From the Void

"Eyes up, Eldrandriel." My ghost spoke throughout the ship. I opened my eyes to find nothing but the vast vacuum of space. Did I really manage to fall asleep? Perhaps I am a hypocrite.

I push the thought away and slide my cheek off of the window. My ears were a little numb from the cold, so I gave them a quick rub. I began to wonder if the ship's heating systems were finally giving out from old age.

Curiously though, the cold did not disturb me. Instead I felt stronger as I felt it. My eyes searched for the heater controls only to find it set for eighty degrees Fahrenheit. Why do I feel cold?

I then noticed why the Ghost had awoken me. A great big circle of blue stared me down through the front windows of my ship. How I missed such a giant was well beyond me.

"Have you ever seen Earth up close before?" My Ghost asked, sounding a little bit curious.

I simply nodded. Earth is a sight I've seen before, but I've only set foot upon it a few times. A long time ago I knew Earth as hope, but when I looked into my sister's eyes for our last few moments that name changed. Hope became nothing. Ironically, Earth has managed to title itself as Hope once again.

Suddenly, the engines roared to life and the ship dived down into the earth's atmosphere. My back was pressed right up against my seat as the ship raced like a bullet from my rifle, with my body struggling to catch up to it. A flame just above the hull of the ship flickered and grew into a great fire before my eyes that swallowed the ship. My ghost notified me that the ship's shields were completely intact, seeming to sense my current fear of being burnt alive.

The ship slowed and I eased forward in my chair. Clouds emerged from the dissipating flames. The ship was shaking rapidly as it attempted to adjust. If I had any food in my stomach, I'm sure I would've been sick. The urge to vomit made me shut my eyes, hoping that I could get rid of that disgusting feeling.

It felt like hours until the repetitive shaking ceased. My eyes opened to find us below the clouds, with rain steadily drizzling above my hull. Quickly I typed on the front pad of my ship, obtaining the image from the ship's lower view. What I saw did not surprise me, but I needed to see it regardless.

Venus was the first thought that came to mind. Beaten up and stripped down cars were scattered everywhere. Buildings with shattered glass through almost every window of every building. The only difference between Earth and Venus was the flora, and perhaps the green tint that Venus has in the air.

Just as the title of Hope began to slip away, it remerged. A sphere absorbed the sky, much like Earth did not long before. I could feel the cold breeze tingling my skin again, but this time I felt heat in my veins. The heat did not seem to make the cold sensation go away, but rather co-existed with it. Was this object causing it somehow?

I shook my head. Obviously a floating ball in the sky couldn't give off such a strong feeling. Instinctively, I turned my head to the right as if I was in my car again, looking through my sister's eyes. What would she make of everything that is happening if she were here?

The ship's descending angle shifted, revealing another sight I did not previously see. There was a large, living city beneath the sphere. Giant walls surrounded it, sheltering those who lived there. My mind went to the Fallen I encountered on Venus. They are on Earth too.

My fists clenched, and my eyes narrowed. This ghost brought me back for a reason. It called me a guardian for a reason. I will face the Fallen again, but this time I'd be ready once I learned everything I need to know.

"Guardian, I would not recommend doing that within the ship!" The ghost warned me, his voice showing how frightening whatever I was doing was. I just pick a point on the ship to look at and give him a face. "What are you talking about?"

"Your hands." I looked down to see my clenched fist. My right hand was on fire but I did not feel any heat indicating that I wasn't just going crazy. I looked more closely at it and noticed that my hand wasn't actually on fire, but rather the flames appeared to be radiating out of my knuckles.

I turned to the left hand and found a completely different sight. Before, I was convinced my hands were clenched, but there was a dark purple energy within the palm of my hand. Despite the fact I knew my fists weren't clenched, it felt as if I was. What is this purple energy?

Then I came to my senses and told the Ghost I must be hallucinating and that there was no chance that I was actually seeing this. Who could radiate flame from their fist? Why would purple energy be sparking in my hand?

"Time to answer all of your questions, Eldrandriel. Welcome to the last safe city on Earth, your new home." The ghost stated without any form of emotion as I unclenched my fists, dissipating the flame and dark purple energy.

The city is beautiful. Lights were flickering everywhere across it. Laughter and happiness radiated through the streets. Men and women walked with a child's hand within their own. Peace at long last has reached humanity, despite me failing to be the one to bring them it.

My ghost slowed the ship quite a bit and flew us towards the tallest building standing. I haven't seen a taller one since my death. It just towered above everything in sight. A hanger bay door opened, and we descended from within it.

I shook my head, disagreeing with my previous thought. Humanity isn't at peace yet. Peaceful people don't need guardians.

