Days passed. We kept traveling, stopping to gather food every time we happened across it. Charles, Naomi, and the baby slowly grew healthier. Their faces filled out, they could travel longer distances each day, and they slept better.
I anxiously measured our pace against the distance to the Last City. We were moving so slowly. At this rate, we wouldn't arrive until midwinter, and there was still the Twilight Gap to cross. It was a steep pass, the only way through the mountains, and winter turned it deadly. Many lives had been claimed on its barren heights.
At the same time, Naomi and the baby couldn't travel as quickly as I hoped they would. On days that they pushed hard and covered miles, the baby cried and seemed to grow ill.
Still, the mountains crept closer. I guided the humans toward the foot of the pass and kept a wary scan out for Fallen. They lurked in this area, preying on refugees and stealing supplies.
One night, as Charles and Naomi ate supper near their campfire, Charles suddenly said, "Naomi, I need to tell you something."
She looked up, inquiring.
Charles gazed at the fire. "Wanderer tells me that I could ... become a Guardian."
Naomi's mouth fell open in shock. "How can that be? You're not dead!"
He explained it to her as I had explained it to him. I listened with misgivings. Naomi's reactions were already negative, her face drawn in horror, silently shaking her head. When Charles finished, she exclaimed, "No! You can't! It would destroy us, Charles. They'd take you away to be a soldier. You'd be a slave to the Traveler like the rest of them. And - and I'd grow old, and you'd stay young." Her eyes filled with tears. She bowed her head over the baby in her lap.
Charles rubbed her shoulder. "I was just thinking ... we're entering Fallen territory. If I was a Guardian, I could protect you."
"You could," she snapped, looking at him, then me. "What then? We reach the City. They realize you're a Guardian. You go off with the Vanguard, while I live in some slum. They say Guardians forget their past lives - you'd forget me."
"Actually," I began.
Naomi pointed at me. "You stay out of this, Wanderer. This is your fault. You're trying to steal him from me."
The accusation stung. I didn't want to steal him - I wanted to enable him to better protect her. I was going to die without a Guardian, certainly, but ruining their family had never been my intent.
Although, that certainly was a possible outcome.
Charles tried to calm her. "Naomi, sweetheart, listen. I'm not trying to become a Guardian. I just wanted your opinion."
She gave it to him, loudly, until the baby began to cry. Then she got up and paced back and forth, making soothing sounds, while shooting me dirty looks.
Charles cleaned the dishes away in silence, packing their bags for the next day. He didn't look at me.
I retreated into the shadowy branches of the nearest tree to avoid Naomi's ire. She made several good points, and from her point of view, I was a threat. I rested on a branch, ashamed. As a Guardian, he would outlive her, and the child, too. How would that stress their relationship?
I wished I'd never found Charles. If only I'd remained in the wilds, blank and apathetic. I'd have died without ever noticing. Painlessly. Starved for Light, grieving my Guardian. But this little family would have starved, too.
I watched them roll out their blankets and settle down for the night. Naomi was crying now, and Charles soothed her. I wasn't welcome in their company tonight.
I kept watch in the tree all night. Nothing moved at close range, but at long range, miles away, I detected the disconcerting movements of alien forces.
The next day, Naomi treated me with such furious disgust that I kept my distance, following them through the trees. Charles never looked at me or spoke to me. They journeyed onward, and I trailed behind.
I could leave them, I supposed. But between Charles's spark calling to me, and the Fallen drawing ever nearer, I just couldn't. Naomi may hate me, but I couldn't bear to see her die, and the baby, too. The Fallen were butchers. I had to stay with the family, if only to guide them away from certain death.
Two days I kept my distance. But the morning of the third day, I timidly flew into camp.
"Where have you been?" Charles said, looking up from his breakfast. Naomi ignored me entirely.
"Around," I said. "Listen, there are F-F-Fallen less than a d-day's journey from here. We must be cautious."
That got their attention. Charles and Naomi exchanged frightened looks. Then Charles checked his rifle magazine.
"Down to half," he said quietly. "If the Fallen attack in large numbers, I won't be able to hold them off for long."
