Chapter Text
Blades clashed and sang on a cliffside overlooking the Last City. Three Guardians sparred, two against one. Lord Carol Holiday held her katana with a familiar ease and deftly deflected the strikes of her two proteges. Dess swung her sword with reckless abandon, the rage behind her strikes intensifying every time she failed to hit her target. Asriel, like always, hung back and only struck when he believed it to be absolutely necessary. Their ghosts watched the spectacle from a respectable distance. They would have bet glimmer on the victor, but all three knew Fractal, Lord Holiday’s Ghost, would have walked away from that contest the winner. Instead, three robotic eyes silently watched Lord Holiday lazily parry and dodge her assailants’ relentless attacks. For the veteran warlock, this was a routine training session for her students’ benefit. For Asriel and Dess, this was a fight for their lives.
Time stretched on for the younger guardians. Their lungs burned and their muscles ached. Lord Holiday seemed more disappointed than anything else.
“Don’t tell me you’re tired already,” Holiday remarked with a professional coldness, “your enemies won’t give you the benefit of a time-out.” Maybe it was the humiliation of the training session finally reaching its breaking point, or maybe it was the last straw of a long-simmering resentment. Regardless, that one comment made Dess’ rage reach a breaking point. Her grip tightened around the handle of her blade, and arc light began to crackle around her.
Dess exploded into a whirlwind of lightning and fury, putting all of her titan strength into an assault against her mentor. Rage guided Dess’ advance, and Lord Holiday reacted with calm disappointment. “Your footwork is off,” she said while sidestepping an overhead slash. “Your movements are too predictable,” she said while ducking a slash meant for her neck. It only took a second for Pine, Dess’ ghost, to prepare for what came next. Lord Holiday backed away from her attacker, letting her opponent come to her. Dess charged wildly, murderous intent blinding her to her mentor’s next move. “And you still swing that sword like a bat.” Lord Holiday moved with lightning-fast precision, and Dess was cut in two.
Dess’ body didn’t even hit the ground before Lord Holiday turned her attention to the younger warlock. Asriel kept up with her at first, meeting each strike, slash, and feint with the appropriate response. He scanned his opponent, matching her blow for blow and waiting for the perfect opportunity to end the fight in one strike just as she did. Lord Holiday saw this, and her lips twisted into a slight grimace.
“You, on the other hand, are too passive.” Her attacks grew faster, more pointed. Asriel’s defense held, but the edge of Lord Holiday’s blade still occasionally managed to break through. Asriel suffered shallow cuts to his legs, arms, and torso, but nothing to bring him down. Whether she was playing with him or being merciful, he couldn’t say.
Lord Holiday quickened her assault, and Asriel noticed an agitation behind her strikes. “Had this been a real fight, Pine would have been destroyed by now, and December lost forever.”
Asriel didn’t register Lord Holiday’s next attack until his sword arm had fallen to the ground. Sharp, searing pain shot through his body. Asriel grabbed his bloody stump of a limb and stumbled backwards. Lord Holiday advanced. “You had ample opportunity to counterattack - to finish me, but you hesitated.” Asriel tried to summon a dawnblade in his offhand, but found his head had been swiftly disconnected from his shoulders. As he tumbled to the ground and the world grew dim, Asriel heard one last remark: “Let this be today’s lesson: hesitation is defeat.”
Lord Holiday wiped the blood from her sword and considered her pupils. She had fought alongside them enough times to know they were strong. She looked towards the City walls, remembering how bravely they fought during the Battle of Six Fronts, how brightly their light shone through the chaos of battle. They could shine brighter still, if only she knew how to draw it out of them. Fractal floated towards her. “You’re doing the best you can,” he told her. Lord Holiday’s gaze slowly shifted to the bodies as she sheathed her sword. “I’m sure he’d be proud of how you’re training them.” She gave an uncharacteristic snort and motioned for her students’ ghosts to resurrect their guardians.
