The Forsaken King

by DarthPeezy

He wakes with no name. All he has is a ghost and a promise to find his sister. The land urges him forward, promising answers to every formless question he holds. Somewhere in the Dreaming City is the key to his destiny. An army of Hive, Taken and Scorn won't stand in his way. The nameless man turns to the rising wind and walks to his future and his past. A story of Uldren Sov.

There is darkness, eternal and pervasive, the final darkness that all life faces. Death, the failure of life and the ultimate endpoint of everything subject to entropy. Life grows and evolves, becoming greater and more diverse with each passing generation. But life, like the universe's resources, is finite.

Life cannot withstand the passing of eternity.

Wake up, my child, a voice calls, ancient and vast and above laws of entropy. It is everywhere at once, a piece of the universe just like gravity and time. No, it is greater than even those forces. It is the power to reshape the universe at will, to go against the flow of entropy.

There is still work to be done.

Light banishes the darkness. Warmth fills the cold bits within him. For the first time, his cells come to life and his heart beats its first beat.

He rises, inhaling for the first time.

Instinct guides him to look at his hands, to inspect them. Blue skin like the sky of his homeland—home? Where is home?—with streaks of dark and light, oscillating and pulsing like mixed fluids until the light wins out. The streaks of darkness sink down to his bones, fading away, and leaving his skin tinged white.

"Hey there," a bright and cheerful voice says.

The man with no name looks to the side and finds something floating above him, Reef-purple—Reef? What Reef? —with a flowerlike silhouette and silver detailing.

He blinks slowly, unsure if this is friend or foe. No, something in the very depths of his soul tells him this floating concentration of light is an ally, perhaps one who will never leave him behind.

"You don't know how long I've been scanning for you. I'm your ghost, Mister Pulled Pork. That's my name. Well, it's the name everyone calls me and I like it. Do you like it? I think you should. Oh, and what's your name, Mister?"

The man stares in confusion, utterly bewildered by the rapid stream of questions. It bobs around his head, a blue light scanning over his body, whilst he is unable to formulate a response. He works his throat to make a sound, but it speaks before he can.

"Don't you know your name?"

The man shakes his head. He should. Something about this place makes him certain he should know his name. That his name is important. His name is in the blood and the blood is in the soil. One calls to the other ceaselessly. The siren call blaring in his head tells him that. It is like a great drumbeat in his mind, imposing and callous.

"Well, I can find one for you. How about Mister Koro One?"

That sounds wrong. He shakes his head and ignores the ghost as it lists more names in a never-ending stream. It does enough talking for them both.

"You're right. One would mean you're an exo. So just Koro."

The nameless man sits on the circular platform, taking stock of his surroundings, and ignoring the ghost.

He doesn't know where he is with any certainty. Somewhere bright and sunny, overlooking a sheer drop down a cliff. It is tranquil, soothing to listen to the wind cut through the mountains and the river a few hundred feet beneath him.

He picks a direction and starts walking. He'll get where he needs to eventually. Somehow, he knows there's no wrong direction in this place. Just a longer direction.

All he has is a certainty that everything he seeks is somewhere in this land.

"Where are you going? We need to go to the Tower. Miss Ikora Rey won't believe this."

That name triggers something. Tower means enemy and Ikora means rival. Why? What is the tower and who is this Ikora?

He shakes his head. Instead, he points to the palace in the distance.

"No, we should go to the city, Mister No Name."

He continues onward, ignoring the ghost. It babbles in his ear about a place he must go to. Which is ridiculous. There's no location in the universe more important than this place that feels like home.

The nameless man sets his face towards the rising wind, puts his grave to his back, and walks forward.

---

The lay of the land

---

If this land is home, then it is a home under siege. The first few hours of tranquillity, of simply walking in this land with its misty sky and lush vegetation, are soon replaced by conflict.

He hears gunshots and freezes. The sound triggers an instinctive fear, a need to run and hide. In response to that fear, he ducks low and moves closer, refusing to be mastered by a formless fear.

He clambers up a rock, careful to not expose his entire body as he peaks his head out. Beneath him are a group of insectoid creatures, bipedal with four arms. They are mutated, bulbous creatures in thick armour that looks riveted together. Most disturbing, each of them seems to lack a head, brandishing cauldrons of trapped fire.

Ravagers, he thinks.

"Those are Scorn," the ghost tells him. "They're not very nice."

They're making sport of some other Scorn, taunting it and forcing it to fight free of their encirclement. And once it is, they let it run for a bit before one of the Ravagers chases it down, dragging it back, and repeating the game until the smaller Scorn is dead.

They add the corpse to the pile over to the side, laughing and jeering in their guttural tongue.

He leaves before they spot him. That was the most direct path to the centre of the city. It means he'll have to circle around and spend however many days or weeks on the outskirts avoiding battle.

As day turns to dusk, his ghost appears and lights his path. It is useful, so he doesn't protest when it babbles about something inane or other.

He does, however, get very annoyed when it suddenly leaves to scan something. The first three times he thinks it may be important, and veers from his path, following it for hours at a time. By the tenth inanimate object it scans, he must wonder if all ghosts are this defective or if his special.

Unique, his light promises.

Before night settles in fully, he finds a small alcove amongst a rock formation. It's a tight fit and not particularly pleasant, too damp for his liking, but better than walking alone at night. His cloak serves as a blanket and his arms a pillow.

"The tower would have a bed for you," his ghost whines, butting his forehead.

He flicks it with a blue finger and settles in for the night.

Instinct drives him forward. It is all he has to go on. Who is he? A child of starlight and darkness. Why is he so scared of the beings of light, his comrades and allies by nature, yet those he fears the most? How's your sister?

Sister? Sister? Sister? Who is she? Why does he feel her calling her? How does he know that he must find her no matter the consequences?

I'm coming.

Stealth comes naturally to him. Staying still and concealing his presence is the first thing he learns. The longer he stays still, the more he becomes a void in the world, something unnoticeable and hidden. He learns to smother his connection to the light around the Taken, becomes one with the dark presence they force on the land.

Sometimes, when he focuses carefully, they fail to recognise him even if they look his way, almost like their eyes slide right over him. It's worked more often than not. He's not sure he wants to risk anything antagonising the Taken. His ghost goes silent around them, hiding deep within his soul.

Every enemy he sees makes him want to oppose them, to match his light against their darkness. He ignores that sense, not willing to see who is stronger. Something tells him he's not on their level, not ready for that level of combat, his only saving grace the armour he wields and the cloak that seems to weigh heavily.

He keeps travelling, sticking to the outskirts and away from any of the factions. He spends most of the day invisible. It may slow him a bit, but it's far safer than tangling with the Scorn when he lacks even the most basic of weapons.

One day bleeds into the next like that, travelling, hiding and listening to his ghost. Sometimes he simply follows the little light as it leads him to new spots. Those moments are calm and peaceful, almost like an adventure. In one underground structure, he finds a mural telling the story of a ship and its crew of nine hundred through space.

SYKSHOCK, he wonders, reading the ancient runes and knowing he should know, but unable to dredge the memory.

"That's the Traveller," his ghost says when they're deeper in the structure. Purple light from a crystal formation illuminates the chamber eerily, reflecting off rusted steel.

He brushes a hand along the rock, feeling a spark, a connection, to the white sphere so much like a moon but so much more. It calls to his Light, or perhaps, his Light calls to it.

There isn't much more to find. Time and disuse have worn this place down, the other murals dull and faded. A shame. There may have been more secrets hidden by time, secrets of the solar system and the people that call this land home.

A source of light and a cool draft marks the exit. He leaves the structure behind and continues his journey.

The sun is hotter this day than the rest. The cloak makes it uncomfortable and he is tempted to remove it. But the moment he tries, he experiences a wave of dizziness.

The cloak is part of him. Not this cloak specifically, but a cloak. Any cloak. If he's to remove it, he needs to have another on hand to replace it. Shaking his head, he leaves it on and continues in the heat, itchy and sweaty and uncomfortable.

"Maybe we can call you Itinerant," his ghost says. "Do you like it?"

Calling him a nomad, a traveller, is just a description of his acts, not a name that means anything.

He shakes his head no, irritated, and continues walking in the heat. The water cascades over the edge, into what should be the depths of space. Instead, he watches with interest as the water diverts course and returns to the bedrock beneath them. A neat, simple system of reclamation.

Mostly, being near water is cooler than being on a flat plane. The natural shimmer from the interplay of heat and moisture makes it easier to maintain his invisibility, so there is a tiny bit of practicality.

The moment the sun fades, the temperature drops rapidly. He pulls his cloak closer against the chill, knowing he needs to find a resting spot for the night.

He finds a glowing tree growing amidst some rocks, long roots dangling over a chasm and feeding on the mists. He checks the area and finds it to be empty of enemies for a few miles out.

The ghost scans the tree. "Safe," it pronounces after a moment.

He rolls his eyes and climbs the gnarled white wood.

There's a branch nestled between two rocks, jutting out and curving towards sunlight, seeking nourishment like all life. He settles with his back against the tree trunk, his side protected by the cold stone to his left, and a falling escape route to his right.

It should be uncomfortable to settle in with one leg dangling and only hard bark for a pillow. But, just like the cloak, it feels natural.

---

Show your strength

---

Something about his cloak makes him stand out.

He learns this when a group of Scorn fire at him despite his best efforts to stay hidden. Not only do they fire, but they chase him down for close to an hour until he finds a good spot to reposition and take them on. Without any weapons, he's left only with the cheap knife he finds on the ground, rusted and dull, singed with solar power.

The knife doesn't like him much, but it likes the Scorn even less. For personal reasons, the knife loathes the Scorn—he gets the feeling its previous owner died facing them. This blunt and forgotten thing wants to wage a war against them, even if it means letting him wield it.

Wielding the knife comes to him naturally, a matter of instinct and thought made manifest: so long as he sees the arc of the blade in his mind, his body will follow through. He pirouettes on the spot, avoiding a shock knife narrowly, before stepping into the guard of the stalker.

He stabs upward through its chin and mandible; the knife slicing easily through chitin and hide and brain matter. It dies in a wet gurgle and a flash of blue.

One down. More to go.

He moves like a dancer between them, stepping around their blows neatly, and using their numbers against them. Randomly, he shoves and elbows and fights like a brute. They don't expect him to be so suddenly aggressive but when they adapt to that, he becomes like water, flowing around them.

He also learns how to make a grenade.