"What do we do?" Naomi whispered. Her anger with me had vanished in the face of this very real threat.
"I'll guide you as b-best I can," I said. "We must reach the Twilight Gap before winter, and there's still so far to go." I glanced at the distant mountains rising blue above the trees.
Charles rose to his feet, lifting his pack and his gun. "Let's move, then."
The Fallen had several encampments in the area, but various teams roved around, gathering resources. I kept my scans on high, watching for them. Twice, I had Charles and Naomi hide themselves in the undergrowth as a patrol passed nearby. The Fallen were humanoid, but with a set of extra arms that gave them a spider-like appearance. They had four eyes, sharp teeth and claws, and consumed a substance called ether rather than Earth foods. They carried knives, electrified spears, and energy weapons.
They were so much stronger than us. Our only hope was to outwit them, because we'd never survive a fight.
That night, Charles and Naomi again argued about Guardians, this time keeping their voices low. Naomi had switched back into operating on pure fear. She couldn't forecast the future, couldn't bear to upset the status quo, and blamed me for everything.
I listened, hiding in a tree, as usual. Despite the things she said, I couldn't hold it against her. She was terrified. Charles was, too, and my offer to make him a Guardian was awfully tempting as enemies surrounded them.
He stayed up that night to keep watch. Once Naomi and the baby were asleep, I flew down to him. "N-no hostiles within a mile."
"Thanks, Wanderer," he said, relaxing a little. He gazed into the darkness for a moment. "If I became a Guardian ... would I lose my memory?"
"That only happens when we resurrect our Guardians from dust," I explained. "We rebuild the brain from scratch. No memories. But you're alive. I won't change anything about you except to grant you a direct line to the Traveler's Light."
Charles studied me. "You're not stuttering."
"No," I said in surprise. "I guess not."
Being so close to his spark gave me a little Light, smoothing away the malfunctions in my core. I'd stutter again the second I left him, though.
Charles studied me for a long moment, then sighed. "Becoming a Guardian is such a blessing and a curse. Would the Vanguard draft me?"
"Possibly," I said. "But most Guardians don't have families. More likely, they'd arrange for you to work in the Tower and live there with Naomi and the baby. This situation isn't exactly normal."
Charles drummed his fingers against his rifle's stock. "If ... If the Fallen kill me ... could you bring me back?"
He was already envisioning a desperate fight ahead of us.
"Yes," I said quietly. "As a Guardian."
He bowed his head for a long moment. "If it happens, it happens." He gave me a sharp look. "Otherwise, don't do it unless I ask."
"Of course not," I said wearily. "I'm your friend, not your master. I never wanted that."
Mollified, he sat back against a tree. "Keep your scans going, Wanderer. I don't plan to die tonight."
I kept watch, even letting him doze in the small hours of the morning. His Light fed me a little, but I needed so much more.
Not that it mattered much. If the Fallen sighted me, they wouldn't rest until there was nothing left of me but a few burned fragments.
We managed to avoid the Fallen for another week more. Our pace slowed as we traveled in zigzags, often hiding for hours and losing daylight.
The Fallen picked up our trail in the end. I had seen them hunt and knew that no matter how careful we were, their tracker Dregs would eventually sniff us out.
It was mid-afternoon, and we had been hurrying along a game trail that cut through the trees, keeping to cover. I detected several hostiles keeping pace with us about half a mile behind.
"They're tr-tracking us," I said in despair. "Five Fallen. Likely, they've already summoned a l-l-larger force to intercept us."
Charles swore. "I'll hold off the tracking team. Wanderer, take Naomi and go. Find a place to hide."
There was no hiding, once the Fallen had our trail. But I swallowed my despair and set off into the brush. "This way, h-hurry!"
Naomi followed me, supporting the baby in her sling, pale and wide-eyed.
I wouldn't have to see Charles die. I could bring him back. But I would have to see Naomi and the baby die, and I'd probably be killed, myself. I was only a ghost, with no weapons. The Traveler created me to support a Guardian, not fight battles alone. If only Charles had let me make him a Guardian! He'd be powerful enough to kill every Fallen in the area with his fists.
