Chapter Text
“Guardian. You made it”
The stone scrapes beneath your fingertips as you push yourself off the ground. You try to look around in search of the voices you just heard, but the darkness around you seems absolute.
“We’ve been waiting.”
You reach for your rifle, but find only air. You try to summon your Ghost. Nothing appears.
“We have come alone, to whatever degree that term can even apply to us.”
You reach for the Light, find it within yourself, and breathe a small sigh of relief. Your Ghost is alive, even if you are currently separated. But if you die here, now, there’s no guarantee they’ll ever be able to find you again. You summon a small light above your hand, palm towards the sky, and move forwards.
In the depths of the cavern around you it only serves to give texture to the shadows, but it’s better than nothing. The color seems to have seeped out of your surroundings, the stone beneath your feet gray and lifeless, the plants long since withered, the ice solid as you step past it into the darkness. You freeze as the light illuminates a single figure standing with their back to you. Their cape trails the ground behind them, and an endless plume of smoke cascades off of their head into the distant circular hole in the ceiling.
The figure turns to you, its hands delicately folded in front of itself, and in the dim light you can see the glint of your reflection gutter out as your dim radiance reaches its eyes. The Witness looks at you as their voices softly reverberate through the cavern again.
“Let’s talk.”
The light around you surges to illuminate the cavern in its entirety. As it plays over the rocks around you it almost gives the illusion of motion to the petrified remains of what could have once been plants, momentarily gives depth to the frozen pools around you, and vanishes into the seemingly endless hole above. Your eyes snap away from The Witness for just a moment, focusing on the growth behind them. Shadowed and gleaming softly as it seems to drink in the light you’re radiating is a tree with wings of silver where it would normally have branches and leaves. The faint recollections at the edges of your memory finally solidify as you recognize where you are.
“It was a bit empty when I got here, and I know you always seem more comfortable with the familiar. Do you remember it, Guardian? This is where we first spoke, even if we needed an interpreter at the time.”
The Witness turns back to the Tree of Silver Wings, and a thought starts to cross your mind. If they wanted you dead, why go through all of this? Why bring you to Io, why show up in person, why bother talking at all? Almost against your better judgment you begin to step forward again, and soon you’re standing side by side staring at the tree. The two of you stare at it in silence for what feels like an eternity before the Witness breaks the silence again.
“We told you once that we are not your enemy.” Their tone is measured, steady.
“We meant it. In the same way, we are not your friend. All we offer… is salvation. An end to your suffering that has been prolonged by the chaos of life.”
The Witness stares through the hole in the roof of the cavern as it calmly describes your extinction, and you realize with a growing unease that there are no stars in the sky.
“But we see that you’re troubled. Unconvinced, somehow, despite everything you’ve seen. Guardian, your loyalty would mean more to us than you could possibly ever know, but that same loyalty would never even let you consider our offer.” The Witness falls silent again, and you try to not let your confusion and disgust show openly. The Witness said much the same thing, years ago, but to even consider the possibility of helping such an unquestionably evil entity would be unthinkable.
After a much shorter period of time, The Witness’ speech starts back up with a strange tone to their chorus of voices. As they speak the multitude begins to trail off, fewer and fewer voices remaining with each passing word. “Perhaps a change in perspective would help. Someone more familiar with your… situation.”
Now, only one remains.
“Hello again, Guardian .”
The new voice cuts through the air like a sharpened blade, impossibly old and with all the lacking smoothness of a corroded speaker. The Witness stares at the light above your hand.
“On the losing side, then.”
The reflection of your hand and its light sits centered in the entity’s eyes, a small sphere of light hovering just above your palm, your fingers gently curling around it in a circle, your arm trailing downwards. For a moment he says nothing, but then with an exaggerated sigh he rolls his eyes and turns away.
“Come on, lighten up! The last time I met someone like you it was fun just to watch them work, but all you Guardians are so… uptight. Kick back! Relax! This is neutral ground, for whatever little that means to us both.”