It is surprisingly simple, instinctive just like the invisibility. All it takes is channelling the void to his hand in currents and eddies and then energising those currents, accelerating them faster and faster until he has a mass of explosive potential in hand.

He throws his grenade at the last group of Stalkers and watches them burn in the vortex of void light.

When they are all dead, he gets to work. There's equipment to be had from the corpses. First, however, he cleans the blade carefully. It served him well and deserves a bit of kindness. He channels void light into it, coaxing it away from the solar power. It is hesitant to trust him after being abandoned.

I'll give you war, he promises.

The last of the resistance vanishes and he easily floods the blade with the void. It darkens, no longer silver with touches of solar on its edge. Now, it is the darkest of blacks, the edge dripping with the promise of the void.

"Ludwig," his ghost says, a name for the nameless man.

That makes him pause as he loots the Scorn. He considers that name. It sounds good, strong, a warrior wielding a giant blade. But he's neither a human nor a berserker.

He shakes his head, removing weaponry and ammunition. The shock pistol has potential. As does the Wire Rifle. He knows he can make something beautiful out of them. And by beautiful, he means dangerous.

The ghost scans the final corpse before returning to his soul.

Flipping his cloak inside out is simple. The inside is pitch black without any of the gold embellishment of the exterior. Plain and discreet.

Natural.

---

Master the Forge

---

Back-tracking the path he took to escape the Scorn is easy. There are so many tracks that even a fool would be able to follow them. It is following beyond the ambush point that he needs to put his skills to use.

The footprints go in every direction, but he susses out those least faded, following until those fade away and he's forced to track the trail by the scent of something sharp and tangy in the air. Their base is a makeshift thing, nestled between some rocks and hidden by trees.

He spends his time modifying the weapons for his own use. Tinkering with them comes easily. Modifying the scope of the Wire Rifle to suit his needs is simple, something he does on instinct alone.

Pulled Pork is busy scanning the base whilst he modifies the stock of the wire rifle, making it collapsible and easier to carry. It takes him a moment to figure out how to modify the firing rate as each of the two scopes is tied to the firing rates, one which draws more power but is slower, and another which occurs rapidly at the expense of power. There's something to be had by altering them to suit his natural tendencies, and not suiting himself to the weapon.

"You're good at this," his ghost says once the wire rifle is complete. "How's about Mister Lien?"

Queenbreaker, he thinks, shaking his head in disgust. He doesn't know what the name symbolises but hates it on principle. It's not a name of his people, whoever they may be.

Perhaps most of that disgust is because of the weapon.

He hates the gun, hates it in the same way a good and loyal soldier hates treason.

"What's wrong? Lien was a bad guess but you shouldn't be upset. We'll get you a name."

No, you imbecile, he thinks but refuses to say. This ghost is his, somehow perfect for him even if he rolls his eyes when it scans some random object or ignores it most of the time.

He waves away the ghost's concern and takes the shock pistol, working on it. After a few hours of tinkering with the fire rate, he decides he loathes the mechanism. Mostly because it uses arc energy and something about that energy makes him leery.

He strips it down to the rails and explores the mechanism that charges the metal shards it fires. Instead of using the arc core to charge the shards and electrify them, maybe he can use that to charge the rails running along either side of the weapon instead.

Day passes to evening as he works on the weapon. By midnight he has a working prototype. It is an ugly thing, blunt and brutish. But there's an elegance to the simplicity of it. Sometimes, pure functionality is more beautiful than form.

He prepares to fire at one of the Scorn helmets on the wall, then pauses, looking at the table. His ghost is fast asleep in the folds of his discarded cloak. It would be rude to wake it.

Walking outside with the helmet, he instantly regrets not taking the cloak. The chill cuts to the bone, leaves him shivering and despondent. He grits his teeth and walks until he's certain the ghost won't wake up from the sound of his experimentation.

He pulls the trigger and feels the thrum of power as the rails charge up. There is a delay between pulling the trigger and the weapon firing, a cadence he'll have to get used to: pull, charge, pause, fire, repeat. He inspects the stalker helmet. There is a hole punched clean through both sides.

It'll be a risky thing getting used to this weapon, odd and exotic for a hand cannon. It is closer to a wire rifle than anything else, but it belongs to him.

When he returns, the ghost is still asleep. He lays the gun next to his cloak, settles into a corner, and falls asleep.

His ghost scans the weapons the next morning, humming cheerfully. He waits patiently, anxiously, wanting to know what it thinks. Which is stupid. The weapons work adequately and he doesn't need the approval of a ditzy ghost.

"Nice, nice, nice, Mister Hephaestus," the ghost says.

Breathing calmly, he shakes his head. That name is wrong as well.

"Not that one? Can I name the weapon?"

He considers that before nodding. Who better to name the weapon than his ghost? There's no history to it. He'd accept Piece of Shit as a name for it.

"Morning Hammer," the ghost says.

He frowns, taking the newly named Morning Hammer and holstering it. He stares at the ghost until it responds.

"Hephaestus was a god of metalworking. I wanted to call you that because you're good at making stuff. But if you don't like that name, maybe you can still have a piece of it, right? Metalworkers use hammers and I thought it was appropriate since you finished it in the morning…"

The ghost drones on about some human gods. He finds he doesn't particularly care for their proclivity towards cruelty or have much interest in their affairs. But his ghost speaking makes it more manageable.

He lets it talk for the rest of the morning as he experiments with the two weapons. The Queenbreaker works as he expects it to, great at medium and long ranges. Pull the trigger, wait for the charge, watch as a knight perishes. He likes the rhythm, safe and protected by distance.

After an hour, he's racked up dozens of kills and wiped out an entire Hive platoon. The presence of the darkness in the air lessens, the constricted light breathing easier because of him.

"How's about Mister Simo Hayha?"

The ghost says the name smoothly. He likes it, not for himself, but because it sounds right for a sniper. He shakes his head and stows the rifle over his shoulder.

The ghost busies itself scanning the rocks on a ridge before moving to a new location, down a ravine. He rolls his eyes and follows behind it, hoping it doesn't get in any trouble.

He climbs the rocks carefully, not wanting to fall despite knowing he can survive. Best to curb any suicidal tendencies before they can develop.

He clambers onto a manmade structure, a shelter of handcrafted masonry and metalwork hidden by a small waterfall. Inside, praying to some odd stone tablet is a group of Hive acolytes. And his ghost, floating awkwardly in their sight.

He stares at the acolytes. They stare at his ghost. He fires first.

The first bullet goes wide, a hairsbreadth from taking its head. At the very last second, he had twitched. They don't give him a chance to recover.

It becomes a running battle in the enclosed space. He jumps on a railing, balancing precariously and pulling the trigger. The handcannon charges, from zero to a harsh hum in half a second. He forces his hand still when the hum dies away, that instance before the gun is discharged.

The wire penetrates the acolyte's head with little resistance.

Slowly, running and gunning, he gets the cadence down. The crucial moment is that split second between the weapon being fully charged and the violent discharge. It is the difference between a satisfying headshot and missing.

Then it clicks perfectly. It's like the trace rifle, only much faster and packing a smaller punch. A precision weapon in the form of a hand cannon.

Pull the trigger. Charge the weapon. Pause. Fire.

Mastering that pause is what determines his accuracy. If he flinches away from oncoming fire or moves around too much during it, the weapon will be wildly inaccurate.

He feels an enemy behind him, too close to dodge.

So, he does something better.

He shadesteps to the side, becoming one with the void and moving faster than he has any right to. Time seems to dilate around him. One moment he's standing, the next and most of him is in a roll.

He lands into the roll, time snapping in place, and raises his gun midway through the roll, pulling the trigger. Right as he's stable, the weapon finishes charging.

The acolyte stares at him in hate. Then the gun discharges, a thin wire puncturing through the acolyte's skull.

Silence greets him once the final acolyte is dead. The battle high fades slowly, his heartbeat slowing and he masters his breathing.

His gauntlets are bloody, slick with alien blood.

Is this his destiny? Murder and death and blood. It comes to him naturally, as easily as breathing. Maybe that's why he's alive again. To be a perfect killing machine, unfeeling and unflinching.

He wipes away the green blood in disgust, walking around the stone tablet. His ghost is there, engrossed with scanning the odd markings. The markings are a prayer of some sort, one he doesn't understand.

Tithe, his mind supplies, part guttural Eliksni and part corrupting Hive.

He shivers.

Pulled Pork scans him. He watches in surprise as the dirt and grime disappear. It bobs his forehead affectionately before disappearing.

Just like that, he feels better.

---

Become a hidden blade

---

It takes him a while to dispose of the bodies and clean the alcove, destroying the tablet and disposing of the shards. The alcove is a nice thing with clear sightlines if you take a few steps away from the waterfall. The other entrance, the one the Hive used, leads to a cistern below the city after a long flight of stairs.

He explores it thoroughly, not finding any more Hive lurking in the area. Safe then, but not the best. He seals off the exit leading to the cistern and decides to make use of the waterfall as his exit point.

That exit, at least, gives him a clear view for much of the plains. The other just leads to shadows he can be ambushed from.

The alcove becomes a central hub for his explorations, a place he can always return to. If he leaves at dawn, then he knows to turn around when the sun is at its highest point. Perhaps it is cowardice, but the city is a war zone and everyone is an enemy.

The first time he dies shocks him. One moment he walks through a cave system, unbothered, searching for supplies and hopefully secrets. The next, there is a hole in his chest. He holds the gaping wound in his torso in shock, staring at the vivid crimson.

He's confused, unsure why he's hurt and gods below it hurts, hurts like his first death, tastes like copper and tangy betrayal, and he's falling like a puppet with its strings cut and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it was all for you—

He dies alone in the cave.

But it is nothing like death as he assumes. He sees his body as an observer, confused. Where is the endless darkness? Where is the non-existence?

Oh, this is what it's like, Pulled Pork says, disconcertingly close. He hears the ghost to his right and left, above and below, everywhere and nowhere.

What is this? he wonders, staring at the Scorn cheering above his body, speaking in their guttural tongue.

So long as I'm here you can't die. I'm gonna keep you safe, okay. I'm gonna bring you back just now.

I don't have any weapons.

He regrets leaving them in the nook he's laid claim to, hidden and out of sight. It has a good sightline to observe much of the city's plains and the war between three distinct factions, and however many subdivisions they have. This should have been a simple foraging mission, close to the base. Not a danger in the slightest and more a long walk.