But I was alone, and Naomi and the child were my responsibility. So I led them uphill, among increasingly huge boulders. My scans showed a wide ravine slicing through the landscape not far off. I dimly hoped we could climb down into it and hide.
But when we reached it, the ravine turned out to be a canyon, hundreds of feet deep, with trees and a river in the bottom. Panting, Naomi looked at me. "We're trapped."
"M-maybe." The shreds of a plan were beginning to form in my mind. A desperate, crazy plan.
I flew along the ravine's edge until I found a boulder near the edge. There was just space between it and the cliff's edge for a person to hide.
"There," I said, indicating it with a scan beam. "Choke point. They-they have to come at us one at a time. You-you have your knife?"
Naomi nodded, squeezing along the narrow ledge. She crouched in a spot a few feet wide, drawing her knife, her other arm wrapped protectively around the baby in the sling.
"I'm setting a tr-trap," I told her. "If it doesn't work ... you know what to do."
Naomi nodded. A quick suicide on a knife was kinder than allowing the Fallen to flay off her skin and limbs.
Now, for the trap.
I flew out over the ravine, tracking, measuring, a fearful, sick feeling in my core. Transmatting was never supposed to be used this way. If the Traveler saw fit to strike me down for misusing Light, I would deserve it.
I set a transmat point a mile in the air, over the most jagged rocks I could find.
Then I returned to Naomi and waited.
In the distance, Charles's rifle cracked over and over. He had sixteen bullets left. I counted silently. After sixteen shots, his rifle fell silent.
Naomi had counted, too. She covered her mouth to stifle a sob.
I watched on scan as a mob of hostiles swarmed in our direction. "Twenty-eight F-Fallen headed this way."
Naomi gripped her knife. "Can your trap handle them?"
"Maybe." I gazed at her a moment. "I j-just wanted to say ... I'm s-s-sorry for making you and Charles fight."
She nodded. "I'm sorry for treating you so badly."
That fence was mended, anyway. If we died, at least I'd have no regrets.
"If-if I fall," I said, "use your knife."
Naomi nodded, but her eyes flashed with fight adrenaline. A snatch of something I'd read flickered through my mind - the female with young is the most dangerous of the species.
I hoped that little fact held true of female humans verses powerful alien warriors.
As the aliens closed in, I flew out of hiding and cursed them in their own language. "Your Archon drinks defiled ether from sick Servitors!"
They looked up, saw me, and snarled, teeth flashing in the sun. They raised their weapons and fired a rain of arc bolts at me.
I ducked behind the rock as the arc bolts sizzled on the ground or sailed off into the ravine. I waited, my transmat beam ready.
The first alien reached the cliff's edge and peered after me, hesitating to set foot on the narrow path between the rock and empty space.
I flashed my beam across him and sent him to my transmat point in the sky.
The alien vanished in a shimmer of light, reappeared in the distance, and fell with a shriek. He crunched distantly on the rocks.
The other aliens crowded up, snarling and cursing. I flashed them with my beam, over and over, transmatting them as quickly as I could. As soon as they vanished, more shoved their way in, waving guns and knives, trying to squeeze into the narrow path. Arc bolts whizzed by my face. I dodged and kept working.
I lost count of how many aliens I sent to their deaths. I was only aware of Naomi waiting tensely behind me, knife in hand, a poor defense against the seven-foot aliens in their armor. The only thing between her and death was a robot with no weapons, who had repurposed his own transmat beam.
The number of hostiles on my scan dwindled. I fought in desperate silence, my concentration absolute, sending them away, sending them away, sending them away.
The last alien rounded the corner at a run and threw a dagger at me.
I dodged, but not quickly enough. The dagger struck me. Something snapped. I spun through the air, struck the ground and rolled to a halt an inch from the cliff's edge.
Was I dead? Had it killed me? I couldn't move, but I could still see. I blinked up at the hulking alien as it crept along the narrow path, its four eyes fixed on Naomi. She faced it, teeth bared, knife ready.
