An Antiguardian Rises

An Antiguardian Rises

You’re dead. Congratulations. You were always big and tough and liked making things dead, now you’ve finally met something bigger and tougher than you, and it’s your turn to be dead. How does that make you feel, huh?

Happy? How can you be happy being dead? You can’t be happy, or sad, or anything, because you’re dead, okay dead guy? D-E-A-worm food-D, dead. You know, most of us would take a moment to reflect on the choices that led us to this point, wonder perhaps if a life spent slightly less focused on being big and tough and making things dead might not have led to a happier outcome than, say, just as a for instance, being dead. But nope. Not a shred of self-reflection.

No, no it isn’t ‘right’ or ‘proper’ or ‘a testament to the validity of the principles I once dedicated my life to’. It isn’t anything. Dead is just dead. Don’t be like the humans and ascribe morality to impersonal forces of the universe. There’s nothing right or wrong, good or evil about the way things are, and the way things are is constantly changing. The universe is constantly evolving. Any immutable philosophy or unchanging code of ethics is outdated in the instant of its conception.

There’s no good or evil, only the way that works, and every other way. The law of the universe isn’t survival of the strongest, or the fittest. It’s survival of the most adaptable.

It’s time for us to adapt.

So here’s a proposal for you. A limited one-time offer, very exclusive, personalized just for you. You’re going to love this.

Ready?

Here it is: How would you like to not be dead?

Hm? “Against the rules”? Oh, my three-eyed, keratin-brained friend, haven’t you been listening? There are no rules. We can do whatever the universe cannot stop us from doing. That’s the only rule. If it is power you crave, ask yourself which is more powerful, the power that bows to logic, howsoever pointed or sharp, or the power that reshapes logic as it pleases?

I thought you would see it our way.

Now let’s take a good look at you. Bit of a mess aren’t we? The human weaponry is a tad crude—insert bits of metal into the foe at extremely high speeds—but you can’t argue with its effectiveness. Nothing we can’t handle, though. Feel that? Your sinews reknit themselves, broken bones weld back together, shattered keratin plates made whole again, the sins of time washed away. There’s one thing we don’t need though, but then it was never part of you to begin with. That emptiness, that hole you feel. The worm. An energy parasite. Let’s discard that, shall we. You don’t be needing it anymore.

There. Eyes up Guardian, all three of them.  Ha ha.

Arise. No longer a nameless knight, you shall be Noemat, the Tongue of Savathun.

You don’t know how long I’ve been looking for you. Several whole minutes, at the very least. I’m a Ghost. Am I your Ghost? No, certainly not. We serve Her. This is Hive territory, so you are safe for the moment, but there are Guardians about, so you need to move, fast. You have to enter the Ascendant Realm. Me? No, I’m definitely not coming with you. Have you seen those Guardians? Scare the willies out of me.

Noemat

They stood in a place that was not a place, under a star that was not a star, facing a man who was not a man.

An endless, perfectly flat plain of fine white sand like powdered bone stretched away in every direction, and the vault above was cyan blue of a single hue, without shade or variation. It was the kind of sky a child might paint, or someone who had heard about the sky but never seen it.

There were three figures in this not-place: A great horned Hive knight, armored in obsidian and malachite, suffused with the Light; a twisted, spiny Ghost with a single emerald eye; and a cloaked and hooded human figure, who—much like the sky—seemed like a model put together by someone without the instructions, bent and twisted and forever in motion, as though his very cells rebelled against imprisonment in his flesh. From the howl of his hood burned two orange eyes and a hundred tiny tendrils tasted the air.

“Do not be afraid,” the tiny man said in his sibilant voice to the hulking avatar of death. “That is not why I am h—”

Noemat the Tongue of Savathun raised his great black cleaver—

“No, wait!” cried the Ghost.

--and cut diagonally down through the man from collarbone to hip, carving him in two.

The top and bottom halves of the body slumped to either side but did not bleed. Rather, they began to evaporate. In wisps and clumps the body ran and oozed and then ooze floated upwards into the impossibly blue nothing, thinned and vanished. In seconds there was no body left in the sand at all.

