Prologue – An Awakening
Some of them will say that I should have stayed dead. Others will rejoice than I never perished. The opinions of others don't really matter, in the grand scheme of things. The only thing that does matter is your choices, and how you let others influence them.
There's a lot of time to think when lying in a casket. Life, death, the rise of civilizations and their downfalls, and everything in between. Before I became what I am now, a guardian of the last civilization of its kind, I never truly believed things had a soul. "A soul is a creation of the mind, in order to explain what happens after death, to cope with the trouble of imagining a reality where we don't exist," I thought. "We're nothing but machines, working tirelessly to whatever ends suit us or those who command us, only too ignorant to accept the harsh reality: nothing happens to us after death, because we aren't around anymore." My time with the Traveler taught me differently.
Unlike what many people are told through the various medias in the City, guardians can die. They do, and I've watched too many fall to be shocked. It's an eventuality. Thus, many guardians, the more troublesome ones particularly, are put on hit lists by the minions of the darkness. A chance encounter with a wandering pack of Fallen can escalate into a full on brawl with a walker. Nothing is impossible if they want you dead badly enough. Luckily, however, they tend to stop chasing you once you're dead. Such is the policy of my particular agency.
My most recent death, I believe I was run down by a pack of roving Pikes, particularly nasty. Funny thing about the Exo is, we can take a beating, even more so when you're not actually inside the soon-to-be corpse. Still though, once they stitch you back together you've got to go into the ground. Amazing that the City still retains burials and their ceremony.
And so, that is how I attended my own funeral – not for the first time, mind you – and looked out onto the eyes of my once-friends, my fire-team members, and even my own Ghost, from behind dead sensors as they lowered me into the ground. Far from the City, far from hostile activity, simply, peace. And I lay there for at least a year, waiting until it was deemed safe for me to return back to duty.
Writer's Note: I'm just trying to get back into the swing of writing, so forgive me if anything sounds rusty or forced. It'll probably get better. This is really just a trial run to see if anyone's interested.