Chapter 4: Kel 'Dauram
Kel 'Dauram lived alone. Not just alone in a house, but alone on a planet. There was nothing else there other than the wildlife that he hunted to survive. It was a peaceful life, but it had become almost too peaceful over the years. He had been there for so long that he couldn't actually remember how long he'd been there for. All he knew was that if he tried to go anywhere else, he would be tried and killed.
There were no entertainment feeds, people to talk to, wars to fight. If he tried to practise flying in his stolen Phantom then he would create too much activity and be found. All he did every day was hunt, explore the land, and train for a battle that would never come. There was no future for him other than his solitude.
What he did to get there was not just treachery, but it was the greatest sin of all. He refused to believe. He didn't believe in the promise of the Forerunners, nor did he believe in the unity that the Covenant brought. All of it was just lies to him, ever since he was a fledgeling. Ever since he could remember being young on Hesduros, he had never believed. He was not just a rebel, but a heretic.
"Why are you this way?" his father had asked him. No, that wasn't right. He never knew his father. Why are these words in my head? He didn't know if that was a question he had ever been asked, or if it was something he was making up. He had been in solitude for so long that he had forgotten his own childhood, even when he had all that time to think.
Why am I this way? He asked himself. His solitude was his punishment, and he had no choice but to accept it. If only he had just believed in the Forerunners as Gods, if only he hadn't taken up arms against the Covenant. He didn't know the answer. Years alone with his thoughts, and he still didn't know his own mind.
One day things will be different, he told himself. One day the Covenant will fall, and I will be free again. The Covenant could have already fallen for all he knew, and he would never know. He would live out his days until he died, and became one with the land that he had begun to call his home.
Kel rose as night began to fall over the forest. He made his way back to his home, the remains of the Phantom he had stolen. It was an old transport, so old that it had begun falling apart. The foliage of the world around him had begun growing into it. It would never be put to use again even if he wanted it to.
He lifted his helmet off of his head, and set it against the log of a fallen tree, along with the rest of his armour. It was the harness of a General, one he had killed. The Phantom, as well as the old concussion rifle he used to hunt every now and then, had belonged to the same General he took his armour from. Kars 'Chelamee was his name, that was something Kel would never forget.
Though he didn't believe in Gods or the Covenant, Kel did still believe in honour. And to honour the blood of Kars 'Chelamee that he had spilled, he had painted the General harness. He had dyed it purple with his own blood, slowly working to finish it over his years in solitude. He knew the General would not have been pleased if he was somewhere still watching him, but he hoped he would at least appreciate the small gesture. It was all he could do now, it was too late for anything else.
With his armour shed, Kel lifted himself into the Phantom. The gravity lift no longer worked, nor did the motors in the side doors, and so he had to climb through the lift hole every time. He found the pile of moss and leaves that he had lifted into the Phantom to sleep on, and he laid down. He closed his eyes, and went to sleep.
Kel didn't dream much anymore. Most of the time when he closed his eyes to sleep, he would wake up the next morning moments later. When he did dream, it was of him as a prosperous General in the Covenant military. A future that could have happened. But he did not regret what he did. He wanted to prove that he held onto his own beliefs, and no one else's.
That night was another where Kel did not dream. He woke up the following morning, and rose from his bed of moss the same way he had for the previous years. The same way he would until he died. He slipped out of the Phantom, and made his way to the lake nearby, dragging his armour in a crate behind him.
He bathed in the water as the local wildlife came to drink. Animals of all shapes and sizes, some of which didn't look like they belonged. A giant muscular quadrupedal creature drank a few feet away from him. On any other world a creature like that would have been a natural predator, but he had only seen them eat plants. Koto is what he called those. They didn't have a name to anyone else.
As far as Kel knew, nobody else knew about this planet. Or at least, nobody cared enough about it to chart it. That was one of the few things that Kel had begun to do himself. He knew the area around his Phantom better than the back of his hand, the lake in which he bathed every morning was the largest of many on the continent where he lived, and it was the closest one to his Phantom.