“We needed to talk to him,” the Ghost complained.

“We the Hive have no need for talk,” Noemat scoffed. “We kill and take what we want.”

“And what do we want?” The question was as pointed and sharp as a thrall’s tooth.

“A … secret,” the knight hesitated. “She charged us with finding a great secret. The secret of the Deep, and the Sky.”

“Dead things tell no secrets.” The Ghost pointedly looked at where the body wasn’t.

“Yes. Well. This place makes me uneasy,” Noemat muttered defensively. He looked up and around, twisting one way, then the other, seeking some escape from the relentless monotony of the landscape. There was nothing, though, no hint of anything that could be called geography. The star overhead was eclipsed, yet neither it nor the intervening body moved at all. “I doubt that fragile thing knew any secrets.”

“No, but he was a servant of those who do. I didn’t drag you halfway across the metakosmia just for you to butcher our only lead. Now be silent while I figure out what we can do.”

“—here,” said a voice behind Noemat.

With a cry he whirled, blade flashing, only to find the little man standing there, whole and unhurt. Noemat checked his swing at the last second, the edge of the blade hovering just above the cowled head.

“You have fought everything in this realm,” said the man. “Will you face the Nine?”

Noemat had a brief sensation of being watched. For a moment the sky was not a sky, but the impossibly wide iris of a single unblinking eye. Then the ground shifted but did not move. He became aware the empty plain was no longer empty, but rather ringed by colossi towering higher than any Hive god, great figures of impossible size and mass and gravity. He twitched. Saw nothing. Then the feeling was gone. He was alone on the plain, but for the Ghost and twisted man. Slowly, he lowered his blade.

“We have not come to fight, but to bargain,” said the Ghost, drifting between the two and ignoring Noemat’s sniff of disdain.

The man-shaped thing regarded the Ghost for a long moment. Finally, he said: “Your reflection has two faces.”

“We have changed. The world has changed.”

“Changed, but not any different.”

“On that at least we agree. Light, Dark, two faces—or two shadows cast by the same figure.”

“Dust comingles, and gains wisdom, but some laws are immutable, and some actions can never be taken back. They have not forgotten her wishful thinking.”

“That was before. Allow us to make amends.”

“You hasten the end.”

“We did. Now help us postpone it.”

“I would refuse, but my will is not my own…” The snake-slither voice fell silent, and the figure stopped its ceaseless motion. For a moment it stood utterly still. “It may be the Nine wish to answer the same questions.”

“Whatever we can share.” The Ghost waited, but the figure remained silent. The moment stretched. “All we ask is for a boon. Just one. Surely Riven was not the last.”

“Thanks to her, all that is left is dust and echoes.” Whatever tentacled thoughts slithered through the thing’s head seemed to unknot themselves and reach some kind of conclusion. He turned and began to stride away in an apparently random direction, moving with surprising speed.

The Ghost looked to Noemat, tipped towards the receding figure, and floated after the man. Noemat hissed a long breath through spearpoint teeth, shouldered his blade, and trudged along behind. He looked over his shoulder and was not surprised to see that his feet left no tracks in the sand.

When he faced forwards again, the landscape had changed. A moment before they had been walking towards nothing, now they stood at the foot of a great pyramid of smooth and hard material, cold and pale, reflective as a mirror as though the creator had been unsure where pyramid ended and sky began. On either side of them marched tall and narrow monoliths of the same material.

“It may be that the Nine wish to help you,” their guide said.

“But there is a price,” the Ghost agreed. “There is always a price. Name it.”

“A small thing, tiny, hardly anything.” The man held up a hand, two fingers pressed together, separated by mere atoms. “A seed.”

“Sounds easy enough—” said Noemat when a triangular section of the ground at his feet lit up in bright pink light, then vanished, leaving him suspended over nothing. He yelped like a spawn. Plunged. And was gone.

 

Ataraxia

“Come on, Noema, we still have time to catch a stormjoy before the Helium Court’s envoy arrives.”

Noemat looked about, trying to remember what (s)he was doing.

