Chapter 39: The Black Garden

"The roles of the Vex, their purpose. Their drive. I can't understand it. Won't understand, didn't understand. But still, they do what they do, the world-minds of the collective passing instructions across time." -File 34423 from Praedyth's Ghost

The Speaker sat with the full Vanguard, eyeing each in turn. "So, Whisper is going to seek the Black Garden."

Cayde-6 nodded, unused to the mixture of pride and worry at the thought. The Black Garden…

"Whisper has, perhaps, already saved the Traveler once. But are we spread so thin we could not spare help for such a critical task?"

Ikora shrugged. "We could, of course. But two things made us reconsider." The Speaker gestured, inviting her to continue. "First, though I don't like to admit it, the odds are that the first raid will not be successful. If we were to send our strongest in force, it could lead to devastating losses. And a larger group may actually have a harder time, generate a more determined response, than a lone guardian."

"And the second reason?"

"And the second reason is the Exo Stranger. According to Whisper, she is the one asking this of her, specifically."

The Speaker considered this for a long moment. "And do you trust this Exo Stranger?"

"Trust? No. But from the little I know of her, she is no friend of the Vex, and she knows more about the Black Garden than we do. If she picked Whisper for the job, then she may be the best choice."

"Then let us hope your faith is well-placed."

…

Queen Mara Sov sat on her throne looking out at the stars, but her thoughts were distant. A Guardian in the Black Garden. The Garden had reacted strongly to Uldren and Jolyon's presence, feeding on the paracausal strength of their Awoken heritage. What would the Garden do with a Guardian?

She frowned, fingertips touching softly, as she recalled her conversation with Uldren on his return all those years ago. His eyes were an open book to her, even his heartbeat discernable. But changed, after his time there. He had never fully recovered.

"Mara, I picked you flowers."

The Queen's retinue parts before Uldren. Astonished eyes flicker between his face, his wounds, and the potted flowers cupped in his hands. Some of them see a madman and reach for weapons before they remember that this is Uldren Sov, Prince of the Awoken, beneficiary of the Queen's limitless indulgence.

"Asphodelia is its name." He kneels and offers it to his sister. "It grew only in the Black Garden… until today. We will plant it here, in our dominion, where I know it will take root and flourish. It will remind the people of our twin heritage."

For a terrible moment, Mara is unreadable. Then she smiles and beckons. "Our brother has attained the Black Garden and returned to us. Come forward." She peels a single petal from the flower and lays it across her fingertip. Holds it up to the light. "Magnificent. Illyn, see to it."

She passes it off. Uldren swallows protest. He'd hoped she might plant it herself.

Afterward, in private, she is silent and still. He tells her everything he remembers. "Did you see the heart?" she asks, softly.

"The heart…" Uldren considers his sister's question. After a while his memories become confused. He was running through a thorny grove, and the branches and prickles were tearing at his cheeks. Huge wet fruits slapped against his shoulders and detonated in overripe pulp. Fruits shaped like heavy, swollen Ghosts. He was huddled with Jolyon beneath a thick cobweb, holding his breath, as they listened to voices argue just outside. His heartbeat… was it his heartbeat? Or another's?

He was in an apartment block. He remembers that. He was sitting in the laundry room, a place with a black-and-white checkered tile floor, watching his crows tumble over and over in the dryer, black feathers flurrying, beaks clacking. A big old female Cabal sat in the tub to his left, scrubbing her back with a wire brush. A Vex Goblin with the face of Alis Li in its stomach stood behind the counter, selling detergent. "Uldren," she said, "you've got a hole in you." The Cabal grunted in agreement. He looked down at himself and there was a hole in his hand, black and perfectly round. His dryer ran out of time, but his crows were still wet.

"Uldren." Mara, shaking him. She does not ordinarily touch anyone. "Did you see the heart?"

It seems the most natural thing in the world that a garden should have a heart. "The Vex infest the place," he says. "It gives them something they crave. It… grows them toward what they want to be."

"You didn't answer the question," Mara says coolly. It's a perfectly sensible observation. It's the strangest thing Uldren has ever heard her say.

"Whatever the heart of that place is," he says, pacing, "it's a seed, I think, a seed left behind to grow. Like a… a node of Glimmer. Or…" The idea strikes him as a thunderbolt. "Or a tripwire. Bait to attract those who seek out and destroy what they don't understand."