You have the light. Now show them why I've been looking for you.

There is faith, deep and endless, in his ghost. It is a promise to stand with him, to see the end of the world and banish the darkness of death. It is a promise to stand together, or pass into the dark together, bound forever by a formless promise. It gives him the courage to stand tall and fight once more.

He returns to life in a shower of light.

Time slows as he takes stock of his situation. Four enemies, raider Scorn with their large rifles, surround him, and many more that he can sense through their corrupted ether—ether, what is ether and no, think about that later—and all prepared to shoot him again.

The bundle of energy within him that's he's been so hesitant to touch calls out to him, begs to be used. It is darkness but light as well, the power of the vacuum and endless secrets that are his to claim if he chooses it.

He reaches to the very depths of the void and summons his power.

It surges through him, a wave of raw power too great to contain in a single body. The force of summoning the void sends him off the ground. Instinct guides him to flip in the air. At the apex, the overflowing void light coalesces into blades that fit his hands perfectly.

And then, when his void has almost left his body, it collapses back in on itself. It masks his presence, makes him invisible, and grants him the truest form of sight.

This is the first secret the void whispers to him: The Way of the Wraith.

It is death and only death. This is not the power of the protector but the assassin. The scorn scrambles away before he lands, terrified, knowing the terrible power he wields.

Too little too late.

He dashes forward and slices once with his blade, carving through the first enemy. It breaks his invisibility but he doesn't care. There is so much speed and raw power running through him that crossing the distance to the other three enemies is instantaneous.

One swipe takes the head of one enemy. The head flies off whilst the rest of the body disintegrates in void light.

The other two are clumped together. Somehow, he knows what to do. He dashes forward, blades low to the ground. He slices up with both blades at once, the invisible reach of his weapons bridging the gap and bisecting both enemies.

He follows through with the momentum and flips in the air. Once more, at the apex of his jump, all the void light he expends collapses inward and cloaks him from sight.

The drain on his power vanishes, once a river now a trickle. He scans the room, marking out the enemies repositioning and trying to flee.

He moves in silence, spectral flashes and afterimages trailing behind and confusing the enemies. Too bad for them those afterimages don't follow his path of travel. They exist to disorientate, to misdirect, to give the impression that there are more assassins than just him.

He jumps over a wall and lands silently, dashing forward low to the ground. The Scorn doesn't sense him before his blade is lodged in its neck. He slinks away, a wraith in the dark, and hunts down one of the remaining two enemies.

The second doesn't even notice him and he stabs it in the back, his blade parting its ether soul from its mortal body. He flips back into invisibility, tracking the last enemy, across the room and hiding behind a rock.

Time's almost up, Pulled Pork says. Make it count.

The distance is too great to cross with what little void light remains. Instead, he coalesces the entirety of his power to one blade. It breaks his invisibility, though the true sight remains, letting him see the enemy behind the rock.

The blade shakes violently, thrumming with so much void light it almost wants to burn him. It wasn't meant to be used like this, or perhaps this modification is too early for him to wield naturally.

He takes aim. Prays his aim is true. Throws the void blade.

His aim is true, unerringly so. The blade adjusts mid-air, tracking the Scorn when it ducks. The blade stabs through the Scorn's brain, impaling it in the wall behind.

There is an explosion of void fire, to his surprise. Just like his vortex grenades.

He breathes hard, staring at his gloves. There is no blood on them this time, burnt away by his void light. Is this what he is? An assassin in the night, an efficient and silent machine of death. Should anyone have this power?

Those answers are beyond him. He heads back to the base after picking the Scorn clean of their ammunition and ether and fuel cells. Maybe they can be retrofitted into an explosive and be useful once more.

He deposits the haul on the makeshift table, a rickety thing of wood he's carved from some of the trees outside, pale bark bound together by scrap steel and leather. Making it had kept him calm through the night whilst the sounds of warfare intensified, one faction striking against the next.

"Oh, I forgot to switch on your shields."

He looks and sees his ghost scanning the weapon rack he made for the dozenth time. There's nothing special about it, but his ghost is odd, thinking it might find something special in the mundane.

Those sound useful, he thinks.

He taps the table to draw the ghost's attention. It floats over lazily, almost hesitant. He hears the hum before he sees the flash of light wash over him.

He experiments and finds the shield lies over his armour like a second skin, the same way water clings to you. It doesn't stop him from perceiving his sense of touch; the walls are still cold, the Scorn blood still sticky, but it does prevent his knife cutting him.

For a long time, he glares at the ghost. It bobs nervously, scanning in every direction that means avoiding his gaze.

"You don't like me, Mister No Name," the ghost says, upbeat still, "but that's okay. I like you. You're mine."

For some reason, that makes him pause. This is his ghost, and he can feel the sadness beneath the cheer. And that's wrong, completely and utterly. Like the siren call in his blood leading him on, something in the very depths of him rejects a reality where his ghost doesn't like him, doesn't trust or respect him.

To accept a world like that is to betray himself fully.

For the first time since this new life, he speaks. "You're mine."

His voice is rough from disuse, gruff where he knows it should be smooth. He stutters on the second word, almost forgetting how to sound it out.

"You can speak," Pulled Pork says happily. "I thought you might be mute. Not that there's a problem with that. You're my Guardian and you're perfect."

He refuses to let his affection show. Any sign he genuinely likes it and the ghost may very well convince him to leave this place and head to the massive concentration of light across the solar system.

As it is, he simply follows it the next day, walking at the pace it sets. There's something relaxing about walking without a goal, walking aimlessly. Yes, there's a siren call urging him to go to the centre of the city, to reach the ultimate seat of power and find answers. But he can do all that tomorrow or the day after.

His ghost wants to scan everything and that's all that really matters.

---

Titan

---

"Hey, there's Miss Nkechi Thirty-Two."

He looks up and finally pays attention. They're in one of the more inhabited parts of the city, where the Scorn and Hive and Taken and the lightbearers battle for territory. He's surprised his ghost has led him so far and that he hasn't noticed the sun setting.

"She's nice. Let's go see her."

He shakes his head, not trusting the lightbearer. Wielding light doesn't mean they're allies. He's seen groups of Hive battling Taken, and as far as he knows they're supposed to serve the same dark master.

The line between light and dark is so very thin.

"Well, I'll go say hi anyway."

The ghost heads on without looking back. Which leaves him with a choice. He can chase after it and cage it. Or he can watch from a hidden spot.

The latter seems to have fewer negatives.

He watches from a distance, able to hear his ghost through their bond.

Ghost and lightbearer are already in conversation by the time he's found a good spot to observe them. The lightbearer is massive, armoured heavily like a bipedal tank. He fingers his Queenbreaker and wonders if it can punch through that massive chest plate.

"Where is he then?" the dark machine—exo weapon frame—asks.

"Oh, he's shy. Not very talkative but he's mine."

The frame hums. "And when are you going to bring him to the tower?"

"When he's ready. That's what he said. Well, not said. He doesn't really talk much."

The machine frame pets his ghost. That sends a wave of rage through him. The ghost belongs to him and only him. No one should have that privilege.

"If you say so," the frame says, condescendingly.

The void is so easy to touch, it comes naturally to him. The hard vacuum belongs to him in a way that lightning and fire do not.

Starlight was my mother, and my father was the dark.

The power that makes him a silent assassin in the bleakest nights isn't ready, the void light within him isn't a roaring crescendo waiting to be released. But there is a tiny portion, power like lobbying four vortex grenades all at once.

He can shape that power and make a weapon of it.

A spectral blade appears in his hand. The weight of it always surprises him, light as a feather but impossibly heavy with the power of the void-gravity. He throws it, watching it cut unerringly through the air. He doesn't aim it to hurt the machine frame. No, he's not stupid enough to harm someone with his ghost in their grasp.

Still, the machine frame catches the blade to his surprise, her hand wreathed in solar light.

"Of course, you'd find yourself a knifey boy," the machine frame says, amused. "Fucking hate that you guys have more armour than a Defender. A tip to you, young Guardian, when you pop your super everyone connected to the light senses it. You did a good job staying hidden until then. We might not know where you are, but we feel it happening."

It pats his ghost affectionately. "Good job, Pulled Pork. Good job." Then it looks in his direction. "Call me if you need some help."

Return, he commands through the bond of light he shares with the ghost.

"It was nice seeing you, Miss Nkechi Thirty-Two, but my Guardian wants me back."

He doesn't let the ghost out of his sight after that. It could have been destroyed and he can't let that happen any more than the universe can forget to turn on gravity.

He holes up in the nook behind the waterfall comes to serve as his base. He boobytraps it to death and back, not letting his true terror show. The ghost simply scans the ether-fuel explosives he makes, never questioning his refusal to leave.

It is during this frenetic period of paranoia that he learns how to make smoke bombs. The first time he does, he nearly blows himself up, startled by the sudden smoke in his hand.

He adapts to them quickly. They naturally want to go off immediately but he moulds them to his desire, twisting the light to connect to a different part of the void. Soon, he has a network of deadly smoke bombs all over his base and along each route to it.

Food isn't something he needs but something he enjoys, nonetheless. He enjoys an apple stolen from the supply drop of the corsairs, glad that the other lightbearers can take freely of them, and so long as he flares his light before approaching, they don't inspect him. Even then, he still enters invisibly.

He peels an apple using the latest knife that he's stolen, a thick and heavy thing, curved wickedly with a leather handle. It's not as good as his first blade but he won't waste that one on anything but murder.

Pulled Pork scans the peels from the comfort of his chest plate, resting easily amongst the folds of his poncho.

"Carver," it suggests.

He pokes it, shaking his head. It huffs in disappointment.

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the city? The other guardians would give you a ride. Miss Nkechi Thirty-Two is very nice."

He rolls his eyes and pokes the ghost. It scans his finger in protest. He goes back to his apple, savouring the taste and watching the war in the distance, mortal Corsairs fighting a retreating battle against the Hive.

Their tactics bother him. They're not laying down lines of intersecting bullets, not manipulating their enemy to set up a kill box. They fight like they're terrified but hopeless, like their deaths are inevitable. He watches them die one by one.

By the last one, he's watching through the scope of his Queenbreaker, his ghost observing on his head. The Corsair is held in the grip of a Knight. It removes her helmet cruelly, seeming to delight in her fear.

Except, she's not afraid. Resigned and tired, but no struck by terror.

"Once more," the Corsair says in the ancient tongue that stirs his memories.

