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The Trials of Osiris demand a level of mental fortitude unlike anything else in the Crucible. My hands shake on my weapon. The cold steel of my submachinegun feels all the more icy in my grip, somehow the firearm is heavier and more taxing to hold than when I forge into the unknown against thousands of Hive, Shadow Legion or Taken.
In some of these skirmishes I wonder what enemies of the Last City must feel. A Guardian is truly one of the most terrifying foes a being can face in the Sol System. I wield fear and cruelty as a weapon myself, it even informs parts of my garb. Dipping my fingers into the manipulative, controlling frost of the Darkness -- of Stasis -- this element has undoubtedly bled into my psyche from months of sustained usage. An old Earth philosopher once said something about the Abyss peering back into us. If this adage is true at all, it finds much truth within me. Yet here, I am likely the least fearsome fighter amid a sea of them.
There is something about this particular battlefield that rattles the senses, the mind. On the face of it, we use the same weapons, we channel the same abilities as always. With the exception of Strand, which has made more and more appearances in recent days, after myself and the few who ventured with me first discovered it on Neomuna, the same forces as always are at play in Saint-14′s arenas. Its playful, focused and enigmatic green threads still take me off-guard sometimes, but that’s not a high bar.
In the Trials, everything takes me off-guard. When the goal is the effective murder of a Lightbearer, no amount of ingenuity is enough -- and my opponents make sure to exhibit this as much as possible. So do I. No tactic is too unfair. No decision is too effective, no tool too powerful.
Maybe it’s because I’m still so new to it. Maybe it’s because those who fight in these battles have been sharpened far more than the average Guardian who seeks Shaxx’s approval. Or maybe the stakes are just higher here, in more ways than one. Some of the most prestigious rewards The Last City has to offer are found in the Trials, if only because of their rarity, and the difficulty of performing consistently well against other Lightbearers who have every intention of being as cutthroat as I am -- if not much, much more.
The difference between fighting here, and fighting in matches overseen by Shaxx is nearly indescribable. In my time in the Sol System, I’ve learned to fear little. But I still freeze and shudder when I fight here.
It doesn’t help that I am nearly always outmatched. I have to hold myself back from disparaging myself when a fellow Guardian decides to fight beside me and show me what enemy tendencies we can expect. The way he explains it, others gave him the time he needed to grow as a fighter when he first started, and he’s only too happy to offer me the same. I’ve stood beside this man under the greatest of duress, lightening his burden as he lightened mine, to the point we half-jokingly call each other brothers now. And still, I can’t stop myself from apologizing for my ineptitude.
Before, this might have ended my ambition.
But after confronting the root of nightmares, the Trials of Osiris are simply one more battleground to prove myself in, to face my fear, until my hands shake no longer, and until my aim stays true in an ocean of bullets.