Bait for Guardians. Bait to mark some milestone in the Traveler's recovery.

"I told you never to go there," Mara says. Her eyes burn. She draws her cloak tight. "Are you not devoted to me?"

"Sister," he says, "of course I am."

"Yet you defy me."

Yes, Uldren thinks. Yes, aren't those the same thing? How could you care at all for something that never surprises you?

He feels suddenly, utterly alone.

Hmm. She was not sure exactly how the Darkness would react, but it would react. She had prepared for such an eventuality for centuries. It was time to review those plans once more. And this new Guardian, this Whisper of the Traveler – she bore watching more closely. Assuming she survived, of course.

…

The situation on Mars was tense. Vex flooded the surface like ants from a kicked over nest. Cabal patrols, heavily reinforced with Skyburner Legion troopers diverted from Phobos, cut swathes through the Vex, moving constantly to avoid getting swamped.

It took Whisper two days to make her way quietly to within sight of the Vex gate. But, at last, they were here. "Well Blabber? You've been quiet. Normally at this point you would be pointing out how foolish something like this is."

Blabber's voice spoke in her head, the ghost already safely decompiled away. Normally, yes. But not this time.

Whisper looked out at the intimidating scene before them. "Let's hope we're up to the challenge, then."

Yes. I don't think we'll get a second chance at this. But if the Exo Stranger is right and we pull this off, we can save the Traveler. If not, the Vex will seize our worlds. Moments like this is what we were made for.

Whisper pulled out the Gate Lord's Eye to double check it. "Still charged," she said softly. "Are we ready?"

We got the Eye. We found the Gate. We charged the Eye. And Ikora gave us her blessing, for what it's worth. Nothing left but to face the Darkness at the heart of the Garden. I'm with you, Whisper. All the way down.

Whisper smiled, feeling the warmth of his support. "The Vex are going to do everything they can to keep us out of the Black Garden," she warned. And it was the truth. The Vex had camped a small army right on the Gate itself. Hydra surrounded the Gate, ready to take down Harvesters or Jumpships, and a solid core of Minotaurs were stationed right on top of them, while patrols of Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Harpies swarmed around the perimeter.

A large-scale assault just wouldn't work. There were too many of them, and they were guarding their own teleport gate with potentially limitless reinforcements. And that meant they had to be sneakier.

She ran through her weapon loadout again. She'd fought enough Vex to have an idea of what was effective against their void shields, and she'd changed her loadout accordingly. She was sticking with The Devil You Know as her primary weapon with the Chilonis-A sidearm as a backup, but she'd picked up a Tongoku FR2 fusion rifle. It was a common weapon, which was all she could afford after her last shopping trip, but it had two things going for it. First, it was a fusion rifle, which meant it hurled unbridled destruction, and second. It used void energy, which should make it especially useful against Vex void shields.

I guess we're going to find out if the Exo Stranger knows what she's talking about. "Alright, send the signal to Alice and Vistrek. Let's do this."

It didn't take long before thunder echoed across the rusty red landscape, followed by the flicker of weapon fire and brighter flashes of Light.

The vex pivoted as one to face the new threat, and despite the terrible firepower they wielded, it was evident that whatever they were, the Vex units were not intended for combat. Their incredible processing power was occupied with unfathomable purposes and constructing subtlety unsettling architecture, not on little things like flank security or tactics.

She triggered her jerry-rigged Fallen stealth drive and moved out of cover directly towards the Vex Gate. As she neared, dodging between Minotaurs, the Gate Lord's Eye began to hum and the Gate responded. Strange dark shimmers fluttered around the edge of the massive circle that got stronger each moment. The stealth field flickered and failed, and for one terrible moment she was alone surrounded by hundreds of Vex. At least a dozen turned to face her and she leaped forward into the crackling maelstrom of the Gate.

Titanic power surged, more felt than seen, light flashed, and the Vex were gone.

…

She hit the ground with a thud and drew her hand cannon, trying to point it in every direction at once, but there was nothing there. No Vex ambush. "Vistrek, Alice, can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Blabber hummed again. Where are we? If this is the Black Garden, it's not on any map of known space and time. I guess we keep going?

"It's that, or go back to the Vex…" She forced herself to take a deep breath and looked around once more. It was… strange. In a lot of ways it looked like just another Vex structure on Venus, with gray granite blocks interspersed with golden filaments that pulsed irregularly. And yet… Ivy hung from the walls, wrapping around the stone as if nothing had moved here for a long, long time.

