"Guardian…Guardian? Eyes up Guardian!" The voice came through a haze as my mind reeled, and the odd sounds accompanying it only reinforced the strange situation.

I stumbled to my feet as one of my hands clasped my forehead in pain, oh by Dendar what kind of nightmare was this?

"It worked…You're alive!" The voice came again, right in front of me, and this time the words were easier to register. Wait…what did it mean 'alive'? Had I been dead?

I looked through bleary eyes to see a tiny white box housing a small glowing…gem? The light flickered up and down my body, and I recognized it as an eye.

"You don't know how long I've been looking for you." It…he, I'll call it a he, said in what seemed to be a solemn and relieved voice.

It was then that I took notice of the scene behind the small being, the ground was littered with rusted metal husks, trees were sparse, snow filled the ground, and a huge metal wall loomed to my right. It was truly an odd sight.

"I'm a Ghost." The voice brought my attention back to the box, "Actually, now I'm your Ghost." Mine? "And you….Well, you've been dead a long time." Strange, I don't remember dying, and I doubt Dendar would so easily give my soul up if I had. "So, you're going to see a lot of things you won't understand." You're one of them, Ghost-box.

Pain arced through my being again as a roar tumbled over the land from the left. I cupped my face and breathed deeply in order to settle the gnawing sensation rolling through my head. I glanced back to the box and saw it looking me over with…concern? Hard to tell with him.

"This is Fallen territory. We aren't safe here. If we get to the city we can recoup there."

I gave a small nod as my throat felt too dry to speak. It was then that I felt the familiar barriers erect themselves around my mind, and the pain subside; giving way to clear thoughts. I glanced around again, now able to take in my surrounds easier, as my apparent Ghost drifted a bit towards the right before doing an immediate turn about to face to me.

"Hold still," was the only warning I received before he faded out in a shimmer of light. I felt something then; a presence envelope my barriers, I tensed as the unexpected and uninvited company settled itself inside my head. It was not inside the barriers, but rather coiled around them as though it were a second set.

"Don't worry, I'm still with you. We need to move, fast." His voice rang from inside me now, and it was slightly disconcerting that he was able to get so close to my thoughts. However I waved that away for the time being-it could be brought up once we were out of 'Fallen territory'.

"We won't survive long out in the open like this. Let's get inside the Wall." He again broke my thoughts and pushed the situation to the forefront once more.

I hurried along the dirt path framed by snow and rust. I would have gone quicker but my body felt odd, as if it weren't quite mine anymore. My limbs didn't move like I remembered, and the jog to the Wall was filled with small tests of stretching my body out and getting used to the movements anew.

I nearly tripped rushing into the stairwell, and fell against the next wall as I caught my breath. Something was wrong with my body; I didn't usually get tired like this, and, even worse and much more concerning, I couldn't feel the familiar sensation of arcane energy coursing through me, not the natural force nor the pact gifted to me.

"Keep moving Guardian; they'll get us like this." Ghost spoke again. and I righted myself, shaking away the unneeded worries. Safety was the primary mission here.

I began my ascent of the rest of the stairs, going quietly rather than quickly to give my body a few more moments of rest.

"Ok…we're going to have to find you a weapon before the Fallen find us." I scowled as I kept moving, his mention of a weapon reminding me of my voided reserves.

We came up to a dark pathway past the stairs that would prevent the typical person from being able to see anything. I walked through it as his voice started again, "Quiet. They're right above us." At the same time he spoke, Ghost turned on a light from…my eyes?

"Cut the light," I hissed back at him. They were the first words I had said since my revival. If these "Fallen" were right above us, we shouldn't give ourselves away. Besides, I could see easily in the dark.

There was a moment's hesitation before the light was extinguished, and I crouched and ambled my way up the stairs pausing only as a figure ran up a pipe in the wall.

We arrived upon a rusted balcony, and it was then that the Ghost reappeared, seeming to float out of me as a ball of light. He hovered over the edge. "Hang tight. Fallen thrive in the dark, we won't. We need more light. I'll see what I can do."

I complied as he knew more about our enemy than I did.

Ghost floated off to the right illuminating the occasional pipe-crawling figures. "Another one of these hardened military systems…and a few centuries of entropy working against me."