Disquiet fills him after the knight kills her. Once more what? A loss against their enemies? He doesn't know and their communication network reveals nothing to him. Stealing their files reveals nothing to him the next day.

He is a bundle of agitation when he learns the annoyance of being killed from a distance. One moment, he's enjoying his walk. The next, he's staring at his corpse, his soul held by his ghost.

After killing the lone ravager, he sets off to find some form of protection.

He finds a helmet, sleek and smooth in burnished silvers and fine gold. It was forged in this city. The craftsmanship too fine for it to have been made anywhere else.

It takes him a while to get used to the weight. Modifying it to fit better is easy but it still feels like it belongs to someone else. Probably because he picked it up off the corpse of a dead lightbearer. Its weapons were gone by the time he found the corpse and the ghost missing, but the helmet was intact. The only real part of it still intact.

He stares at the helmet in frustration one evening. It is useful and functional: the HUD displaying the status of his shields, waypoint, and ammunition counters beneficial. But it just looks wrong. Feels wrong despite being retrofitted for him. His lips curl in disgust as he sets it down on the table and settles in for sleep.

He wakes and finds his ghost sleeping on the helmet.

The colours are different. A much darker base, the same black of his cloak. There is fine gold detailing like the scales of his boots and gauntlets, and a splash of red on the cheek ridges the same shade as his pants.

Whilst his ghost rests, he smiles.

When he awakens Pulled Pork, the smile is gone. After all, it can't see the smile with the helmet on.

---

Lessons learnt

---

He watches a group of Guardians through the scope of his sniper rifle, stolen from a cache of the Corsairs. Taking from them is natural like he has every right to their equipment. His ghost may also be in their networks, feeding him information. It makes no sense. Something about a cycle and how this is the fifth time now.

He's in the water reclamation network beneath the City, hiding from the veritable army of Guardian on the surface waging a war against the Taken. It's a relatively safe space. Apparently, the secrets of water reclamation are of little interest to anyone.

"Here's the thing, kid," one of the Guardians, a human, says, "You can't let any Warlock know."

Warlock, another thing to add to the category of things he doesn't know. Perhaps they are mythical beings on indescribable power, wielding ruinous powers.

They like wearing bathrobes, Pulled Pork says, a new icon appearing on his HUD. He files it away on his to-read list.

"I swear if you tell em we'll get you grounded in an office job forever," the other Guardian, this one another Awoken—but not kin, never kin—says threateningly. "They think we forgot how to blink. As if Hunters are that stupid. Maybe Titans, but they'd never figure this out anyway. Blinking is simple. All you have to do is cut a hole through reality like this."

The Awoken makes a fist, arc light swirling. The Awoken hunter pull his hand to the side quickly.

Space parts in a shower of light that stays stable for perhaps two seconds before it collapses.

"Now, I'm going to show it in practice," the Awoken says. The Guardian sprints a short distance before leaping. At the apex of his jump, he brings his fist down.

He seems to teleport, which seems absurdly unfair to him. Why should they have that ability when he doesn't?

"It's a lot easier if you try in your super."

The youngest nods, taking a few steps back.

He senses the surge of arc light moments before the Guardian is surrounded in sparks. A long staff appears in the young Guardian's hands.

Watching the guardian try and fail to blink is mildly entertaining.

"How come it's just us," the youngest asks once the lightning is gone. "You never see Gunslingers blinking around."

"You'd have to ask a Warlock. I mean, the voidlocks can blink but the others don't. Makes me think the arc boys should be able to. Maybe some Nightstalker will figure it out before the Stormcallers. Ha, that'll piss off all the Warlocks."

"Wouldn't be the weirdest thing," the human says. "I don't think you were there that time a bunch of hunters pissed Ikora off. Don't know what they did, but this was after Osiris sauntered back into her life. Anyway, these Hunters piss her off so much she threatens to Nova them. The kids don't listen because Ikora looks harmless, right?"

The youngest shakes his head, terrified. "No. Traveller, no, she terrifies me."

"Well, maybe you'll make it. So, they keep on being little shits and even Zavala starts backing away. Next thing you know, boom. Nova bomb right then and there."

"They must have really pissed her off."

"Oh, it gets worse. Their ghosts bring them back five seconds later. And guess what Ikora does immediately. She nova bombs them. Then she does it a third time. Like she's back in the Crucible during Mayhem but worse."

Ikora, he sounds in his mind, remembering it from before. Another name to be wary of. Whatever a nova bomb is, that it can kill a group of Guardians makes it worthy of respect. That she can use that ability, what must be a super, three times in under a minute is terrifying.

With a single breath, invisibility washes over him and he retreats. Best not to risk them picking up on his presence. Who knows what technologies they have on them or what powers their armour might have?

He spends days practising how to blink. Mostly, it amounts to him landing awkwardly on his ass. A lot. Almost constantly.

"Orin," his ghost suggests on the second day, scanning a dead acolyte's gun. "It sounds very Awokeny, you know?"

No, he thinks but does not say, dusting his pants after the third failure of the day.

Trying to rip a hole in reality doesn't seem to be the right way to go about this. Maybe because arc light is beyond him. No, saying that implies he can never touch the other forms of light. And the impossible is something he refuses to believe in.

He'll figure it out even if it kills him.

---

The power of the light

---

As the days pass, the city darkens more and more until it rains darkness. No, rain implies it goes down from the sky. Whatever this is, it starts from the pools of darkness on the ground and continues upward, converging in the centre of the city.

Ammunition for his weapons becomes a problem. The Queenbreaker, at least, uses standard wire rifle ammunition but his handcannon requires time and effort to modify either shock pistol ammunition or the more onerous task of filing down wires for the larger Scorn weapons.

Both of which he is running low on.

With the war going on, he's unwilling to venture too far. But he needs to chart this city, its plains and underground cisterns, and learn its secrets as well. He needs to find his sister, wherever she may be.

It ultimately comes down to which weapon he trusts more. The one he made through instinct, his fingers following an ancient design, or the one he made through intuition and experimentation. The answer is simple: he chooses the one that doesn't trigger uncomfortable feelings every time he looks at it.

He takes the Queenbreaker and removes its ammunition block. It takes a few hours to file the long and thicker wires to something appropriate for Morning Hammer.

He has four blocks of ammunition by the time he's done, forty kills if he doesn't miss any shots. Better than the Queenbreaker and its six wires.

Maybe he can find another Corsair supply cache and steal something for the sniper or pistol he has in his base. He has yet to find their forges or ammunition depots they use to restock, but their armaments sometimes seem endless. It's an optimistic gambit.

It's also a foolish gambit.

The moment he approaches the supply cache, a rupture in reality materialises, swallowing him whole. Darkness engulfs him, suffocating his light.

He lands in a crouch, eyes rapidly adjusting to the gloom and his helmet doing its best to make a map of this place with echolocation pulses. Except something seems to be eating those pulses. He swallows nervously at the slimy webs and pulsating orange sacks. Hive orange.

Wherever they are, the darkness smothers the light. The weight is oppressive and cruel.

Be careful, his ghost whispers. If you die here then I can't bring you back.

He stays perfectly still until invisibility washes over him once more, blood pounding in his ears. There is an acolyte, its scent thick and cloying and revolting, observing a gathering in the centre. Here is a group of thralls in what passes for slumber amongst their abominable race.

The gathering draws his interest: a few knights kneeling around an altar, thralls and acolytes interspersed amongst them. Something about the altar draws his attention. It makes a sound that he can't hear but his light perceives, a song of cruelty and death and destruction and the more he listens, the more he is drawn toward the potential of endless power so long as he abides by the ancient sword logic and—

A loud screech makes him freeze. It also breaks him from his mindless approach.

He glances down and sees a worm under his boot, pitiful and pathetic, writhing in agony. With one sharp twist, he silences it permanently.

Too slow.

A much louder shriek pierces him to the core and before he knows it, he's staring at a true monster. It floats, unlike every other Hive he's seen and seems to be wearing a tattered robe. But those robes are inscribed with letters of destruction and evil benediction.

An aura of raw scorching power surrounds the Wizard. He can feel it clawing its way in his mind, trying to tear through his defences and corrupt him. Worse, he thinks this is nothing more than a pleasant greeting.

So, he throws a fucking smoke bomb at it. Whilst it rages, he throws a grenade right in its face. Its shields fade away but it fires bolts of energy towards him.

Backpedalling, he fires his handcannon. Once. Twice. Thrice. Only one shot lands, clipping the wizard in the shoulder.

Instinct makes him duck a thrall's wild slash. He spins on the spot, withdrawing his black knife, and stabbing it in the face. He keeps with the momentum and grabs the thrall, using it as a shield against the wizard's ruinous bolts of power.

He fires his handcannon until it runs dry, maybe only half the shots hitting the wizard. The final one strikes it in the chest. It gives one final shriek that makes his ears bleed before collapsing. He drops the long-dead thrall and prepares.

Two enemies down, too many to go.

He shadesteps, reloading instantly and coming face to face with the veritable army of Hive. Knights with their great blades lead acolytes and thralls. One lonely lightbearer against a battle host of Hive.

As always, he fires first. The thrall dies. Before it lands, he's firing again and dashing to the side. Liquid fire splashes over the spot he was just in, warm even through his shields.

It is a risk to battle them in their own territory, but there's no guarantee he can find the exit without dying. Best to kill them now and escape later. That's what he tells himself.

Mostly, he wants to prove his strength.

He can feel his super charging slowly. Until it is ready, he's left with the ancient powers of gun and blade.

Every trigger pull must be perfect because he may not get another chance. It doesn't matter that he wants to dodge the thrall's claws because it means killing an acolyte and bettering his position. Throwing his knife to kill a thrall may be foolish as it's the only one available to him, but it gives him space to shadestep and reload his empty gun.

The sound of Morning Hammer charging death is like music, a violent overture to his craftsmanship and combat skills. He slides beneath a knight trying to shield bash him, firing his gun as he slips beneath its legs.

He rolls forward and is glad he listened to his instincts because there's a giant sword between his legs. He grins at the vile creature and fires his gun. Two shots to centre mass and one to the head.

It drops dead.

He scrambles to his feet. There are still more enemies, more acolytes and knights to kill. The ground is slick with the strange Hive fluids that he doesn't want to think about.

A shield blow sends him flying. His vision goes red. He thinks it might be anger until he sees his HUD blaring warning signs. The protective shields are gone and things in his body are broken, even if the battle high is keeping him from feeling them.