She would die. It was a mathematical certainty. If the alien didn't kill her on the ledge, he would throw her off the cliff.
How badly was I hurt? Did my transmat beam still work? My systems flickered with errors. I fought through them, reaching for my beam. One more time, I begged it. One last beam, please!
My systems stabilized for a quarter of a second. It was all I needed.
The alien slashed at Naomi. She parried the blow, but it knocked the blade from her hand. She faced the alien, unarmed.
My beam flashed.
The alien went to join his brethren in a long, long fall onto the rocks I had chosen for their final resting place.
Naomi gasped. There was silence for a long moment. No more aliens appeared. My flickering scans were empty. I stared at the cloudless sky. My repulsors didn't work and I couldn't move. "Na-Naomi," I said. "They-they-they're gone. Am I-I-I dead?"
She stooped and lifted me carefully. "Poor Wanderer," she murmured, gazing into my eye. "Half your shell is gone."
That was the snap I had heard. How was I still alive? My core had somehow escaped damage, although errors still flashed through my systems. I needed Light in order to heal. I had expended so much energy, my spark had been nearly quenched.
"Charles," I whispered. "We need-need-need to find him."
Holding me like a weapon in both hands, Naomi crept out from behind the rock. "Any aliens?"
"None," I replied.
She asked me this every few steps. My scans remained thankfully empty. I doubt I could have managed one more transmat.
We made our slow, careful way back to where we had left Charles. He wasn't there, but I sensed his spark, and guided Naomi into the brush.
Charles had made his last stand in a little clearing, keeping a tree trunk at his back. He lay at its foot, burned from arc bolts, bloody from stab wounds, the earth beneath him dark and sticky. Flies had settled on him in a cloud.
Naomi sobbed and waved them away, cupping Charles's cheek in her free hand. He had died with a grimace on his face, fighting to the end.
His spark burned on, bright, defiant, singing the song of a hero.
"Wanderer," Naomi choked, "can you-can you bring him back?"
"Yes," I said. "I think."
Half my shell was gone. My spark burned low. I was hungry, exhausted beyond measure, paralyzed. It was time to bond to my Guardian and raise him, but I feared I was too weak.
"Set m-me close to him," I said.
She did, placing me on the ground beside Charles's corpse. I focused on his glorious spark. The spark I was destined to bond with, even after losing my first Guardian.
I opened my shell and felt the remains of it crumble around me. I gave Charles my spark, my life, the pathetic little that remained. My vision darkened.
Then his Light flowed into me, reviving my spark, healing my systems. I gathered it up and used it to mend his broken body, sweeping my healing beam over him again and again. His being focused on my spark in recognition, and he touched me in greeting.
Further Light flowed into me. I, in turn, refocused it into a resurrection beam.
Charles drew a great breath and stirred. As he sat up, Naomi flung her arms around him, kissing him and crying.
I lay on the ground in the remains of my shell. I was reviving slowly, the Guardian bond working its way through me like a rising tide. I had been so starved for so long that my self-repairs might take days, instead of minutes.
As Naomi calmed down, she began to tell the story of how I had saved her and the baby. As she spoke, Charles reached down and gathered up my core and shell. He held me against his chest, as gentle and protective as he was with his own child. I closed my eye and rested, secure in my Guardian's touch.
Charles climbed to his feet, gazing around with an alertness he'd lacked before. "My rifle's out of ammo," he told Naomi, "but the Fallen have plenty of weapons." He walked back along the trail they had taken, examining the bodies of aliens he had killed. He found a high quality arc rifle and several ammo packs.
"Now, let them try ambushing us," he told Naomi. "I have the Light, now. I'm not afraid of them anymore."
Charles led the way, no longer wary and fearful. He consulted me every so often for scans and navigation. Naomi followed him, unsure and a little worried at this change in him.
I could have told her not to worry. Charles had the gifting of a Hunter, and this intensity had always been his - the Light merely amplified it.
As we looked for a campsite that night, I told Charles, "Fallen approaching from the east."
