I have a friend.
Do you know how strange that is?
I am destruction. I kill and am killed and kill again. They call me a Guardian but I am no shield. I am the knife they never see coming. The bullet they never feel leaving. I am a weapon, a tool, not alive or dead but somewhere in between.
And yet I have a friend.
His name is Rantharin.
I would say that he keeps me sane but sanity is not required. How could it be? We—the Guardians, the swords of the Speaker—fight impossible odds for impossible ideals. If we were sane we would have used our first bullet on our Ghosts and our second on ourselves. It would be cowardice but at least then we would have been free.
I realise I sound bitter. I will not lie to you and say I am not.
This is a war I did not choose.
I remember little from my past life—a face, a name, though neither belongs to the other—but I have asked my Ghost about me. He remade me, as the dead hand of a dead god, and he knows my body in ways I cannot because it is his will that anchors my Light to this world.
He said he could not be certain, but that from where he found me, from what surrounded me and from the resonance of my Light, he believed I died fighting. Not because I was a soldier—I was reborn as a weapon but my Ghost is sure I was not always this way—but because when the void stares back your only hope is to shoot out its eyes and blind it.
I did not choose this war.
My Ghost chose me.
I should tell you, now, that I do not hate him for it.
I said it was his choice but I lied.
I said it was his will but I lied.
It is the will of the Traveler and I must serve the god that has been chosen for me.
I should tell you, also, that I do not hate the Traveler.
It sleeps. It is no more aware of itself than I was before my resurrection. In the moment before its defeat, it acted as all living things do. It acted to survive. I cannot blame it for that - not when I sit here, still lacking the resolve to end myself before the rest of the universe can.
Perhaps I should return to my friend.
He is a Hunter. He uses a handcannon—almost the same model as mine—and he is better than I am.
I am not weak. I conquered the Black Heart alone and unbroken. I have slain Archons, Nexus Minds, and abominations from the Pit.
He is still better.
In another world, this would be a cause for envy. For jealousy. In another world, I might hate him for taking almost everything I aspire to be, and doing it first.
Here, it is a cause for relief.
When we fight, I know he will kill. When I die, I know he will live. When I lose, I know he will win.
There is no greater security than that of competence.
I call him friend, but that is not quite accurate.
We are arrows, sharing the kinship of the Traveler's quiver.
I do not know what it is like to have friends.
But I know what it means to be a weapon.
I should probably mention at this point that Rantharin is not a name of my invention, but one of the pseudonyms of a friend, who I regularly play Destiny alongside. He is, of course, better than I am =P
