I lost my Guardian during the Red War.
It was a short war, all things considered. Five days of hell. The aliens called the Cabal attacked at night, using a thunderstorm to hide their ships from our sensors. They concentrated fire on the Tower, headquarters of the Vanguard and all Guardians. Our leadership was killed, confused, and scattered.
Then the Cabal attacked the Traveler itself, source of the Light that powers and immortalizes Guardians, creator of us ghosts. The Traveler has hung in the sky above the Last City for centuries, a mysterious, silent white globe. The Cabal trapped it within a powerful cage, cutting off all Guardians and Ghosts from the Light.
My Guardian, Thrand, was fighting Cabal on the ground in the City streets with his team, protecting a residential sector, buying time for the civilians to escape out the northwest gate. The Cabal came at us in a swarm: huge, hulking brutes in heavy armor, the horns on their helmets making them resemble space rhinos.
Thrand fought expertly, whether it was with a rifle at range, or hand to hand with a couple of knives. I remained hidden in phase, invisible, healing his wounds with Light.
Then the cage snapped into place around the Traveler.
The Cabal actually stopped attacking to watch and laugh. Thrand and his two friends staggered and fell as the Light deserted them. I thought I had died somehow. The link I shared with the Traveler had been cut, and suddenly my entire being was full of darkness. My scans went dark. My healing powers drained to nothing. My ability to resurrect Thrand vanished.
"What - what's happening?" Thrand cried to me, struggling to his feet.
"The Light," I gasped. "The Traveler. They've taken the Traveler."
Thrand looked up at the claw-like cage gripping the Traveler in the sky overhead. Then he helped up his teammates. And they grimly turned to face the Cabal, Lightless, weakened, mortal.
The Cabal captain pointed at us. "Kill them all," he ordered his troops.
My poor Guardian fought a desperate, losing battle. I struggled to heal him, to keep him on his feet as bullets tore through him and blades slashed him. But without Light, I barely had strength to heal at all.
They struck him down, as well as his teammates, trampling their bodies underfoot. Then the aliens moved on, attacking and slaughtering civilians.
I remained with Thrand, still invisible, trying to resurrect him. His spark persisted, weak and feeble without the Light to power it. If I didn't raise him soon, he'd fade and perish.
I tried for hours. The rain poured down, and the ships of the invaders swooped overhead. The ghosts belonging to Thrand's team tried to raise their Guardians, too.
At last, one of them cried, "My Guardian's spark is gone!" She fell out of the air and landed on her Guardian's corpse, making a terrible sobbing sound.
"No," I whispered. "Thrand, hold on. I'll raise you - I will-"
"My Guardian is dead," whispered the second ghost. He hung in the air, staring at the body. Then he turned and flew away aimlessly, wandering here and there, scanning the wreckage as if he'd lost his memory and reverted to hunting a new Guardian.
Then it was my turn to watch my Guardian's spark flicker and die. The bond between Guardian and ghost slowly tore away. Part of me died with Thrand at that moment, leaving my spark a feeble, flickering thing. He was gone, and I was severed.
I stayed with his body, numb, half-dead. Days passed. A great battle raged on across the solar system as the Vanguard rebuilt itself and fought to regain the City and the Traveler. But I remained with Thrand. He was gone, erased. How could his spirit have returned to the Traveler when we were cut off?
Five days after the invasion began, the Vanguard and a single Guardian who had regained their Light attacked the Cabal. They battled the Cabal general one on one. Then the Traveler, itself, awakened. It broke its cage and sent out a burst of Light that revived us ghosts, healed all the Guardians who had survived, and slaughtered our enemies.
But Thrand's spark was still gone.
Weeks passed. Survivors returned to bury the dead and rebuild. Thrand and his team were gathered and carried to a place outside the wall where they were collecting dead Guardians for burial. They lay in rows, wrapped in their own robes or capes, many with loyal ghosts still attending them.
The funeral was horrible. The Vanguard had a ceremony that lasted a whole day, mainly because it took that long to bury all the dead Guardians. The ghosts who had been severed drifted away, most of them wandering upward, toward the Traveler.
Thrand was gone. I had failed him. I wept tears of Light in silence.
As the funeral ended and everyone departed, I remained at the grave, hovering over the stone marker with Thrand's name etched on it. One of my friends, a ghost named Lina, lingered nearby, even though her Guardian was leaving.
"Sigma, what will you do?" Lina asked.
"I don't know," I replied. My core was hollow, my spark gone dim.
"Will ... will you return to the Traveler?" she asked timidly.
When a ghost lost their Guardian, it was customary to return to the Traveler, the being who created us, and merge back into the Great Consciousness. Part of me wanted that-to seek the Light, to bury my grief in oblivion.
But at this point, I had no direction, no goal. "Not yet," I told Lina. "It doesn't seem right not to ... not to mourn."
She gently leaned her shell against mine, the closest we ghosts came to a hug. "Well, keep us posted. My Guardian said you can stay with us as long as you like."
That was right. Thrand's apartment was destroyed, his belongings burned in the ruins of the old tower. I had nowhere to go.
"Thanks," I whispered.
But I didn't take her up on her offer. I spent my days either standing vigil at Thrand's grave, or resting under an awning in a corner of the new Tower roof, hidden, watching the other Guardians go about their business. I was no longer a part of that life.
My Guardian was gone. His spark had faded. Where would he have gone? Had some small fraction of him returned to the Traveler? Had the Darkness consumed him? Whatever happened, it was my fault for not being able to raise him. All us severed ghosts blamed ourselves, even knowing that losing the Light hadn't been our fault.
Thrand had named me Sigma. But he was gone, and I wondered if my name had gone, too. Who was I, without my Guardian? What was left of the ghost I had been?
I spent the short, cool summer in the Last City, spending my days in the Tower and my nights in the graveyard. I couldn't bear to leave Thrand alone, even though I knew his life was gone. A corner of my heart hoped that I'd detect his Light, and be able to resurrect him, pulling his quanta up through the ground, freeing him from the coffin.
But day after day passed, and no Light returned.
Other Hunters mourned Thrand. Nobody spoke of me. They probably assumed I had died, too, or returned to the Traveler. I was a single ghost, invisible among all the other ghosts in the Tower.
I had never been invisible to Thrand. I still wore the gleaming blue and orange shell he had given me. I missed him horribly. If only I could have told him about the way the Traveler had awakened. He'd have loved it.
As the seasons changed toward autumn, restlessness took hold of me. Perhaps it was the geese migrating south in great Vs. Perhaps it was the trees changing to red and gold. But the Tower felt too small, and the graveyard had grown too painful, with its daily dose of false hope.
One morning at dawn, I visited Thrand's grave for the last time.
"Goodbye, Guardian," I told the mound. "I am leaving. I don't know what will become of me. But if I'm slain out there in the wilds, perhaps my spark will find yours in the void." My voice caught. If I died, I would return to Light. But Thrand ... his spark had faded.
I hung in the air beside the marker, unwilling to leave him, even now. My poor Guardian, struck down so cruelly, even his immortality cut off. There was nothing I could do for him, crippled, severed ghost that I was.
I flew away from the City wall and south, into the wooded mountains, and didn't look back.