"Right," he said, lifting his stolen rifle. "Naomi, climb that tree. Stay above their line of sight." He boosted her into an oak tree and made certain she and the baby were concealed.
Then he looked at me, still cradled in his hand. "Can you heal me?"
"Yes, Guardian," I replied. I tried twice before I managed to phase, anchoring myself to his position in hyperspace. I could heal him from here, and be out of harm's way at the same time. But phasing had been out of the question when I had been starved for Light.
"Great," Charles said, depositing the bits of my shell in his pack. "Let's try out this Guardian thing."
When the Fallen reached our camp, they found not a pair of fearful humans, but a fully-fledged Guardian who had a score to settle. Their predatory swaggers changed to a panicked fight for their lives.
Charles didn't know the full extent of what he could do, now that the Light empowered him. But when he reached for it, I handed it to him, and it became an electrified staff in his hands. He spun it in circles, striking enemies and killing them with crackling bolts of lightning. It was savage and beautiful, and I loved it.
He hunted around and around the camp until the Fallen were eradicated, their bodies everywhere in the trees and brush. Then he calmly took their best weapons, ammo, and armor, and carried it all back to camp.
Naomi was terrified of him for a while after that. But Charles reassured her that he was himself - he merely had better fighting abilities now. He comforted her the way he always had, and they settled down to sleep.
"Wanderer," he thought to me, where I was hidden in phase. "Keep watch for us."
"Of course," I replied to his mind. "They'd be mad to attack us, now."
He yawned. "Tomorrow, I'm going to raid one of their camps for a pike. No point in walking when we can ride."
The sheer nerve of this thrilled me. "What gave you that idea?"
"I've wanted to do it since we got out here," he replied. "It's so hard on Naomi and the baby to travel on foot like this. But robbing the Fallen would have been suicide."
"Not anymore," I said.
"Not anymore," he agreed.
A little later, after Naomi and the baby were asleep, Charles thought to me again, "Wanderer?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you for saving them. I've never heard of a ghost transmatting enemies before."
"Me neither," I replied ruefully. "I'm not entirely sure I didn't break some kind of rule. But I didn't want to see them die. And ... so I misused my Light. It almost killed me."
"I felt you struggling to raise me," he thought. "You were so weak. Are you any better now?" His concern touched me, as powerful as his concern for his wife and child.
"Much better," I reassured him. "Your spark has healed me." It also nourished me, satiating the terrible lonely hunger that had plagued me for six years. A ghost without Light is as good as dead. But now I was bonded to his great, fiery spark, brighter even than Thrand's had been. I was content, warm, secure in our bond. And I could talk again.
My only regret was losing my shell. It was my last connection with Thrand. Without it, I was only a small, naked core with no protection at all. So I hid in phase where nobody would see me.
A little later, Charles's drowsy thought reached me. "Should I still call you Wanderer, then?"
What had my original name been? I had to think for a while. Thrand had called me Sigma, but when he died, so had the name.
"Wanderer suits me," I told Charles. "But you could shorten it to Wand and I wouldn't mind."
"Wand," he thought with sleepy amusement. "My very own magic Wand."
Then he was asleep. I kept watch, powered by my Guardian's spark, thinking about the future.
Once we secured a pike, we could reach the Twilight Gap within two weeks. The crossing would take another three. Then we'd find the Last City spread out below us within its walls, the Traveler dominating the sky overhead.
They'd take us in, and there would be quite a stir when one of the refugees turned out to be a Guardian. They'd want to put Charles in the Vanguard at once. But I knew how the Vanguard worked. I'd steer him through the red tape, make sure he found a position that kept him close to his family and didn't ship him to the stars.
His son would be raised among the Tower elite. What an education he'd have. Naomi would be treated with the dignity she deserved. They'd have so many opportunities in the Last City.
I had lost my first Guardian, and I'd always miss him. But my second Guardian was just as exciting and satisfying, in completely different ways. More than just a Guardian, I had a family, and we were headed home.
Someday, I'd show Charles Thrand's grave. But for now, I was content to be finished grieving, to be moving on.
The Light would guide us home.
The end