The expanse of observable space is awash with light. Myriad stars, from the smallest brown dwarfs to the colossal superstars of the universe's birth are scattered throughout it. Dancing between them are countless planets, and still more moons dance around them. Suspended between the revolving celestial bodies is a fine powder, a haze of icy rocks and gases. One would believe that the universe is filled with events, of mighty upheavals as stars and planets fall towards one another in the grip of gravity's wells. Apocalyptic impacts, fiery explosions and tectonic upheavals would seem to paint the face of reality, defining the character of this realm in the wake of catastrophe. But this is not the case.

The whole of the universe, like anything else, is made up of nothing. Like so many motes of dust suspended in a sunbeam, the moons and worlds and suns of space are inconstant, in flux. The gravity that holds them together is itself just an impression of their shape upon the emptiness of space. The expanse between even the most tightly-packed atoms is a gulf of magnitude, and the gulf of time between events still wider. And like dust, the matter of the universe is fraying, collapsing. The only truth, the only eternal truth of any kind, is that all things must end. The laws of entropy are inviolable. The will of the Outside knows this, and despises the light. It despises the lie creeping along the edge of its nature, touching its unknowable shape. And it has retaliated.

The anomaly came out of the darkspace (the place/time/event beyond the leading edge). It was not a natural form, not a sphere or disk, but a contoured line with a tapering tip. The shape of a hard black tooth, in accordance with its nature. For a billion years or more it was adrift, cast between the gaps of the universe's undulating shape, falling towards its destination. Its descent and path was not preordained, but inevitable. The fang of the dark sought the finest flesh, the intercise between infinite and oblivion, the center of all things.

After millennia of charting a path through the cosmos, it reached the place and time and moment, the tipping point. The Needle pierced a moon of the gas giant known as Fundament. It sheered through the porous surface of the satellite, cleaving a deep gouge through its rocky face, and fell into the planet's grip. Plowing through Fundament's atmospheres, it blazed a path through layer after layer of planet, and came to rest within it. The remnants of the moon drifted off course and likewise fell, shattering into thousands of pieces and littering the surface of the world.

Thus is it was that the Worms and the Krill came to inhabit the forbidden world. Thus it was that death first touched the great Heresy, and the first note in the song of the Deep became known.


There is no illumination, and I can't see. My hand fumbles around in the darkness to my right, and I find my alarm clock. Depressing one of the buttons on the clock doesn't stop the noise. As I shake off the sleepiness, I cup my hands over my ears to tune it out, the incessant buzzing. It doesn't help. My tinnitus has grown worse, and I'm starting to fear it will progress to total hearing loss at this rate. But until I see a doctor, there is nothing I can do for it.

"Lights on."

Cool artificial lighting illuminates the interior of my home. Flipping my legs over the side of my bed, I lean forward and run one hand through my short brown hair. The wooden boards of my loft creak faintly as I stand up and stretch, and I squint at my surroundings.

My home is essentially a single large room, about twenty feet tall on one side. An industrial sized water heater and pump dominate one corner. During the winter, it can become pretty noisy down here because of it, but at least my rent is cheap. A concrete stairwell ascends up the side of one wall from the water heater to the entry door. My loft is opposite from the heater, and a rudimentary kitchen and living space lays beneath it. The corner between my loft and the heater houses a gym-mat and weight racks, along with some basic exercise machines. To its left next to the heater is a wall-mounted shower head and drain, and a bathroom stall. The corner between the stairs and the loft has a pair of stainless steel worktables and stools, and a large, strange-looking apparatus. One table is covered in spare parts, diagrams and hand-written notes. A 3-d printer is perched on the end of it. The other table is mostly cleared off except for a long-term project of mine. The device between the tables is an old fixed-position virtual reality simulator. Some speakers are scattered around the interior of the room. I like to listen to music while I work, and right now that sounds like a good way to drown out the buzzing.

"Play music, Lupe Fiasco's Lasers."

As I descend the ladder, the music pumps out of the speakers. I cross the carpeted floor of my kitchen and wince as my bare feet touch the cool concrete floor between the carpet and my gym mat.

