Author's note: Adapting Final Shape was tricky because I hadn't written anything since Witch Queen. I decided to pretend Lightfall didn't exist for the purposes of this fanfic storyline. Lightfall was entirely filler, and should have been us defending the Last City, and not us defending ... some other city that didn't exist until they made it up. And I've read all the lore on the Veil and I still don't know what it is. Yeah, so I'm leaving out that travesty and just going with the actual storyline. I also have some problems with Witch Queen, particularly the season right after it, but it would take another 100k words to explain it, so I'm lightly passing over that, too. This adapt is very heavily the NetRaptor version of how Destiny could have ended, and I hope it pleases readers.
Dusk was falling over the fields and forests around the Farm. The warm spring evening was mild with bird and insect song as the Guardian walked along. His cloak brushed the tops of the grasses, disturbing butterflies that whirled into the air around him.
Crow hadn't visited the Farm in a long time, not since being accepted into the Vanguard and the Tower. He had been busy with humanity's enemies in other places, and the Farm had been a peaceful backwater for a couple of years now. Many Guardians had moved there with their families, seeking a respite from city life. They provided protection for the regular people who lived and worked there, and had all but eliminated hostile Eliksni in the area. Instead, they were assisted by the Eliksni of House Light, who lived and worked alongside them in peace. Many neighborhoods of little houses had sprung up around the landscape, divided from each other by fields of wheat or barley. He saw no guards as he walked, but that didn't mean that watchful eyes hadn't spotted him.
"Do you think he'll help?" Glint asked.
The Ghost's voice broke the silence as he appeared in a swirl of transmat sparkles. Glint was a little robot in a pink and silver orchid shell, his digital blue eye bright and cheerful.
"I don't know," Crow sighed. He plucked a buttercup from the multitudes in the field and sniffed it, then twirled it in two fingers. "All I know is that I don't want to do this without letting him know."
"He's still your friend," Glint said softly. "He cares."
Crow nodded. He didn't voice the thought that he missed Jayesh Khatri, missed the warlock's quiet wisdom and the Light that danced in his eyes. The Vanguard had kept Crow so busy fighting the Shadow Legion and scouting the invading pyramid ships, he hadn't had time to visit his friend. But in the quiet times, when Crow was having an evening drink with the other Hunters, Jayesh's absence was a hollow place in his heart.
Crow made his way between the fields and up a hill toward a small neighborhood of houses. They were built of stone with thatched roofs, and looked very old-fashioned and quaint to his City eyes. The smell of wood smoke and cooking food touched his nostrils, and he inhaled deeply. Children ran about, dogs barked. A guard at the corner recognized him and nodded behind his helmet. Crow nodded back and continued up the town's only street, his feet carrying him along by habit.
Jayesh's house was the last one in the row, set back from the others in order to take advantage of the shade of a huge old elm tree. Lights gleamed in the windows and voices spoke inside. A small child wailed. Crow stood for a moment, listening and smiling. Here was peace, and normalcy, a taste of what it was he fought so hard to preserve. After a moment he stepped up on the porch and knocked at the door.
Footsteps thundered across the wood floor to the door and it sprang open. Jayesh's son Connor looked out, a chubby boy of ten years who had been a Guardian from birth. His Ghost Varan floated at his shoulder.
"Oh, hi Crow," said Connor. He opened the door wide and called over his shoulder, "Dad! Crow's here!"
Crow stepped into the house's living room and looked around with approval. The furniture was rustic and hand-made, with homemade cushions and throw pillows. Jayesh sat in a wooden chair with his guitar on his knee, and his two daughters Sephanie and Anya looked up from a pile of wooden blocks in the middle of the floor.
"Crow!" Jayesh exclaimed, rising to his feet. He was of Indian descent with golden skin and wavy dark hair. He was dressed in a loose tunic and heavy pants with mud stains in the knees, as if he had been working in the fields all day. He certainly didn't look like a professional Warlock who had mastered both Light and Darkness. He shook hands with Crow with a grin and offered him a seat. Crow sat with a sigh and leaned back, crossing his ankles. Jayesh fingered his guitar, drawing forth a soft, complex melody that sounded happy. His Ghost Phoenix appeared and floated at his shoulder, as if preparing to listen to gossip.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" Jayesh said. "What brings you out here?"
"Oh, lots of things," Crow said cagily, gazing at the ceiling beams. "Have you been following the news?"
"As much as we can," said Jayesh. "Sometimes things take a few days to make their way out here." He nodded to Kari, his wife and fellow Warlock, as she entered the room and sat in a chair beside his. She was as fair as Jayesh was dark, with long auburn hair she wore pulled back in a ponytail. She smiled at Crow and settled herself for a chat.