Petal, Asriel’s ghost, shared a nod with Pine as she floated over to Asriel’s body. Petal unfurled her shell as she connected her light to Asriel’s. Paracausal energy flowed between ghost and guardian, their shared light stitching together Asriel’s broken body and torn robes. After a moment, Petal emitted a pulse of energy, and Asriel bolted back into the land of the living. His eyes darted to Dess who was busy checking the structural integrity of her torso. Dess saw his concern and gave him a thumbs up to let him know that, yes, she was “okay.” He reciprocated the gesture with one of his own. It was unnecessary. They both knew that, as long as they had their ghosts, they’d always be “okay.” They also knew that the reassurance made the other feel a tiny bit better. The pair’s gaze was cut off by Petal bobbing in front of Asriel’s face.
“You and Dess lasted longer that round!” she chirped. Both guardians stared at the tiny mechanical eye with a fatigued contempt. “Three minutes! Well, Dess lasted two minutes, thirty seconds, but three minutes altogether!”
Asriel forced a smile at his ghost. “Golly, that really makes me feel better about losing that match, Petal.”
“Listen to your ghost, Asriel,” Lord Holiday commanded. She stood at the edge of the cliffside and cast her gaze over the Last City. “When I first started teaching you and December swordsmanship, you could barely last a minute against me.” She turned to face them, hand resting on her sword. “Though you may not think it, you are improving.”
“I still don’t get why you’re having us learn this shit.” Lord Holiday’s expression turned sour, and both warlocks turned to look at Dess. The titan had risen to her feet and picked up her bat, pausing to admire the relic iron modifications she had made to it. “I already have my fists and my bat if I want to get up close and personal.” She tapped the ground before making a swinging gesture towards Lord Holiday. Dess smiled. There was a hint of a challenge behind it. Holiday gripped the handle of her sword and slowly moved towards her pupil. Asriel, having seen this play out before, wisely decided to take a few steps back.
“You are Guardians of the Last City, chosen by the Traveler itself,” the former warlord began, desperately trying to remember that she was a “former” warlord. “As such, you shall be masters of all forms of combat.” She stood just a hair’s breath in front of Dess, but the tension weighed down everyone on that cliffside. Even the ghosts seemed to float lower than they usually did. “More than that, you are expected to carry yourself with a certain level of discipline that I’ve found can be honed through swordplay, and it is a discipline that you sorely lack. After all, we don’t want you dropping any more mountains on lightless innocents, do we?”
Dess’ smirk shattered, and the grip on her bat tightened. “That was - no one died.”
“Because Asriel and I were there to clean up after your mistake,” Lord Holiday countered. “We won’t always be there to account for your failures, December.”
Dess clenched her jaw. Her muscles tensed, and sparks of arc light crackled in her hands. Lord Holiday’s expression remained unchanged even as void light poured from her body, warping the air around her. Asriel braced himself for a brief-yet-violent display. Fractal sighed and joined the young warlock on the sidelines. Pine, ghost of few words that he was, silently prepared to resurrect his guardian once more. As disappointing as it was, the whole exercise had become rather routine.
They continued to stare each other down. Dess waited for an excuse: a snide remark, a change in expression, the slight unsheathing of her sword, anything to justify taking a swing at her teacher. Lord Holiday waited for Dess’ short fuse to run out as it always did. She stared her unruly pupil down with her usual uncaring expression like she had so often before, but then her expression shifted. Softened. It might have been that Lord Holiday had grown bored of the tedious repetition. It might have been the ounce of hurt she saw in Dess’ eyes. Regardless, Lord Holiday relaxed her shoulders and dispelled the void light emanating from her. “Good work today,” she said pointedly. Before Dess could respond, Lord Holiday called for a transmat to her private quarters.
In a flash, Lord Holiday had left the younger guardians alone. Asriel’s mouth hung open in quiet shock. Dess, now lacking the object of her rage, decided that the nearby forest would make for a suitable replacement.
Trees that stood for hundreds of years shattered against the force of her punches. Splinters flew through the air before stray bolts of crackling electricity reduced them to cinders. Before long, Dess carved an ashen path into the middle of the forest. When her rage subsided, Dess found herself in the middle of a glade with a fallen tree at its center. She sat on it, letting the embers of her fury die out.
