(This story will include frank discussions of suicide, suicide methods (without visual violence), and suicidal ideation as it relates to the Destiny universe and their Thanatonauts. Guardians may, in most cases, be regenerated back into life. We do not get this option; we get one spin on the wheel only. If you are not in a good place, please reconsider reading this story. If that is why you were drawn to this story, please PM me, I'm always checking my email and I will be happy to talk to you and get you help. The US suicide hotline is 1 (800) 273-8255 )

Nyx Falling

This fire burns our brains so fiercely, we wish to plunge
To the abyss' depths, Heaven or Hell, does it matter?
To the depths of the Unknown to find something new!

~Baudelaire, The Voyage, from La Fleur du Mal

. . .

The First Card – Voyager

. . .

"You must not forget how to live," whispers my Ghost into my ear, our familiar refrain and ancient logos. A reason for the universe. My reason.

I don't respond to it, not aloud anyway. I focus on the deep dive ahead of me instead. The Towers and the Traveler and the sprawling last City are at my back. Beneath my feet are the steel girders of the Twilight Gap. And before me is only empty air.

I am tired of using bullets. Sometimes I imagine I remember the sharp spang of impact, a ricochet of metal against bone, before I begin to grasp about in the darkness for vision. I've wondered many nights if that interferes with my search, that connection to base mortality when what I need is the immortal. So I've looked for other methods instead, methods where I can more easily focus on the mind's journey and not the body. Today is the first for this one.

I don't know how the others did it in the early ages of the Warlocks. So much of it is lost and even our oldest scholars can recall so little of those related secrets, those rituals of preparation for the dark journey. Or perhaps they do not share. The rumor is that our representative, Ikora Rey, disapproves of the thanatonaut trials, but who can know? I dare not ask her myself. Nor do I want to reach out to the handful of others that I know try to navigate this path. Not yet.

A gust of bitterly cold, crisp wind rushes by me and instinct causes me to grasp at the scaffolding at my side. I see my own young skin, the back of my hand; soft blue and lit gently from within. I am Awoken. I don't think that means I'm awake. I think I'm far from that. My life feels like it's been trapped inside a numb, confusing fog since my Ghost woke me. Death becomes meaningless to the Guardians, and I feel too often as if that means life is, too.

But that can't be true, because if it is, then our fight is also meaningless. There are too many riddles and not a single answer. If I can't find one when I'm alive, maybe there are clues somewhere in the other state.

The flesh that binds me wants to live, it craves and claws for rescue while I pen it up on this high perch once meant for birds alone. My heart is thumping hard inside my chest. My mind believes I need more to understand the soul. That beyond the twin valleys of fear and death is understanding. I don't know if what I subject myself to is brave. I only believe it is necessary. Why else were we given these gifts of revival, if not to use them as we seek?

"Fly with me," I whisper to my close Ghost, and I fall in defiance of my primal need to survive.

. . .

First there is darkness – only the cold and simple darkness that is the forever shadow behind the light of life, and the first flash of a possible understanding distracts me. If Light might be Life incarnate, then is not the darkness of death itself forever the Other?

The fear slithers out of the dark to grip me when I realize this and I cannot breathe.

I cannot breathe and I am terrified. My heart would crash through my chest but it doesn't beat and my body is still broken on the ground below the wall. Death will not permit me air to calm myself. Death is the final God. No gleaming sphere for its incarnation but only infinity itself. This is its realm and I am a trespasser stealing secrets from its altar.

And yet I see. What I see – is it only darkness, or Darkness?

I try to scream and there is no sound.

There are shapes now, writhing in the black. They are things made of knotted flesh and grinding metal and sometimes both at once. There is a low and starving growl that may be only my mind knitting itself together under the careful guidance of my Ghost, but I think it may also be death's own Guardian, a minotaur come to hunt the intruder in the maze. I think I see it, towering over me and its profile lit with a monstrous, flickering hue of purple. But perhaps now that is only a memory of Mars or maybe even Venus snapping around in my cortex. Worlds where I have ranged in life.

It screams at me as my flesh snaps together anew and in its howls I hear the black hymn of the Garden. It's close. It's so close. I can smell the flowers and they are sharp and full of strange perfume.

I forget the thing hunting me and press forward in the vision to try and reach it; the place beyond. Others have broken it open to be searched and studied there in the reality of Meridian Bay, but it still also exists untouched in the countless layers that make up the tower of space-time. In one of them must be a secret still guarded. I mean to find it and tear it back with me into the Light of day.

A single light blooms before me in the distance and it is red like blood, like the edges of a flame. It bursts into an inferno to consume me and now I know it's only the blood rushing again through my ears and

. . .

I sit up, reaching for my own face to see if I'm still who I think I am. My hand trembles from new muscle fatigue and that old, unavoidable fear. "How long down?" I croak, my throat painfully dry.

"Thirty seconds."

"Not long enough." I shake my head at my Ghost, feeling pain behind my fresh eyes as the morning light lances sharp into them. "I need more."

It sounds reluctant. "You found the path to the Garden again."

"It's guarded, Ghost. So well guarded." I manage a laugh for it, but it hovers close, its one eye staring at me without that soft-lit amusement I liked better. I know it wants me down shorter times, not liking the increased risk that comes with longer deaths. It must be hard for the construct and I feel a moment's guilt. I know it doesn't approve of my journeys at all, but it will abide. As will I. "The minotaur is always watching. If the others still experimenting have gotten this close, I wish them good luck, too."

"Pujari walked the maze and it destroyed him. The keepers of the black garden do not tolerate visitors. The visions you are chasing may destroy you, too."

