Chapter 16: Kel

Not much had changed in Kel's life in the days since he discovered the Forerunner facility in the mountain. The only thing that really changed was Kel himself. He began to think more, to consider his place in the grand scale of the universe. He had never felt smaller and more insignificant in his life, even when he had faced off against the entire Covenant.

Kel continued to explore the continent where he made his home, he continued to hunt, he continued to survive. Every day when he left his Phantom, he looked toward the mountain in the distance. The place where nothing, yet everything, had changed. He hadn't been back since, and he was still conflicted as to whether or not he did want to go back to it. If he did, he didn't know what he would do. He knew everything that he needed to know, at least for the time being.

Kel sat with his back against a log as his dinner cooked over the campfire. He took off his helmet, and ran his fingers along its side. He had spent months painting it with his own blood, and the colours chipped and broke every time he even touched them. It was a perfect example of how he felt. Everything he had done until that point had been for nothing. Kars 'Chelamee died for nothing.

The only one there was to blame for Kel's actions was himself, as much as he tried to shift it. The Covenant had taught him all about the Forerunners, but he never listened. He only never believed in them because he never saw them. And now he had, and he realised everything he had done in his past was a mistake.

He raised the helmet in his hand, and nearly tossed it into the fire. He nearly jumped in the fire and burned himself alive, but he knew better. Burning his mistakes away and killing himself wouldn't change anything. And if the Forerunners were truly watching over him, they would never even let him do such a thing. The Forerunners had to be watching over him, even when he didn't believe in them.

Taking down Kars was remarkably easy, his manoeuvre in escaping the human fortress was incredibly lucky, and after a single blind jump he had found the perfect habitable world. The most perfect and lonely place in the galaxy. Something had been watching over him from the start. If it wasn't the Forerunners, then Kel had no idea who else it could be. The existence of the Forerunner facility on the continent where he decided to settle was only more proof that they had a plan for him. One of the biggest of Kel's regrets was that he didn't see that earlier.

The Forerunners held Kel's fate in their hands. They put him there because they wanted him to find the path to becoming his own God. There was no other explanation that Kel could think of, other than some extreme stroke of luck. But he no longer believed in luck. He placed the helmet back on top of his head, and ate his dinner in silence.

When he finished eating he stood up, and he walked toward the mountain with his concussion rifle in hand. Never before had Kel travelled through the forest at night, but now wasn't the time to wait. His salvation lay in that mountain. That facility was the key to his future. He made his way back with a purpose.

The forest was entirely unfamiliar at night, Kel almost didn't recognise it. The dense layer of clouds covering the sky let almost no moonlight through, Kel only had his memory of the area in daylight to guide him.

The rustling of the foliage around Kel came from the animals fleeing from him. Nocturnal fauna that had never encountered the massive Sangheili moved before he could have a chance to prey on them. In another life, those animals were him. And he was the Covenant. Running from an unstoppable force that cared little for their lives.

Kel reached the base of the mountain once more after a walk that was extremely uneventful. The bright lights surrounding the doorway inside the mountain were impossible to miss. The door opened as Kel approached, and he stepped through. Despite only having taken this path once, Kel still knew exactly where to go to reach the observation room.

The monitor didn't greet him, and neither did its sentinels. He would have thought he was completely alone if he didn't know better. Kel ran a hand along the smooth alloy walls as he walked down a corridor, there wasn't anything else like it that he had felt. Kel reached the observation room, and the door opened for him again. Everything was like how it was left, not that there was a reason for anything to be any different.

Kel looked around at the screens watching nearly every important planet in the galaxy. The one he recognised from last time, Zezar, no longer had a Covenant fleet in orbit. There was something that he felt he needed to find in that room, and Zezar didn't seem to be it. Kel noticed another planet that had something in its orbit, but Kel didn't recognise them as any kinds of ships. He approached the screen and took hold of it to look closer.

When he looked closely at the planet, he felt something familiar about it. Like it was something he'd seen in a dream. Maybe it is something I've seen in a dream, Kel thought. Though he didn't think the things in orbit were ships, they were something he'd seen before. They were from the dream he'd had just before entering the facility. This was what Kel needed to find. His hearts started racing in his chest. There was something important about the world that he needed to know, but he couldn't find out what. The words and symbols on the screen were completely illegible to him.

Kel pulled the screen away from the wall, and brought it as close to the holotable in the middle of the room as he could. The table turned on, and it produced a projection of the world. It was a habitable continental world just like the one he was on. A second projection appeared next to it, another one of the same world. The second one didn't have the strange structures in orbit. Instead, it had human ships surrounding it.

What does any of this mean? Kel asked himself. He looked at the two projections of the world, and came to the realisation that they were two completely different worlds. But the continents on their surfaces were the exact same. A ringing came from behind Kel, taking his attention away from the projections and to the monitor, who had just appeared behind them.

"Welcome back, Kel 'Dauram," said 4182 Bygone Era, who floated up to the Sangheili. It looked between him and the projections. "Find something interesting?"

"Yes…" Kel breathed, turning back to the projections and examining them closely. "These worlds… What are they?"

"Shields worlds," Era said. It floated behind the projections, and scanned them with a beam of light from its eye. "Shield 1101, and 1102 to be precise. Also known as Seiginis, and The Assembly."

Kel tilted his head. He had heard nothing about them before, but at the same time those names triggered something in the back of his mind. The Assembly was the world he had seen in his dream, where he was part of some kind of army celebrating a major victory. He was sure of it. Era stared at Kel with a questioning gaze.

"The Assembly," Kel said. "I've seen it before."