"What news are you talking about?" Kari asked. "Savathun stealing the Light?"
"That was two years ago now," said Crow. "We've been dealing with the Lucient Brood ever since. At least we did figure out how she converted the Ghosts to Hive Ghosts. It was that song of hers that everyone was singing."
"Right," said Jayesh. "I knew that was going on. That was about the time we made the choice to move out here. You and Silvan were doing all right, and she'd had the baby just fine. How is Rega, by the way?"
"A precocious two-year-old," said Crow with a fond smile. "She spent her first year learning words and now she argues with me over what day of the week it is." They all laughed.
"You two are welcome to come out here any time," Kari said. "Getting away from the Tower has done us so much good."
"Can't," Crow said. "I'm the fill-in for Hunter Vanguard. The Hunters are coming back to the Tower for the first time in ages, and we get along pretty well. I'm even drawing a good salary."
"Good," said Jayesh, the spark of Light in his eyes growing brighter. "What other news?"
"Oh, plenty more, I guess," said Crow. "We caught Savathun's Lucient Brood to hack into their minds and figure out how she'd stolen the Light. Turns out her whole redemption thing was a huge fakeout for the Vanguard. She'd engineered a Ghost for herself long before we removed her worm, the filthy liar."
Jayesh nodded in a resigned way. "And Saladin exchanged himself to the Cabal as a political hostage instead of you, when you accidentally killed their friendly Psion."
"You had to mention that," Crow muttered, still gazing at the ceiling.
Kari counted on her fingers. "So then Calus came back on the Leviathan ship, only it had been infected by freaky Darkness growths, and everybody had nightmare doubles hanging around them, including you."
Crow nodded. "I made peace with him."
"Then Mithrax, Kell of House Light, went out to stop Eramis, Kell of House Salvation, from getting her hands on Darkness artifacts," Kari went on. "Then there was that whole deal with Rasputin coming back as an Exo but getting hijacked by Clovis Bray and having to commit suicide."
"Ana Bray still isn't handling it well," Crow said.
"So then the Shadow Legion showed up and started attacking the City," Kari went on. "Kind of Red War part 2, only we kicked their butts this time. Then Saturn's moon Titan showed up again and there was that whole mess with Deputy Commander Sloane being half-Taken but she'd been chatting up a sea monster. Then Eris became a temporary Hive God so we could get rid of Xivu Arath, the last actual Hive god. Then there was the whole feeding an Ahamkara thing."
"I'm perfectly happy living out here," Jayesh said, his head bent over his guitar. "I never wanted to see Riven again, and I hear her undead version was quite chatty."
Crow didn't mention how Riven had asked him about Jayesh and gloated over how she had torn out his Light. It was better than his friend never know these things.
"So are we current on the news?" Kari asked brightly.
"More or less," Crow said. He placed his hands behind his head and gazed around the room. It was rustic, but clean, owing to Kari's clean freak nature. The children were healthy and well-fed. Jayesh and Kari looked happy and relaxed, so different from the last time Crow had seen them. Had they not had Ghosts at their shoulders, he'd have thought he was visiting the house of any normal human family who depended on the Vanguard for protection.
"You know about the portal the Witness made to enter the Traveler, right?" Crow said.
Jayesh placed a hand on the guitar to mute the strings. "Yes." He looked up, the blue Light in his brown eyes shimmering like a flame. "Please say you've found a way inside. I feel the Traveler's suffering in my own Light. The Witness is doing unspeakable things in there."
"The Witness has the portal barred," Crow said. "The one Guardian who tried to follow it through, we found him later merged with a piece of his own ship. But Riven condescended to grant a wish to send someone through."
"A wish?" Jayesh said, glancing at Kari. "But the Ahamkara twist wishes."
"This one is different," Crow said. "We had to pay a steep price for it, but now one person will make it through the portal. We think that will open the way for others."
"Don't say you're here to ask me," said Jayesh, eyes narrowing.
Crow swallowed. He gazed at the ceiling for a long moment, working up the nerve to say it aloud. "No. It's me."
Jayesh and Kari each made startled movements.
"Because of the connection I share with my sister," Crow said, sitting up and placing both boots on the floor. "Mara Sov has been … good to me. And Silvan. When I enter the portal, I will pass through it, because Riven granted the wish. And Mara can use her connection with me to open the way for a fireteam."
"What team?" Jayesh asked.
"Ikora and Zavala," said Crow.
"The whole Vanguard leadership is going in there?" Kari exclaimed. "What if the portal kills them the way it did that other guy?"
