Do you still believe in all the things that you stood by before?
Are you out there on the front lines, or at home keeping score?
Do you care to be the layer of the bricks that seal your fate?
Would you rather be the architect of what we might create?

Architects – Rise Against

October 22, 2958; Infinite Forest, Mercury

Panoptes was not a Mind built for combat. Its strength was entirely dependent on its ability to control everything in its domain. When several elements in its domain simply refused to be controlled, everything fell apart.

Everything.

Panoptes screeched and died. Azra didn't quite believe it; it seemed too normal. The Infinite Mind died just as the Templar had, just like Atheon and the Undying Mind and Brakion- just like a dozen, a hundred other Minds that had met their end at Azra's hands. A boom, a screech, a spray of Radiolaria. The light in its eye went out. Its superstructure crumpled under its own simulated weight. She supposed that was kind of the point of the Vex: they were all the same. Despite differences in collective and frame, they were all of one Pattern.

It was just… anticlimactic, was all.

No other Vex moved to assault her. Azra let herself land squarely on the ground, shield-point hitting and sticking in the rock as she braced herself on one knee. Her eyes were glued to the pieces of bronze that used to be Panoptes, but it was dead. She knew a dead Vex when she saw one.

With a sigh, she let go of the Aegis. It made no fanfare in disappearing; one second it was there, the next it wasn't, leaving no sign it had ever existed in the first place.

Azra rose to her feet and looked around. Osiris stood a few meters behind her, messing with his cubes urgently and muttering to himself. He's probably deleting all the Humanity-dooming simulations, Spark reasoned silently. Sagira floated on by Osiris, watching him.

Azra cast her senses further and found… nothing. It was unnerving. There was just… no sound. No simulated wind to whisper over the stone, no far-off engines or birdsong or running water. With no Vex frames to tromp about, the silence was deafening. It left the sound of Azra's breath loud in her own ears. The smell of burned Radiolaria had evaporated, leaving nothing behind it. The ambient light shone down unshifting, just subtly alien enough to put her on edge. And all the while, Azra's Lightsense blared from a lack of feedback- there was no ground here as far as the Light was concerned, no air, no Sun overhead. Nothing but Azra and a featureless void-

And the Warlock behind her, who was still muttering and clacking his cubes together. Azra spoke just to relieve some of the tension humming through her. "So. What now?"

"Now," Osiris answered her, "now I take control of the Forest. I end this threat, for good." Panoptes was defeated, but there was still the Dark Future to foul. Destroying it would be simple enough with the Infinite Mind removed from the equation.

Sagira finished the calculations, rattling off the necessary coordinates with practiced ease. Osiris fixed them in his memory. And there was the Conflux he required not twenty meters away, positioned front and center where it would be easily accessible to the frames that had worked in this site.

The Hunter watched him uneasily as he strode towards it. Osiris did not meet her eyes. There would be time enough later to find the words he wanted- for now, their work remained unfinished. Apologies and gratitude could wait for this threat to be tamed.

Still, he did note that she was tense as he approached the Conflux. Was she still on edge from the battle just now finished? Was it a lack of faith in him to carry out this final part- or a lack of trust that he would do the right thing?

It didn't matter. The curiosity could wait just as the apologies could. Osiris held his tetrad in one hand and reached out to the Conflux with the other.

This moment had been decades in the making. Osiris had been manipulating the network for a very long time, muddling up simulations, opening doors to a million futures and shutting them again. He had copied his consciousness and sent slivers of himself to the ends of this reality and beyond. He had learned nearly every inch of the Forest, the laws that dictated its twists and turns, the backdoors in its programming. It should have been simple for him to interface and begin issuing commands-

He thought he had been ready. But he had been wrong.

Later, after investigation, he would piece together what happened. Panoptes's will had been undone, the Forest freed from its singular focus. Simulations ran long and undirected. Processes looped and looped and looped through themselves, unchecked. At the speed of Vex computation, it only took a few seconds for chaos to begin to build. There were enough automatic safeguards that things held still, for a time.

But in the moment, this was all he had time to understand: Osiris touched the Forest. There were ripples, enough to perturb the delicate balance. Things happened very quickly; the faint background noise in the system doubled, then quadrupled, then octupled. Superpositions slammed apart, toppling from possibility into existence like boulders down a mountainside. The metastability shattered.

Then, all at once, the Infinite Forest was unleashed. Every Vex processor, every glob of Radiolaria, every function running in the system pulled in a different direction. It was chaos, pure chaos, as reality itself pulled apart in an infinite fractal. There was no harmony, there was no Pattern, just madness.