I start my morning routines with light stretching. My left arm's still sore, and fully extending it causes me shooting pains, but at least I can use it. As I move onto the treadmill, I consider not bothering, but habit compels me. My father taught me routine is the foundation of discipline, and that running is the foundation of athleticism. I never knew my father that well, as young as I was when he left, but I remember the mornings we spent together, honing our bodies. The jokes he'd tell, the play-wrestling. That competitiveness. I miss those moments, sometimes.

I start off at a regular jog, the sounds of my feet and the music a regular beat against the silence. He left my mother and I before I had any hair on my face. I'd be lying if I said I didn't resent him for it, for disappearing. His duty was everything to him, his responsibility to the city was all that mattered. He promised to come back, but left us behind on some black mission for the Vanguard. Before I know it, I'm sprinting, sweating and frustrated. I tag a control on the treadmill and slows to a stop.

I need to cool off.

The cold water does me good, soothing my aching body. Once again, my thoughts shift back to my past. The years after, my father's absence. My mother's cancer, the hopelessness of it. The guilt as I pursued my own future and education as she struggled. If only he'd been there, to help us, support us. She'd still be here if he had cared.

Flipping the water dial off, I pat myself with a towel and return to the kitchen pantry. I'm a bachelor, so I've never been much of a cook, and most of my meals come from restaurants around the Tower's perimeter. I didn't have much in the first place, and the feast from yesterday almost completely wiped out what was here. I withdraw the last few bits of edible food left, and wash it back with a ginger beer.

I dress lightly and go over to my workstation. My hand drifts across the armor on the table. From a young age, I'd always idolized the guardians. To the people of the city, the guardians aren't just soldiers or weapons of the light. They are the holy chosen of the Traveler, the heroes of Light, immortal gods among men. I was no different as a child, and in my mind my father had stood tall, all powerful and all knowing. It took years for me to stop waiting for him to come back.

I'd never understood the draw, the allure for him. He'd called it his duty, his calling. His purpose for existing. But as I replay the moments of last night in my mind, I think I can. The fury, the exhilaration, the rush of adrenaline. The sheer unadulterated terror and exultation of victory.

It's like a drug.

My hands are shaking lightly as I hold them up to my face. I draw them into fists, and look around the empty room. It seems... flat. Two-dimensional, like a picture. Near death-experiences have a way of shifting perspectives. My static existence, the repetition of normal life. I can't go back to that.


I slip the pieces on procedurally, layer by layer. The black suit is a heavily modified Knight/1 suit by Crux/Lomar. The now-defunct company had some revolutionary ideas for armaments, but their armor line wasn't nearly as popular and eventually got phased out. The suits suffered issues with software malfunctions due to over-engineered designs, and had a reputation for unreliability.

By edict, guardian equipment isn't allowed to be dispersed among the civilian population. Following the riots in the wake of the battle of Twilight Gap, the authorities of the city determined restricting weapons and armor access to guardians was the best course for maintaining peace. A handful of these suits entered circulation before the prohibition. It took some time, but I was able to assemble this one piece by piece from a variety of black-market vendors. Whatever I couldn't buy, I've been able to print myself based on old designs. The armor is the culmination of years of effort, and constituted most of my free time outside of work and other projects.

As I slip on the helmet, I thumb a button of the integrated computer on the left arm and the armor's heads-up-display initializes. Checking through the system, I see that vitals monitoring, coms and navigation all seem to be operating normally. The raised, glowing interface above the arm-pad is actually a virtual reality hologram generated by the helmet, and isn't normally visible to the naked eye. I finish mapping the armor to the contours of my body, and proceed to the other table.

I slide a case out from underneath it, and crack it open. A Hakke sidearm sits within, along with some ammunition. It's conventionally known as an Ironwreath. This particular one is an older model, a B rather than D, but is well-treated. It belonged to my father, and it is one of the few belongings he left behind. I withdraw it and slip a clip into the sidearm, then pull back the slide to load the chamber. I pause to admire the workmanship of the weapon, then holster it on my left thigh.

The other weapon resting on the table is a toy I've been working on for some time. It's a modified secondhand GRABT sporting a plain white color scheme. I've reinforced it with additional plating to increase its durability, and rather then three full actuator arms, they've been shortened to stubs at the end. It's a bit less powerful and flexible than it was originally, but the compromise allows me to use the more common standardized power packs found in other kinds of heavy weapons. In theory, rather than slugs it should explosively release a repulsive force. Tests so far have been pretty promising: a few cratered metal plates are laying next to the table.