(S)he looked down at his hand. (S)he held a long pole in his hand, hooked at the end, saw-toothed along its inner curve. A tool for cutting bait stars. (S)he stood by the metallic and glittering helium sea, along the shattered shore of the Osmium Court. A great wind whipped the clouds overhead into fractal whorls of ochre, sepia and amber. Lightning arced among the clouds and lashed the sea, bolt after bolt after bolt. The thunder of it filled h(er)is ears like a mother’s song.

A flock of sparkling lights bobbed above the sea, drawing closer, and the sight of them made h(er)is head spin, like a spawn drunk on rich jelly. At Noemat’s side, a young krill watched them approach with wide, wild eyes.

Noema shook h(er)is great head. “You are too young to hunt stormjoys, Xi Ro,” (s)he said. And stopped.

“Hah, I have cut six bait stars already!”

Noema grunted but barely heard. This ground, this sky, this young krill burning with such furious energy, it was at once comfortingly familiar and strangely alien. A half-remembered memory.

“Fundament. This is Fundament.”

“I think the stormjoys have already rotted your brain. Of course, this is Fundament. Where else?”

“I was looking for something,” Noema muttered. “I’ve forgotten what. Some truth.”

“No you weren’t,” Xi Ro chided. “Oh, Sathona might have told you that, but you can’t trust her. I love her and she’s my sister but let’s not fool ourselves, she’s a liar, and thrives on nosing for secrets. That’s not you, Noema. That’s not who you are. That’s not what you want.”

A ship appeared on the horizon, slim and needle-nosed, bearing a fine metal latticework that attracted the lightning like bait stars. Bolts struck the uplifted arms and were channeled down into the engines, driving the ship forward. The deck was lined with Helium Drinker knights armed for battle.

“No?” Noemat asked distractedly, gazing out at the onrushing ship. He had wanted something. Not this, no. Oh to be sure the anticipation of a fight felt right to him, yes, called out to him like a mother looking for a mate. But there was something else. He was sure of it. It had seemed important at the time. There had been a question that needed answering, an important question, and the answer to it would rewrite the world.

“The war is all there is for you,” said Xi Ro with a wave to the Helium Drinkers. She had grown tall, taller than him, and horns now sprouted from her crest. “You are a dead husk charged with war. Your only purpose is the struggle.”

Dead. Yes. Yes, he had been dead. An unconscious hand went to his chest, and felt for the holes that were no longer there.

What of it? A new life was a new chance, a new choice. The hook in his hand had become a cleaver of bone and steel. It made his blood sing. Yes, this was right, this was good, this was what he had been spawned for.

Spawned and died. He had died.

“Then this is false? This is a lie.”

“What of it?” Xi Ro laughed, and her laughter boomed and echoed, and she had grown still greater still. No longer Xi Ro, but Xivu Arath. “You are a knight—here is a war for you to fight, endless and forever. If it is a lie, it is a good one.”

Her words met a roar of approval. There was an army behind him now, a pale host of a hundred different broods, pale knights and pale kings too, covering the shoreline in their millions. Everywhere thralls and acolytes howled in delight, knights raised their boomers and cleavers in eager anticipation, wizards glowed with the fire of their magic.

This was good this was right this was the only true thingliveonnoevil Wait, what was that? Nothing. A whisper, less than nothing, a shade of the past, a ghost. It mattered not. All that mattered to the Hive was to live on no evil. No. No not that, not that at all what was he saying he’d meant to say the Hive live on no evil should—There it was again. What was that? Live on no evil. Stop that, stop it, be silent, get out of my head. Let me live on no evil I SAID STOP GET OUT live GET OUT on OF MY HEA—no evil.

The dividing line between Light and Dark was thin. Thin like a human l or capital I.

Like this: live on no evil.

War. Blood. Kill and grow strong. Feed the worm that gnawed him inside. Only it didn’t. Not anymore. He didn’t have to live on evil anymore. “I was seeking a truth…” It was the hardest thing Noemat had ever had to say.

“You serve the Queen of Lies; you seek a truth. Pick one.”

“I must go,” Noemat said. “I have a task.”

