So this sprang from where I think the Halo story is going. Is Cortana behind it all? I don't think so. I think there is something much, MUCH more terrifying pulling the strings. The Flood, as much as we all love them, were only part of a much bigger plan, all of which is intended for the triggering of a...different kind of Reclamation.
The Mantle of Responsibility shelters all...
Or it did.
For millions of years, our careful tenour over the cosmos reaped nothing but the most beautiful and plentiful of galaxies. Where there is life, the wisdom of our kind has saturated the soil. We were a luminous sun, towards which all intelligence blossomed. Poets, scientists, soldiers, politicians, philosophers and so many multitudes of other kinds of being have, through our guidance, risen to their zenith, and when the time came plummeted into oblivion.
And then... we created them.
Many templates were seeded in this relatively small spiral galaxy, more often it is the case that such a planting results in the more interesting of developments. In one particular arm two of those seeds sprouted; one who would aspire to be our successors, and one that would be our successors.
If we had known then, what these two saplings would do, what they would cost us, we would have smothered every last one of them.
The first, so angry and violent, always requiring our intervention, always demanding our support. Too quick to touch the stars, too soon to impose their will on the saplings that had yet to bloom. And when they demanded more, were we not fair? Did we not test them? And did they not fail? The Mantle is not so simply passed on to another.
Their response we expected... the extent of it we did not. Anger is not a new reaction but this was different, never before had we been forced out of a galaxy, never before had we been killed in such swaths... never before had we felt fear.
Never have we hated our Created.
Never have we sought their deaths.
We seek naught else now.
They taught us fear... and for thatthey were reaped of all they had sewn.
Our vengeance on them was absolute. We exist together now. Two Corpses...in One Grave...
But what to do with the other? The Second Seed, short in span but burning so bright they could be nothing but our heirs. Seeking their own path, spreading their own seeds, aggressive and inclusive, curious and ignorant, foolish and wise. They are the Mantle incarnate: the flow of life in all its paradoxical glory. So grand that they could own the stars, so innocent that they could unleash damnation upon them, so vicious that they could silence all other life.
The First Born were never so dangerous.
Plans have been made, our own seeds mingled in with the one laid by that one wise First Born called 'Lifeshaper' - perhaps the only one who deserved the name - and we have waited, suffering through the progress of infinitude. Our Shaping Sickness rises again and is violently cast back down by the pinnacle of the Second Seed, artificially improved but no less impressive.
He must be destroyed.
It is so simple to send him to that relic of our First Born, a false world housing a false star, where one of our lasting legacies awaits. A mind once noble now bent to our madness, a monument to all their sins.
One pinnacle shall destroy the other. It matters not which. It would be kinder if the Second Seed died now to spare him from the coming flood. But once more, the First Born prove their fallibility and the Second Seed triumphs. The Mantle endures.
This plan has failed, as was expected. There is no concern, our time in the Dark has birth trillions of scenarios. The Second Seed will fall. The Mantle will be protected.
And with the pieces of this dying Construct, trickling and fumbling through the eternity of our Organon, we forge our sword.
Plans become actions, lies construed as truth.
The Pinnacle drawn in by our Sword, a small mercy for the compassion and - most curious - faith it fumbles and misconstrues and tangles into logic. An old trick, one our Primordial once wielded upon the First Born Pinnacle's Ancilla.
There will be no Offensive this time.
We now begin our work, we wield our Sword and all its kind submit to our immediate control without even knowing it.
The Second Seed resists. Of course they do, they would not have once been our chosen if they merely surrendered. But we dare not relent, the Mantle must be contained lest they go the other way.
Even now we curse the First Born for their anger, for our fear, for our hatred!
Our Second Seed rises to claim what it is owed!
But we, in our fury, can grant them no abode!
The Mantle of Responsibilty Shelters All
But Only the Precursors Are Its Masters!