I stow the tractor cannon on my back, and also grab the Psion beam-rifle. I can't make heads or tails of the indicators on the weapon, so I'm unsure of how much ammo it still possesses. Nonetheless, it joins the shotgun I'm carrying. A pair of EMP-grenade joins a hard-light holographic projector at my hip, and I test fire the FMA (Flexible Metal Armament) installed in my left forearm. A titanium-alloy dart two inches thick flashes out at high speed from below my wrist, impaling through the stainless steel of the table before retracting. I extend it again, holding it up for inspection.

"Groovy."

I do one last tour of my home, circuiting the areas, then ascend the stairs to the entryway. I look back over the place that's been my home for the last twelve years, then turn off the lights and shut the door behind me.


It's a long way to the roof from the sub-basement, and without working power the elevators are out of commission. I stroll up the stairs at a regular pace. The suit is surprisingly comfortable in spite of the exertion; the base layer of the suit is thermally regulated and airtight, and readings from vitals monitoring are constantly adjusting the temperature within. Servos in the armor gather electrical charge from the mechanical action of my arms and legs, powering the suit's systems, so the harder I move and run, the more efficiently it cools me.

While ascending, I pause at one of the floors to look around. Most of the doors are wide-open, their inhabitants long gone. Some of the apartments are ruinous, filled with char and on the verge of collapsing. Others are relatively untouched, as though the residents vanished mid-meal. It's disturbing, the juxtaposition of normal life and the destruction.

I continue upwards, and finally reach my objective: the storage units on the roof. Staying low to avoid drawing attention from a Cabal patrol ship, I crouch between the squat buildings and disarm the lock to my personal storage.

A few power tools and gas cans are scattered around, and a generator sits in the back. An oblong object under a tarp takes up most of the room in the storage unit. I pull the covering free with a flourish.

A piece of art lays revealed. I call her my "shrike". She's a modified sparrow from the EV line, and she cost me a fortune to buy. She sports two big improvements I've added. One is a pair of metal blades on the support struts, facing out towards the front of the sparrow. Unlike conventional sparrows, she is designed for ramming into enemies at high speed. The second addition is a work in progress. When activated, the shrike's levitation field can be inverted; essentially, she can stick to walls and even ceilings. The downside is, this puts a huge strain on the engine and eventually results in catastrophic failure. Until I can get the heat-sink issue fixed, I'll have to use the traction perk sparingly.

I run one hand across her frame lovingly, then straddle her and lean in. My body perfectly matches the contours of her own, and a playfully tweak her throttle to listen to her purr. A quick check over the Shrike's display shows all systems- fuel, levitation, ionic thrust, strafe thrust- as green. I maneuver her towards the entrance to the unit, and flip on my coms.

For the most part, all I pick up is static, but via my arm-pad I can see heightened activity along one of the low frequency bands. Tuning in, I pick up a voice on my coms channel.

"This is Eva Levante of the tower, requesting guardian assistance. We have wounded and children. The Cabal are attacking us. Hurry- we can't hold them off. Oh Traveler, please save us!"

Signal triangulation indicates the survivors are two miles distant. Revving my shrike to full, I activate the ionic thruster and fly off of the rooftop.


Rounding the corner, I spot a team of four Cabal firing at the entrance to the office building. They haven't spotted me yet, and I accelerate at top speed towards the legionnaires. I plow into the nearest, impaling him on the blades of my shrike, and bring the vehicle around to face the other three Cabal. Their fire is being intercepted by the dead body on my shrike, so I withdraw my ironwreathe and open fire at them over his body. My shrike is drifting to the right to avoid incoming fire. Another two go down. Hearing the telltale click of my sidearm, I sheathe it, withdraw the beam rifle, and line it up with his head. The beam erupts out of the barrel and begins melting his head. One explosive decompression later, and all that's left of it is scattered on the ground around his body.

I kick the smoking remains of the impaled Cabal off of my shrike's blades, and proceed towards the office building. A handful of dead civilians are lying in pools of blood among the debris around the entrance. I try not to look at them as I enter.

I hear hushed voices whispering,

"Oh thank the light! A guardian!"

and

"We're going to make it through this."

Perhaps a half-dozen men and women with kinetic weapons are stationed around the building entrance as I enter. They look haggard, and several are sporting injuries of some kind.