He rises upward like a piston, stabbing the thrall. In one fluid motion, his gun is raised. He takes aim just above the knight's shield and fires. The wire slices through the Knight's leftmost eye. He fires again when it staggers back. Fires until his gun clicks empty and the knight falls to the ground.

Just two left now, an acolyte and the Knight that seems to lead them. Which is great because he's got one brick of ammunition.

Just a bit longer, okay, his ghost says.

The beast is larger than the rest, its armour dark red chitin instead of the dirty greenish-brown. Even its sword is imbued with dozens of Hive runes. It looks like a champion of its species, its shield covered in overlapping straps of some exotic metal.

Paying attention to the Knight makes him forget about the lesser of the targets. The acolyte's bolt strikes him right in the shoulder, shattering his regenerating shields. He stifles a yelp of pain, throwing himself to the side.

And right next to his knife he used to kill a thrall. Convenient, he thinks, grabbing the dark handle and extracting it from the Thrall's head. Then he throws it, all in one fluid motion.

His blade flies true and strikes the Knight in the eye. It roars, giving him an opportunity. He jumps forward once, landing on the Knight's tall shield. He leaps off the Knight's shield, towards the acolyte.

And right into the path of an acolyte readying its weapon. There's no chance it can miss and his shields are depleted, his armour weak after tanking the knight's shield. If he gets shot, it means death. The real kind. The acolyte will get its shot off long before he raises his gun, long before he can wait that half second for the weapon to charge.

So, he does the impossible. He channels light to his fist and feels the void-that-binds-stars, feels the cold vacuum of spacetime between his fingers. It seems stronger here, his connection to the fundamental forces of gravity and time magnified further.

And with it so strong, he blinks.

It's a dizzying rush of confusion as one moment he's in the acolyte's crosshairs and the next he's in the air behind it.

He hits the wall. It dazes him for a split second before he's shadestepping to the side and landing in a crouch. Hesitating means death and he doesn't mean to die this day.

He raises the Morning Hammer. Braces the gun with his free arm. Pulls the trigger.

The acolyte dies instantly. He isn't sure why, but invisibility washes over him. But, like with most of his powers, there's no rhyme or reason.

The Knight is the last enemy and he tracks it through walls, making use of the limited time he has available. When he feels his invisibility about to break, he leaps forward, unsheathing his knife. He stabs the Knight and is surprised to see the purple miasma around it.

Somehow, he knows he's shattered its defences with that strike. For a few moments, it will be vulnerable.

He draws on the void light and throws a grenade.

The bulky shield cracks. Now is his chance. He fires his handcannon as fast as he can, one shot bleeding into the next until the shield shatters.

The Knight roars so loud it pushes him back, makes him uncertain. What if it's too great for his abilities? What if the darkness is greater than the light he wields?

It swings its blade once. He rolls to the side, glad his instincts are so strong because that blow would have killed him. If it can carve a trench in the floor, then it can certainly slice him in half.

He scrambles back on the ground, trying to put some distance between him and the Knight. But without its shield, it is blisteringly fast.

It brings its blade down in a massive two-handed swing. Death, inexorable and unstoppable. That is the nature of the Hive, the nature of their power. Kill the weak until only the immortal remains.

"Mara!" he roars because he can't die.

He feels a flicker of starlight, of dark magic. It ignites his light. From deep within his soul, the void light within him rises like a tidal wave. He pops his super, void light propelling him off the ground and towards the sword.

He summons his spectral blades and parries the crushing sword strike, deflecting it to the left. He shadesteps forward and to the right, slicing at the Knight's knee. It roars and tries to backhand him.

Too late.

He jumps and flips, slashing upward with both blades in his heaviest attack. It cuts the Knight's other arm clean through.

At the apex of his flip, he jumps once more. Then a third time to reach the ceiling.

He plants his feet on the ceiling, defying gravity—reworking it in the opposite direction—for a moment, before pushing off with a burst of void light to the ceiling. It propels him towards the Knight like a rocket.

He twists around the Knight's final counterattack, feeling the sword skim his helmet. Too close for comfort, but close doesn't cut it.

His blades stab deep into the Knight's chest. It stares at him in a rage with its insidious eyes. So, he pumps the remainder of his super into the blades, engulfing them both in void fire. The energy builds up in the Knight.

It grasps for him with its giant claws, one last attack to kill him as well.

The Knight explodes in a shower of gore.

He collapses to the ground, breath coming quick and sharp. He doesn't want to look at his armour or cloak or imagine every disgusting piece of Hive flesh on him. And if he doesn't look at them, he doesn't have to see his hands trembling.

Is this what it means to be a lightbearer? To match strength against the darkness and kill ceaselessly and remorselessly. To never show weakness and win every battle in a never-ending war.

Pulled Pork materialises. The ghost scans him first, then it scans the Knight.

"This was a high-ranking Knight," his ghost says. "Good job. How's about—"

He shakes his head, already knowing the name will be wrong, and much too tired to deal with the ghost. He picks his black knife on the way out. Though his ghost heals him, he still feels weak on his way to his base, drained of strength. His ghost stays close by, lighting his way and not scanning anything.

Together, they make the long trek home. A dead man walking with his ghost. How absurd is that?

He shivers in his home base, cold in a way that isn't purely physical. There's a chill in his soul, a taint that chills him.

The darkness is strong and pervasive and freezing. Haunting, put simply, just like the shrieks of the Wizard. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees the Knight and the runes burnt in his mind. His light remembers the promise of power through sword logic that the altar promised, dark and insidious and perhaps infinite.

All he would have to do is give in to the darkness wrapped around his bones.

"A fire would be nice," his ghost says.

That is a surprisingly good idea, one that pulls him away from that dark line of thought. He looks to his ghost, finding it distracted by the outside world.

There's a circular depression a bit out of the way. He pours ether and a bit of the energy dense fuel from the Scorn. From what he's learnt, the raw and unprocessed ether will undergo some ritual before it is fit for the Scorn to use.

Even still, he summons his light and plunges his hands into the pool of blue. A cold chill creeps up his arms as he cleanses the ether in light, purges any form of corruption or taints in it until it is a shimmering pool of bright blue.

He has nothing to light a fire with. He tries using his blades but they're imbued with so much void that they can't generate sparks. All they make are little flares of void flame.

The memory of that machine frame his ghost spoke with fills his mind. She wielded solar power so hot he could smell it from a mile away. That would have more than enough energy.

Drawing forth his light only yields void for a long time when all he would like is solar or even arc. There's just too much of him connected to the darkness, to the pervasive presence of gravity and vacuum and nuclear forces.

"You have to be happy to use solar," his ghost says. "Not sad and grumpy."

Happiness isn't something he genuinely feels, not something he can summon after that fight.

But anger? Rage? Passion? Those he has like an endless storm, hidden beneath the cold indifference he wears.

He focuses on that anger, becoming one with it. No, not one with it, that way lies the void and fuck, it's gone, he thinks when the spark of light turns purple.

And that just makes him angry.

He focuses on that spark of rage, of anger and disappointment, and traces it to its core, right at the base of his soul where void meets the rest of the light. There, smothered beneath his void is light flavoured like smoke and ash.

He stands in the heart of his passion and anger, letting it consume him. It feeds on itself, leaving him numb but energised, a cycle in reverse. Oxygen becoming flame that becomes oxygen once more. It is like a trance, and he knows that right now, he cannot miss a shot.

With the tiny flicker of solar light he can manage, he sets fire to the mass of ether. And regrets it immediately.

The flames are a ghastly blue, like the dreaming dead of this land. The flames seem to watch him, observe him, and find him lacking all at once.

Awoken father, they seem to say, pathetic little boy clinging to his sister's glory.

His ghost scans the fire from a distance, circling them warily.

It lands on his shoulder. "I don't like those flames."

He finds he can't argue with that.

"I'll take watch. You need some sleep, Mister Prometheus."

He doesn't sleep immediately. The flames are too haunting, almost burning bits and pieces from his past. The throne, he thinks, remembering flames and betrayal and love so fundamental you could set gravity to its tune.

He watches the flames with his ghost. It hums a tune he doesn't recognise, off-key and discordant, right in his ear. It grates and nearly makes him flinch at one particularly bad note.

It soothes him to sleep.

---

The Art of War

---

The corruption vanishes one day, much to his surprise. One evening the darkness is thick and suffocating. In the morning, it vanishes and light reigns.

Things are odd. He swears he remembers killing the Hive Knights from the ridge. But maybe they just breed quickly and fall into familiar patterns. He kills them once more with his Queenbreaker because he may as well.

It is when he goes to the cave system he first died that it makes more sense. He remembers the stalkers that inhabit it, remembers murdering them after they cornered him. This time he ambushes them and kills them before they even see him.

A group of acolytes seem to have found his home base. He kills them from the shadows, an unseen wraith never missing a shot and a cruel blade finding cracks between chitin.

It means he must leave.

He stares at all the equipment he has stocked: ammunition for his two favourite weapons; shotgun shells for the Corsair weapon he's stolen next to the high-calibre rounds for the sniper he stole as well; Scorn traps, a couple of the arc totems, a few dozen solar totems, and one void totem, rarest amongst them; rations of his favourite fruits like the tart apples or the hard-shelled fruit like a pear. It means leaving everything.

"What's wrong, Mister Nobody?"

He gestures at his equipment then nods to the waterfall hiding the entrance.

"Oh, you should just say so."

The ghost floats over his equipment and scans it. Then, he watches in shock as the sniper disintegrates in motes of light.

He merely watches in shock as it proceeds to disintegrate everything he's worked hard to acquire.

"Oh, boy, am I full. If you just followed me to the tower, I'd be able to store ten times as much. A ship would help."

Only his trust in the ghost reassures him that his equipment isn't destroyed. If this were anyone else, he'd have shot them.

Eventually, it figures out his silence is a request for information and explains what a vault is. It can store equipment and retrieve it no matter where he is so long as he has programmable matter like glimmer or legendary shards—the former he has a decent chunk of, looted from many chests. The ghost shell itself doesn't have as much space as if he had a true vault, but it'll do for the few weapons he has.

It means he's not bound to the little nook. He leaves once he's satisfied that anyone who finds this place next will be greeted by a massive explosion.

He is spy and stalker, an assassin in the deep night. The Taken and Hive and Scorn are enemies, he knows this in his blood that calls them the enemy and his light that marks them evil. He shows them what it means to be a Hunter.