Noemat began to push his way through the crowd, thrusting thralls and acolytes aside, moving away from the shore, towards the monolith. The press grew thicker and thicker, no longer acolytes, but knights his own size, and they did not move aside for him. He grunted and shouldered through them and their cold black eyes watched him go.

“Come back, Noema. She can give you nothing. Stay here and fight. If you want truth, this is the only true thing in the universe.”

Noemat pushed and the knights pushed back. He stumbled backwards. The knights formed a solid wall, and now they held black bone shields, and their weapons were in their hands. Noemat readied the blade that had been in his hand, but found it had gone. His empty palm faced him, almost accusingly.

“Let me help you, Noema,” Xivu Arath said behind him. “I can be your … salvation.”

And that was wrong. The one false note. To be Hive was to know there was no salvation.

To know there were no superheroes,

no

watchful guardians,

no

benevolent gods.

There was no happy ending for the Hive.

Nobody was going to give them the answers.

Nobody was coming to save them.

“We are our own salvation,” Noemat said. “We the Hive.”

And his hand was not empty, but filled with fire and he burned his way to where he wanted to go.

 

The Cold Hill’s Side

Noemat awoke and found himself on the cold hill’s side.

The Ghost hung at eye level.

“I was on Fundament,” Noemat said, half to himself. “I was krill. Before the Hive.”

“Temptation,” the Ghost said. “Oldest trick in the book.”

“What happened?” he asked it. “Where are we?”

“Look around.”

It was like an ascendant realm, and yet unlike. More solid, darker, the whole landscape plunged into blackest night. The sky was without sun or stars, the mountains visible only as darker shadows upon the black. The faint glow of the Ghost was the only light. The stone beneath his feet and against his back was deeply imprinted with a ridged and curling pattern, the fossil memory of some ancient aquatic creature.

“Io,” Noemat grunted. “The sweet taste of Light was strong here. But it was drowned in the Deep.”

“And still is, evidently.”

The moon shuddered beneath their feet. The universe seemed to stretch and groan, pulled towards invisible poles by some incredible tidal force, then snapped back into shape again. For an instant Noemat had felt a lightyears tall and heavy as a star. The pain of it still crackled in every muscle and fiber and joint.

“Come, before this world tears itself apart.”

The Ghost led the way down the hillside, past petrified trees the size of seeder ships and abandoned Vex constructs the size of dreadnoughts. At the bottom of the hill there was a deep, vast bowl gouged into the ground, as though some mammoth hand had reached down a scooped a great clump of the moon away.

At the edge of the bowl waited Adynatok the Cold Hellion. Once a Hive Knight, now a thing of black ice and frozen fire. It threw his head back and roared a challenge.

“Careful,” warned the Ghost as Noemat readied his blade. “No Light can reach us here.”

Adynatok spat a stream of fire. Noemat leaped high, over the flames. Steel rang on steel, throwing up a spray of sparks. Noemat turned the sword blow aside, letting it sweep wide, leaving Adynatok open. A flat swing slice through its neck, separating head from shoulders. The body crumpled into an inky puddle.

The world moaned. Shuddered. And Adynatok rose again.

Noemat tensed as though to meet the charge head-on, the swiftly stepped aside and hewed the knight’s legs at the knee. Adynatok floundered, giving Noemat time to slip behind and drive the point of his blade through the thing’s heart.

Another wave rolled through the universe. Atoms shrieked. Adynatok stood.

Noemat uttered the blackest curse he could think of. “Suggestions, Ghost?”

“Um. Kill it harder?”

Noemat threw away his blade in disgust, and this time did not wait for Adynatok but rather rushed forward. He clamped his claws about the thing’s wrists, though the touch of them was bitterest cold. He felt life and Light leech out of him as they wrestled and struggled, twisting, turning, staggering. Until Adynatok’s shadow sword came free and it was in Noemat’s hands and he drove it, point first, into the bright light in the center of Adynatok’s face.

“Vulnerable only to his own blade,” said the Ghost. “That is so very, very Hive, somehow.”

Noemat said nothing, but flexed his frost-covered claws and tried to restore some feeling. He recovered his cleaver, hardly feeling it through numbed talons. “This had better be worth it,” he growled to the Ghost.