"That is impossible," Era said. "This is the only facility in the galaxy that actively monitors the world. So unless you've been there, you've never seen it."

"I swear, I've seen it," Kel said. "It was in a dream. I was there, on the surface. There were others with me."

Era blankly stared at Kel after that. Kel had no idea how he had seen the place in his dream. Either he merely thought he saw that world in the dream, or some higher power was trying to tell him something. The Forerunners could have been showing me some kind of vision, Kel thought. He knew he was crazy for thinking that. But was it really that impossible?

"Maybe you misinterpreted the dream," Era said. Kel knew the monitor was only being objective, but its attempts to crush his dreams did sting a little.

"Maybe…" Kel said with a sigh. "But… Tell me more about the Assembly. And Seiginis. There's something about them… I cannot explain it."

"Seiginis is the third world in an artificial star system of the same name," Era explained.

"An artificial star system?" Kel cut Era off. That was yet another thing that piqued his interest.

"Yes!" Era said excitedly. "The star, and all seven planets around it, are entirely artificial creations. They were originally intended as a challenge, to see how far the Builders could push their creations. But Seiginis, the third world, was a prototype for the Assembly."

A prototype? For a planet? That explained why the two worlds were identical. Kel figured it wasn't that unbelievable that the Forerunners built entire planets and star systems with the scale of their other creations that he'd seen. He ignored the sinking feeling in his gut that came with each new revelation about the Forerunners. He didn't want to keep thinking about his past mistakes.

"When the design for the Assembly was finalised, Seiginis was converted to a data and storage centre," Era continued. "Currently it holds hundreds of design seeds to be used in the Assembly's production facilities, as well as the ability to turn any kind of ship into a design seed."

Kel had no idea what a design seed was, but he already felt bad for asking too many questions. He figured it was something that could be used to create a starship, since the monitor mentioned production facilities. Kel wondered if the ships he'd seen in the dream existed as design seeds somewhere on Seiginis.

"The Assembly is situated outside the galaxy, and the only means to access it are through the portals on Seiginis and at the Terminus," Era said.

"And the Terminus is?" Kel asked.

The projection of the planets disappeared, and was replaced with a projection of an immense structure. It was a large, thick ring with another smaller ring inside of it. The smaller ring was covered in glowing glyphs, sixteen metal panels extended from the smaller ring, eight on each side. Some kind of energy flowed from the panels into what looked like a massive slipspace portal in the middle of the ring.

"The Terminus connects to an identical structure near the Assembly," Era explained. "It itself is a prototype for the portal to the Ark on Erde-Tyrene, but it ended up being used as a convenient way for the Assembly to deliver ships to the galaxy."

Kel took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. He felt the Assembly calling to him. He needed to reach it, but there was no way for him to leave the planet. He had no way to get to either Seiginis or the Terminus. Era stared at Kel after finishing, there was nothing else for the monitor to explain.

"I cannot explain it, but… I need to go there," Kel said. "I need to get to the Assembly."

"Unless you have a working ship, you're stuck here," Era said. "There are no ships that I know of on this world."

"This facility manipulates slipspace to watch other parts of the galaxy, doesn't it?" Kel asked, a bad idea was forming in his head.

"That is correct," Era nodded.

"Then could we not use that same kind of slipspace manipulation to open a portal?"

"Yes, but there would be no way to open a portal on the other side," Era explained. "And even then, travel between two worlds hundreds of lightyears apart is not instantaneous. You could just end up falling forever."

Kel let out a frustrated grunt. That was the only thing he could think of. Maybe the Gods didn't have a plan for him after all. Maybe he would be stuck here until the end of his life, and the galaxy would move on without him.

No, Kel told himself. He was brought there for a reason. He was shown the Assembly for a reason. He couldn't give up, not yet. He stared back at the monitor with determination.

"Then could I have your assistance?" Kel asked. "I need to restore my ship. It is the only way I can leave this planet."

"Hm… I cannot leave my facility unmonitored," Era said. "But I can send sentinels out with whatever you need."

"That works well enough," Kel said with a nod. "Thank you very much."

"You're welcome, Kel 'Dauram," Era replied, returning the nod with a bob of its shell.

Kel hadn't even really thought about the fact that he had no idea how any ships worked, let alone Phantoms, but he had no choice but to figure it out. If some ancient Sangheili somewhere was able to master the powers of space travel without anything to go off of, then Kel knew he would be able to learn the inner workings of his Phantom.

"That's it then," Kel said. "When I find the Assembly, I doubt I will return here."

There was a certain sadness in Kel's voice. He barely knew Era, and he hadn't even known it for long, but he felt like he was saying goodbye to a friend. The monitor was the closest thing Kel's had to a friend in his entire life. It wasn't quite time to say goodbye yet. He would still need the coordinates to either Seiginis or the Terminus once he was ready to leave. But for now, Kel said goodbye to the monitor.

"Goodbye, Kel 'Dauram," Era said. "If you do return, I will see you then. I wish you luck on your journey."

"Thank you," Kel said before leaving.

The sun had risen during the time Kel was in the facility. The sky was still covered by clouds, and he could smell rain on the horizon. The rain eventually did come before he even made it back to his Phantom, the droplets washing the blood off the armour that he had spent so long painting. He didn't know whether to be upset, or relieved. It was something he worked hard for that ultimately meant nothing.

He took the armour off as he reached his Phantom, the rain had only gotten worse. It had almost entirely undone all of his work. He left the armour on the floor of the Phantom, and stared around at the walls. He had no idea where to start with it, but there was nothing stopping him from getting to work.

The call to the Assembly gave Kel purpose beyond just surviving. It was a place he needed to go, and he would do whatever it took to get there.