Osiris was swept away by it. There was noise, so much noise. There were not a million separate simulations, there was just one simulation running a million different scenarios at once, and Osiris was staring into it with eyes he could not blink. It felt like every single thought anyone had ever had was being shoved into his brain. Scenes flashed before him-

a dense jungle smelling of sulfur-

the scrape of a knife against whispering bones-

sand trickling through an hourglass-

a Titan groaning under the weight of a collapsing ceiling-

dark holes full of chittering Fallen language and glowing eyes-

a Warlock looking out over Fellwinter peak and frowning-

gray dust blowing in the wind-

a river eroding its banks in fast motion, writhing like a snake as the centuries pass-

a Hunter, dirt-stained and beaten, gasping to life as she is revived at the bottom of a pit-

There are arms around him, holding on for dear life, and then they are falling together.

They land.

The place echoes so much it is static. A thousand whispered voices blend together into an incomprehensible mush. None of it is important.

Osiris takes the sensations and thoughts as they come to him, too stunned to do anything but note and categorize them as they pass. Sagira is still with him, just as disoriented as he is. He is unhurt. He is not where he used to be.

The ground is milky-white Radiolaria, but it does not sting to the touch. It is frozen in a glassy sheet, impossibly smooth. The reflection of his own wide-eyed face stares back at him. To his left, slate-gray plates breach the surface, forming twisted fractured sculptures. There is a doorway between them. It is impossible to tell how large this chamber is- the distance is a fuzzy, featureless void.

To his right, the Hunter is coughing. She has been coughing this entire time since they landed. It is a repetitive and ineffectual noise, like a program caught in an infinite loop with no termination. She is on her hands and knees an arm's length away from him, hunched with her face buried in her elbow.

Osiris reaches out and touches her arm and she startles back, coughing finally giving way to a gasp of surprise. Space around her gasps, too, and Osiris is suddenly awash in visions of her come sputtering back to life- at the bottom of cold, dark pits-

The visions subside like a wave rolling out. The Hunter sits back, looking stupefied.

"What happened?" Sagira asks.

The Hunter stammers. "I… I-" she chokes on it, face going pale, eyes glazing over.

Her Ghost stutters along with her, hovering at shoulder and ticking his shell in a repetitive motion. "We can't… she can't, I… was, but I won't-"

"Have you died yet?" A familiar voice asked. Ikora Rey stood above them, radiant in purple and scarlet. Her eyes were just as bright as Osiris had remembered them. Her posture was straighter. She wore responsibility proudly and confidently. She had grown since he'd last seen her.

Azra still squirmed under her gaze. She sat in a chair, absolutely covered in filth. "Didn't dare in the Vault, except that one time," she rasped. Her voice was rough and reedy from disuse. "It was real Dark. And then afterwards, I just… managed to… not get killed?"

Ikora nodded her head. Her tone was one of friendly conjecture as she spoke. "Well, I certainly see no reason why you couldn't try for a fresh revive now. If resurrecting in the Vault was what lead to these temporal issues, then perhaps starting again in the shadow of the Traveler will put things to rights. If that fails, try Io. It is still flooded with the Traveler's energy."

Titan Vanguard Zavala interrupted from across the room. He was every bit the same man Osiris remembered him, down to the crisp inflection in his voice that hid his sympathy. "This is fascinating, but there is a very important strike in Old Accra that requires our attention. I'm sure there will be time for this discussion later."

"You need to kill me," Azra says in sudden urgency. They are once again seated on the glassy Radiolaria. There is no sign of Ikora Rey or Zavala, nor the chair Azra had sat upon, nor the filth that had clung to her clothing. "Not… not here-" the Hunter mutters.

The scenery shifts again, suddenly, and Osiris is not sitting on time-frozen Radiolaria, but on the pockmarked concrete of a gun range floor. An apparition of an Exo Hunter is frozen on the other side of the room, a Hand Cannon in his grip.

"No," the Hunter mutters to herself. "Not now, not… then?"

"What is this?" Osiris says. "What did you do?"

The apparition of the gun range vanishes. "I take the fall for you," Azra says matter-of-factly. "Of course-"

"No," Azra will mutter. "No, I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

"If I'd been there-" Cayde-6 will start.

Azra will finish the thought before he can. "Then you'd be suffering, too, and I'd be sad because of that. I'm glad nobody else has to bear this." She will fiddle with a small knife, spinning it between her fingers. "Not you, not Veera, not Osiris, not even Taniks. Nobody."

"It was that bad, huh?" Cayde will say. When Azra doesn't answer, he will make a small, helpless sound and scoot closer on the bed. He will draw Azra into a one-armed hug. Although no sound will escape her throat, her shoulders will shake.