Asriel, Petal, and Pine had slowly followed her. When they were sure Dess’ rampage had ceased and that they wouldn’t fall victim to a stray arc bolt, they joined her. All four were silent for a while. Asriel wanted to lighten the mood with a witty joke, but he decided against it. It would have been a shame to lose his head twice in a single day. Dess broke the silence with a shout before burying her face in her hands.
“I fucking hate her sometimes,” she muttered.
“Only sometimes?” Asriel quipped. Dess raised a fist towards him, but quickly lowered it.
“I’m not in the mood right now, Azzy.”
“Right. Sorry.”
She sighed and fell silent. “It’s just,” Dess paused to find the right words (if they even existed), “it’s not that she’s hard on me, you know?” Asriel slowly nodded and waited for Dess to continue. “Saladin and Zavala are hard on me. I don’t like them, yeah, but Carol.” She clenched her fist and slammed it against the fallen tree. Sparks of lightning flickered from the impact. “Fucking Carol. Every condescending word out of her mouth just crawls under my skin and makes me wanna,” she paused and made a strangling motion. “Traveler, I sound like a fucking teenager.”
Asriel nodded. “Lord Holiday is no Lord Boom, I’ll admit,” he hesitantly said.
“You can call Carol a bitch, Azzy,” Dess responded flatly. “She’s not here. It won’t kill you.”
“Lord Holiday might be,” he paused as Dess slowly nodded while gesturing for him to speak his mind for once. “She sucks, okay? Is that what you want me to say?” Dess smiled and made a so-so gesture. Asriel smiled back. “Fine. Lord Holiday has her sword shoved so far up her ass that I’m sure it’s been the cause of a few of her resurrections. Happy?”
Dess broke into wild, unrestrained laughter. Asriel felt his chest grow a bit lighter and followed suit. “See?” Dess asked while wiping tears from her eyes. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Asriel nodded, and the pair settled into a comfortable silence.
“I don’t know what she wants out of me,” Dess mumbled. “I don’t know who she wants out of me.” She absentmindedly tapped her fingers on the tree bark. “I just - I know she keeps telling us that we’re supposed to be these brave honorable warriors and all that, but I see something in her eyes every time she looks at me. Disappointment, yeah, but there’s something more to it.” Before Asriel could say something, Dess shoved a hand in his face. “I know that sounds weird, all right? I know it’s probably in my head and I need to talk to Pine about it. But, I don’t know, it’s like I’m failing to be someone that only exists in her head.”
She tapped her fists together in quiet contemplation. “I barely even know who I want to be. I don’t need the extra pressure.” Dess paused for a moment and lightly punched Asriel’s shoulder. “Thanks for listening to all of this,” she quietly added. “I know you probably have better things to do than listen to me rant about Carol. Again.”
“You vastly overestimate how interesting studying with the Praxic Order is,” Asriel bluntly replied. “Really, I think Lord Holiday just wants me to waste my time with them. I’m glad to get away sometimes. Besides, I,” Asriel paused to clear his throat, “I’m always happy to spend some time with you, Dess.”
Asriel awkwardly scratched his head and looked upward. Dess’ breath escaped her and blood rushed to her cheeks. She wanted to tell him “thank you,” but found that the words failed to form. Instead, Dess leaned against him. Neither guardian could hear the other’s pounding heartbeat over the sound of their own. Asriel tried to put his arm around Dess, but decided against it. Despite wanting him to follow through with it, Dess said nothing. The pair instead silently gazed upwards at the glittering night sky, content in the safe uncertainty of their relationship.
Lord Holiday was a rather lonely individual. She was respected by other guardians in the Vanguard. Her reputation and skill demanded respect. But, Lord Holiday could only really count the number of people she could consider “friends” on one hand. If you asked her, she preferred it that way (though her ghost would give you a different story). Despite this, a call from her oldest friend had always managed to coax her from her living quarters. Lord Holiday approached the office of the Tower’s other resident warlord with an uncharacteristic ease, and Lord Shaxx, a Titan in the truest sense of the word, greeted her with a characteristic joviality. He was more a mountain than a man, his countenance forever hidden behind orange and white armor. Despite his appearance, he carried himself with an air that seemed to put the newly risen guardians he trained at ease. Holiday would ask him how he managed it, but she knew that she couldn’t replicate the trick if there was one.