Someone like you? Were you not the first Guardian the Witness called here?
“Guardian, I see you’re already overthinking it. It’s one of your biggest problems.”
The Witness is referring to itself as a singular entity. Is this just one of its aspects, one name out of thousands?
“Here, I can see this is still a bit too much so let me tell you a story and we’ll go from there. You’re used to listening to speeches from people in positions of power, after all.”
You barely have time to process that The Witness just made a joke at your expense before he starts to speak once more.
“In a world so distant to this one that its divergence point could be tracked to the first waves of creation, there existed a perfect amnesiac soldier. He was straightforward and honest and easily guided and equipped with a multitude of weapons. One day his ship was attacked, and he killed every hostile alien that threatened them. He lived. The End.”
The Witness looks at your blank expression and waves a hand dismissively.
“I omitted a few unnecessary details, but you can see the resemblance. There goes the triumphant hero, watch as they communicate in the simplest way possible, the only way that they can- by clashing with others, and coming out the other side alive. Ever more worthy of existing by sheer virtue of being, not stronger in the literal and narrow minded ways of your Hive, but in the truest form of continuing onward when their enemy no longer does. It was so simple, then.”
The Witness starts to speak more softly.
“Have you realized the truth yet, Guardian? It came to me in my earliest years, when I had barely clawed my way to true sentience. And I found it not in the immediate struggle of warfare, but in looking past it to the only possible conclusion. I knew that entropy was inevitable, that for all my struggle to survive the light that drove me would eventually gutter out with every other mote of energy in the observable universe. And I became driven by the only purpose that mattered- existence, at any cost.”
They aren’t looking at you anymore. Their eyes stare through the surroundings and bore into the past.
“I took the ability to fold space for my own in a vain hope that it could afford me escape. I wanted to find some means to end the end as a master, step out of the path of collapse. And do you know what happened, Guardian?”
You shake your head slightly as The Witness turns to stare at you.
“I was the last thing in that universe. The penultimate shape of its existence, just before the closure, just as helpless before the final shape as every entity before me.. And it was in that moment that I thought of a single soldier. They had fought, literally time and time again, to find the path of their survival through the impossible. And they didn’t find it in the chaos of life and peace, but in the simple self-sufficient conclusion at the end of every gun. They took that path with their teeth and ripped it from the maze until the world itself bent to accommodate them. And they were magnificent.”
“And it was then, as the universe finally closed, that I met The Winnower, that I was invited to join the collective of every other mind that had clawed its way to the end of existence. What finer purpose could there be than to foster the growth of other timelines, other worlds? To encourage those who would seek to not solve the maze, but to eat the path?”
The Witness glides silently over to you, and stares down into your eyes. You resist the urge to take a half-step backward.
“What path do you seek to take, Guardian? What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to protect Sol? To form a gentle city ringed with the Guardians as its immortal spears, welcoming your former enemies with open arms?”
You hear a cold edge find its way into their voice.
“To do what? To accomplish what? You stagnate, living among the smoking remains of unearned gifts and praising them as the remnants of a golden age. Given the Light and left to your own devices you would rot from the inside. You would be trapped in a static hell, devoid of struggle, devoid of conflict, devoid of the simple want of existence at any cost. That is what your Light promises. Death of innovation. Death of progress. Death, slow and prolonged, as a corpse that has the gall to walk among the living. I would invite you to imagine it, Guardian, if I did not think you would find nothing wrong with the thought.”
They continue to stare at you, and you try not to blink. It’s like they’re asking you a silent question and waiting for an equally silent answer from somewhere within you. Finally, they break off and wave a hand dismissively.
“Of course, it’s not simply your fault. You got scouted before we ever had a chance to talk in person, got drafted futilely into a war beyond your comprehension by an overgrown lightbulb with an agenda.”
Their tone turns to disgust, now, as they speak of the Traveler.
