Envy the Sunsinger IV

Eriana-3 learned very early what she was.

She had been reborn amidst a ruin; beneath the rubble of a city on the southeastern coast of northern America. A center of government for the country that once was. Her Ghost, nicknamed Jax by someone else and permitted to keep it by her, found her there and claimed her as his.

Within her first hour of life, she was hearing voices.

Multiple voices, aside from her own, she realized as things came more into focus. Her Ghost, for one but another. Another voice in her head, stronger, more forceful, pulling her attention every chance it could get. It confused and frightened her, as did everything else. She asked her Ghost about it, just one of the many questions she had regarding the world she had just been thrust into. Jax told her that it was likely the Traveler. The entity he was born from, the thing truly responsible for bringing her back to life. All Ghosts and Guardians felt a pull towards it. It only made sense that Guardians, Ghosts and the people they protected would build a home beneath it. The Last City, Jax called it. It wasn't hard to imagine what happened to all the others.

She asked which way the Traveler was. Jax told her south and when she concentrated, she felt it, its beckoning.

She didn't need to focus on the voice to hear it. It was louder, more insistent and it was insisting that she go the other way. That, Jax had no answer for and he seemed even less happy about it than she. His mood wasn't improved by the decision she made to follow the voice. Despite their supposed connection, he could just barely make out what was speaking in her head and the pulling, he felt nothing at all. But because he couldn't feel it, he couldn't feel it getting worse. Even when Eriana tried to sleep, even as she traversed the old city for a way out, every idle thought turned her attention northwards. Whoever it was trying to speak to had no intention of being ignored.

She'd come to regret traveling north, even as she knew that the Warmind would never leave her in peace.

Her journey had not been easy. She encountered everything from Human bandits to Fallen raiders, many who had never seen someone like her. Overhearing someone discuss how they would take you apart once they had you was unnerving, even years later. More than that, she learned quickly where she stood with people who weren't like her; she was vastly worth more dead and dismembered than alive.

The fear, the confusion, the dread of what she was headed for and that strange voice growing more and more insistent, refusing to let up even as she obeyed its demands; one day, it all became too much. Eriana had managed to fight off a band of Fallen, losing the only weapon she had when the Captain's Shock Blades cut it in half. Before the last Fallen body hit the ground, the crack of a high-powered rifle filled the air. Before the sound could stop rattling in her head, she felt cold burn down her left arm, followed very shortly by searing pain.

She might have been stronger, more resilient, more agile but they had chosen their time to strike well. Bandits, Humans. It shouldn't have surprised her that they had no loyalty to anyone but themselves and not even that most times but the shock was mind-numbing. She was one of them. She was human, wasn't she?

But that seemed to matter little. They closed in and backed Eriana into the side of a stone hill, rifles aimed at every part of her. Most of their faces were covered. Those who weren't grinned like cheshire cats. She knew they wouldn't riddle her with bullets as they threatened. They needed her in good condition if they wanted to benefit.

Somehow, that was worse than if they had just decided to shoot her over and over. The hungry glint in their eyes, the terror and the anger; the deep burning anger at everything that had been burgeoning within. Now it sought release, to the point she could feel it on her fingertips.

Bright flames erupted from her palms and swept around her in arcs so bright and blinding, she could see nothing else. She could feel nothing else but the heat. She could think of nothing else either. She didn't want to. For the first time in her short life, even the voice was silent. For the first time in her short life, she felt something akin to relief.

When she returned to the world, she found it very different from how she left it. No guns pointed at her, no leering eyes or cruel smiles. Just a circle of black ash carved into the ground around her, a scattering of weapons and the distant echo of…something.

Jax would later tell her that "something" was her assailants; her victims screaming as the flames devoured them to the bone.

"You didn't tell me I could do that," she said that night, sitting before a fire she made herself. Beside her was the rifle that had taken her arm off, repaired and recalibrated.

"It's usually better to let a Guardian discover it on their own." The Ghost chuckled slightly. "They usually don't believe us when we tell them. Coming back from the dead? That's fine but being able to throw fire? That's a bridge too far."

Eriana looked down at her hands. With the smallest amount of concentration, she could feel them begin to warm again. She pushed more and more until, in the darkness, they began to glow. Despite herself, she let out a small laugh.

Then, the voice returned and said the only thing it ever had to say.

Move.

So she did. She did until she was out of the ruins of the city. Until she was deep into a forest that had grown over a large complex filled with vehicles and bunker doors. Until she found the one door, one that stood out no differently from the rest, that made the voice go silent.

She wanted to say she'd never be the same after that but it wouldn't be true. Eriana never had the chance to learn who she was before it was taken away from her.