Whisper moved forward cautiously, peaking around each corner. After just a few minutes she spotted a group of Vex Goblins. She aimed at the first, but held her fire. There was a squad of six of them just standing there. She walked closer, weapon raised, but they completely ignored her, their eyes powered down.

She examined one closely, curious. Its golden armor had faded with time and moss clung to once-pristine surfaces. They're in some kind of stasis. It was eerie walking among the frozen Vex, her footsteps echoing off the stone walls.

A bad feeling settled over her as she moved forward. It was hard to describe, somewhere between a sinking feeling in her stomach and a tingle up her spine. The feeling seemed to float in the air like an oppressive mist.

It was so disconcerting she missed the first movement among the ancient Vex. A goblin stepped out of the shadows and slammed into her, sending her hand cannon skittering across the stone.

She drove an elbow into the Goblin, knocking off its head in a shower of sparks as three more Goblins emerged. She blinked away and drew her sidearm as the headless Goblin hurled bolts of raw solar energy in every direction.

Her weapon thundered once, twice, and she drove her blade into the radiolarian core of the third.

Well, if they didn't know she was here before, they did now. She recovered her weapon and moved forward through the windy, branching tunnels. Her software was automatically mapping the area as she went, but it wasn't hard to know which way to go. All she had to do was keep moving towards that awful feeling of dread.

She jumped down where the Vex inexplicably left a big chunk of structure out and a patrol teleported in. Her hand cannon roared, taking down several Harpies as she slid left, then traded it out for the fusion rifle as she faced down a Minotaur surrounded by Goblins.

The Minotaur fired its fusion torch which detonated at her feet, blowing away her shields and her blackening armor. Then her fusion rifle replied, hurling void destruction that crashed into the Minotaur's void shield and the harmonic energy detonated in a chain reaction, blowing out and smashing the surrounding Goblins.

She hit the trigger again, holding it down for a second as it charged, and the two void weapons fired as one. The fusion rifle ripped the Minotaur apart. The fusion torch hit her on the left shoulder, launching her backwards. She ricocheted off the stone and hit the ground hard, followed a second later by what remained of her left arm.

Well, we're off to a great start.

Blabber emerged and glowed with Light in the dim Vex tunnels, and she moved on again before more Vex could close in on her. Around another corner she paused. Ahead of her was a clump of chest-high grass in a small pool of brackish water. So, when they said garden, they meant garden garden?

She pressed forward, pushing her way through, and on the other side was a rough-cut stone staircase leading upwards.

Whisper moved up cautiously, then gasped in stunned surprise as the cramped architecture gave way to an enormous vista. Huge fields of violently red flowers stood in stark contrast to the green mist of an endless sky, thick enough it felt oppressively claustrophobic. Paths cut through the fields, angling crazily this way and that, but they seemed almost to have grown into place, rather than built by some unknown hand. And up far and away, the backdrop for the incredible area, was a distant mesa.

Whisper knew immediately she would never forget this bizarre place, and would never be able to describe it fully. It was alive, somehow. Not just the plants, but the garden itself. The paths pulsed with energy in time with the breeze rustling the flowers, like the breath of reality itself. The air smelled sickly sweet, but it was heavy with possibility, ready to gyrate off in unknown realities at the slightest touch.

There is something extremely dark down below. I think we found the Garden's Heart.

"I can feel it." Whisper raised her hand to her eyes, watching the slightest tremble in each finger exactly in time with the pulses from the Garden. She shook her head and refocused. "We have to move."

Agreed. Look there. An icon blinked in Whisper's vision and she looked out into the distance at the shadow of a large Vex unit floating through the Garden inspecting the plants like a bizarre groundskeeper. "Good catch. If we get spotted by a mind that big, every Vex in the Garden will be on us in minutes. I don't like it, but I think we need to get down into the Garden and stay off the paths."

Okay, just… be careful.

Whisper made her way down from platform to platform, dodging between small Vex patrols, until her boots crunched into the moist loam of the Garden's soil, surrounded by vibrant red flowers.

She jumped as a burst of color exploded in every direction, twisting in the air among the flower petals. They were shapes, images even, swirling until they faded away.

"What is this?"

She waved a hand in the air and watched as a flicker of red with her face on it waved back, then vanished. Blabber hummed anxiously. Scans are all over the place. There is nothing, then you move and these possibilities grow, then die.