Anywhere Kel went on the continent, he could easily tell where he was. Not just because of his memorisation of the land, but because of the face of the mountain in the distance. He stared out at it as he washed off the dirt from the previous day's adventures.
The koto who drank next to him eventually stopped, having gotten more than enough water to survive for the day. It looked at Kel, and he turned to it. He still couldn't tell what the planet's wildlife thought of him. They had been there for as long as the world existed, and he had only shown up over a decade ago. Not only that, but he was the only Sangheili there. And he always would be. The koto snorted, and it left him alone.
Kel finished washing and he stepped back onto the shore, where he dried himself off. He opened the crate and pulled out his armour. Every time he looked at the helmet he was reminded of Kars. He saw the General's face in it, he watched the light fading from his eyes. He shook his head to get rid of the memory, and he put the helmet on. He got into the rest of his armour, and grabbed a hunting spear that he had carved from the branch of a tree.
Kel made it his next journey to climb the mountain in the distance. He had gone around it several times as he charted the land, but he had never actually attempted to climb it. It would prove a challenging task, but it was one he was confident he could handle. He then set out across the forest as the sun rose in the distance.
Kel made it to the base of the mountain easily, the land between it and his Phantom was quite easy to traverse. He had killed a few rodents along the way that he planned on eating on the way up. At the base of the mountain he had begun setting up a shelter. The trek there was long, and he didn't plan on climbing the mountain on the same day. He started a fire and began to cook the rodents after skinning them with a makeshift knife. They weren't much, but they would be enough to keep him going.
Kel took a look around as his food cooked, and he noticed a strange sight. He felt his hearts drop when he realised what he was looking at. Metal structures jutted out from the rocks at the base of the mountain, he could tell they weren't a natural formation. He quickly scrambled to grab his concussion rifle, only to realise he had left it back with his Phantom. If someone else was there on his planet, the only thing he would have to fight them with was his flimsy wooden hunting spear.
He waited for his food to cook before actually going toward the structures, he didn't want to waste perfectly good food. Once it was finished, he took them away from the fire and stuffed them into a bag. He gripped his hunting spear in his hands as he approached the structure. A sharply edged wall of metal stuck out, it looked like it came from inside the mountain. Kel prodded the metal wall with the spear before slowly pressing a hand against it. It was made of an alloy he didn't recognise, it definitely wasn't something built by Covenant or humans.
What are you? Kel wondered as he stepped away. What was the purpose of the structure? Did it actually go deep into the mountain? Were there more of them? There must be more of them. He turned back to the top of the mountain. Surely there must be more to find higher up. This climb just became a lot more interesting.
He returned to his shelter as night began to fall again, and he ate one of the cooked rodents for dinner. He saved the others to eat during the climb. Once he finished, he laid on the ground and quickly fell asleep. It wasn't the best sleep he had ever gotten, as he was without the comfort of the moss, but it was better than climbing at night.
Kel immediately set out on his climb the next morning as the sun shone down upon the land. There was a small path along the side of the mountain that got him started, from there he had to climb up the side of the rocks. He had no sort of climbing equipment to help him, only his hands and feet. The bulkiness of his armour only made it more challenging, but it was too late to take it off.
Kel was already exhausted by the time he made it halfway up. It had gotten colder the higher he went. And though the sun had not yet begun to set, he suspected he wouldn't make it to the top before nightfall. There was nothing to create a shelter with, so he would just have to bear it. He sat on an outcropping of stone with his back against the rocky wall of the mountain, and he suddenly began to laugh. He defied an entire empire, and killed a Sangheili General with little more than his bare hands, and now a little rock climb was going to defeat him.
Once he felt he had recovered, he began to continue the climb. He didn't make it much further up before he noticed another of the strange structures. It was like a spike that stuck out from the rock, smaller than the one at the base of the mountain, but made out of the same strange material. Behind it was another wall, blocking off what looked like the entrance to a cave. If only he had brought his concussion rifle to blast it open. At least now he had a bigger area to rest, but he didn't rest long.