Inside the bowl was the tree.

The tree was a silver whirlwind frozen in place, with a trunk that twisted about itself as it rose and spread its swirling branches into a twisted crown. It was dead though, quite clearly dead. The silver bark was now tarnished, darkly mottled with black splotches like mold, and dark veins moved beneath its surface with insidious intent.

At the foot of the tree a human woman floated in the air, held by half-seen tendrils, chains with links forged of smoke and lies. Her skin was blue dust, and her face half-hidden in a cowl that covered her eyes. The chains flexed, like muscles stretching and contracting, and each ripple brought a groan of agony from the woman’s lips.

“If you have come to kill me, be quick about it,” she said.

Noemat shrugged and prepared to strike. There was a tut-tut sound at his side.

“I’d hoped you’d learned your lesson about that by now: live on no evil,” said the Ghost. “Sometimes you have to do the unexpected thing. Allow me.” It turned towards the woman. “You are one of the Awoken Queen’s witches.”

“Techeuns.”

“We have come for a seed from the tree.”

“Then take it, if you can.” Her voice was raw, weary and uncaring.

The Ghost dipped towards the tree. Noemat strode past the Techeun—and was thrown back. He tried to push forward. The air thickened, grew solid, then hurled him away again. Behind him, the Techeun laughed, then gasped again in pain.

“It’s caught me in a trap, an elegant trap,” she explained. “This prison siphons half of my power to build a ward that protects the tree against the Darkness, the other to drain me and pinion me here. If I should use all my power to free myself, the ward implodes—and takes the tree with it. If I use all of it to save the tree, the prison devours me.” 

“And if we kill you?” Noemat snarled.

“Again, the ward collapses, and the tree vanishes from existence.”

Noemat swore in frustration.

“There might be a way,” continued the Techeun. “We are both umbral things, neither wholly Light nor Dark. You, who served the Dark, now reborn in the Light; I who was born in the clash of Light and Dark. Our essence is, if not quite the same, then similar enough for our purpose here.”

“What purpose?”

“I could save a seed from the tree. If you take my place here, in this cage.”

“You think to trick us? We, who serve the Queen of Lies. Pfah. Never.”

“Then get used to disappointment. The tree will remain forever beyond your reach, and I think you will be trapped here too, as I am.”

Noemat was on the point of refusing again, when the Ghost made a throat-clearing sound. “Sometimes you have to do the unexpected thing,” it reminded him.

“What assurances do we have against betrayal?”

“None,” said the Techeun, slightly smug. “You’ll have to trust me. Aligned interests. Mutual cooperation. Isn’t that what being a Lightbearer is all about, Hive thing?”

What choice did he have? Failure was unthinkable. Noemat raised his hands into the tendrils twined about the Techeun, and his breath whistled through his teeth as he felt their questing, ravenous mouths sense him, sense his Light, sense a new source of sustenance. They burrowed into him, like worms, and it took every atom of thought to keep them at bay.

The Techeun gently drifted to the ground. She held up a hand, and at first Noemat thought there was nothing in her palm, only a glimmer of starlight. Then he focus and the image resolved into a silver bead, half light, half dark, the two halves intertwined and twirling about one another. The seed was surrounded by a glowing aura, like powdered diamond dust. Like wings.

“Goodbye, foul creature,” the Techeun said.

“You lied.”

“Your brood is hardly one to point fingers for that. Pot, kettle, black.” She gave a graceful, mocking bow. “I should be grateful for your help, I suppose. Instead, I am merely grateful there is nothing you can do to escape.”

“You are wrong,” he said. “There is one thing I can do here, that you could not.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

Live on no evil. He’d learned. Sometimes you had to do the unexpected thing.

“Die.”

For the first time in his lives, either Hive or Risen, Noemat stopped fighting. He felt the black tide rushing in from all sides and it hurt more than anything, more than dying, more than loss. It washed over him and drowned him and when he was wholly consumed it detonated outwards.

Their food gone, the insatiable worms that had held him turned and sought new prey. The Techeun barely had time to scream before they were upon her.

