Chapter Text
She took a breath before opening her eyes. The air was new into her lungs and brought with it the softness of moss and fresh rain. She found that she had words for these things, but could not have explained how.
Faint mechanical whirring and thoughtful beeps and chirps prompted her to open her eyes. A glittering metal object—a cluster of little pyramids arranged around a central sphere—hovered a few feet overhead. The metal plates clicked and shifted, spinning as the little thing considered her. At the center of the sphere a blue light like an eye glowed down at her.
The plates split in surprise and the object gasped. “It worked!” Their voice was slightly tinny, produced by a metal voice box, but not unpleasant—smooth, quiet, and tenor.
“What are you?” the woman found herself asking.
“Ah—that’s rather complicated. I am your Ghost. It’s a long story,” the little machine confessed. “I can explain more while we walk. You and your former companions have not been dead long and I fear your murderers are not far off. We should get moving.”
The woman blinked, sitting up to take in the full picture of her surroundings. She sat in a damp forest on a gentle, mossy slope. The metallic reek of blood finally came to her, though, as she took in the bodies of some fifteen people strewn between the trees. She retched as her already empty stomach tried to empty itself into the dirt.
The Ghost whirred and clicked, plates shifting anxiously as they scanned the forest for movement. “I appreciate that this is all very sudden, but I am picking up Fallen chatter and you don’t have armor, weapons, or a grasp of your Light yet. We have to move now.”
The woman nodded, trying not to look at the bodies as she heaved herself to her feet. It was easier than she expected—her movements were quick and smooth, certainly far smoother than they should be based on the state of her clothing. Her coat and pants indicated multiple slash and stab wounds, with a few bullet holes for good measure, but the skin beneath was smooth and unbroken.
The word “Fallen” held meaning for her, too—four-eyed and sharp-toothed scavengers, armed with energy weapons and wicked blades. She wondered if this was their work. “What happened to me?” She mused aloud.
“I am afraid I do not know,” the Ghost said, wheeling toward her to stare her in the eye. “Ready to go? Good! This way.” They whizzed away through the trees and the woman could see no other option but to follow.
She had to run to keep up, and the sun flickered across her eyes as it flashed through the trees. It must be early afternoon. Another piece of information that she understood without knowing why.
The Ghosts’ voice brought her out of her own thoughts. “Welcome to the European Dead Zone. It is a region more-or-less overrun by Fallen. Do you know what those are?”
“Mm.”
“There are human enclaves out here, despite the Fallen presence. And I came out here in search of you.”
The woman blinked. “In search of me? Why?”
“Well, not exactly for you. I didn’t know that I was looking for exactly you. Do you know what the Traveler is?”
The woman hesitated. Yes, she did, in a way—the same way she knew what Fallen, sunlight, and afternoon were, the Traveler sufficiently shaped the world that she could conjure up an image of a white sphere the size of a small moon hovering a mere mile over the Earth’s surface. Beyond that, she did not know much. “Yes,” she said, nevertheless.
“But ‘Ghost’ doesn’t mean anything to you? Hmm. How about ‘Guardian’?”
“No.”
“Fascinating! We should discuss this further at a later date.” The Ghost was positively bubbly despite the face that they were apparently fleeing from Fallen and they had just awakened the woman from death. They cleared their digital throat. “However, to explain further, when the Traveler…went quiet, the Ghosts were born. Each of us has a fraction of a connection to the Traveler’s Light and we have one person who is ours. I have been searching for you for centuries.”
“How did you know I am yours?”
“I couldn’t possibly describe it. Until I scanned your body, you were just another dead human. But suddenly a connection snapped between us, and here you are.”
“But who am I?”
“Asking the big questions, are we?” But they slowed to get a look at her face. “No one remembers who they were before they died, I’m sorry.”
“Or how they died,” the woman mused, fiddling with a loose strip of her coat.
“Exactly. You make who you are yourself, now.” Thier plates shifted again, considering her. “It will get easier.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t!” They whirled off again, cheerfully. “I’m guessing based on what I’ve seen of other Guardians.”
“But what do I call myself? What do I call you?”