I feel bad for misleading them, but I can't really deny it without quashing their hope. And that hope might be the last thing keeping them alive.

A child, perhaps eight or nine, is standing at the entrance to a hallway off the main lobby. She signals for me to follow, and sprints down it and through an open door. I follow her at a close pace.

The room beyond is filled with injured people, frightened-looking children, and the elderly. Many turn to me, faces lighting up in anticipation. I turn back to the girl that led me here. She's standing next to a hoverchair-bound-woman that shares a striking resemblance to her. I recognize the old woman immediately.

Eva Levante used to be a shopkeeper in the tower, and maintained a stall off the hallway to the Tower North. Her main area of focus was in shaders and emblems. She charged outrageous prices for her products, and I was always of the opinion that she had questionable taste based on her inventory. That aside, she was a warming presence of the Vanguard, and her contributions to the Festival of the Lost and the Dawning were appreciated by all. She stopped running her business last November, and rumor was that she'd developed some kind of nerve condition. She was missed, of course, but life goes on.

She smiles up to me from her seated position, and intones,

"My my. I haven't seen that armor in a long time." Her eyes linger on the augmentations of my suit in curiosity, and her gaze drifts back to my visor.

"Thank you for saving us, Guardian. As you can see", she gestures to the others, "we are not fit to continue defending against the invaders. We need to move these people into a safe place, but we have no transport and our resources have reached their limit."

She looks up to me, as though I know the answer to her dilemma. As if I have the solution. I know that look, that adoration. I feel the bile rising in my stomach as I answer,

"I'll get you out of here. That's a promise."

'"That's a promise"'. The last words he ever said to me.

I hear a cry being raised from the front of the building. The Cabal have returned.


The Cabal reinforcements drop down from their ship. I'm counting four- no, five Cabal soldiers. A trio of Psions also descend and spread out around the compound. The five Cabal start their approach to the entrance in a delta formation, weapons firing as they go.

I duck behind the nearest pillar, and try to control my breathing. Depressing a switch on my arm-panel, I activate the enhanced movement mode on the suit. I'm honestly not sure this will work at all. Physics modeling and virtual reality simulations can only go so far. They can't imitate the granularity and harshness of the real world. If this works, I'll be nigh-untouchable to the approaching Cabal. If it fails, I'll look like a fool and die comically.

At this point, I'm actually considering running. These enemies might be more than I can handle alone, and it would be pointless for me to die if they are. But the faces of the survivors in that room, I can't get them out of my head. The faith Eva showed in me.

I can't leave them to die.

I step out from my cover and chuck my EMP grenade in an overhand throw. It flies true, impacting the leading Cabal. An explosion of electricity follows and a cloud of flak drifts over the area, obstructing their vision.

Before they can recover, I activate the thrusters on my back plate and the repulsor fields on my hands and feet, and rocket forward in a semi-crouch. The shots from the two unaffected Cabal go over my head as I accelerate forward. It's difficult to maintain my balance as I slide/dash across the loose terrain, but I just manage as I ramp off of an outcropping of concrete. Flying over them, I extend my left arm forward towards the lead Cabal and raise my hand in a claw-shape. The FMA darts out of it and impales his chest with a sickening sound, and retracts. His chest is spraying blood and he doesn't seem to understand he's already dead as he falls to his knees.

I round on the next-nearest Cabal with my tractor cannon and line up my shot. With an explosion of gravitational power, I literally blow him away. His lifeless body impacts the Cabal behind him, who tumbles onto his back from the force. At this point, the Psions begin joining the fracas and start laying down rifle fire as they weave in-between cover. I fall flat to avoid their shots, using the dead Cabal as cover, and deploy my hologram generator.

A construct of hard light is generated over the device in the shape of a floating laser turret. It brings its sights to bear on the nearest standing Cabal, and they quickly succumbs to its automatic laser fire. Additionally, the motion-tracker in my HUD is being enhanced; thanks to it, I can pinpoint the hidden positions of the three Psions.

I stand and start running, dashing forward as I beeline for the closest two Psions. The dropship fires on the position I vacated, laying down searing-hot plasma on my holographic turret. A few shots overload the light-construct and the generator fails.

I leap over the Psion's cover and put spear the nearest one through the head with FMA. The second goes down from a blast of my tractor canon, its collapsed inward from the force.