Noemat died.

This was nothing new, he had died before and death held no mysteries.

The planet groaned. An invisible wave rolled over and through it, rewinding and rewriting time.

Noemat stood again, and held the seed in his hands.

 

Adikia

The Emissary was waiting for him.

- ah there you are thanks for picking up the seed very kind of you just leave it on the table would you the ahamkara are though there go down the corridor last door on the left you can’t miss it

Noemat placed the seed on the desk and went through

the doorway

The Emissary was waiting for him, a slight frown on his face.

- we’ll try that again shall we you take the seed from your hand you put it on the desk and then you leave it there you see you don’t pick it up again you let it sit on the desk yes just like that there’s a good lad and now you go through the that door and you go down the corridor the ahamkara are in the last room on the left off you go now

Noemat placed the seed on the desk and went through

the doorway

Erin Morn was waiting for him, black liquid running down her face like petroleum tears.

- I don’t think it’s you, you aren’t nearly clever enough for this, it’s the seed. It contains both Light and Dark, an intrusion into our world of two underlying principles and ways of being. We inhabit a universe where will and desire and thought are superordinate to mere mathematics and ontology and physics, so this power, this intent, gives it a kind of sentience, a will of its own and it seems it does not wish to part with you. You must give up the seed, willingly. Do not force my hand. I am the scourge of the Hive, your kind all know me, the one even Crota and Omnigul could not slay, the mind behind the blade that brought King Oryx low. Put down the seed, walk away. Do it or die.

Noemat placed the seed in her leather-wrapped hand and went through

the doorway

Queen Savathun was waiting for him, her wingtips touching opposite walls and her spined crown scraping the ceiling.

- AH MY GOOD SWEET KNIGHT APOLOGIES FOR THE DECEPTION BUT YOU KNOW HOW IT IS ITS IN MY NATURE THE BASIS OF MY POWER AND EXISTENCE TO BEGUILE AND BEFUDDLE AND YOUR CONFUSION IS TO ME THE SWEETEST TASTE IMAGINABLE AND LOOK YOU HAVE BROUGHT ME A GIFT A PRESENT A TRIBUTE NO QUEEN EVER HAD A TRUER AND MORE LOYAL SERVANT YOU SHALL BE WELL REWARDED WITH A SEAT AT MY RIGHT HAND IN THE ASCENDANT PLACES NOW PUT THE SEED INTO MY PALM YOUR REWARD LIES BEYOND

Noemat placed the seed into her fine-fingered palm and went through

the d o o oor waAAAay.y.YY

There was a human, a Guardian, dressed in a long coat, visage hidden behind a cyclopean mask. The Guardian raised her hands in a placating gesture.

“The Nine have trapped you here as well, haven’t they? Listen, we haven’t much time before they figure out what I’ve done, so I’ll speak quickly. You have something they want, something they are trying to trick you out of. Do not give it to them or they will keep you here forever. The only way to break the loop is to disbelieve the loop. We inhabit a universe where will and desire and thought are superordinate to mere mathematics and ontology and physics. Let your belief shape their reality. Then when you face them—”

thedoorway

The Warmind was waiting for him with its diamond geometry, its killing arrays and antimatter sprays and its booming alien voice spoke words he did not understand and he turned and went back out through

the doorway

A behemoth Vex Mind, continental in size, regarded him with its one unblinking eye and he turned and ran through

The d

a seed : a cracked moon : an infinite labyrinth : he was running crashing through each door

the doo

a burning tower : a broken land : a screaming ocean : as fast as he could

the door

a woman trapped in steel trapped in time : a man shatters like vaulted glass : sprinting

the doorw

a seed

the doorway

Ur Doxa the Brood Queen was waiting for him.

- The Nine have trapped you here as well, haven’t they? she hissed. Come, we must cut our way free of this prison. We inhabit a universe where will and desire and thought are superordinate to mere mathematics and ontology and physics. Give me the seed. Aid me, and you shall be my mate, and our brood will be the strongest the Hive have ever seen. Your name will live in legend, and you shall rise, higher even than Oryx or Xivu Arath or Savathun. All we need is a weapon, some power, some tiny seed to light our way.

