Awakenings: Golem
. . .
I don't remember dying.
I remember what came before.
. . .
We do not speak of these things at the Tower, in the vast shadow of the Traveler. Not in day, nor in the long dark of night. There's little need to, for it's all the same story. There's screaming, and there is pain. War holds little else in its finale, even for its survivors.
But we each remember the light that came to us after that, and that is one thing we do talk about in the dark, when we have need to remember light.
. . .
I awoke prone, on a field that I remember being full of blood amidst the tall grass and I remember thinking to myself, My God, what would it have been like to see this place in a time of peace? I could see the small periwinkle flowers that dotted the rolling hillside, even smell them, and the sounds of everything were muted and distant. It was beautiful, and it did not matter to me what name the field had or what hands held it; whether it was Soviet, Polish, or German.
/:It didn't last:/
The words came from just by my ear, low, cultured, and with a strange little metallic twang that gave its accent-less but perfect Russian a kind of empty echo. The effect was mournful. I lifted my head to see who spoke to me and the vision of the spreading green field vanished with an abruptness that startled me. My sudden movement made my entire body hurt.
/:Easy. You're only just coming to.:/
There was no one in in the sharply lit metal room with me. The only motion was a small piece of metal that floated close by my head. I reached out an aching hand to touch it and then froze, looking at the strangeness that encased me, from my fingers to my shoulder.
/:You wear a protective suit. It's designed to help complete the process of your reconstruction without incurring fresh trauma to your new musculature. There will be further upgrades in the days to come as you grow capable of accepting them. These will include cerebral cortex structures built to help you adapt to the complexities of your new environment, both psychologically and intellectually.:/
I begin to understand the nuance of the strange words with chilly horror. "I have been remade by a thing," I say in a hoarse, croaking voice that sounds nothing like I remember. "I am a thing." And I remember the tales told to me by a refugee from the Belarus border, that little old Polish Jew and his florid tales of the golem. I began to shake. I think I might have fled, but my body was my enemy. I could not trust it. Instead, I made a soft, dry noise of fear.
/:This... could have gone better.:/ The low voice took a wry tone. /:Understand, friend. You are you, like none other. To make you something other than yourself would be to undo everything we are trying to accomplish.:/
I cried out at the little construct, still afraid. "Then what is all this?"
/:You are awakened at the edge of your world's fate to fight once more, but not alone and not without hope. When you leave this room, you will find yourself in a new time and place and much will be strange to you at first. You and many others. We will give you what you need to find your place, and the companions you come to find will help you find your road.:/
"I understand none of this. What are you?"
/:I am your Ghost. I am your friend and yours alone, and I have needed you, searched for you through countless galaxies for this moment. I will help you to seek your destiny, as your world needs you to seek it. As the Traveler needs you.:/
The little construct glowed with a blue light that filled the room, not unlike those of the flowers in the dead field I remembered so well. It made the strange machines that surrounded my bier almost pretty. /:Come. Let us prepare you for what is next. The flowers you remember are gone, but they can come again. If we try.:/
. . .
I wear the livery of the Warlocks, and strange magic courses my new veins. Though I learn quickly of our new codes of behavior and talk little of the before, they give me a nickname based on the hints of my very existence – frontovichka. It will suit; it was the truth. From their masked lips it holds no taint of the bitter insult that the word held among my old 'comrades.' And I see none of them here, in the shattered ruins of Old Russia, do I? They do not have the honor nor the guidance of our little friends. So I will take the name back, as I will take back our Rodina-Mat in time . Until that day, I am mother here now. Her warrior at the front of the line.
I do not grieve to see her in ruins. Sorrow is not the warrior's way.
Now vengeance... vengeance has a good taste to it. They have given me fine weapons and fire and my eyes, keen before, keen as hawksight now, pick out my enemies among tundra quite well. I often bring home new prizes. New machines. New ways to kill what comes for us in the dark.
There are always things in the dark. I've learned not to fear them, for we have been given power over them.
. . .