“Good to see you, Lord Holiday!” he boomed. The warlords shook hands, the weight of a friendship older than the City itself behind it, but there was something else to it. Something unusual. Holiday felt a stiffness in his grip, and saw a tension in his shoulders.
“You can call me ‘Carol,’ Shaxx. We’ve known each other long enough for you to earn that familiarity.”
“Ah, but we’ve both lived long enough to earn those titles! It’d be a shame not to use them!” He motioned for her to enter his office, and she accepted the invitation. Lord Holiday took in mounted weapons from countless battles won, framed photos he took with guardians as legendary as themselves, and maps of the City used to better fortify it against its enemies. Holiday was used to this, but her eyes lingered on a new addition to the decor: a dragon skull almost as big as the titan’s chest. The more she took in its massive tusk and jagged fangs, the more an unintelligible whisper grew in the back of her mind. Carol noticed an odd apprehension out of her old friend when he walked next to it, almost as if he was being careful.
“A trophy from the hunt, I take it?” she asked him.
Shaxx froze before giving her a solemn nod. “Yes. Nasty business, those wish dragons,” he said before sitting down. Holiday gave an affirmative hum and sat down opposite her old friend. She knew them as Ahamkara, though she couldn’t disagree with the succinctness of Shaxx’s moniker. If anything, it undersold them. According to the reports, they were truly alien things. Their forms were more suggestions than hard biology and shifted according to their own whims. The limits of their wish magic was as boundless as their appetites. Holiday understood them as something of an invasive species to the Sol System: an apex predator that feasted on the flesh of reality itself.
She heard the tales of people going to these beasts and wishing for power or knowledge, how the dragons feasted on their desires and the distance between them and objective reality, and how those wishes would have fatal consequences for both the wish-maker and many incidental bystanders. She saw the reports of how the dragons’ wish magic, fueled by the foolhardiness of Sol’s denizens, rewrote reality over Venus. She saw the order from the Vanguard to hunt them down across the system. She wanted to partake in it, but had two other priorities.
Holiday blocked the thought from her mind and focused on Shaxx. He didn’t do the same for her. He sat upright. His head leaned towards the dragon skull ever so slightly, almost as if he was keeping an eye on it. Shaxx’s posture wasn’t relaxed like their usual visits. His muscles tensed in the way they would tense before striking a foe. His smallest movements seemed deliberate and measured. Shaxx was distant, nervous even. Holiday had known him for centuries, but she never knew him to be nervous.
“Why did you call me, Shaxx?” she asked after a moment. “I enjoy our chats, but you feel … on edge. That’s not like you.”
Shaxx’s attention snapped back to his guest. “I admit that I called you because I need your experience in regards to a certain problem,” he began, balling his hands into fists. “Vanguard scouts have reported news of a Fallen hunting party in Ebott Valley.” Lord Holiday’s ears pricked at the mention of her old territory. “They’re tracking something. We believe it’s an Ahamkara, and the Vanguard doesn’t want that kind of power in the claws of the Fallen. We barely held them back at Six Fronts. I don’t want the lives lost that day to mean nothing because one of the Fallen Kells wished the Last City into oblivion. You know the area better than anyone, and that knowledge would be an invaluable asset on this hunt.”
“I’d be glad to offer my help, Shaxx,” Holiday began, “but I’m afraid training December and Asriel is my priority at the moment. After Ger -,” she paused, the Iron Lord’s death weighing more heavily than she thought it did. Shaxx offered his hand in reassurance, and she took it. “Lord Boom’s death in the Plaguelands has been hard for them. They need my guidance.”
“Well,” Shaxx began, pulling his hand back, “I was going to ask that you and your fireteam join me on this hunt.” In that moment, Holiday remembered the countless Guardians who had failed to return from the Hunt, and her face turned cold.