He tracks groups of enemies for days at a time, waiting to find their commanders. From a distance, his Queenbreaker kills dozens. At medium range, he kills them with his handcannon. And up close, his blades are lethal instruments.

When they hide or go to ground in fear, he tracks them down, masking his presence and letting invisibility wash over him.

He learns that he can infuse his blacksteel knife with void light, make it sharper and deadlier. It is a cheap version of his spectral blades, but it makes carving through Hive chitin easier and severs the connection the Taken have with the Darkness far easier than simple steel. And the knife seems pleased with it.

It's odd, but the longer he spends with the blade the more it changes. Once a forgotten a dull silver blade, it is longer now, dark as the night. If he catches the light just right, he can see the intricate patterns in purple carved on its edge.

The Scorn are the most dangerous. They are relentless once they have his scent and the best he can hope for is to find a good spot to stand his ground. Worst of all, they adapt rapidly.

The ravagers soon drop two cauldrons for one, the other replaced by a shield much larger than the ones the lurkers use. With their strength, they don't move any slower.

It's like fighting a knight but worse. Knights are cautious and careful, ferocious only when they have closed the gap. But their shield ravagers follow a simple rule: attack, attack, attack.

That alone he could deal with. But the lurkers adopt phalanx formations, becoming an impenetrable wall of arc death. They box him in for the ravagers to close the distance.

When he tries to flee, he finds raiders harrying him at every step. They dash through the smoke, two arms holding their massive saw rifles and the other two wielding arcs blades to stun and harry him.

Using his super doesn't help. The very first time he popped it in the air, ready to enter the fray, a Raider in the distance had sniped him. It didn't kill him, but the void light drained away completely to protect him.

Soon, it feels like the entire Scorn army is chasing him. He faces a running battle in the underground water reclamation plant, using the cover and high arches for protection. That lasts until they bring in the Abominations who fire a torrent of overcharged ether that destroys his hiding spot.

He wobbles precariously before, managing to maintain his balance. Then something shoots him. The impact dislodges him and he feels into the water.

This isn't going well, he thinks as the water drags him away from the horde. He'd let the water drag him along if not for the fact that he can sense corrupted ether downriver.

He crawls onto the ledge tiredly, cold to the bone and tired as hell.

"Things aren't going very well," his ghost says. "Want me to call some help?"

He would say no usually. Should say no. But he can hear a group of Chieftain barking orders in Eliksni, commanding their soldiers to secure the exits and pin him down.

"Yes," he says, speaking for the second time to his ghost.

He still his breathing and hides, vanishing from sight. The only good thing about the murky water is that it masks his scent as he stalks cautiously through chambers and cisterns, hanging precariously on ledges to hide from a patrol.

Smoke bombs are invaluable as traps. Not to harm, but to divert attention away from him. It lasts only until the Chieftain holds back the horde from pursuing, forces them to stay organised and disciplined. With their overlapping sightlines, there's never an opportunity to pick one off from the shadows.

He's currently underwater hiding from the screebs when he hears it.

The sound of a hammer striking steel.

He feels ash and fire and melting metal, feels a raw surge of solar power in the depths of his soul, and for one frantic moment thinks this is another enemy, run, run, I can't fight this—

"That's help," his ghost says, materialising in a flash of light.

Today he witnesses a flaming hammer. He witnesses it carve through ravage shields, exploding and becoming a swirling mass of flames that incinerates more enemies. It is a deluge of fire and death that gives him the willingness to roll out of his hiding spot and see her.

His heart stops.

In the air above is a flaming figure, a blazing hammer like death wielded in her hand. It is the light of the Traveller made manifest to kill as a wildfire kills all forest life, a natural part of the cycle of life. It is the heat of the sun, the power of a nuclear explosion.

If the night and shadows belong to him, then a bloody noon war belongs to her. If the hidden blade belongs to him, then the warhammer is hers. If he is deception and trickery, she is brute strength and unyielding will.

He fires his handcannon to kill a ravager behind her.

She glances at him. Nods once. Throws another hammer.

This is what it means to fight with a Titan: so long as she is here, he knows that he cannot fall for she will not permit a comrade falling. Her blazing hammers will burn a path to the heart of the enemy. Kill the enemy before they can harm her allies. It is a simple philosophy but one deserving of respect.

He dodges between her hammers, sliding and shadestepping faster than ever before. He fires with the Morning Hammer, never missing amidst the swirling sunspots. He reloads like a blur, tracking enemies easier than when he is alone. This is what it means to be in a fireteam: each dodge covers a greater distance, each bullet strikes harder, and death is less likely.

Somehow, he knows the three stalkers above are a waster of her power. He slides forward, firing during the motion. One bullet. Two Bullets. Three dead stalkers later and he's invisible again, moving towards her.

Her super fades and she creates a barrier, a towering wall of raw light. It is a wall that will never fall so long as she is here. It is a fortress, one he can hide behind as she readies her weapons to wage war.

The enemy is in disarray. He won't let the opportunity be wasted. There is a path to victory and he'll build that path with his powers.

"Move," he growls.

The titan rolls to the side as he leaps in the air, summoning the power of the void. It fills his soul and body. The power is too much to contain in a single body and pushes him higher for everyone to see. At the apex, when he would usually summon two daggers, a thought occurs to him.

If she can throw hammers, why can't he throw swords?

There is no reason he can't. He's done it before, once, when his power was running out the first time he wielded the spectral blades. One blade he threw with unerring accuracy and the explosion of void light that followed.

He condenses the entirety of his super down to the two blades. They expand till each is longer than he is tall, the entirety of his power converging to a sharp edge. The void armour and promise of invisibility disappear, leaving him vulnerable.

He sacrifices all forms of protection for pure power.

He swings once and throws the blade, less a sword and more a beam of void destruction. It cleaves the abomination in half with contemptuous ease, continuing onward to strike the ground. The blade explodes, a swirling maelstrom of void light that incinerates the Scorn.

That leaves him with one blade, one weapon to kill the rest. He meets the Chieftain's eyes and sees the hate in them. He doesn't care. The void consumes any fear, any hesitation.

With one mighty swing, the Chieftain burns in his light.

He lands lightly on the balls of his feet, breathing hard.

"Traveller damn," the Titan says. "The Dawnblades are gonna be so pissed off when they hear about this."

He looks over to her, a massive behemoth of armour and raw power. She removes her helmet and he sees the exo war frame beneath, metal dark as midnight and eyes are blistering red.

His ghost appears and scans the exo's helmet.

"This is my Guardian, Miss Nkechi Thirty-Two," it says for him. Good, because he has no interest in speaking to her.

The exo nods, looking him up and down. He doesn't know why, but he can tell she disapproves of him. It makes him glad his helmet obscures his face and his cloak is turned inside out, plain black instead of elaborate gold.

"Interesting hand cannon you got there," the frame says, stowing its fusion rifle. "Reworked wire pistol, right? More a wire rifle than a hand cannon. Nice idea. Why didn't you tell me he was good with making weapons?"

His ghost bobs happily around his head. "Because you never asked."

"What did you do to them?" the machine frame, Nkechi-32, asks. "I've never seen the Scorn use gear or tactics like this."

He stays silent. She has no reason to demand knowledge from him. He does not belong to her, is not her ally. She may have rescued him, and he may owe her a favour one day, but those answers don't belong to her.

"Hm, the silent type. What a stereotype. Look, hunters are stronger as a wolf pack, you hear. One common enemy and all that jazz."

He has a wolf pack. He has his ghost with him. That's all he needs.

"I guess you've done well surviving here this long. This isn't a safe place. Especially not for new Guardians."

"I've tried telling him, Miss Nkechi Thirty-Two, but he never listens."

He rolls his eyes and reloads the Morning Hammer, before holstering it. Walking around with an empty gun is a fool's choice.

"Well, if you need help, you know how to call me. And be careful with that armour. Nearly threw a hammer at you by mistake."

He tilts his head in confusion.

"It looks too much like the bastard who shot Cayde. You probably cobbled together whatever armour you could. It's no worse than all the Guardians looking like Taken or Vex but be careful. Not everyone's going to give you the benefit of the doubt."

He nods once to the exo who nods back. He holds his hand out and his ghost lands on it, humming off-key once more.

"Goodbye, Miss Nkechi Thirty-Two."

The Titan laughs. "Keep him safe."

He isn't sure who she speaks to, but maybe she's talking to them both. They're a partnership, ally and comrade and equal. His ghost returns him to life but he also provides something vital to it. He is determination and rage and tunnel vision whilst it is peace and enjoyment and meandering paths. Two halves of one perfect whole, greater together than they ever could be apart.

Right now, he can't be distracted. No matter how much it would please him just to follow his ghost wherever it goes.

Cayde.

That name fills his mind. And it forces him onward. These last few weeks have been meandering, following his ghost's whims more than heading to the centre of the city. But now it's time to resume his journey.

They leave the underground and head to the surface. Sunlight greets him, hot and humid and blinding. But even if his eyes couldn't see, he could still follow the yearning in his blood to head to the centre of the city.

The time is right for it. He is stronger now, confident in the void light he wields. The Taken do not scare him and the Hive avoid him for his presence means death. The Scorn he avoids, killing them from the shadows whenever they may impede his journey.

There are other lightbearers he encounters on his trek to the centre. Hunters and Warlocks and Titans, wielding an assortment of weapons and waging war against the other factions of the city. He stays away from them despite his ghost wanting to speak to them. They aren't his allies though they both wield the Traveller's light.

After days of walking, he notices that the darkness is back, overwhelming the light. It happens suddenly, like flicking a switch. One moment he's sleeping in a tree, the next there's a Taken Blight right beside him.

He learns from intercepting Corsair communications that this is the week in which the corruption is at its highest. He also learns that the Queen's Court is open for guardians who prove themselves.

---

The Wrath

---

Instinct guides him towards the Observatory. He avoids the Scorn and their war against the Taken and slips inside undetected.

He shivers, taking in the sight of the odd device in the centre, almost like a grand orrery. Yet, it's something so much more than that. It is a piece of science and technology and magic and power, a work of pure majesty and thousands of years of knowledge. Oracle Engine, his blood tells him and he knows it is right.

Lost in his thoughts, he doesn't notice the person entering from the other entrance.

"Hold, Guardian," the woman says loudly, her voice tight. "Remove that helmet."