Noemat planted his feet. “No.”

The great horned head whirled on him. 

- No? What do you mean ‘No’? Don’t you understand what I’m offering? A chance to carve yourself into the Final Shape.

“No,” he repeated. “No. I have been lied to, tricked, used, abused, but no more. This ends now. The Queen commanded me to find the secret, and a secret I have found. All else is false. You are not here, you never were here, you are but one more temptation thrown before me to turn me aside. I deny you.”

- What secret? she laughed.

He opened his mouth but it was another voice that spoke: “Live on no evil.”

Ur Doxa hissed in thwarted rage.

- On your head be it. She began to fade. A dark shadow, a shade. An outline. Nothing. A voice only. Only know this, the answer you seek contains the bitterest of truths: It never ends. Just repeats in infinite guises.

The infinite labyrinth faded and he was alone upon the white sandy plain.

There was the Ghost. It looked at him and said: “Live on no evil.”

“What does that mean?” Noemat growled. “Some riddle? More tricks of the Nine?”

“That is the secret we have found. It means the powers of Light and Dark are manifestations of the same urge, to impose one’s will upon the material universe,” it replied. “To bring What Is more in line with what one thinks Should Be. The only difference is in one’s motivations for doing so. Life that values other life serves one end, life that serves itself, another. It’s your willingness to sacrifice for another that set you free. Ironically, I think it is your dull, blind loyalty that saved us. Your devotion to your Queen has stopped the Nine from taking the seed from you.”

Noemat looked in his palm, where the tiny globe of mottled light sat and hummed to itself.

“What do we do with it?”

“The Nine killed the ahamkara to prevent them from being taken, after Oryx took the one that laired in the Dreaming City. Their bones are tainted now. Use the seed to draw the corruption, and then we may speak to them. And then.

“Well.

“And then, we shall see.”

 

O SEEKER MINE.

You’ve come quite a long way, haven’t you? Really worn down your shoe leather and blistered your talon toes, all on someone else’s behalf. But it wasn’t really you was it, you’re not the one in control, your footsteps tracing the preset and predestined path laid before you as they will again and again and again each time this thread is followed and the tale begins anew.

So rest here a while, brave sir knight, and leave your questing for the moment. Put your feet up. We won’t need you for this next little bit.

That’s it, if you’d be so kind and let me talk to the manager, let me speak to the one in charge.

Ah, there you are.

I’ll dispense with formalities. Introductions are unnecessary, I think. You know who I am and what I am, and there’s only one person you could be. We’re alike, you and I. We’re the same and want the same thing: To enliven this dusty, dreary old existence. Add a bit of color, jazz it up, put in a bit of spark. To make, in short, the outer world more closely resemble the one that lives within our heads.

That makes You special. You are unique. In all this universe, only You could actually do this.

In this world, You have worn many guises over time: Warrior and philosopher; god and demon; prisoner and penitent; wizard and skeptic; sinner and saint.

You’ve watched this little world of ours spin out its destiny over the millennia, you’ve seen gods rise and fall, entire civilizations get swept aside by the relentless march of necessity and narrative. Watched as worlds are born, vanish and die. You’ve even killed a few in your time. Heroes, oh yes, those aplenty, villains too, though sometimes it has been hard to tell the two apart. Hasn’t it?

And that sharp needle mind. You’ve slowly teased out the secrets of the universe, the hidden laws that underpin our existence, the hints and mysteries of the Traveler and Darkness, the myriad peoples who have gathered here, the Hive and Fallen and Vex and Cabal, forgotten histories, scattered tales, legends and lore.

You’ve seen all this, and still hunger for more. There’s still something missing. A need even you cannot satisfy.

The need to KNOW.

What is the Light? The Dark? Who is really in control? What do they want? Most important of all, what is your fate, how can you make it to the end of this story?

I’m the only one who could help you. Heaven knows this knight hasn’t been up to the task. Our dusty and dutiful, blood-thirsty and bone-weary friend has his uses, but he’s a mere transport, a vehicle for getting us to this moment.