“Whatever you like. Now then, my plan is to stop in at the nearest human enclave, then catch a ship to the Tower to gear up and get our first assignment. And, uh…teach you how all this works.”
“How all what w—.”
The sudden thunder of a distant engine made them both jump. The Ghost’s plates flew apart, looking similar to a startled cat, and the woman got a glimpse of their bright interior: swirling blue light twinkling with stars.
“Fallen!” the Ghost chirped. “With me.”
They skidded partway down the slope to a rocky section of hillside. The woman flattened herself against it and the Ghost shrouded themself in her hair. They watched an enormous Ketch, spike-nosed and asymmetrical, blot out the sun as it glided overhead. It was flying low, close to the treeline. Smaller skiffs swarmed behind it and one broke off to descend toward the crest of the nearby hill. As it got closer the woman could make out a set of markings painted across the front.
“Another House of Dusk vessel,” the Ghost said.
“What’s that?”
“The Fallen used to operate in clan groups called houses. But between pressure from Guardians and the Cabal,” (the word brought to the woman’s mind blocky, red ships in the distance), “most Fallen have united under one banner, the House of Dusk. Come on, the Ketch has passed and we should see what that scout ship is here for.”
With only the briefest glance to make sure danger was not close, the Ghost zipped up the hill and once again the woman had to run to keep up. It should have taken effort, but it didn’t. “I thought you said we needed to find shelter—we don’t have supplies or weapons.”
“Yes, but imagine if we could return to the Tower with intel already!”
“Tower?” The woman asked blankly.
“It’s the—oh, just come on! I’ll explain later.”
The woman scrambled along behind them. A few minutes’ jog brought them to the edge of the bald hill’s crest, where they stopped just inside the tree line.
A skiff had landed on the grass and its crew stalked the hilltop, rifles slung over their shoulders and pistols close at hand.
“Get down!” The Ghost chittered, but the woman already knelt in the sparse undergrowth, eyes tracing the anxious twitching of dreg trigger-fingers.
They were swathed in purple fabric marked with the same symbol as their ship. The crew had eight of the small, undernourished and crested dreg, two of the four-armed vandals with their enormous sniper rifles, and one captain, marked by his double-spiked helm and fur-edged cloak.
The captain was pacing, and turned to mutter something to a subordinate.
“They’re waiting for someone,” the Ghost hissed, and the woman nodded.
A twig snapped behind them. The hairs flew up on the back of her neck. The Ghost appeared in danger of panicking and the woman snatched them out of the air, clutching them to her chest and rolling into a nearby bush.
A troop of humans, eleven in all, passed through the underbrush only a few feet away.
When the woman tried to roll over to watch the meeting, a pair of boots blocked her view and the woman swiftly rolled back. She glanced down at the Ghost, who nodded and wove through branches to peer out the other side.
They wiggled back in just as quickly. “They have a translation device. They’ve done this before, or at least they were planning for this conversation.” The woman frowned. “I can’t get a good look at their faces anyway—I’ll stay and translate.” And so, whispering in their tinny, mechanical voice, they relayed the conversation.
“You’re late,” the captain growled.
“You don’t get to complain!” The human leader hissed, voice choked and difficult to hear. “My child was among those you—.”
“We made a bargain, human. You did not tell us not to kill anyone. We could not have recognized one as your spawn. The job is done. Where is our payment?”
The woman and the Ghost exchanged glances.
The Fallen captain chittered low in their throat—it might have been a laugh. “Where did you humans find so much glimmer?” That word brought an image to the woman’s mind of a handful of blue, faintly glowing cubes of raw, unprocessed matter. Money, but so much more than metal disks.
“You don’t need to know,” the human leader snapped. “It is the agreed-upon sum.”
“And we will take it. Good doing business with you.”
“There may be more where where that came from.”
A chorus of chatter rose from the Fallen until the captain’s voice silenced them. “What do you have for us?”
“I will not tell you yet—the time has to be right. How should I get in contact when we are ready?”
“You already found a way to use one of our transceivers.”
“I had to steal away to rewire it over the course of a month. Surely there is a better way.”