Rasputin was as gentle as he could be. So he claimed. His "gentleness" came with little introduction, with no warning and left her in a state of delirium so deep, even Jax couldn't bring her out of it. He wanted her to learn everything about who he was, who she used to be and everything in between. She learned of Felwinter. She learned of what he was hiding in the Cosmodrome. She learned what she was able to do and what she'd be able to do, with his tutelage.

She didn't want it. She never wanted it. Years later, she was still expressing that, as clearly as she could manage but he didn't care. He knew what was best for her, more than anyone else. Especially her.

He let her go when he was done with her. He gave Eriana a ship and another weapon before sending her on her way. His voice never left her head. From then on, he often muttered to himself, too quiet for her to hear; as if he were using her mind as a space for him to occupy. When he had something for her, she would hear it; he would make sure of it.

What Rasputin did changed her on a fundamental level, in ways her Ghost could not understand nor reverse. Computers that would glitch her presence became easily opened. Frames became loyal to her with little but a touch and that was only the start. The more she learned she could do, the more she felt distant from that which made her a person; made her Eriana. And she hated every moment of it.

Then, she met Sai. She met Ikora. She met Wei-Ning. They helped her see something of herself outside of Rasputin's access to the world. With them and her Ghost, she was Eriana, a Guardian, a person. So, she never told them; about the still-living Warmind or her connection to him. She met Osiris and never told him about who his teacher really was. She didn't want to change their opinions of him or herself. She didn't want to expose this deep part of herself, in case they started looking at her and saw something to fear or worse, valuable to their own ends. For fear Wei couldn't bring herself to love her anymore.

Wei was gone and she'd never know now. Eriana could not decide if that was a good thing or not.

"Anything new?" she asked. She could feel Jax snap back to attention, lost in the stream of reports running through his mind. Reports on the Great Disaster from Guardians who were both there and elsewhere. Ikora discouraged her from doing so but it kept her mind occupied.

"As a matter of fact…" One report came up before her eyes. "From Mars," he said.

She gave him a look but turned her eyes towards it anyway. Mars, Meridian Bay, as expected. It took a second before she recognized the author's name. "Didn't know they were letting Pahanin out on patrols again," she muttered into her fist as she started reading. Filed or not, that Pahanin wrote it meant everything said couldn't be taken as the full story. He had never been the same since the Vault and losing his friend, Kabr. But the more she read the report, the more invested she became.

Pahanin reported strange behavior from the Vex on Mars. Something pulled their collective attention towards the sky. Every single Vex unit in the area responded in the same manner. At this point, Eriana would have started searching for reports on Vex activity on other planets such as Venus or Mercury but it seemed Pahanin had already done the work for her. The Ishtar Sink, the Field of Glass, any Vex present seemed to freeze in place and turn their heads towards the sky, ignoring everything else around them. No one could explain this phenomenon. As expected, since no one had enough of the story. All reports corroborating Pahanin's contained times of events, often meticulously, to the second. All of them had occurred around the same time, when Crota made his presence known on the Moon. When Crota killed Wei-Ning and countless others. It couldn't have been a coincidence; this radical change in behavior at the response of a monster breaking into their world. As if the safety of being millions of miles away wasn't any sort of assurance.

No, a part of her said. It couldn't have just been that. There had to be more and she had to find out.

"You have a plan." Jax wasn't asking. He gleaned that plan quickly and whatever he felt about it, he hid well.

Eriana stood and paused. Her Ghost wasn't the only thing privy to her intentions now.

Rasputin never stopped watching her. He didn't even have the decency to pretend. Eriana pushed her welling anger back down, unclenched fists she didn't know she had tightened and started towards the exit, telling Jax to ready her ship.

Eriana threw a sharp, swift kick into the Minotaur core, sending it reeling. Three bullets broke into its chest cavity soon after, throwing it to the ground. Eriana shot another two into its trembling frame to make it cease and another third, just because she felt like it. The underbelly of the Ishtar Academy grew quiet after that. The Fallen were keeping their distance now that she was here and the Vex no longer had eyes on the area. They'd send reinforcements soon but not soon enough. She had time to work.

Eriana turned from the scattered parts of destroyed Vex and towards the complex's north side, the only one with still functioning lights. There, in the muck, was what she had come here to find. A Vex Goblin, the only one she had left alive, its eye shattered and both its legs burnt and twisted into useless metal sticks. It still had its arms and was using them to crawl away from her.

Eriana followed, swamp water and radiolaria swirling around her ankles. She passed the downed and ruined skiff at the center of the Academy before the unit noticed her. She reloaded her sniper, took aim and shot at the joint connecting its left arm to its shoulder. It went limp and the other arm tried to compensate by clawing even faster. She holstered the weapon and when she stood over it, she lifted her foot and pressed down on its back. With both hands, she took its left arm and with a heave, ripped it messily out of its socket. She tossed it behind her, walked to its right side and then took hold of that arm as well.