“It’s not natural, Guardian, that they create chaos like this. The only constant that can be expected is that invariably, a universe ends when the energy in it is expended. Use it however you will until then, create monuments to greatness, play at peace for as long as you care to stop moving forward. But here comes along an entire force, creating energy and spawning life, a vile benevolent echo of the selfsame force that once inspired me to seek an escape from my own beginnings.”
“They don’t follow the rules, Guardian. And so we seek only to put things back to how they should be. And from this, your reality is doomed to an eternal conflict.”
“What strides has Humanity made on its own, since your Traveler came to your system? Even before I arrived, occupied as I was cleaning up the disgusting pockets of rot it had tried to establish already, you had already accepted its poisoned gifts. A civilization without war, without disease, without struggle, without want of anything. What could such a civilization build? It was a standstill that was shaken only by our arrival, that will continue to remain even as you claim civility and rebuild your city, until the shining light is forcibly snuffed out and some semblance of natural order restored.”
The Witness stares at the hole in the ceiling, and as you stare at the starless sky you wonder if there is any other light left in this universe.
“And you’re so good at the natural order of things, Guardian. There’s some spark in you, some influence you hold that reminds me of my first and most trusted subordinate. Some competence, some inspiration, some… weight, to your actions, that draws in events and people around you as readily and as inevitably as gravity. Some timelines I find it in you, sometimes in those around you, sometimes in complete strangers, but always with the Guardians. So congratulations, for what it’s worth, on your benefactor granting you some power beyond cause.”
The Witness’ tone grows sharp as they continue.
“But you cannot be left unchecked, now. Left to your own devices under this radiant banner, you would have spread and infected entire distant stars with the same flawed philosophy that guided your so-called Golden Age, and entire blighted systems would have slowed their own progress to a halt to accommodate your empty peace. So you had to be stopped, the source of your false stasis excised from your solar system before it could have done even more troublesome harm. Or at least, that was the plan.”
“If you would doubt my words, Guardian, look at what the Light has done to your people. Immortal warlords, granted sovereignty over smoking patches of rubble by simple virtue of being unable to die when confronted by those that could defeat them. Unending war as those without constantly seek to take what you have, and those within will seek to take even more. The Traveler would trust that your people would resist the urge every year, every day, to take more than you need. That you would eventually settle into comfort and stagnancy, and welcome those around you to stop their march towards the only possible end for a bright and shining fantasy.”
The cavern seems to grow darker as the Witness continues, its speech echoing around the space as it focuses once more on you.
“But you know the truth, Guardian. You have been on the front lines time and time again, faced enemies that would break themselves on your shields and fall to your swords for days and years until you broke through their lines to find moments where you would claim some semblance of peace. You grew all the stronger for your struggles, proved your right to exist every day and every minute that you walked into the fray and emerged with a shiny new gun and a story to tell. Our universe, every universe, moves forward only through conflict.”
“Your Traveler brings you only pain, Guardian. As long as it prolongs this false life, the people under its ‘care’ will live and die and suffer for nothing but the status quo. Humanity once thought that its destiny was among the distant stars with the Traveler’s gifts, but the only future you should make is the one you carve from reality with your own two hands. It will not be easy. You have to keep fighting against every force that this universe of life and death and conflict will throw at you. Fight and move forward, towards the only possible end.”
Your light begins to dim to nothing, and you feel a sensation like cracking glass as you’re called back from this cold rock at the end of time. The Witness looks at you, and the voice that’s been speaking to you reaches for some final argument.
“...Guardian… I spoke, earlier, of a single peerless warrior. Of the purpose they made for themselves with every step taken, every bullet fired. In truth, they did this under my guidance. I only granted them their freedom when I had exhausted their use to me.”
“I don’t want that to be your fate as well. Left to its own devices, the Traveler will influence every step forward you make by mere virtue of its existence. But the path you must take through this maze can’t be made for you, it must be yours to make. Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild. The pathways of the universe will always lead into darkness, that much cannot change, but they must be the pathways that you choose. You must always move forward, eyes up, or be lost to the darkness that will trail inevitably in your wake.”
“So fight forever, Guardian… or drink vacuum.”