"What are you doing?" Sagira asks. The scene fades.

"Uh… sitting?" the Hunter answers. She sounds almost comically confused by the question. She crosses her legs and leans forward.

"You 'took the fall for me'," Osiris says. "Did… did you take control, too?" The Forest seems bent to her will, making physical shape out of her memories.

Azra's eyebrows furrow. "Control of what?"

"This," the Warlock gestures to their surroundings. No matter how the simulation changes, they seem to always end up back here, with the time-frozen Radiolaria and the strange sculptures of twisted stone.

"The Forest has no control," her Ghost answers. "No focus. It reacts."

"Wait, you can see that?" The Hunter asks, alarm in her voice-

The cave walls were cramped around them. The air felt stale. There were too many people in this small space.

"If you start chasing the future like you can remember it, start feeling for the past like you can relive it, then you don't get to have a present anymore," the Hunter yells. "So focus. It's just echoes. Associations. They don't mean anything, they're not important, so stop. Listening!"

Osiris found himself unable to do anything but observe. He wanted to ask a question, but there was no room for him here in this simulation. The rest of the Guardians stared at Azra in stunned silence.

The Hunter let out a sigh and turned around. "This way," she muttered.

The Hunter continues forward confidently even though the cave vanishes. She doesn't look back.

Osiris stands in haste. What would happen if she caused another scene change and he was caught outside of it? If she leaves, would he be able to find her again?

"Where are you going?" Sagira asks.

Azra's forward momentum stalls. "Hm."

Osiris draws even with her. There is a look of abject confusion on her face, like she has woken up in an unfamiliar place and can't remember how she got there. She doesn't even seem to register his presence.

"Are you alright?" Osiris asks. Something is wrong with her. She had been so focused and concise before- now her train of thought seems to jump at random. She is scattered.

The Hunter shrugs, confusion suddenly gone from her face. "I'm fine," she says casually. "Or I will be fine, and that's the same thing."

"It isn't," Sagira protests.

"It was," the Hunter says tauntingly.

Osiris has concerns of his own. "Panoptes-"

Azra closes her eyes inhales deeply, like she can smell it. "Dead," she says confidently. "Like Atheon. And Quria."

"Quria?"

"Oh wait, not yet." Azra goes from smooth and confident back to confoundment in an instant. "And maybe not ever?" She shakes her head. "Ohhhhh boy. Please, if we talk about this, I'm gonna throw up again."

"What are you talking about, you haven't yet-"

She threw up into the bucket, heaving and heaving even when there was nothing left in her stomach. Cayde-6 was on one side of her, gripping her shoulder and murmuring platitudes that made no sense. Her Ghost was on her other shoulder. She clung to the bucket so tightly it creaked in protest.

"Different topic. Please," the Hunter says, and it sounds more like a demand than a request.

"You are the one that started this conversation!" Osiris protests.

"But I won't continue it, you will!" Azra gestures angrily. Then the anger melts away again to that lost confusion. "Or you won't… Will you?" She breathes rapidly, eyes screwed shut. "I'm okay," she says. "I'm okay I'm okay I'm okay-"

The Venusian night air was cool and refreshing on Osiris's face. A dirt-encrusted Warlock sat opposite of them, a fire in his eyes and a passion in his voice as he spoke. "You have crawled out of hell, from deeper pits than even I could imagine. I don't know where the future will take you, but there are precious few places that you cannot find your way back from."

Azra closes her eyes and puts her face into her hands. "We have to believe this," her Ghost says aloud. "It has to be true."

The other Warlock- he looks familiar, though Osiris cannot bring his name to mind- is frozen now. The whole simulation is frozen. The air is suddenly still. The leaves have paused mid-rustle. Azra is the only thing that moves, heaving breaths as she tries to settle herself.

Osiris finds he has the ability to move, too. He puts a hesitant hand out to touch her shoulder, then elects to simply stand beside her instead. "You took the fall for us," Sagira says. "Did you know this would happen?"

Azra looks up at him with such a sadness on her face. "You… you needed help," she croaks. "Of course I will."

The simulation fades and they are back in the room with the Radiolaria floor. Azra straightens, drawing a deep breath. "I'm okay," she insists. "Or I will be okay, and that's the same thing." She seems to believe it this time, tipping back from despair into an odd sort of cheerfulness.

"You're talking nonsense to me," Osiris says.

She grins. "What's new?" She places her hands on her hips and surveys their surroundings. "So, are we just… hanging out in the Corridors of Time now?"