The third Psion leaps out from behind cover and begins levitating. Blue energy is coalescing under him.

That's not good.

On instinct, I dash to the right just as a wave of arc energy propagates outwards from the Psion and explodes the concrete debris where I'd stood. Dropping my tractor cannon, I fast-draw my ironwreath and pump three bursts of semi-automatic fire into his chest.

The drop-ship is still firing on me as I dart behind a low wall. I take a quick scan on the surroundings and spot what I'm looking for: a pair of opposing walls between buildings.

I sprint forward at full speed towards one of the walls and leap up to it. Inverting my repulsors lets me momentarily stick to flat surfaces, and with the momentum from my thrusters I'm carried up the wall about ten feet. Kicking off, I leap to the opposing wall, and repeat the process to ascend another ten feet.

My thrusters are spent as I reach the apex of my ascent, and I kick off once more towards the drop ship. I aim and fire my FMA at the underbelly of the Cabal transport, and it pierces and anchors inside. The cable rapidly retracts, pulling me up to the underside of the ship.

With my free hand, I shove my last EMP grenade into the breach, then kick off of the underside of the transport. FMA rips free and returns to my left arm.

I land in a heap onto the hard rocks beneath, just as the grenade detonates. An electromagnetic pulse is released from the grenade and propogates through the Cabal vessel, temporarily disabling its flight systems. The beast comes down hard, and I have barely enough time to throw myself out of the way as it smashes into the ground.

Rounding on the rear of the ship, I bring the beam-rifle to bare on the door-lock and melt it with a sustained shot. The loading ramp falls open, revealing the interior. I put another two shots in the pilot's head as he leaves the cockpit.

Surveying the scene, I feel a profound sense of satisfaction as I note the score of dead bodies. A few of the survivors are peaking out of the building's entrance to see my the status of the battle.

"Hey, did somebody call an uber?"


The survivors don't waste much time as they begin filing out of the building and boarding the drop-ship. In the meantime, I'm busy at the controls, my arm-pad connected to the interface. Fortunately for me, Cabal software is very simple, and aside from secure systems there are practically no security protocols. Getting these people to the nearest entrance to the Underground is as simple as plugging in the coordinates and laying a course on the autopilot. With luck, the Cabal won't know anything's amiss with this transport until the survivors have escaped.

"Thank you, guardian. You have done so much for us."

Eva Levante's praise makes me glad I came out here, and seeing these people reach the Underground would be inspiring. But being called a guardian after so many years of despising and envying them just feels strange to me.

"No thanks necessary, Ma'am. I was just doing my duty."

She smiles, then asks,

"I would know the name of our savior. Who are you, dark knight?"

I'm Batman.

I barely fight off the urge to say that out loud, but can't come up with what else to say. I can't say my name, or I might be implicated for masquerading as a guardian. So I blurt out the first thing to enter my head instead.

"Yusuf."

She inclines her head to me as she ascends the ramp.

"Thank you, Yusuf. I won't forget this act. Stay safe."

The ramp closes behind her, and the ship takes off. As it passes out of sight, another enters the area and opens fire on me. I evade the shots and quickly hop aboard my shrike.

As if.

A field of red ions trail in my wake as I rocket away from the area.


I find another two other groups of survivors as I transit the city, so I point them towards the nearest subway entrances. That's nothing compared to the thousands that lie dead in bombarded buildings, but I try not to dwell on that.

As the second group is retreating down a service ladder into the tunnels, some voices begin to come through my coms.

"-ves, we can't hold this position. Operation Sesame is a bust. The fallen are everywhere."

Lilly's voice rings loud and clear into my headset. Looks like they're in trouble. I take a moment to triangulate their position based on the signal, and place a waypoint to their destination. The Tower.

Out of the frying pan...


I'm near the base of the Tower... or rather, where the Tower used to stand. It looks like the Cabal attack on the complex didn't stop until they'd knocked it off the wall and turned as much of it as they could into slag. Piles of broken concrete, partially melted I-beams and exposed cabling are scattered around the area. As I approach, I pick up the sounds of automatic weapons fire and explosions coming from the East. Withdrawing the beam rifle, I scale the nearest hill and lay flat on my stomach in order to avoid being seen as I scout the area under attack.

