It was that weird dream again, complete with a bizarre sense of deja vu. A desolate, rocky valley in a foggy, indistinct landscape, seemingly full of metal obelisks inscribed with runes mounted upon the stumps of what might have been trees. A pair of stone archways at the valley's ends, one filled with sickly light, were the only other things that stuck out.
That, and the corpse.
There was always a corpse, slumped at the foot of the gate full of sickly light. There was always the same feeling of guilt, regret and familiarity at it. And there was always the feeling that they were both the person's killer, and inexplicably not their killer.
Althen woke up sweating. This wasn't an unusual occurrence, not any more. Three months straight patrolling the various Dead Zones across the world without an opportunity to head back home and unwind would do that to you. Admittedly, she reflected, it wouldn't be quite as bad if that damned recurring dream would just go away already, but judging by how frayed the nerves of the other half of her fireteam were, the difference might not be all that much.
Crawling out of the tent she had been sleeping in and removing her helmet (unless you were exceptionally foolhardy, you did not take your armour off to sleep out here), she took a quick glance around, checking for the telltale signs of enemy presence. It waasn't just Fallen out here, not anymore. And sure, it was more or less the middle of the night, but that just meant an attack was more likely.
An indistinct shape in the darkness by the dying ashes of the campfire shifted and a glowing pair of eyes appeared, looking toward Althen. "Dream again?" a synthesised voice spoke softly. Althen barely responded, just nodded briefly, and the owner of the voice chuckled in response. "Figured." He paused. "Look, don't just stand around like that. Take a seat, it's warmer over here. 'sides, if there were anything coming I'd see it even if they were acting all sneaky."
Althen sat down heavily on a log opposite the exo Warlock. "Well, I wouldn't put it past you to get so caught up in... whatever you end up musing that the Red Legion could march right through here and you wouldn't notice until the next week." She prodded the ashes experimentally with a stick, achieving little outside of exposing one or two embers that were still smouldering. "So tell me, since you're the Warlock here, any ideas on what's with that dream?"
Tirren-13 shrugged. "Not really any more than the last... oooh I don't know, thirty times you've asked me about it? You know full well I'm more practically inclined anyway." His expression became irritated for a moment as he muttered under his breath, "Traveller knows we don't need any more warlocks who only care about theoretical crap..." This prompted an eye roll from Althen, who was all too familiar with Tirren's rivalry with... well, pretty much most warlocks, if she were being honest. "That said... I did recall something a colleague of mine shared with me a while back, a hypothesis that recurring dreams like that are visions from... I think he said the Traveller, but honestly I doubt it. He seemed to believe such visions could show the future, but also things happening in the present, or things that happened in the past."
"So there's the possibility that this dream's a vision of something that happened, I dunno, a few thousand years ago, and doesn't really mean anything any more."
"Could well be. Bear in mind though, this is the same guy who seemed to genuinely believe that if you killed yourself and had your ghost revive you, you'd be revived well rested, and we both know how testing that went, so... a pinch of salt might be in order. Several pinches of salt, come to think of it."
Althen winced at this. She remembered all too well Tirren's attempt to test that hypothesis during a particularly boring stint in the Asian Dead Zones. Watching a friend get cut down by slap rifle fire or get punted off a cliff by an infuriated Legionary was one thing, but watching that friend nonchalantly blow his own head off with a hand cannon was another, and not one she was likely to ever get used to. The jackass could have at least picked one without an explosive payload.
Meanwhile, several miles away, a floating machine shaped like a cyclops' skull with armour plating scanned the body of its master for signs of life, and finding none settled into sleep mode to pass the time until their return.