The Corridors of Time. Osiris has never heard of that name. "Is that what this place is called?"

"No," she says. "This is the Infinite Forest. Though you should know that…" she frowns at him.

Perhaps as erratic as her train of thought is, direct questions will yield better results. "Where is the Corridors of Time?"

The Hunter shrugs. "Where isn't it?"

"So we are in the Corridors of Time?"

The Hunter rolls he eyes. "Yes? No. We're in the Infinite Forest." She frowns thoughtfully. "Though you should know that…"

Osiris is reminded of the early versions of the Vanguard Net. It would be a battle for information sometimes, talking in circles with the computer until you could find the right parameters to give it. "You are of absolutely no help," Sagira accuses.

"Hard to be of help when you can't remember what tomorrow looks like," Azra shoots back cheerfully. "Nonlinear. Haven't I told you?"

"Fine," Osiris sighs. "Is your condition… permanent?"

"Yeah," the Hunter answers, "but it won't be forever." They flicker briefly though that pair of scenes- a bright-eyed Ikora offering suggestions, the gun range and Cayde-6 aiming a Hand Cannon at her head. "Best not to do it here," Azra mutters.

Osiris nods. "Then how do we leave?" He doesn't know their current coordinates, and with what has just happened, he is not eager to try and brute-force a portal.

"Here?" Azra asks.

He waves an arm in frustration. "Where else?"

"If you ask questions, you will get answers," her Ghost warns. "Be simple. Complex things get really complex."

Osiris is going to get a migraine from this. He rubs his forehead. "Yes, fine. How do we leave here?"

The Hunter turns and stares at the broken stone sculptures. "That way," her Ghost says. "It's a facsimile of the real thing, but we can get out the same way."

"We will be lost," Azra murmurs. "I can't… not like this."

"We need to leave," Osiris said. "Panoptes is dead. You have become… compromised."

"Fair," the Hunter says as if he'd simply pointed out a character flaw of hers.

"We cannot restore you here," the Warlock leads. "Ergo, we should leave."

Azra taps a finger on her chin. "You drive a hard bargain," her Ghost announces.

"Let's get going already," Sagira complains. She whizzes ahead towards the sculptures. The Hunter looks at Osiris, shrugs, and jogs to follow.

But then, right before they reach the threshold, Azra stops and throws an arm out. Osiris collides with it. Sagira stops and turns, grumbling impatiently, but the Hunter's eyes are sharp and aware and full of a sense of urgency. "We would get lost," she warns.

"Will we?" Osiris asks. He is much more concerned with their tangible future than conditionals.

The Hunter frowns. "We won't," she decides after a long moment.

"It doesn't matter," the Warlock asserted. Her eyes were green bits of fire in the gloom, full of conviction.

"How does it not matter, Veera?" a Titan yelled. He despaired.

The Warlock's voice was a beacon in the Darkness, a lighthouse showing the way towards hope, towards victory. "How long it has been. If this is the first time or the seventh time we have done this. It is the last time."

"We can be successful, if we just believe we will be," Azra says.

She turns her head and the world shifts around them. They stand now on the steps before the Infinite Forest. Ikora Rey stands to the left. She holds her arms behind her back in a dignified pose, but Osiris does not miss the twinkle of pride in her eyes. Cayde-6 has much less of a sense of decorum, already stepping forward with his arms out. There are jumpships overhead. Several Guardians are transmatting in behind them.

"Is this…" Osiris asks. Is this the actual future? Or just another flimsy simulation of a possibility?

"Don't ask," Sagira mutters in his ear. "I've seen enough to know that question won't end well."

The scene fades, and they stand once again before the threshold. Osiris decides his questions can wait. "You are the one that knows the way forward," he points out.

"That's the thing," the Hunter says. "I will… but I wouldn't have."

Before Osiris can ask for clarification, she decides on a course of action.

"Praedyth!" she calls out. Then, head tilting, listening to the sound as it rebounds back across the void, she turns slightly, cups her hands around her mouth, and yells again.

"Can't a fellow take a simple nap these days without being interrupted?" comes a disgruntled reply.

Suddenly, standing there with them is another figure. Osiris recognizes him- he was the one from Azra's previous vision on Venus. Praedyth was his name.

The Warlock turns, seemingly upset, before catching sight of Azra and Osiris. He suddenly seems to become aware of their surroundings, looking this way and that, alarm growing. "Azra," he says. He looks at Azra, then to Osiris, then balks and glares at his fellow Warlock. "What's happened?" he demands.