A frown touched my face at that. There go the odds of finding any sort of blade; they all would have rusted away in centuries. It was then that the lights began to kick on, illuminating the entire base and spurring the Fallen into action. Multiple enemies ran across another platform, and a few even floated towards us, much like Ghost.

"They're coming for us!" Ghost yelled the obvious as he merged back with me.

"Next time no light!" I retorted as I sprinted for a rising gate.

"Here! I found a rifle! Grab it!" His light returned, focusing on a shaped hunk of metal leaning against a crate.

I bit back my question of what it was to save energy and grabbed the thing as I ran past.

We rounded a corner with the sound of footsteps coming ahead of us. "I hope you know how to use that thing."

"I don't." I rebuked as I ducked behind a wall when a shadow moved across the far area. I fiddled with the thing a bit, finding a hunk of metal about the size of my hand with a trigger on it. An idea suddenly rose up in me, "Is it like a crossbow?"

"Eyes forward. Watch your tracker." Ghost responded.

I was about to point out that he hadn't answered me when I noticed something odd in my vision. There was a small circle to the upper left at which I couldn't quite look directly at. It had a red bar on the bottom of it-probably the tracker he mentioned. Not only that, but the image of the 'rifle' I was holding was in the lower left of my field of view with two numbers set adjacent to it, one much larger than the other.

I glanced at the numbers and then back at the weapon in my hand, trying to find a connection. If it was like a crossbow…ammunition? But I wasn't carrying anything that resembled any form of ammunition. I growled as I glanced around the corner of my wall towards where the shadow had been. Since nothing was moving, I started forward again, keeping low and silent. I aimed the weapon forward, or at least I hoped I did. Given that I was never trained with a crossbow, it was hard to tell.

I rounded the next corner and took only a couple of steps forward before the ambush struck. One being dropped from the ceiling while the other jumped out from behind some pipes on the left.

I inhaled sharply and backed up, placing the corner between myself and them, just as the one who dropped from the ceiling aimed his own weapon at me and propelled glowing blue orbs at my cover.

Taking the hint, I extended one arm around the corner and aimed my rifle like he was. Then I pulled the trigger.

The massive recoil on the weapon caused the shots to go wide as I couldn't control it with just one hand. I was also greeted with the sight of some of the numbers in my vision ticking down. Definitely ammunition, then. Learning my lesson, I pulled the rifle back just in time for the second enemy to round my corner with a dagger in hand.

It charged forward, yelling something I didn't understand in a garbled language. I jumped back and, this time taking the rifle in both hands, pulled the trigger again while pointing it at him. Once more, most of the shots went wide, but enough found their mark to fling the creature back, against the wall, filled with holes. It was then that I figured out that the rifle had a small dot above it showing where the ammunition would hit.

Filled with more confidence than before, I aimed the rifle around the corner again and fired at the first and last guy. Only two shots rang out before the rifle stopped. Worriedly, I pulled back, hoping that I hadn't just broken my sole weapon. I glanced down at it as more blasts bounced off the corner, and, as my eyes shifted to prominent red zero next to it, a frustrated growl escaped my lips. I dropped it and quickly looked around for another answer.

My sight fell upon the glowing blue dagger of the already dead being. It had fallen out of his hands at his death and now rested against the wall next to the corpse. I glanced at the guy still firing at me, and it paused after a round to take out a lower part of the weapon. I took my chance to dive for the dagger, a weapon in which I was actually proficient. After grasping its hilt, I immediately lunged at the enemy as it replaced the part of the rigle that had been removed.

Just as I landed on him, dagger digging into it's neck, I felt two shots bury themselves in my stomach as we fell to the floor. I ignored the painful sensation and repeatedly brought the dagger down again and again into its neck until it stopped twitching. Its head popped off after the fourth stab, flying across the floor with surprising speed. I took the moment of it's obvious death to glance down at my wound.

To my extreme bewilderment and joy, I was not bleeding at all, and there were no wounds. The only evidence left of the injury was some of my blood spilt on the fresh corpse and two holes in my clothing. Perhaps this meant I had some sort of regeneration affecting me, maybe as part of the revival process?

"That was surprising Guardian." Ghost's voice again broke my thoughts. "You might want to pick up the rifle again; it still has enough ammo to reload and we can pick up more from their guns."