When we touched the ground, the line of light from the hanger bay at Mars returned. I shut my eyes as it quickly traveled up my body, disappearing whatever got beneath it, and reopened them a few seconds later.

I found myself standing up outside of the ship facing my ghost that was squinting it's diamond of an eye at me. He shook himself, and began to fly off in the opposite direction as I followed.

All around me I heard voices. I looked around the hanger and found several engineers staring at me and talking amongst themselves.

"I haven't seen her before." One stated. "Did she come off planet? Since when has a ghost brought anyone back from off planet?" I caught someone else saying in a different batch of people. "Oh God, probably another hunter. Like we need more of those."

"Welcome, Guardian." An unseen person stated. I looked around the hanger, searching for the speaker and expecting another ghost, but did not find one. My ghost stopped moving, then looked up and down. A bright blue light sparked out of nowhere, and then a man stood before us with a huge grin on his face.

Something was wrong with this man though. He wasn't human. His skin was slightly purple, and his eyes were orange. Long orange hair flowed from his head. I thought about if his hair was naturally orange, but the thought slipped from my brain as he began to speak.

"It's good to see a new face here. I am Vlado Kriz the slayer of the Darkness, savior of children, and the ladies man." He begins to say, sounding a little full of himself. "Who are you?"

I squint a little at him, uncertain what to make of this arrogant, little thing. "My name is Eldrandriel." I say plainly. How do I know if I can trust these people for sure? Is he even a human? I need them to believe they can trust me though, regardless if they are friendly or not.

I reach my right hand out to shake his, but he grabs my fingers with his and lowers himself to give the top of my hand a slight kiss. This is terrific. All I need is a scoundrel right now when I want answers.

I let him raise himself back up and let go of my hand before I bring it back to my side, despite the desire to fling it out of his grasp and give him a good punch across the jaw. I've never before been attracted to anyone and I don't plan to ever be, which I suppose makes sense given my condition.

"Welcome Eldrandriel to The Tower. Where did you come from? South America? Old Australia?" He asks sounding only slightly curious. Before I can answer, my Ghost tells him instead. "Venus."

Vlado's eyes widened and his face got serious. He turned his head toward my ghost with a deep look of concern on his face. He simply asked "why?"

"Telling you isn't worth my time." My ghost shot back at him. "If I'm going to have to explain why I revived her, then I'd prefer to tell the story to someone who matters."

I couldn't help myself, so I smirked just a little. I've always enjoyed seeing those I dislike get insulted or brought down, but unfortunately Vlado seems to notice that detail. He slowly walks up to me looking speechless, but shakes his head maybe three feet away.

"Follow me. We must bring this to the Vanguard's attention." Vlados turns away from me and begins moving quickly up the stairway out of the hanger as my ghost and I barely manage to keep up with his pace.

We entered an area on the building where there was no roof and it was laid out like a park. Trees and some grass grew before a metal railing by the edge off of the building. A small mail office appeared to be just past a trio of very tall ATMs. People were everywhere. Some were fully armored; others wore very protective looking robes, and the rest had a medium amount of gear fitted with a cloak. All had firearms on them. These were guardians.

I noticed that some of these guardians weren't human or like Vlado. They were machines. As I looked around, I saw more machines but none of them were the same type as what I now knew were guardians. These droids were armed with weapons and reminded me vaguely of the peasant droids of Mars in my old life. We called them that because they did all the manual labor that humans no longer had any interest of. They still seem very different from the ones I remember, but it's good to find something familiar within this past day.

We walked past the mail office and down a set of stairs to find a robot guardian equipped with very heavy looking set of gear blocking our path to the next room. "What business do you have here, awoken?"

I pondered over what he said. Could he be referring to Vlado as an awoken as if this was his species name?

Vlado put his left hand over where a pouch lay on his right shoulder. He pulled out a knife and tossed it around in his hand. "You exos must be programed to follow the rules to the letter, I swear."

The machine, which I assumed are classified as exos, seemed to tighten what symbolized a jaw. "We have free will." He stated sounding offended.

Vlado pointed back to me. "I thought the Vanguards would like to speak with Ms. Venus over here. Protocol is for all new guardians to be found on Earth, correct?"

The exo nodded and held out his left hand, gesturing for us to pass. We walked down another set of stairs and passed through a couple desks before reaching a room with a large table in the middle. Three individuals stood at the table, arguing loudly with one another.

The first to be seen was an blue exo with a horn-like shape sprouting from his forehead, who wore a cloak on his back. An older looking and bald awoken male stood a few feet from him, wearing what looked like extremely heavy gear without much effort. Lastly, was a bald African-American woman who wore purple robes with a hint of pink.