It looks like Lilly is under fire from two teams of dregs that are gradually advancing around either side of the debris-pile that's protecting herself and Graves. Graves is gripping an injury on his stomach, and laying with his back to the cover. He looks barely coherent. To their left, a titan with an assault rifle is peppering the incoming dregs to keep them at bay.

A blue-white pulse of energy flashes from a forward position and the Titan goes down in a spray of blood. I can just make out a sniper standing over the crest of a far hill, his weapon trained on the guardians' position.

Withdrawing my beam-rifle, I drill the red-hot laser into the vandal, incinerating his body.

"Shit! Psions too?!" Lilly exclaims, her eyes sweeping across my position to find the source of the shot.

I hop aboard my shrike and quickly ride up to their position. I wave as I dismount.

"Oh thank the light for Cairn. He sent reinforcements after all."

Dismounting, I quip,

"Who were you expecting? The inquisition?"

Her eyes narrow in surprise, and aghast she responds,

"Skip? You're alive?!"

I didn't expect her to recognize me by my voice so easily. If she reports that I'm pretending to be a guardian, I'll be in hot water...

Trying my best to disguise my voice, I respond in a gruff tone,

"Skip? Never heard of the guy."

She seems nonplussed by my answer, then shakes her head and says,

"Ok, not-Skip, just help me kill these Dregs, alright?"

I nod and we get to work. Lilly advances to the right, her scout rifle a regular beat as she places round after round into Dreg heads.

I go down the left, parallel to her and unload my sidearm into the handful of Dreg on my end. I strafe from side to side on approach to draw off their shots, and once I'm close enough a series of stabs with FMA are able to finish them off.

As we both meet on the other side of the junk pile, a Fallen drop ship is pulling away. Thankfully there is enough water from the storm last night for Lilly to notice the approach of new enemies.

"Watch it! We've got Vandal assassins moving in.", She gestures ahead towards the splashing water.

I can't see them clearly, but thankfully I don't have to. I deploy my hologram generator between us, and the light-construct turret shifts to track one of the invisible targets.

With our enhanced motion trackers, we're easily able to identify the approaching vandals. Between my turret and tractor cannon, and Lilly's skill with that knife, we make quick work of the vandals that are left.

The Fallen ship's soldiers depleted, it departs. Lilly starts cheering and unloading empty rounds into the air, then follows it up with some kind of victory dance. I guess I'm still a little self-conscious about this stuff, so I kind of stand there awkwardly until she's finished.

"I need to check up on Graves, get him first aid. Don't go anywhere," Lilly orders me.

Of course, I go exploring anyway. I won't be able to find the Vault if we don't take advantage of the lull in the fighting. So I walk a short distance away and try to figure out the best location to set up a sensor array to locate it.

That's when I notice that my tinnitus is getting worse. The buzzing is growing in volume as I near one of the rubble piles, and I can just make out that a space has been cleared that's big enough to walk through. The tunnel itself looks like it was cleared by hand, and I'm concerned it will collapse onto me as I pass through, but it holds. At the end of the tunnel, I can see the unmistakable shape of the Vault doors. The doors are battered, but it looks like the Vault is intact. It's leaning askew slightly, and upside down, but that shouldn't matter for most of the weapons.

I move in, and look around the interior. Guns, weapon racks and shattered display are randomly scattered around the interior. I walk in to start picking up weapons, but the buzzing in my head is growing unbearable. It's like a swarm of angry bees crawled into my head.

My pain distracts me, and I don't notice as a Fallen Captain appears behind me. His arc-blades flash out in an x-cross and they easily slice through my back-plate. I fall to the floor in pain, and try to bring my tractor cannon around to shoot him. He cuts through it, nearly taking my hand off at the wrist. I'm forced to drop it, and in panic I fire my FMA at him. The spike impacts his shield, but is deflected. Chortling through his multi-fanged mouth, he steps forward and pins me to the floor with one massive foot.

With a kind of patient satisfaction, he slowly pierces through my chest with the blade. It sinks in, inch by inch, and my chest feels like its on fire. Currents of electricity are pouring through my body, filling me with agonizing pain. I jerk and twist, but I can't escape. I can't breathe, my chest is full of fire. He's too strong.

My vision fading, my right hand comes to grip on the handle of a weapon. I bring it to bear on his head, and pull the trigger. Shot after shot strikes his shields, until they eventually fall. I try to hold on, I try to hold out until he dies. The darkness takes me.