I glanced back to the weapon I had tossed to the floor and walked over to it. I then picked it up and repeated the action I had seen the enemy do, removing a hunk of metal from beneath the weapon, which I learned required the pressing of a button on the side of the rifle to accomplish.

"Now just hold the clip to your belt and, we can refill it." Ghost instructed.

I followed his instructions and watched the clip glow for a brief second before sliding it back into the bottom of the gun. The numbers switched, the larger set decreasing and the red, flashing zero changing to a twenty-five.

I sighed in relief, happy to have my rifle still working. The dagger from the corpse was nicked and I slid it into my belt to keep as a backup. Then I moved forward, readying myself for the next combatants.

We moved around the corner, through a corridor, and unto another balcony. I had lowered my gun slightly, so as not to waste ammo by accidently pulling the trigger, when one of the red guys dropped right in front of me.

Acting upon a knee-jerk reaction I didn't know I had, my hand shot forward with an open palm much like a monk. My arm didn't quite reach him, but it didn't need to, as a sphere of purplish energy expanded from my appendage. It smashed into the being, launching him backwards in a ragdoll fashion, which showed him to be a corpse before he even hit the ground.

I stared at the corpse and then my hand in surprise, I had never seen a spell like that before, much less used one. I could feel the energy propelling that ability coil around my arm, slowly regenerating from it's use. Even more, that tiny spark of energy seemed to kindle the familiar feeling of arcane energy within my own core; nothing to be used, but enough to show it was still there.

A grin, perhaps a bit blood-thirsty, stretched across my face.

"Well done Guardian. Most Warlocks take some time before they can use their Void, but we have to keep moving."

"Warlock, eh? Well, you're not wrong." I answered back with much more swagger than I'd had previously.

I scrapped my way through a few more fights, they all of them being much easier now that I knew how to work the gun and had a backup touch spell whenever any of the enemies came too close.

I picked up another gun, this one a different build than my first, and tucked it to my side to use if I ran out of ammo for the first. The next section had a few traps, trip mines, as well as several more combatants, or Dregs, as Ghost has mentioned they were called. Another fight with more Dregs and a couple of Vandals followed close behind; I reveled in it. Each fight, and each use of that unique void spell seemed to stir my old self back up to the surface. I was feeling so much more alive, far better than I had when first Ghost revived me.

"The Fallen have a tighter hold on this place than I thought. Just a little bit further. Let's hope there's something left out there…" Ghost's voice rang through my head again.

I paused as I walked through a small door way into another corridor. "Say Ghost, do you have a name?"

"No, typically the Guardian a Ghost bonds with gives them a name." He answered back with what sounded like curiosity.

"Oh." I returned eloquently and let the conversation drop there. Or I would have if Ghost hadn't piped up as we stepped out of a shallow pool of water on the floor onto dry stairs.

"What's yours?"

"Grim. Grim Scalestone." I spoke in response and paused in thought briefly before continuing on, "How would you like the name Wraith?"

"Wraith?" He echoed back as though testing the name.

"Yeah, Wraith, considering you did raise a specter like me and you say you're a Ghost, it rather fits." I responded in warm tone, or at least I think it was warm. Hard to tell when you've been dead for how-ever long.

"I'd like that…," the newly named Wraith replied as we stepped through a door out into the open air. "This was an old Cosmodrome. There's got to be something we can fly out of here." He said as I took a moment to take the in scene.

A bright red light soared into the air as I took my first step onto the ground, followed by a huge expanse of purple energy enveloping a distant pillar.

"Fallen ships!? This close to the surface?" Wraith exclaimed, and I raced forward as a huge air-borne vessel lowered till it was hovering two stories above the ground, it was followed closely by two more. Fallen quickly jumped out of the ships descending to the ground.

"Move!" Wraith blared as the Fallen opened fire.

I dove for cover into one of the small open huts before returning the shots.

The battle was slow going; the Fallen has numbers, but I had cover, or at least the intelligence to take cover, something the Dregs seemed to lack by majority. Any damage I took was repaired just by taking a small breather against my hidout. Really this regeneration was ridiculous; maybe even troll level.