"Eventually."

"I can break the encryptions on the inner archive. Let me steal you old books. You can ponder those for a while and see what guidance you can find. There are new texts being uploaded from the reclaimed Ishtar Collective, even. Maybe somewhere in there is a clue to the old rituals, the ones set down by ancient Osiris. Heal for a time. Rest. Prepare for the next journey." Its thin, musical voice pleads with me. It's hard to resist it, it asks so little of me these days. Having already asked everything when it brought me to life the first time.

I still feel driven by the fading vision, however. I want to try to explain what I see. "I saw a light bloom this time, and it was red."

"Yes. Pujari spoke-"

"I don't care about Pujari!" I snap in frustration, unable to help myself. I'm losing the trail, too busy realizing how much my body aches. "I need to see with my own eyes."

"When you are in the darkness, Keres, whose eyes are you seeing with?"

I didn't have an answer for that.

. . .

I let the Ghost win for a while, going about patrols and losing myself in studies. My companions brightened to see me like that, and it was tempting to stay and bask in their shared Light. From time to time Ghost brought me the new texts, as promised, and in them was almost nothing I could use. The Collective were scientists; their need for philosophy was slim and their interest in death almost entirely biological.

Yet I read them all in grim fascination well into the long nights, wondering what the Vex saw when they looked out of their cage at their human keepers. If they were caged – the Ghost brought me transcripts of Ishtar's scientists driven to grim questions of reality itself. A possible basilisk's trap, meant to punish the living into serving the Vex's ultimate ends. But the Warmind gambit certainly worked. Didn't it?

In the end, who knew? The transcripts ended in mystery, like so much we've tried to recover.

At night after finishing those texts, unable to sleep, I began to wonder if I was being watched by Vex at every second. That we were in fact still all in that cage, with only a little food and a treadmill to run on. Or that there were no others – only me in that cage and under study by that collective alien mind. A solipsistic hellscape.

I don't dream any more, not since I started hunting death and its visions instead. I'm thankful for that now. I think after these texts I might have woken up screaming, terrified that my eyes would fly open and stare into those single red ones.

I tried to distract myself with a tangent. There was that grinding metal in the darkness of death, I remembered. The Vex are not bound by time and space, so why should they be fixed in place by a mortal's concepts of life and death? Were they indeed there too? Was my vision of the minotaur in the maze far closer to the truth than I realized?

Perhaps they were the ones who held the keys to what I needed.

Ghost, I think I'm going mad. But if I want to be sane, I need to keep searching.

. . .

Ikora Rey came to visit me, her eyes watching me close while her voice was firm and kindly. "Guardian Keres, you've been quite busy in our library lately. It's always good to see new Warlocks so invested in helping us try to piece together our past."

I lick my lips, looking for any traps in her words. So far, there were only those I might trip myself into. "I know so little that the books we have are amazing to me. I barely even remember what came before. The library helps with that. I find myself not feeling so adrift." I glance at my Ghost, telling mostly the truth. I think I might have born on a ship near the Reef. Or on Earth, in the shadow of a pile of half-melted rubble. Or perhaps they are both just echoes of my resurrections. Those are the possibilities that blend together the strongest, at least.

There are whispers of other things somewhere in the mist. I can't tell for certain which ones have any truth. Ghost worries that the journeys I'm taking are causing other memories to fragment, that the constant deaths are rewriting and tearing apart everything else I have.

I'm afraid it might be right.

I can't let that stop me. I need to keep searching.

Ikora smiles for me. "The past is always a whisper in our ears, and it's one that shouldn't be forgotten in the sea of living noise. What we need also, however, is future's song."

"But the two in are locked in a cycle, one needing the other. Two harmonies to teach their lessons, so we don't forget our mistakes." I give her a slight bow, afraid that I'm about to sweat through my tunic and wishing I'd kept my armored robe on to hide my shaking. In the kind voice of the Vanguard is a warning.

"Very good. The balance must be kept, however. Don't lose yourself chasing that whisper," she says, and now I know she doesn't need to waste time laying a trap to catch me out. She already sees what I've been up to and thinks to save me from myself.

"Ma'am," I say, not acknowledging what I know she knows. I sound apologetic, because I am. I should not have been caught, but I am young, and I must learn from my error.

Ikora clasps her umber-brown hands in front of her long robe, and I still feel her eyes studying me. "I need to send some representatives on a small mission. The Cabal are attempting a push on Deimos and the debris belt around Mars. Some speculation suggests they may even press further than that if we don't halt them quickly. Perhaps they're bored and lonely with all the attention we've given to the Moon lately." She sounds dryly amused, making a little hmph in the back of her throat before continuing.

"They've already meddled far too much with Phobos for our comfort and now they're looking to expand. I'll be sending you, for one. I've seen your patrol logs; I think you could use a little air that isn't Russian." I hear the smile spread in her voice. "The Titans will be on point command, you'll defer to them on this one."

"Of course, Ma'am." I straighten, considering this change of plans. "Who will I report to when I depart?"

"Exo Striker Vance-17. Do you know him?"

The Guardian with a human's shadow following alongside his Ghost's. A stoic. "I know of him. I will be happy to help." I look up to see the smile still on her face.

"You won't need too much formality with him, Keres. Relax. Have a little fun with your work for the City's protection."

I ignore the way she stresses a Guardian's true priorities. Yes. My work. Where the Cabal go, death always follows close behind. I smile as I realize this, delighted. The delight is genuine and I think it takes her off guard. "I look forward to it!"