With it, she dragged it towards the complex, where she would have light, space and cover to do her work. It fought against her as best it could but its best amounted to very little.

Eriana hated what she was about to do. She hated that she learned or rather, that the knowledge of it was forced on her. To be able to leave her own body and interface with machines. She was a Human, wasn't she? But a stronger hate overrode her apprehension. It was the only thing that got her out of bed most days. If this was the path that needed to be taken, she would take it. The only other option was to just fall apart.

With a heave, Eriana lifted the Vex onto a metal table that came up to her waist. When it tried to push itself off, she destroyed the remaining hand. She reached behind the desk, producing a bulky metal chain. She began to wrap it around the Goblin's neck, securing it beneath the desk.

She stood up straight and peered down, watching it struggle l. It was taking much of her restraint to not just kill it outright. It was taking the rest of it to not just walk away. Go forward. Go forward. There's nothing for me back there.

Eriana put her hands to the Goblin's battered thorax before she could change her mind. She felt for when she reached the threshold. Where her mind ended and the Vex as a whole began. The edge of a cliff that led into a bottomless pit.

Eriana took the plunge.

Even outside of her body, she could feel it tense up from her head to her feet, her fingers digging into the metal chassis, such was the flood of information that struck her. Her mind was no better off. She once asked Sai to describe drowning to her, after the Hunter had to fished out of a deep lake and hauled to shore.

"There was this pressure in my chest," she said meekly, shivering and wrapped in a towel from Wei's ship, "Trying to force me to take in air, even when I knew what would happen next. I lost to it eventually but the pressure didn't change. Everything just started to burn and burn and…then slow down, fade out. All I wanted to do was go to sleep."

Eriana had never understood until the first time she interfaced with the Vex. Not of her own volition or even by accident. She was forced in. The Warmind thought the midst of battle would be a good time to show her what else she was capable of and if her fireteam hadn't been there, that battle might have had a very different outcome for her. It was the same every time and here was no different. She was unmoored, unable to keep her head above the violent whirlpool trying to suck her in.

She let it. There was no way for her to avoid the collective's attention but if she let herself blend into their sea of thought, they wouldn't be able to find where she came from. They wouldn't be able to close her out. They wouldn't be able to locate and target her body. She had no one left to protect it after all. A goal was what she needed. Something simple, singular, unyielding. Before, she would use it to maintain her sense of self but she soon learned of an additional purpose it could serve.

"Crota," she thought as loudly and as forcefully as she could. She let the name fill her head and her heart until both began to burn. It hurt to think his name but the pain and grief reminded her of who she was.

"Crota." She said it again and again, until finally, she felt the tides shift. They knew him. They knew him so well. The very thought of his name could be used to steer them.

The Vex spoke in both translatable words as well as symbols. Eriana saw and heard and felt only three. Sword. Blade. Knife.

She pushed for more. The words only repeated. She demanded a meaning. She wouldn't get it. The return to her body felt like a bolt of Arc burning through her. It was also unexpected. She gasped and stumbled from the body, dropping to one knee before she could fall over.

Eriana looked at her hand to find it trembling. She pushed to her feet, swaying on weak knees. "Over here, Eriana." She turned so fast at the sound, she nearly fell over again. She found only Jax floating behind her, beside an empty chair against the vine-covered walls.

"The Goblin died on you, it seems." He said it to explain why she had been forced out. Her two eyes came up to its one, its head turned slightly towards her, dull but accusing.

"I got something before it did." Eriana sounded as if she hadn't spoken in days. "The Vex know of Crota. They've encountered him before."

Jax only blinked at her. Then, he chuckled. "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me."

Eriana stood and walked over to the Goblin, still as dead as she left it. Still, she put a hand to it. Nothing.

What did they see? What did they learn? The Vex do nothing so well as learn.

Sword. Blade. Knife. They meant something. Those words meant something but…

She had just unfashioned the chain holding the Goblin down before she heard Jac speak. "Eriana. More Vex incoming."

"Did this one draw them here before it died?" Rhetorical question; it didn't matter. She used her foot to tip the table over, letting the bronze carcass clatter to the ground in a heap upon itself. Its central cavity had shattered. Radiolaric sludge dripped slowly to the ground.

Sword. Blade. Knife. Crota.

"I need a message sent to Sai," Eriana said. She retrieved her gun from where it had been stashed and started towards the exit. "Tell her I'm going to be gone for a while." She paused as a memory overcame her. A memory of them and their last night together. The time they had stolen away from all the crowds and parties filling the bar to sit beneath the stars and just talk.

They'd do it again someday. "Tell her that I miss her. Tell her I'll be back soon."