This climb was not something that would defeat him. He was determined. More of the strange structures appeared at his sides the higher up he went. He wondered how much of the upper half of the mountain was actually stone, or if it gave way to more of the same strange metal. He also wondered why this was his first time seeing these kinds of structures. Maybe they were only part of the mountain. Or maybe there were more underground. Kel had travelled across the surface of the planet many times, but he hadn't yet done much exploring underground. If more strange structures existed elsewhere on the planet, he was going to make it his job to find them.
Kel continued. Higher and higher. The air continued to grow colder, and he started to have trouble breathing. The sun began to set, but he couldn't see it behind the mountain. He wasn't going to let the climb defeat him no matter what. He found another large outcropping of stone to rest on, this one with more of the structures. But these ones seemed different. There was another wall blocking off the entrance of a cave, but this one had a door in it. At least he thought it was a door. It was very strangely angled, but it looked like it would have some way to open.
Kel slowly approached the door and readied his spear in case there was someone behind it. The door suddenly opened, and Kel jumped back as it startled him. But then the door closed. He gave it a confused look before stepping towards it again, and watching it open again. Automatic… Motion activated. If anyone lived there, they certainly weren't expecting visitors. He approached the open door to look inside, but he couldn't see anything past it. Just darkness.
He activated the light mounted on his shoulder armour, and now he could see where the door led. A large cave on the inside of the mountain, one that extended deep down by the looks of it. He no longer saw it as some random traveller's home, but as some kind of facility that had been abandoned at some point. He didn't know it was abandoned, or what kind of facility it even was, but he wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to find out.
What's the worst that could happen? Kel asked himself. He was going through the door anyway, it was the only shelter that he had for the night. He slowly entered, making sure it really was abandoned before deciding to use it as shelter. The large cave had another door in the side that was motion activated as well. When Kel approached it, it opened to a ramp that went down, confirming his suspicions of it going deeper into the mountain. He opted to stay in the cave, as his climb was not yet over.
The cave felt strangely warm, and Kel also felt it was easier to breathe inside. It was perfect for spending the night, other than the fact that he would have to sleep on a bunch of uncomfortable rocks. He laid down on the floor in the corner of the cave. It took him a while, and there was an uncomfortable amount of shifting positions, but he eventually did fall asleep.
This time he had a dream. It was the same dream he always had, or at least it seemed that way at the start. He was a General in the Covenant military, as he had always seen himself. But this time he was in the armour he had taken from Kars, painted the same purple that it was now. He stood in an open field of grass, staring into the sky alongside ranks of various other Sangheili.
In the sky he saw a fleet, at least he thought that's what it was. Strangely shaped starships of immense scale sat against the backdrop of space, they definitely weren't of Covenant design. It was hard to see, but he could tell that they were made of the same alloy as the structures that surrounded him in his sleep. He noticed the other Sangheili around him didn't actually look like Covenant military, they almost looked like mercenaries. But something told him they were his friends.
They all cheered for a victory that Kel wasn't aware of, but he could tell that he was a part of that victory. He hadn't had any similar dreams before that could tell him what was going on, so he just accepted the words of praise he received. The fleet in the sky made a jump to slipspace, and the dream began to fade away.
Kel woke up the next morning more confused than he had been the previous day. Why was the dream different? Did these strange structures have something to do with it? He rose from the uncomfortable floor and looked to the door that led further down into the mountain. Something about these structures was speaking to him, and there had to be more to see further in.
He thought about his climb. At first it had meant nothing to him, it was just something for him to do. But now he felt that there was more of a meaning to this climb. It wasn't to reach the top of the mountain, it was only to find a way inside of it. The dream he had told him that there was something different about the mountain than the rest of the planet, and he had to find out what it was.
Kel approached the door, and watched it slide open. He calmly stepped through, and he made his way down the ramp.
