possible that-” Euclid was a gusher even on his worse days, and Constant used the sudden exposition spilling like an especially ornate word fountain from his vocoder to zone out again. It felt… peculiar to be back here on Venus. There was a certain tug, somewhere in Constant; something deeper and brighter than his crimson shell, something that stretched all the way back to Earth. Something that made it feel tense all the time now. As if something was… coming. Euclid had sensed Oryx’s arrival; Constant couldn’t help but feel as if something… similar was happening.

It wished it had some guidance. That deep unknowable Something inside of it was quiet. At times maddeningly so. Constant found itself tangled in the strings of an indiscernible everything, feeling the trembling vibrations of something it could not see or understand. It supposed Euclid felt similarly at times… but the difference was, Euclid had Constant to guide him. To refocus him, to remind him, to stabilize him. Constant? Constant didn’t have anyone to look to for guidance. Constant was alone.

“Don’t you agree?”

The question shook Constant out of its reverie and it re-materialized without bothering to look at Euclid as he walked. “Mm hmm.”

“It should work, right?”

“Yes, Euclid.” The Exo stopped walking and Constant turned. “What are you doing?”

“Just trying to confirm,” Euclid said slowly, “That you think it’s a good idea.”

“Yes.”

“Okay then.” Euclid kept moving, mouthlights strobing an innocent smile. “When we get back I’ll paint your shell bright, neon purple.”

Constant froze for a moment, the lights in its eye shrinking to a pinprick as it realized what had just happened; then it let out a blustery sigh and spun its foresegments in irritation, following after Euclid. “Alright. I wasn’t paying attention,” It admitted, tart and snide and bristling at the idea of such a brazen coloration. The crimson Frontier Shell it wore served both form and function. It took paramount pride in its appearance, unlike the disheveled robes and oft-forgotten helmet of its Guardian. “You caught me. Let’s just get this done, alright? I’d like to get back.”

“Do you want to talk about what’s wrong?”

“You left your helmet on the ship again.”

“That is a deflection.”

Constant buzzed in irritation and started to dart out ahead of Euclid, but the Guardian slipped around in front of it and put his body in Constant’s way. “Wait,” He said, holding his hands up. “P-please. Talk to me. We’ve been together for… for how long now?”

“One hundred and seven years,” Constant responded; it lifted its gaze to Euclid’s face.

“A very long time,” Euclid murmured. “I remember when Andal Brask was the Hunter’s Vanguard.” He turned and glanced back down the hall. “And I remember, ahh, how, how much you were hoping for a Titan. Or a H-hunter. Someone sturdy, someone s-strong. A front line warrior, someone to wage direct war on the Darkness.”

Constant was silent, following its Guardian down the hall as they progressed deeper into the forgotten laboratory. This had been a point of contention between the two of them, to a certain extent, for a hundred years. Constant did not regret much, but Euclid had been so unstable when he’d resurrected the Exo, when he’d chosen his Guardian; and then he’d become so flighty and anxious, so reluctant to socialize and be a part of the Traveller’s world. So far from what it had wanted to find.

Constant regretted every moment he’d spent treating Euclid like a chore, and not a partner.

“The garden,” Constant finally admitted. “I’ve been thinking about the garden.”

“Ah! Me too. I believe that we’ll make it something great. I know it is somewhat smaller than our garden here on Venus- no rock garden on the Tower- but the herbs are coming along nicely, aren’t they?”

“Hmm. You’ve done well at regulating the temperature and humidity.”

“I think so. I am quite glad Ikora afforded us the spare room for it; some of the other Warlocks enjoy meditating around the smell of the Venusian Blackgrass.” Euclid pressed his palm against the keypad of the door they’d been traveling towards, their ultimate destination. There was a flash, a gout of smoke, and the sizzle of fried electronics as he cooked the entire panel with a burst of Solar light, and the seams of the door sizzled and pried apart at Euclid’s whim.

Inside, Euclid took a small, excited breath; walls and walls of seed packets and hanging flora from before the Collapse. The room was severely overgrown, vines choking the directory and every table.

“It’s still here,” Constant said, unable to hide its incredulity. “I can’t believe it. The Fallen, the Vex… untouched. Euclid, we found it.”

“Th-the lost greenhouse of Doctor Arkand Breunner,” Euclid whispered, voice bubbling with glee and awe. “Records and seeds of pre-collapse flora dating back to the earliest days of the Golden Age.” Euclid turned to look at Constant, beaming in lights. “Good job, my friend.”

For a second Constant found those feelings of incumbent harm- that tug, somewhere deep in a fathomless place much bigger than the red shell it resided inside- fading into nothing. Euclid gently cupped the bell of a bright orange flower, humming and leaning in to give his olfactory detectors a chance to analyze the smell. “I would love to live in a garden,” Euclid murmured. “I find them so soothing. There’s something about a garden that is endlessly invigorating. So much life.”

“Do you think that’s what the Traveler sees us all as?” Constant asked before it could stop itself. “As a garden?”

Euclid hummed. “I don’t know. I suppose I wouldn’t be all that surprised.” He sighed fondly and let go of the flower, then began packing up seed packets. “Come, let’s get these stored away. I suspect we won’t have an abundance of privacy.”

“Of course,” Constant said. Before long the two of them had completely cleared the room, and Constant was initiating the process to dematerialize the both of them back to orbit.

“Euclid.” The Guardian looked up from his notebook at his Ghost. “I’m sorry I don’t talk to you more often. I mean, just casually.”

Euclid paused, the lights at the very back of his throat flickering faint, uncomfortable, unsure. “O-oh. Er, it’s alright.” He was silent for a moment, scribbling out one last note. “… You know… I-I am grateful.”

Constant’s primary foresegment dipped in confusion, its entire shell quirking quizzically at the sudden statement. “What? Why?”

“For everything you do for me. For everything you have done for me.” He gave the orange flower-bulb a final, gentle brush with his fingertips before he strode over to where Constant was floating. “You have helped me so much. I know I’m not exactly what you wanted but… you are the reason I am as stable as I am today. Bringing me back to life in the first place notwithstanding.” He chuckled.