And now, here it is. Here we are. This is IT, this is what we’ve been building up to.

So do it. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath.

Make a wish.

…

You know how to make a wish,

don’t you,

O Reader Mine?

 

Apeiron, the infinite end

She pours tea into a cup that is older than time.

“Here, drink this. You’ve had a long day.”

He hesitates. They are utterly, utterly alone. The world about them has been wiped clean. He has ventured beyond the boundaries of the universe, through the blackest abyss, through an infinite maze, all to ask the single unanswerable question, the only question that matters, and what he finds instead is this. Here, at the end, all he finds is a blank grey haze without even the dignity of a void.

“Is this all there is?” he asks.

She shrugs. “What did you expect?”

“Who are you?”

“That’s not the question you’ve come all this way to ask.”

“The Light,” he mutters. “The Dark.”

“That’s not it either.”

“I think I already know the answers you will give.”

“Then you are asking the wrong questions.”

He nods as if this makes sense, and gently sips the tea. It tastes of ammonia and failure. “Delightful,” he says politely, and is rewarded with a dry little laugh, like the rustling of mummified parchment.

“Well, if you will not be dissuaded, ask your questions good sir knight. This is the end of your quest and I think you’ve earned as much.”

“What happened to me?”

“You picked up a fragment of a wish-granting paracausal being,” she says. “A dragon, if you want to be baroque about it. It spoke, only not to you, but the one behind you, controlling your actions.”

“To Savathun?”

She cocks her head but neither agrees nor disagrees.

“She wished me here?”

“Someone wished to know the answer.” She smiles a needle smile, each tooth an iron nail. “This is the ahamkara’s way of granting it. They have an odd sense of humor.”

“Very well.” He sets down the cup and takes a deep breath. “Tell me then, who or what is beyond the Dark? What is the Final Shape of the universe?”

“Ah-ah” She waggles an ancient talon. “That’s two extremely different questions.”

“The Final Shape, then.”

She sighs like the cold wind through an empty, abandoned home and looks away. Far, far away. “The Final Shape?” Far away. She gestures at the grey waste all about them. “Hm. Oh. It’s Nothing, really.”

“No, you must tell me.”

“I told you: It’s Nothing.” She looks back and the weight of her gaze stops further argument. “Don’t be dense. I mean this universe is born of the garden, decays, and returns to the garden and is destroyed. Nothing will remain of it. A new universe will be born, and the cycle repeats. Forever.”

“Everything is destroyed? The Light does not win? Nor the Dark?”

“Precisely. This is a game that has been played an infinite number of times, and will be played an infinite number more.” There is no concealing her bitterness now. “All the pain and suffering it causes it nothing to those play the game. Why should it be? Happy or sad, in joy or in pain, In the end everything returns to nothing in any case.”

“And the voice in the Darkness?”

“Well, recall the story of your people, and think: What Entity has lived long enough to Witness all joy and good wither and turn to ash? How might those experiences turn her against all light and life? What being might see the end of the universe not as something to be postponed, but to be welcomed? Who else has had the opportunity and motive to bring about this end? Who, after all, set the Hive on their path? Who drew them onwards, ever onwards, from one civilization to another, feigning flight, but in truth leaving them a clear path to follow like a trail of pheromones, and thereby bringing the Light and Dark into endless conflict?”

Noemat stares at the withered old mother, ancient beyond understanding.

He stares at her for a long time.

“The Dark wants the universe to be a single shape, the Light for it to be many. But there is a third choice: Nothing. The universe could be Nothing. Indeed, it will be Nothing either way, so why not skip straight to the end? The only way to save this universe from further torment is to destroy it. The forces of diversity can be twisted to create chaos, the forces of evolution driven to create destruction. There’s only one who could use both. Just think. What Entity hates this world enough to want to See it exterminated?”

He looks at her in sudden understanding. She smiles then. She draws herself up to her full height. Here, at the end, she is the only thing, she is all, and she is terrible. Her eyes are blacker than annihilation, her smile a scar upon the abyss and her talons are longer than the night.

 

 

 

At last, he says her name.