There was a pause during which the Ghost risked another look into the clearing. “The captain is handing over something small—it might be a transmitter,” they said, but the woman pressed a finger to her lips as the nearby human shuffled their feet.
The Fallen captain chuckled again. “See you soon, human.”
There was movement all around them as the skiff’s engine spun up and the humans retreated once more into the trees.
The woman and the Ghost lay in their bush as the sound of first the engine, and then the rustling of the humans’ passage faded into silence.
The Ghost pushed through the branches to act as lookout while the woman extricated herself and dusted off the ripped pants. “I don’t like this,” she said.
“Me either,” the Ghost replied. “But at least now we know who was responsible for your—and the others’—deaths.”
“No, we don’t. We only know who held the blade.”
They looked at each other.
“What are you going to do about it?” the Ghost asked.
The woman hesitated. “The Fallen may be a threat but the blood of those people is also on the hands of other humans. People deserve to know.”
“So you’re planning to act as judge, jury, and executioner?”
The woman shook her head, looking out into the forest where the human group had disappeared. “I am not one of them, but their community has the right to judge them. Then we can go to the…Tower.”
The Ghost’s plates shifted and the woman had the distinct impression of a smile. “I think we will get along very well. Eyes up, Guardian. Let’s find that settlement.”
“Don’t call me Guardian, I hardly qualify as anything useful yet.”
“Well, what should I call you?”
“I don’t know. What should I call you?”
The Ghost began drifting off and the woman followed. “I don’t know, think of something.”
“You should choose your own name. I don’t even know what to call myself.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I will deliberately choose something silly.” The small smile that cracked her face felt foreign, but not unpleasant.
“Alright!” the Ghost insisted, “I will think of something!”
The journey took two hours, unsure as the Ghost was of their path. Neither spoke, and they saw no one else, neither human nor Fallen. The woman was glad of the stillness.
Around nightfall, they came upon a much-worn track. A few minutes’ walk brought them to an ivy-covered cliff. The woman stopped short, but the Ghost drifted onward toward the wall. “Come on.” They nosed aside strands of ivy and disappeared.
A crack in the wall granted the woman access. It soon widened enough that three people could have walked abreast. It wove through the rock and soon there was no light to see by; she moved along by feel. The woman flinched as the Ghost swung abruptly back around a corner to find her, their eye beaming brilliant light.
“Oh! Sorry,” they dimmed the light. “I just wanted to mention that I…stowed away on a supply ship to get here. None of the inhabitants know I’m here and I’m not even confident that they’ve heard of Guardians, so…perhaps it’s best if I hide for the present.”
“Whatever you think is best.”
They pressed on with the Ghost once more sheltering in the woman’s hair. “We need to get you a bath.”
“It’s not my fault I got killed,” she grunted.
A few more bends in the path brought light filtering back into the tunnel once more and the Ghost turned off their light. As they came around the bend, the woman and two other humans surprised each other. The guards—they each carried a rifle and stood before a gate marked with the word “Stonehaven”—clutched their chests.
“You were so quiet I thought you must be a Fallen scout,” one of them gasped. “State your name and purpose please.” But as they lifted the light to get a better look at her face, the guards’ own faces drained of color.
“I don’t believe it,” the second guard mumbled. “Our patrol said they all—.”
“Take her to Arwa now,” the first insisted.”
“Follow me, quickly.” The guard shoved through the gate and the woman followed. They gate opened onto a sizeable cavern that had been built up into a small town. Moonlight filtered through branches and a gap in the stone ceiling onto the tin roofs of houses. The guard led her down a pebbled street and across a small square. People milled about, still winding down from the day’s business, and as they spotted the guard and the woman in tow, normal chatter swiftly descended into startled whispers.
A crowd gathered behind them as the guard led the woman up a path that ran along a clear stream and up to a wide building—the town hall, perhaps. As they neared the door, raised voices rose from inside.
Without a word to their visitor, the guard knocked.
The argument ceased as someone inside snapped, “What is it?”
“Arwa,” the guard shot a glance back at the woman, “You had better come outside.”
“What the hell is it, I’m bus—.” The door jerked open and the woman behind it froze as she saw their visitor. Tears filled her eyes. “Irina?”