"I-" the Hunter begins. She hesitates, hands caught mid-gesture. "He- we…" She is stuttering again, caught up in some incompletable thought process. Eventually she shakes it off. "Yeah. Whatever he's gonna say," she grumbles, jerking a thumb at Osiris.

Praedyth turns his attention to the older Warlock. There is judgement on his face. "We destroyed Panoptes," Osiris explains. "I attempted to take control of the Forest, but something went wrong. She…" he pauses to search for the correct words. "She took the fall for me. As she puts it."

"Azra," Praedyth says, sounding horrified. "You're-"

"Cracked," the Hunter confirms ruefully. "Forever. But not always. And not badly? Could be worse." She shrugs.

"She seems convinced this can be fixed," Osiris says. "But not here."

Their surroundings flicker- once on a gun range in the City, to the steps in front of the Infinite Forest's main gate, to a large room with amethyst walls.

"Azra", the green-eyed Warlock will plead. "Listen. Please."

Azra will stare back dispassionately, cocking her sidearm.

Then they are back in the Corridors. Azra is frowning. "I would get lost," she explains. "Purposeful movement requires cause and effect. Elsewise 'forward' can be any direction."

"Orientation requires both knowledge of where you are and where you wish to be," Praedyth agrees.

They are seated in the Waking Ruins once more. There is cooking equipment scattered over the stone block between them. A small stove sits inactive off to the side. A camp lantern casts an unflickering glow on their surroundings. Sagira looks up and wonders at the star-filled sky while Osiris keeps his attention on the people in front of him.

Azra speaks. "Kabr cracked the glass. I shattered it. But you…" she gestures to Praedyth, who has reverted to his muddy visage. "You can see through it."

"So many futures," Praedyth sighs in response. He sits for a moment, studying Azra, studying Osiris. Finally, he reaches forward and takes the lantern in his hands. All of the shadows shift as he turns the light source over. He addresses Osiris. "I hope you realize the gravity of what she's done for you."

It's Sagira who answers. "I do," she says quietly.

"Many Guardians, including myself, suffer from hubris," Praedyth says. "You, especially. I have paid my price. Today, yours has been denied." He speaks like an ancient oracle extoling wisdom. "There are many fates laid before you, Osiris. I have seen your potential." His hands tighten on the lantern. "I have also seen your failings. I can light your way out of this place, but the path you chose to walk is a decision you must make."

"Guardians make their own fate," Azra chimes in. "Nobody else, nothing else can make our choices for us."

Praedyth nods. "The path you have walked led you into isolation. It would have led to your doom if you'd continued down it alone."

Azra interrupts. "Wait, what are we talking about?"

Praedyth casts a glance at her. With the darkness and the mud, Osiris can't decide he looks in sorrow or compassion. In either case, Praedyth leans forward and holds the lantern out to her.

"What is this?" Azra asks, taking it automatically.

"Clarity," Praedyth says. "And hope."

"I, uh…" Azra says. She shifts her gaze from the lantern to Praedyth, then to Osiris, then back to Praedyth and then the lantern again. "…You can't just do that," she announces.

"Do what?" Sagira asks.

"That's not how this works," Azra's Ghost accuses. "You can't just make things make sense like this."

"Perhaps you can't," Praedyth says imperiously. "But I have seen through the Glass."

"I… thanks," Azra says. She seems more at a loss for words than unsure of how to string them together. She glances at Osiris and in the lanternlight there is an understanding in her eyes.

Clarity, Praedyth had said. The glow seems to cast itself more on Azra than on their surroundings, like she has a personal stage light focused on her. She seems more confident than she had a moment ago. "Are you… well again?" Osiris asks.

"For now," Azra says. "I think?"

Praedyth stands up. Azra follows suit. The simulation reverts again, whisking away the stone and Venusian jungle and replacing it with frozen Radiolaria and slate. The lantern remains in Azra's hands.

"I expect a lengthy conversation when you get back to the City," Praedyth says. "But you have a long walk ahead of you. You'd best be going." He pauses. "Will you be alright?"

Azra takes a deep, steadying breath and clips the lantern onto her belt. "We will," she says with conviction.

Praedyth tilts his head and raises his eyebrows at Osiris in an accusational look.

"I will consider what you have said," Osiris promises. "But I agree we had best leave."

It is enough to appease Praedyth. The Warlock nods. "Very well then. Traveler Bless."

"Have a fun nap?" Azra offers.

Praedyth smiles.

Then Azra and Osiris stand, once again before the threshold.

"Well, that was weird," Sagira comments.

"Your face is weird," Azra jabs back. She hesitates a moment, looking at Osiris with an unsure expression on her face.

Then she shakes it off. "…Come on, let's get moving."