Pushing the encroaching enemy back up to a building to the south led to the discovery that the Fallen also had flying companions, something I had forgotten since I had last seen them before I'd picked up my rifle. They lasted only slightly longer than my surprise. Once I had eradicated them and found myself inside the building, I took a moment to breath.

As I gathered myself, I noticed something new. It was a feeling, along my arm where the void power coiled itself, creating something of a bulbous sensation. I distinctly knew it was something to be thrown, something with an area of effect.

"I'm picking up signs of an old jumpship. Could be our ticket out of here." Wraith spoke, and I nodded in response, kicking myself into continuing. The next room provided the perfect situation to test out my new spell, as three Dregs were crowded around something in the middle of the area. I conjured the ranged spell into my hand and gave it a toss. The result was rewarding-a purple sphere sailed out of my hand right into their midsts before expanding, simultaneously pulling them in and exploding. Truly the Warlocks here had wondrous spells.

I rounded the next two corners to see a huge metal contraption suspended in mid-air with Dregs and Vandals covering it's hull. I was about to open fire when a much bigger figure also dropped from the ship. An odd blue energy covered it as shots rang out around me.

I ducked behind cover as Wraith took the moment to update me, "It's a Captain! We'll have to get rid of him."

"What do you suggest?" I queried as I took a moment to fire at the blue target-nothing affecting him "It doesn't seem like we can."

"We'll need to hit harder, that shotgun you picked up should do the trick." Wraith answered back, with a mildly worried tone.

I paused a moment after riddling one of the Dregs with shots from my rifle, "So just hit harder?" I asked with a plan forming in my mind.

"Yes…." Wraith responded, leading off as though he was worried about something.

I nodded and peaked around the corner again. The Captain had gone off to the left behind some pillars joined by two Vandals and a pair of Dregs. With their position in mind, I lobbed my AoE void spell at them and dashed up a few stairs to the right so that I was acrross from them.

The spell had done well, knocking off the two Dregs with a Vandal; the Captain, though, practically untouched and so was the other Vandal. However, I now had a perfect shot since their cover wouldn't help them here, even if I were a little rusty. I reached down into the mass of energy within me that had been boiling forth since these fights had started. It was finally filled with enough mana to mold. My empty hand performed the somatic components, a slithering motion with a twist, and my voice rang out with the word of power "Nightmare!"

Four beams of black, crackling, pseudo-serpent energy ripped out of the air in front of me and lanced forth. Three towards the Captain and the last was directed at the Vandal. He was struck full on immediately, and his corpse flew through the air, slamming into the wall behind him with a sickening crack. As for the Captain, the first blast caught his arm; the shield dispersed immediately as he was pushed back, and his feet dragged into the ground from the knock-back. The second bolt struck his shoulder, practically tearing his left arm from his body and the last landed on his midsection, completely by-passing his armor and tearing through him. It left a fist-sized hole in his torso. The Captain collapsed then, falling to the ground in a bloody heap.

I breathed heavily as the mana quickly refilled itself; the effort had taken more out of me than I thought it would, but already I could feel the rest of my energy returning. If I could just rest I'd hopefully be back to my old self.

"That….That was-" Whatever Wraith was going to say in reaction was cut off by a monstrous roar not too far from us.

"We need to go now!" My point was accented by a behemoth of a being emerging from a hole in the wall north of our position.

Wraith emerged from me and disappeared again; based on the lights kicking on in the vessel I guessed into there. "Hold still," came his voice.

I scowled, not wanting to be a sitting duck for the thing, but I didn't have to wait long as a light enveloped my body. All of a sudden, I was in another place, looking down through a window at the ground upon which I had just stood. Lights came to life around me, I could hear the sound of something mechanical roaring and wires snapping behind me. The scene outside the window changed as we were lifted up past the buildings, while flashes of blue light flying past the window indicated that shots were being fired from below flew as we rushed past.

In less than a second, we blasted away, traveling faster than an arrow.

"Let's get you home." Wraith's phantom voice came out of the machinery around me.

I turned away from the window, suddenly feeling very ill and nodded my head.

"But first, I think we need to have a talk." He continued, I nodded again.

"Yes, after I rest." So saying I leaned into my chair a bit more and closed my eyes.

Wraith made no complaint.