The Hive flows towards me, ceaseless, shrieking, mindless, their gnarling hands reaching to pry at my well-scarred armor shell. Scars I have earned over a dozen campaigns already, well-prized. My Ghost twitters a dozen alarms at me but I heed none of them. I don't need to. The fire inside me grows and is nearly ready to consume its prey. With a swift jump to the air I let my inferno free and two dozen of the little horrors shriek as they become ash. It will not be enough. More lunge to fill the breach left by their companions and I spy their two commanders in the gloom well beyond, hidden by the coiling sheet metal. The beached ruins of the old tanker creak with the rapid pressure changes that my fire brings. I must be a little more careful. Only a little. Should I cause a blow-out, it would be tactical to leave it by those two monstrous fools.
I hear the alien clittering of their voices down the hall as the flood of alien meat rushes me. I mow them down and listen for clicks and growls of portent.
/:They seek to delay you, little else.::/
My Ghost confirms what I suspected in the noise. I huff a dry snort of disdain inside my environmental mask and let the Hive's annoying flood feed another burst of my rage. It takes time, for the fight today has been a long one. I think of the seared breach in the lower decks, already flushed clean by others in this day's assigned fireteam and I smile for my own pleasure. There is a Hunter among them; I have worked with him before. Even drunk on vodka he is taciturn and distant, but I can guess around the edges of what he was once. And what he was once was a killer of men. Like many of us. He did not speak of himself, but he spoke of monstrous men not unlike those I fought. Jungle men that tortured millions of their own because they dreamt too large of a mad utopia, some few decades after the madness I knew. So he killed them for their hubris, by dozens and perhaps hundreds. A hunter then, a Hunter now.
I like him.
I hope he has killed many Hive this day. I hope I kill just as many. And with that thought, I let the swarming Hive think I am to incinerate another group.
Instead I leap through them, dash across a series of rusting, ancient supply crates, and charge the commanders. The fire burns deep, almost white, and in the rush of hot air in too small a space I cause a blow-out in the old tanker's hull. Just as I'd hoped. I see them sunder from within, viscera and muscle splattering free with the pressure more than their whip-cord bodies can bear and I am near wrenched apart myself. It troubles me not at all – I'm busy enjoying the sight of a handful of Hive that were too close and so I've killed them, too.
My Ghost whistles a merry tune because it can and because it knows the tune pleases me. I will need a few moments to recover my health, but when I do, I'll finish the rest and go home to the Traveler's shadow.
. . .
I do not know where the Ghosts truly come from. Perhaps they are the Traveler's steel 'children,' or perhaps they come from the same unknown hands that made its holy sphere. But there are more of them than I've dreamed. A handful lie inert across our world waiting to be found and those strange new allies from other places tell me sometimes of their search across countless horizons. Plenty yet seek their own Guardian, flitting and haunting their way through all the worlds' graveyards. They bring them to their new home when they are ready and I know those looks of fear and confusion in the awakened faces, our universal language – a gift from our Ghosts - still thick and heavy on their tongues. I am not particularly maternal, but I know to be their friend when they need friends most. It was that way with me on my first steps to the Tower. Soon enough, their bloodthirst returns. That is the language I understand best.
One of these, many months after my awakening, tells me the tales of the Valkyrie. A good legend. I give him one of my precious bottles of vodka, found in a crate close to a bombed-out Siberian mine, as a reward. A week later I pull his body from the nest of Vex that has gotten too close to one of our outposts on Venus. When his Ghost revives him anew, he rumbles a merry laugh and offers to give me my bottle back. I tell him no, keep it. He owes me a story later. And you never run from a debt to a Russian.
I know the timbre of his voice, my friend with the Germanic legends. I recognize the clipped cadence when he speaks his own language. In another time, he would have killed me or I would have killed him. Over Belarus. Over Poland. Over countless dead, lined up like ruined logs and tossed aside. To tell these stories would be to weep. Instead, I tell him the tale of my old friend and his golems and he tells me of a good friend of his that fled from his little brown Hitler's Youth uniform to America and became a baker instead. When we return to the Tower, Vex duly repelled, we find my Hunter and we lie to each other for hours, exaggerating already great battles into arenas of pure glory.
. . .
This is how we face the long dark before each battle.
We tell of awakenings.
We tell of legends.
We tell of futures.
We tell of destiny.
But we never tell of what came before. It is always the same story, one made of sorrow. We make new stories now, ones of made of light's last hope.