"A Garden of possible realities, huh? I'm trying not to imagine what the Vex could do with this place."

The flowers rustled as something moved through the underbrush nearby. "Let's go."

They set off, moving cautiously through the fields and trees. Small flowers sprang to life with each footstep and withered away as she moved, unrealized possibility withered on the vine. After only a few minutes however, she saw a larger flower, its petals exploded outwards, but its heart was germinated with words. She stepped closer and the brush of air detached the pollen of ideas into a face she recognized.

Uldren and Jolyon huddle together, shivering beneath a canopy of white tongues. The rain pours down. Uldren can't tell where it comes from, exactly—somewhere up in the green mist? But the rain falls and falls; and he and Jolyon turn their heads up to drink, here at the bottom of a chasm between two flower fields, where the Garden's immaculate surface divides into tropical fetor.

"Everything grows here," Jolyon mutters. "Look at your nails."

Uldren studies his hand. He has a dreadful image of his fingernails developing into tight down-curved loops that curl around back into his fingers, completing a hideous circuit to their root. It's awful and yet it's wonderful, in a transgressive way, in a newborn-screaming way. It speaks to him of new and secret things happening here. "They're dirty," he says, "but I trust you'll forgive me on that account. Rain's not letting up. Shall we move?"

"Aye." Jolyon hauls himself up with a fistful of slithering vines. They try to coil around his wrist. Tiny teeth shaped like letters saw at his skin. He stares at them, starts to say something, and jerks his arm away.

"Are you all right?"

"For now," Jolyon mutters. "For now."

They move down the length of the chasm, green mist swirling overhead, ankle-deep in a wet compost of flower petals and rich black soil. Wide, flat beetles with arching horns wrestle in the earth. Uldren flips one on its back. The beetle has no interior: seen from below, it is just a hollow shell. Jolyon pulls up a fern, and its roots are the branching metallic threads of a circuit board. Tiny squirming things shaped like wet microchips mill in the exposed soil.

"I don't like this place," Jolyon whispers. "We should get back to the surface…"

He means the Garden's surface, the manicured sectors of red flowers that stretch away toward a distant mesa. But it's far too Vex up there, Uldren thinks. They've been in here, gardening, moving earth, making walls, building their ancient constructs of stone and light. Trying to tame this place.

"It's life," he breathes. "You're right, Jol. Everything grows here…"

He cannot let this place be killed. He cannot let it be looted and overthrown like everything else that doesn't fit into the narrow binary dogmas of the Traveler's undead warriors. Excitement seizes him and he runs ahead, sloshing through the muck, laughing aloud.

"Uldren," Jolyon shouts after him, "what are you looking for?"

"I don't know!" he cries back. "That's what's so incredible! I can't know!"

It was starting to make sense. The Black Garden was incomprehensible, but she could know that it was incomprehensible. Whisper started walking in a dream, following the trail left behind by Uldren Sov's passage. Their footprints in the soil, the yellow sunflowers of their fear, the fiercely orange orchids of their courage. Through fields, over rivers of wonder, then down into a clearing with short-cut grass. Vex frozen in stasis stood there around a ring of large stones. She couldn't tell if it was minutes or hours before they found a tree sprouted from the remains of a Cabal. Memory seeds floated on the wind, but at its heart was an idea.

They track the last Cabal soldier from the place of carnage, onward through the flower fields, following the dribble of black oil that escapes the wounded Legionary's pressure tourniquet. Uldren moves with cold, vicious anger. War here in the Garden. Petty, detestable war, brought into this place by some blundering Cabal expedition. They deserved what they got. The Garden must be left to tend itself, mustn't it? It must be allowed to evolve its secret fruits…

The terrain dips. The red flowers fade away to low, woven grasses. The wind whispers… soft words, sentences with just the beginnings of syntax, the cadence almost musical. "Brain stain," Jolyon whispers, fearing infection by a contagious idea. "We should…" But his voice trails off as Uldren pushes ahead, down into a low vale, slipping easily through tangled undergrowth. Vex. There are Vex here, dozens of Goblins and Minotaurs, still as statues and covered in moss, in a ring like some robotic henge. They are singing in faint, wraithlike notes of inhuman clarity. Uldren knows what this place must be.

The Cabal Legionary huddles behind a stone. Uldren creeps forward. By the time the wounded bellowing thing knows he's there, he has a knife pressed to its helmet, right above the cleft of its lips and the soft tissues below. "Don't move," he says, in Ulurant. "Don't speak. This knife is atom-sharp."