"It won't," said Crow, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded. "Not with Mara holding the way open for them." His voice dropped. "Anyway, we're leaving tomorrow. I wanted to ask you what it's like inside the Traveler, since you're the only one I know who's ever been in there."
Jayesh sat in silence for a moment, gaze on the floor. After a moment he said, "The Light creates constructs. You exist in the space it wants, and the kind of space you expect. When I spoke to the Traveler, it created rooms and a theater for me, where we could debate the actions of Ghaul. I suppose it could have looked like anything, but I wanted just … an apartment, so that's what it gave me."
Crow nodded. "So it's like the Ascendant Plane in that respect."
Jayesh nodded. "But more wholesome and pure. Think carefully about what you expect to find inside, and that's what will be there."
"Right." Crow sorted through his own ideas of what the interior of the Traveler should look like, and settled on the landscape around the Farm. He couldn't imagine a prettier location, and landing on grass wouldn't be so terrifying.
Jayesh strummed the guitar and hummed softly. Kari got up and lit a couple of oil lamps, bringing one to a low table beside the chairs. It filled the room with a warm, mellow glow. The children sat on the floor and stacked their blocks, even Connor.
"So you're going to the Traveler," Jayesh said in a low voice. "To save it from the Darkness."
"The Witness," Crow replied. "I don't think it's really the Darkness, it just uses it. We found out that the Darkness leans toward the mind and psychic powers, while the Light leans toward life of all kinds."
"So you're walking into a psychic battle," Jayesh replied. "How's your mind powers?"
"Average," Crow replied. "First we have to figure out if the Witness can even be defeated. It's a god, more or less. It just turns our own Light against us."
Jayesh turned his head and opened his mouth to say something else. But at that moment a strange voice spoke.
"You live without purpose."
It was a passive, gentle voice, barely a whisper. But everyone heard it. Everyone looked at each other, then glanced around the room, seeking the source.
"Anguish. Bliss. A meaningless cycle … of action and reaction."
"Jayesh?" Kari said, rising to her feet.
Jayesh stood, too, both arms outstretched. "Quiet. I think it's…"
"Let us bring an end to your meaningless exertions," the voice whispered.
The world folded, turning to black glass and stone. The rustic little room, the lamps, the playing children, all went dark and still. Every person froze into a statue, sometimes with two arms or two heads, where they had been in the midst of a movement when the change came. Jayesh had two faces, one with the mouth closed, the other with the mouth open. Crow stared at him out of eyes of stone, fixed forever into place. Inside he screamed and beat against the stone, but he could not move. He had been folded, frozen, petrified, shaped into a final form for the rest of time. The whole world had been frozen, folded, sliced, plants, animals, trees, the planet itself, cut and folded and minced into frozen sculptures, a parody of life.
"A final shape is coming," whispered the voice with the utmost compassion. "Chaos untangled … made knowable … with immaculate intent. Let us know you … and be reborn … into perfection."
Crow struggled, but his fighting was futile and he knew it. He knew it as he knew the weight and durability of stone. To this otherworldly being, he had been sculpted into a perfect version of himself.
Yet somewhere, behind the darkness, behind the stone, the Light persisted. It struggled, it fought, and then it pulsed.
"Yet you're still resisting," remonstrated the gentle voice.
Light blasted through the world, pushing back the stone, pushing away the obsidian and marble. The world unfolded. Stone returned to flesh and blood. The lamps resumed burning. Everyone gasped and lurched to their feet. The children cried out and ran to their mother and father. Their Ghosts flew around wildly.
"What was that?" Kari cried.
"The final shape," Crow gasped. "The Witness is trying to use the Traveler's Light to freeze the entire universe into its idea of perfection."
"But the Light resists," Jayesh exclaimed. He stared at Kari and the children for a moment, then turned to Crow. "I'm coming with you."
"What?" Crow exclaimed. "No, that's not what I came to ask–"
"I'll follow the Vanguard in," Jayesh said, setting his guitar in its case. He rose to his feet and stood with his fists clenched at his sides. Something had changed in his face–Jayesh, Warlock of the Vanguard, had returned in that moment. "The Witness is tormenting the Traveler to do this, and it's all our lives at stake. I'm going to help you stop it."
Crow wanted to argue, but a warm feeling erupted in his chest that silenced his arguments. All along, he had been hoping his friend would accompany him. He couldn't ask, of course, not when Jayesh was so happily settled with his family. But the Witness's horrifying test of petrifying the universe had changed everything. Jayesh was committed now, in a way that Crow hadn't seen in him for the last two years.
Jayesh retreated to his room with Kari to pack. Crow went out on the porch and watched the stars come out. What had happened to the stars in that moment of freezing into stone? Had all light in the universe blinked out, plunging everything into the endless dark?