He glances towards her. Her features are pale, too pale to be natural. Awoken come in every shade of blue, but that is too close to eggshell white. Sickness, he thinks at first.

Delicately, he flicks the clasps keeping the helmet in place. The back folds away, sliding away. He removes the helmet and lets it hand loosely in one hand.

The woman who guards the barrier between him and his goal is tall and imposing, purple hair styled ferociously. She stares at him in rage and anger and horror, her knife gripped tightly in one hand.

"You died," the woman says.

It sparks a piece of his recollection. Petra Venj, the name comes dislodged. Who is she? He is uncertain. Her name means ally, enemy and warden all at once, a confusing mix that leaves him vulnerable.

The first bullet would take his head if not for his shield. He shadesteps to the side on instinct.

He dodges the knife and draws his gun, firing once in warning. She's already gone, far faster than any other of her order that he's seen since returning.

The bullets strike his shields far faster than he can react. He ducks and weaves, putting distance between himself and Petra. He draws on his light and forges one of those smoke bombs he's become fond of.

He leaps between a pillar and a wall, throwing the smoke bomb. And watching her shoot it mid-air before he even lands on the ground.

He takes a split second to calm his breathing. Takes a breath to still his heart. Vanishes from sight.

Silently, he scrambles up the wall, smart enough to know she will be tracking his previous location. He makes no sound as he reaches the top of the pillar, carefully reaching for the next handhold.

She shoots him down.

How the fuck did she see me? He wonders, landing in a crouch.

She fires relentlessly, features contorted in rage. Every bullet is meant to kill. If he were a mortal, then he would be dead.

He gets ready to summon the void blades and cut her down.

The Oracle Engine surges with power, a deep purple light that washes over the room. It makes him hesitate to summon his super. This may be reinforcements, more enemies that he'll have to fight. Best to save it for them.

"My wrath," a voice calls out from all around them.

The voice is commanding.

Expectant.

Regal.

The voice makes him freeze. It is the voice of a monarch and it knocks free more memories.

Mara Sov, his mind supplies. Queen. Regent. Monarch.

"My Queen," she says in wonder.

"Would you commit regicide, my Wrath?" the voice asks. "Would you kill a prince?"

Petra freezes. Then she takes a breath and relaxes.

"Only at your command, my Queen." She kneels. "What do you wish of me?"

"Leave my brother be. Ensure no Guardians enter this space. Speak of this to no one."

"Understood," she grits out. "I disagree heavily with this course of action."

"Your concerns are noted, my Wrath. But this is no time for emotion." The voice pauses, almost as if in consideration. "Come, lightbearer."

He rises from his crouch and holsters his gun. For some reason, he knows she will obey those commands to a letter. No, she'll obey even the spirit of those orders, never seeking to subvert them.

The weight of duty, he thinks, staring at the woman, this Queen's Wrath. Her armour is light and ornate, but he can see the practicality in the supple leather and armour plates. And from her combat skills, she is peerless amongst the Corsairs, very much the equal to any lightbearer.

"You need an offering," Petra says, so angry her glare would incinerate him if possible.

He shakes his head.

An offering to see a Queen is something for others to present. He may not know his name, but he knows that an audience with the Queen is his right.

He walks past her and ascends the stairs to the gateway between worlds. On the way, he removes his cloak and flips it around, lets the gold embroidery and ornate symbols show prominently once more. If one is to see a Queen, one must look their best.

The instincts that brought him this far, the siren call in his blood and bones, guide him once more. In one hand, he summons forth a deluge of raw light. With the other, he calls on the power he has suppressed, something like the void but beyond the purview of Light—the darkness is heavy, inky black and just as natural to him as the light.

Starlight was my mother, and my father was the dark.

Those words echo in his mind. Both reside within him. The darkness the Taken wield is alien only because of the master they serve, not because it is darkness. Even the overflowing light within him cannot take away that portion of his birthright.

He forms the shape of it in his mind, the key to unlocking this lock. Dark and Light obey his command. There is a code written in the marrow of his bones, a promise that no matter how far away he is, she will always allow him to return. It is a promise of starlight and darkness, a chain that binds him to the one he searches for.

With power and intent, he presents an offering that eclipses all others, sealed in blood and bone: kinship.

The gateway opens and he steps through the blinding light.

---

You Can Be King Again

---

There are things one may notice when they visit this place. Maybe they see the hallway and the strips of light running their height. Perhaps they see the galaxy in all its perfection, a thousand thousand stars like motes of light. Perhaps they take notice of the fine metalworking on the railings.

Ultimately, none of that matters. That is all merely decoration and window-dressing.

The importance of a blade is in the sharpness of its edge, not the jewel in the pommel. The value of a shield is in its structural strength, not the careful gold embellishing. A gun is valued for it fires death, not because it has a nice shader on it.

The importance of a Queen's Court is in the Queen, not the court itself. Place the structure anywhere in the universe and it is merely something to look at. Place a Queen on an empty field, and suddenly that field is a piece of history.

This woman who sits on a throne in the middle of space, a court observed by the stars themselves, is his sister. He knows that because the universe twists itself to write that in his mind. It needn't have. That simple fact echoes in his mind, makes his bones creak and his blood pump.

She is his sister just as the sun nurtures life. Look up and you'll know the sun for what it is. Look upon the Queen and you will know her as Mara Sov.

There is no hesitance as he kneels.

His ghost doesn't care much for propriety. It floats towards his sister who lets it alight on her palm.

"You find yourself in my court once more, lost little light," the Queen says. "Not so lost any more. Tell me, do you enjoy the shell I gifted you?"

"Oh yes, very much, Miss Mara Sov," his ghost says enthusiastically, bobbing happily. "The other ghosts are jealous of it."

"As they should be. It was a gift from the Queen." She turns her head delicately to look at him. "Gifts are given freely. And yet, you have repaid it a thousand times over. What is your name?"

He doesn't have an answer for that. Who is he? Why does he know this woman is the only person to earn his love if he cannot name himself?

"I don't know."

She tilts her head. "You come to my court without knowing your name. Returned from the dead, you kneel without knowing your name. No."

Her eyes burn with power, a glacial blue the fills his with dread. The court itself trembles, shaking with the tremors of her rage.

Pulled Pork, however, seems not to care. The ghost rests on the Queen's knee, watching eagerly.

"We witnessed the stars together," the Queen says softly, cruelly, the stars dying. "We were born of the same womb and you claim ignorance of your name."

Behind her, the nebula swirls faster and faster, bright and glorious as the Queen's power intensifies.

"It was I who named you prince," the Queen says as the air freezes and dies, withering away. "It was I who raised you, third to Awaken in our homeland. And you claim ignorance to the name you chose."

He has never seen a supernova before. That he is certain of. The sight of such would stay with him from life to rebirth.

He sees one today. It is heat and light and wrath, the power of an enraged God. He can't see her, blinded by her power, but everything is the Queen.

"Name yourself before your Queen!"

This destruction and power, this expression of entropy and death, is but a fragment of her majesty.

"Uldwyn," he shouts.

The light fades away. The heat and destruction pass. Normality returns as the Queen considers him as an entomologist considers and a spider.

"Uldwyn was the name you were born to," the Queen muses, running a finger along the ghost's shell. "What was the name you chose, third of your kind? What was the name of your promise?"

This land is home in a way no other can be for it is where his sister resides. He holds a connection to this place through the dark and the light that swirl beneath his skin, a connection deep in his blood and bones.

Perhaps it is because of that, that he remembers.

"Uldren," he says slowly, testing the name. "Uldren Sov."

The memories come back in a rush.

The colony ship of nine-hundred. The birthplace of the Awoken, the first land his sister became a god. The journey back to the solar system fraught with peril. The Reef she was crowned Queen for she will always be Queen.

His infatuation with the Black Garden and the price Jolyon paid because of it. The fucking minotaur and witnessing the heart.

The Wolves and their failed rebellion. Queenbreaker, he remembers, understanding his loathing for the weapon.

Oryx and his war. The terror of watching his sister's ship vanish. Landing on Mars and being taken by the Kings. Breaking the Kell of Kings.

Fikrul and the Barons, and their escape from the prison. Killing Cayde and taking the Ace of Spades.

His obsession with finding Mara and Riven corrupting his dearest wish. He should have shot that dragon as a hatchling. The destruction of his people is because of that dragon. The blood of the Awoken on his hands, all because he sought to claim a prize for his sister.

Wanting is alien to the Awoken, their great weakness and harbinger of death. Anthem Anatheme they call it, the gap between he-who-was and he-who-would-be that can be filled by death and corruption. Loyalty and love for his sister, the desire for her approval, widened that gap endlessly until Riven could corrupt all that he was.

Least of all, he remembers his first death He can't tell who pulled the trigger. Maybe it was the Guardian seeking vengeance. Maybe it was Petra committing regicide.

"So, you do have a name," his ghost says. "I like Uldren. It sounds like you. You even look like an Uldren. Uldwyn sounds right but in the wrong way. Does that make sense? Calling you Uldren is just right."

Her attention shifts to the ghost hovering above her knee, completely ignoring Uldren as he works through centuries, maybe millennia of memories. The recent history is what matters most. The billions of years within the Distributary can come later.

But he shouldn't be able to remember any of this. He knows that. They've met enough of them to know it is impossible for a Guardian to reclaim their memories.

"Names are a promise, little light. The name you take most important of all. Do you know Uldren means loyalty in the Awoken tongue?"

But isn't he the brother to Mara Sov, a god that is Queen and a Queen that is a god, in the lands that are his by right of blood? The Dreaming City belongs to him in a way that no other place can. It is the blood of the Queen and the witch science of her Techeuns, the ferocity of her Wraths, the nobility and strength of Sov blood that built this Dreaming City.

He may not have hewn the stone or provided the power, he may not have constructed the engines that power the city or made plans to connect to the Ascendant realm. But all of that can be traced to Mara Sov and he is her brother.

He is Queensbrother and there is a promise there, an oath between what he is and what he can be. He is part of her legend, a key piece of the puzzle. He is her first champion, her wrath before she was Queen. He was her first counsel long before he became Crow. He held their people's love where she held their worship.

"No miss Mara Sov," his ghost says in response to her question.

"When I was a child it did not mean so. But the actions of your lightbearer made it so."

Every step he's taken has been guided by the city's memory of his lineage, guiding him to his Queen of starlight and darkness.