"We can't send more guardians out of Old Russia! The Fallen forces are stronger out there!" The awoken yelled into the face of the cloaked exo. "Fallen?" The women interjected. "The House of Devils focuses their assaults in Old Russia, not beyond it. We have never heard back from anyone regarding our enemy in West Africa. How can we know for sure if they are Fallen?"

"Whose to say those guardians didn't just abandon us?" The exo asked sounding a little sure of himself and his answer. "We have no other enemies on Earth besides the Fallen. A lot of people are going rogue, believing that they can make it on their own or fight the darkness better than we can."

The awoken looked angry, as if the very thought of someone abandoning them was insulting. Before he could say anything that would surely cause more problems, Vlado gave a quick cough so that we would be recognized. The three vanguards turned their heads to face the sudden noise, with their eyes studying my movements.

Vlado stepped down the stairs, with the ghost and I not far behind, and approached the massive table. "I'm sorry to interrupt your lovely breakfast discussion, but we may have a slight problem." The vanguards' eyes did not widen at all, unsurprised by the fact that more trouble was here for humanity.

"Our new edition to the guardians goes by the name of Eldrandriel. While the name isn't as attractive as I was hoping, that is not the problem. Well, at least not your problem." I gave him a slight glare in response to the insult. Vlado grinned only slightly, but forced a stern face to return. "She comes from Venus."

That did widen the vanguard's eyes. Almost on reflex to the statement, they abruptly turned their heads to study me over again with their eyes. The woman turned her head to face my ghost though.

"We set the rule to never leave Earth to search for guardians for a reason, as we do for all of the other rules. Why did you feel obligated to break it?" She asked very coldly, but in a way that seemed as if she were already giving him a lecture on how ridiculous he was. My ghost gave her one of his diamond squints, as if not seeing where he went wrong.

"According to what we have written down, 'ghosts traveling to other planets in the search for guardians is strictly forbidden unless the probable guardian has an incredibly strong connection to the light.' I thought she had just that."

Three different white lights sparked in the middle of the air, and then the figures of much larger and modified ghosts replaced the light. They floated towards me and stopped a few feet from my face just before scanning me. One turned to the woman.

"She has a strong connection to the light, but nothing too abnormal from the norm. In fact, the readings I got from you were much higher than hers, Ikora." The other two confirmed with their owners before all three of them disappeared. The woman did not seem pleased with this information.

"The risk to having a ghost such as you captured was not worth the risk. I apologize if this may come off as rude, Eldrandriel. This is not to say you wouldn't have been revived later, if we would have retaken or were beginning to send guardians to Venus. The problem here is that ghosts are incredibly powerful, while not as powerful as the Traveler, we cannot risk the forces of the Darkness getting their hands on them."

I nodded, somewhat understanding her train of thought. The ghost did manage to bring me back from the dead. What else could it do?

The exo then interrupted. "Perhaps introductions are in order before we continue. I am Cayde-6, vanguard of the hunters. Mister honor and glory over there is Commander Zavala, the vanguard of the titans. Ikora Rey is our vanguard for the warlocks. We might as well make it official now: You're a guardian. We sort of advise and teach those within the three types of guardians."

I turned my head to study them all, just as they had studied me. Ikora then further explained, almost as if she were sensing my curiosity. "Depending on your personality and morals, you'll be placed into one of the three categories. While many other factors contribute to it as well, these are the major two. Hunters are a little adventurous and free-spirited, living up to their name. Titans are honorable and strategic fighters, always ready to face the enemy head on. The ones that I advise, the warlocks, are curious and intelligent individuals, ready to shatter the darkness through finding its weaknesses."

Cayde-6 folded his arms together, and spoke with positivity. "I can already tell you lack the qualities to be a hunter, so no tests will be required in that area. My business is done here, for the moment. Vlado, are you coming with me to the bar or what?" Vlado grinned and quickly ran beside his vanguard while I'm left wondering how a machine can drink beer.

"It's unfortunate there are so many hunters." Zavala spoke up, sounding disappointed. "Some of them make me question how I'm able to work beside someone so uncontrolled. I could use a few more honorable men and women."

"And I need more intelligent thinkers." Ikora chimed in, also opening the doors for me to join their categories. "However, I have one question that might speed this process up: What did you do in your old life for a living? What was your area of occupation?"

I looked down to the ground, debating whether or not I should actually tell them. I haven't told a single soul since I've been revived what I use to do. There's only person that I've ever told. I looked to the right, once again searching for my sister's eyes.

"I used to serve as an agent."