Connor joined him on the porch and sat on the steps. "That was scary. Being turned to statues. I didn't have hands."
Crow nodded.
Connor looked up at him. "You won't let anything happen to Dad up there, right?"
Crow smiled a little, thinking of all the risks Jayesh took in battle to protect his team. "I'll do my best to make sure everyone comes back, but it's war. Things happen in war."
Connor nodded soberly. "I'll look after Mom and the girls until you come back. Also, punch the Witness for me."
"I will." That was a promise Crow could keep.
Jayesh emerged on the porch a little later, dressed in his old Ego Talon warlock robes, all gray with the yellow eagle logo across the shoulder and chest. He carried a duffel bag over one shoulder, and the hand cannon Lumina rode in its holster at his belt.
Crow straightened. "Well well, haven't seen you in a while, Guardian."
Jayesh flashed him a grin and stooped to hug Connor. Crow tried not to eavesdrop, but he caught Jayesh's goodbye and muttered last instructions to 'keep them safe'. Connor nodded soberly.
Then Crow and Jayesh walked through the night together, following a well-trodden path from the village down toward the airfield.
"The Vanguard will be pleased to have you back," Crow remarked. "The Tower hasn't been the same since you left."
"They can get along all right without one warlock," Jayesh said. "After our stint in the Reef … well, do you remember that last run through the Ascendent plane, that monster ripped me open until I bled essence?"
Crow nodded. He'd never seen that happen before, even in his centuries of memories from Uldren.
"Well, Mara and the Techeuns healed me twice, and it wasn't enough." Jayesh pressed a hand to his chest. "Having a wound in your soul does terrible things to your mind and body. Kari was the one who finally pushed us to move out of the Tower. I was … too devoted to the Vanguard and it was killing me."
"How are you now?" Crow asked.
Jayesh's grin was quick and easy. "Oh, taking two years off to live my own life has been wonderful, you have no idea. I don't cough up essence every morning anymore."
Crow tried to imagine coughing up bits of his own soul and immediately wished he hadn't. "It was that bad?"
Jayesh shrugged. "That stopped within a few weeks of moving out here. Living close to the earth was the best thing for me, and Kari, and the kids. Connor was getting a little warped, being a Guardian from birth. It was good for him to come out here and have a childhood again."
"Right." Crow wanted to mention his own battles with the ghostly Nightmare of Uldren, the way it whispered to him and kept him from sleeping for weeks on end. But the idea of Jayesh being so sick that his soul was bleeding out stilled his tongue.
However, Jayesh was interested in him, too. "You said Mara Sov had been good to you and Silvan. I thought she wanted to split you up and take the baby?"
Crow grinned fiercely, a little of Uldren showing through. "That was before my Nightmare showed up. I had to work hard to make peace with him, turning him from a nightmare to a memory. Silvan could see him, too, and no matter how nasty he was to her, she was always kind to him. That helped a lot. Then once that was over, Mara invited me out for tea and a long talk. That was where I laid down the rules."
Jayesh looked at him, marveling. "You stood up to Mars Sov?"
"I did," said Crow. "And it was the best thing I could have done. It woke her up to the fact that I'm not on her chain anymore. She had always planned for me to be a Guardian, you know. It's why she was so distant to me my whole life. Now that I am one, she's all ready to be buddy-buddy. Uldren resents it something terrible."
"And you?" Jayesh said softly.
Crow smiled and looked down. "Well. It hasn't been easy. I've had to establish strict boundaries. She's not to try to integrate me into Reef society again, for one thing. No annulling my marriage, no giving me orders that conflict with my Vanguard duties. You know, I think she respected me for it? Uldren never had any boundaries, he just wanted to get her in bed. But for me to come along and keep her at a distance … well, it's different when the boot is on the other foot."
"It's good for her," Jayesh said fervently. "The all-powerful queen of the Awoken needs someone in her life who can call her out."
"I think it has been good for her," said Crow as they entered the airfield. Several jump ships stood at intervals, including Jayesh's little jumper and Kari's larger cruiser. Crow's white Radiant Accipiter crouched at the far end like a bird of prey awaiting its next hunt.
Crow went on, "She's really mellowed in the last few years, actually talks to people and smiles sometimes." He paused and drew a breath. "We're going straight to the Reef from here, I'll send you my flight calculations. Mara and the Techeuns have keyed a portal to open straight into the Traveler. I'm going to dive through and they're going to track me. Then you'll come back to Earth and fly in with the Vanguard."
"Right." Jayesh ran a hand along the nose of his ship, caressing the dents and scratches. "This might be this old girl's last flight."
"Could be," Crow said, although he disliked the implications of this thought. "Load up and let's go."