Maybe if he had risen on any other planet or moon, he wouldn't remember his Queen. Maybe he would have forgotten the story of creation he is privy to. Maybe he would have forgotten his sister.

But this city sings his name and this court whispers ancient secrets freely. It refuses to let him forget. The powers of light and dark that infuse it, the centuries of rule by his beloved sister, the very nature of the Awoken permeates every atom of the city. And each atom speaks to him, calling him to remember and never forget.

When his memories have returned fully, when he is Uldren Sov, brother to the Queen and not a nameless lightbearer, he raises his burning orange eyes to glare at her.

"I hate you, Mara Sov," he says, rising irreverently. "Everything I have ever done, I did for you. Did you mourn, dearest sister?"

She merely watches him from her throne. That is answer enough. He may not know her but she knows Uldren and Uldren knows himself. Her silence is meant to extract pain, to make him reveal his secrets and knowledge before her. It is a punishment worse than a simple answer.

"No, of course you wouldn't," he says playing into her game and not caring. "What was I but another piece of your plans? A sacrifice and a pawn to an indifferent queen."

"I expected more of you, dear brother."

A statement, a fact, but also a lie. It lodges more memories. She is always disappointed in him but only in death does he understand. He is her twin, the one who stood by her from the very beginning. But he is no king, a prince only by virtue of her affection, the affection one has for a pet.

"What was the price of my loyalty? What advantage did it gain you?"

"Entertainment, perhaps? It was your foolishness and love that granted me my greatest advantage: the support and loyalty of the Tower. All it cost me was your death. Easy enough to pay."

"The Awoken are broken, a shell of their former selves because of your gambit. We left paradise at your command, we accepted age and death. All we gained was suffering and misery. All because of you."

"Yes," she agrees regally. "You died for your Queen. Just as my Corsairs and Techeuns and Paladins. They were loyal to the death. Are you still loyal to your Queen in death?"

"Are you still loyal to your people?" he counters.

"Answer my question."

That is how they communicate, one question in response to another. Rarely are there straight answers outside of extraordinary times. This is one of those times.

"You know the answer." Uldren shrugs. "I was never loyal to the Queen Mara Sov of the Awoken."

Pulled Pork stops scanning the baryon flower in the corner.

"Then name your loyalty, Awoken. The name Uldren is a promise of loyalty. To whom did you make that promise?"

"I was loyal only to my sister Mara, the girl who was afraid and uncertain. Not the God-Queen to come. I'm only loyal to the sister I love."

Then, she does something that pierces him to the core. She smiles. It is tiny, non-existent. But to Uldren it is bright as the supernova.

"Yes, your love was always your greatest weakness. It makes you suggestible, susceptible to the Anthem Anatheme. But it was also your greatest strength. You were always my most important piece."

"How is Petra?" he asks lightly, callously.

"I have entertained you enough, brother," she says, hard as diamond. "Do not push me."

"When has Mara Sov been pushed?" he questions, unwilling to let her have the advantage eternally.

To be Mara Sov is to manipulate probability, to change the world merely by existing. Uldren Sov was a part of her story, the dashing rogue to her noble regency. Simply by being beside her, he was forced into that role.

Now, however, whatever probability she forces merely by existing dies before the paracasual nature of the Traveller's light. He is Uldren Sov, lightbearer and Queensbrother. He can be anything he wants.

All he will ever want is to make Mara proud.

The Queen waves her hand and the universe reworks itself. A chest materialises before him.

"Open it," she commands.

He does so, finding two weapons within. It surprises him that she will gift him death and war.

He removes the sword first, holding it carefully.

"This is the Black Talon, made in honour of you. A weapon to commemorate the dead prince. I find it fitting for you to wield it now."

He has lived billions of years, first in the paradise of their people, and many more in this solar system, mortal and weak. The blade is but one weapon he has mastered.

He takes the sword and feels its weight. Heavier than he expects for such an ornate weapon, most of the mass concentrated in the last third of the sword, where the purple orb is housed. He can feel the concentration of power the orb holds, exotic and mysterious.

But so, so intimate.

The design of the weapon is one of his oldest, one that he spent years refining in bursts of inspiration. Impractical, gaudy and against his design philosophy of clean efficiency. But it hides a secret. It may be a melee weapon, but it was designed to bridge the gap between gun and blade. The technology and witchcraft to design it was beyond his knowledge, something better suited to the Techeuns.

Mara would not give it to him were it not everything and more than he wished for.

He affixes it on the left side of his waist. It is his dominant hand. A sign of fealty only Mara will understand.

"They will know your armour."

Which means she doesn't like it, not that she will ever say it like that. Perhaps it is the cloak that bothers her the most. No, it almost certainly is. He doesn't look like a crow without his old cloak. That one was a gift from Mara, a mark of her ownership.

This one isn't.

Or perhaps it is. He made it himself and threaded the marks of the Vestian Dynasty, the marks of Mara, on something he made.

"Perhaps, but it is mine."

He reaches in and removes the shotgun within the chest.

It is short as far as shotguns go, black steel and redwood and silver embellishment. He feels the heft of it, tracing the gold engraving of a crow on one barrel.

The holster is just as beautiful, Awoken-wrought steel and dark leather. It goes on his back, designed for the shotgun's handle to peak over his right shoulder, for his right hand, his off hand, to wield.

Pulled Pork scans the weapon. "Devotion," his ghost says. "I like it."

It's a much better weapon than the Ace of Spades, a gift instead of bloody conquest. They are both weapons of war, but this one means infinitely more.

"You are the Forsaken Prince, a traitor to your people. The Guardians will come for you for the murder of their Cayde. The Fallen Houses see you as an enemy for your betrayal."

"And I'll kill all of our enemies." He stands fully. "What's the plan?"

"What makes the Guardians special?" she asks instead of answering. "They are foolish, confused creatures of repetition. They are not strong. Yet, they kill gods."

"They're paracasual," he answers easily. "Destiny means nothing to them."

"You wield that power now, the ability to outmanoeuvre destiny. It will be your greatest strength in the battles to come."

"Did you know I would return?"

Mara does not answer for a long time, too intrigued by the construct of power she shapes between her lithe fingers. This space is the innermost part of her Ascendant Realm, the place where she is both a god and a believer. She forges something wholly new and unique using the fabric of the dream stuff that permeates her realm

He could pester her for attention. But that would make him a supplicant more than he already is.

"Is the future known to anyone?" she asks, eventually.

"Maybe to a god," he muses. "Riven told me the thousand thousand secrets you tried to hide from me. It told me the secrets of your power, of your nature. What difference is there between the past and future for a god?"

"Are gods immortal? Was Oryx who lived by the sword immortal? Is his Witch-Queen sister who wields a bomb-sword, who trapped my people in this never-ending loop, immortal and eternal?"

And then he understands, for the first time, he understands the plans of his Queen. He is no smarter than he was as a mortal, but death gives one perspective. And perhaps, as a lightbearer, the gap between he-who-was and he-who-will-be is bridged by the impossibility of the light. Perhaps in the absolute selfhood of light and ghost, he can become selfless, impossible to predict and immune from fate.

More likely, she feels affectionate, willing to indulge him more than usual. Which has always been a lot. Uldren Sov, the dashing Prince of the Awoken, most loyal to the Queen and the only one to question Mara Sov. One of the few that she loves, less than herself, of course, but more than most.

"I suppose I can be your pet god-killer." He grins his most arrogant grin, watching her shape the universe with delicate fingers. "And when the Awoken are free, we'll be ready for the last Hive God. We will show it the meaning of war."

Pulled Pork scans him. Uldren blinks, not surprised. One day, he'll have to catalogue everything his ghost has scanned. There may be something useful hidden there.

"Hm," the ghost hums. "You don't look like a god-killer. Are you one? Which ones did you kill? Can I scan them?"

She makes a sound of delight. "Yes, scan their corpses as much as you please, little light. But first, you must kill them. Can you do that for me?"

Pulled Pork bobs happily. Embarrassing. Earnest. Foolish. For some reason, he wouldn't trade the ghost for anything in the world.

"Defeat Savathun and claim its power," Mara continues. "Unseal the Distributary and return the Awoken to this solar system. I shall teach you the secrets to build an Ascendant Realm with your light. Only then can you stand beside me as an equal."

"A Forsaken King," he muses, tasting the promise. "You make it sound so easy."

"Sunder Quira who orchestrates this loop. Defeat the Eternal, sever its connection to power, and consecrate Eleusinia in your light. Do so and free us from the cycle. Be both the bomb and the sword, and perhaps those who are dead do not have to stay dead. Speak to the Techeuns. They will guide your way to the Nine and the weapon they have prepared. Go now."

The audience is done, the universe tells him. Uldren turns, leaving Mara to shape the universe in her hands. His Queen has given her orders. All that matters is that he follow them.

"I like your sister," his ghost chirps. "She makes you talk."

A crow caws, loud and incongruous in this realm.

He looks up to see the bird circling around him lazily. He holds out his arm and it lands. Its feathers are pure white and its eyes the red of arterial blood. It isn't natural, a construct of Mara's power, and a mark of her affection.

He has always loved birds, raptors most of all. But the Crow belongs to him like no other can. It is a mark of intelligence, a guide in the dark, and a symbol for spies. Already, it interfaces with his equipment, granting him access to whatever remains of the Awoken intelligence network and the rest of his mechanical crows across the solar system.

Pulled Pork materialises and scans the crow. "Bran," it names the crow before disappearing in a flash of light.

As he leaves, he hears her final words.

"This was all part of the plan."

Armed with the gifts of his sister and the weapon he forged, Uldren Sov prepares to play a role in Mara's gambit once more. It may be an insane plan. One lightbearer prince facing off against a god, a traitor finding redemption through an insane gambit. It is something out of a tale.

Uldren smiles.

He does love stories.

Perhaps the story of the Forsaken King will be remembered until the stars fade.

---

A/N:

This was written, edited, and revised in a rather feverish three days all because of one cutscene. One god damned cutscene.

This draws extensively from the lore books The Dreaming City, Marasenna and The Forsaken Prince.

Most of this is based on pure speculation and draws a lot on some deep lore. It also takes some liberties on the nature of reality and the importance of legends to the Awoken, and the power they hold.

If you enjoyed this, let me know by dropping a review or even a fav. But know that all of that is unnecessary, and your readership is more than enough for me.

Take care, Guardian, and remember, there's always another secret to discover. And no matter how dark things get, there's always hope so long as you try.

Cheers.