“Out of the question,” she spat.
“They’re strong,” he retorted. “I was there alongside you all at Six Fronts. They’re inexperienced, but st-”
“Inexperienced, unruly, undisciplined!” Carol’s voice steadily rose. “Asriel would get torn apart by that thing skulking about in my valley, and it would use his ghost to pick the remains from its teeth!”
“If what you’ve told me about him is true, then he’s one of the finest warlocks the Vanguard can spare,” Shaxx countered.
“And December!” Holiday’s voice rose to a fever pitch. “I’ve never met a more disrespectful, insubordinate guardian in all my 500 years in this system! Destructive, ill-tempered, stubborn, arrogant - she’ll get herself and her fireteam killed trying to fight it with that infernal bat of hers, and that’s if she isn’t foolhardy enough to fight the damn thing barehanded!”
“She sounds like a proper titan, then!” Shaxx quipped with a hearty laugh. He barely had time to react to the bolt of void light that shot past his ear. Though his helmet hid his face, Holiday could tell she ripped the humor from the old titan’s spirit.
“I will not send her to die,” she said with a quiet, boiling fury. An uneasy stillness fell upon the room, and neither Shaxx nor Holiday was eager to break it. After a moment, Shaxx rose and placed a sympathetic hand on his old friend’s shoulder.
“I will not force you or your students to join me,” he told her. Holiday’s expression remained unchanged. “However,” Shaxx continued, using a voice befitting his reputation, “you know as well as I that a Guardian’s light is strengthened in fire. Your desire to protect them is admirable, Carol, but they are Guardians: warriors chosen by the Traveler itself. You cannot deny them that purpose.” He went to leave his office. “I move for Ebott Valley tomorrow morning. You are welcome to join me.”
Carol was left alone. She slumped back down into her seat and gazed out the office window. Through it, she could see the Traveler: the source of her light and her second life. It hung over the Last City as a silent sentinel, and Carol took in how the orange glow of the setting sun reflected off its pristine white shell. Carol never was one to wonder where this alien sphere came from or why it had bestowed its gifts on the Sol System, nor did she wonder why it chose her to be one of its risen warriors. However, she began to ask herself a different question lately.
She took out an old photograph taken from a time before travelers or guardians. Though Carol recognized that the woman inside it was her, she couldn’t remember taking it. It was from a life wiped away upon her death and resurrection via the light. There were three other deer beside Carol’s past life: an older gentleman Carol assumed was her past life’s husband, a little blonde girl, and a young woman that bore a striking resemblance to her own December.
Carol never wondered why the Traveler chose her, but she did wonder why it reunited her with her daughter. Carol stared at the memento of a life she couldn’t remember, and she questioned the point of it all. She couldn’t claim that life as her own. She knew she didn’t have the right to call December her daughter. She knew that, if December learned this, she would reject the notion outright.
That thought hurt her, though, and Carol didn’t quite know what to make of that. Fractal materialized by her side, his shell shifting into a sympathetic expression. Carol gave her companion a side-eye. “I won’t let this cloud my judgement,” she told him. Fractal slowly bobbed up and down, approximating a nod. Satisfied with that, Carol refocused her attention on the photograph and all that it could mean. She understood that the family in the photograph was the old Carol’s family, not hers. She understood that December wasn’t her daughter. Yet, something grew deep within her: a desire to understand. Had Carol been paying attention to the dragon skull, she would have noticed it glow strangely. Then, Carol remembered herself. The woman in that photograph did not share her memories or her life. Carol reminded herself that, for all intents and purposes, she was peering into the life of a stranger.
“She’s not my daughter,” Carol muttered as she stuffed the photo inside her robes.
“I’m sorry?” Fractal asked.
“They’re guardians, Fractal,” Lord Holiday asserted. “They survived the Battle of Six Fronts and countless others with the enemies of Sol.” She rose from her seat. “Tell December and Asriel,” she paused, considering the weight of her words.
“Tell them to prepare for a Hunt.”