"I can tell," the Legionary grunts in its native tongue. "It's roight up in me eyes. Practically shavin' me bristles."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Just abou' the worst place anyone's ever gone?"

"You say that because you can't smell the air," Uldren says. "It's sweet. Like pollen and thunder. Why did you come here?"

"Not by any chance of oir own, ser. The milk robots abducted us."

The whispers have taken on a soft hint of Ulurant grammar, confirming Uldren's suspicion. This is a place where abstract patterns war for survival, fighting to propagate themselves by preying on each other. The Vex are singing to see how the Garden changes their song, and even this conversation has fertilized the air. "Why are they here? What do they want?"

"They come 'ere to pray, ser. They're makin' vessels ou' of themselves. They're the wors' things ever to be, ser. They 'ate existence."

"How do you know this?"

"Oh, frum the seeds, ser," the Legionary says. "Do yeh see them?" And without hesitation or second thought, he punches the emergency medic release on his helmet. The pressure seal breaks and a ring of black gel sprays out, hissing. The Legionary slumps over. His helmet tumbles into his broad lap.

Beneath the layer of gel, the whole surface of his skull has the pitted texture of a strawberry. Thousands of tiny seeds glisten in the Cabal's flesh. Uldren brushes the skin in fascination.

"Uldren," Jolyon radios, "I really don't like the expression on your face."

"This place has secrets," the prince murmurs back. The bone mic feels cold and inorganic, poorly mated to his flesh, compared to the warm, close-packed pits of the Legionary's deformed skull. "So many secrets… They grew in him, Jolyon. The Garden grew its secrets in him."

"Who gives a rat?" Jolyon snaps. "Your Highness, we've got to get out of here. Before whatever happened to them happens to us too!"

He's afraid of secrets, Uldren realizes. The unknown terrifies him. Which is very sensible. Very rational. The attitude of a good scout, a good soldier, a survivor.

But Uldren can't stop imagining how astonished Mara would be at this place. What if he could bring her here? What if they could explore this place together?

Yes, there were the stems of ideas plucked by Uldren's hands to return to his sister-queen. At the thought, a vivid purple thorned rose burst from the back of her hand.

Whisper tore out the rose in shock, sending a shudder through her metal frame. She looked up, gun in hand, at the very center of the Garden where Uldren had turned back. The Vex surrounded this place, their timeless frames overcome with vines and flowers, watching to see how the Garden would grow their song. Three Vex Gate Lords surrounded the center, their arms outstretched to receive.

But there, above them in the air, was the true Heart of the Garden. An enormous cloud of shapeless power, the crackling black a vivid contrast to the vibrant colors of the Garden. The soil beneath it churned in a constant state of flux, possibility growing one moment then rotting away the next to feed new potential.

Darkness. It's right there, the Darkness that destroyed the Golden Age.

It was revolting, but also… enticing. It destroyed everything it touched, but created in equal measure, feeding all possibility at once before pruning it away. It was random, a breath of air as significant as the destruction of a star, but if it could be directed, that awe-inspiring raw potential directed and controlled…

Whisper?

They wouldn't need to cower in the Last City at the mercy of the Vex, the Hive, the Cabal, even the broken remnants of the Fallen. With this power they could break the endless stalemate of violence, they could impose their will, she could recover the knowledge of the Golden Age. Humanity could be great again, strong again, strong enough that nobody could threaten them ever again.

Whisper!

She blinked, wrenching her eyes away from the Darkness swirling above at Blabber's frantic call and she started. Thick tree trunks had burst out of the soil around her, branches growing in twisted shapes, their leaves forming patterns of possibility she could see clear as day. Whisper, standing atop the Clovis Bray facility on Mars, fully restored and thrumming with energy. Whisper in the Hellmouth, slaughtering Hive with fists of icy power. Whisper, making the City the kind of place children like Emilia could flourish in. But every possibility grew from the tree branch jutting from her chest, flowing in every direction around her – the image of her reaching up to the Darkness above.

Referenced Lore:

Quests:

Approach the Garden

The Black Garden

Blood in the Garden

Lore Books:

The Forsaken Prince: After the Heart | Part I

The Forsaken Prince: After the Heart | Part II

The Forsaken Prince: In the Garden

The Forsaken Prince: On the Hunt