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It’s usually the other way around.Maybe not common, not in this so-called Second Golden Age, but every so often, a Guardian will lose their Ghost to the myriad forces of Darkness, in turn forever losing the ability to resurrect, and much of their ability to wield the Traveler’s Light. It’s a terrible phenomenon, a tremendous loss that no one but another Guardian can possibly relate to, though one that’s fairly easy to avoid - Ghosts rarely phase back into three-dimensional space outside of safe spaces, like the Last City, and even if they do, it takes a weapon of ontological power and paracausal effects to truly kill one.Naxos is very much alive. His Guardian, however, is dead. Death is, of course, so intrinsic a part of a Guardian’s experience that some even count it as part of their skill set, but then none of them have experienced Ariadne’s fate - died her last death, swallowed by the fading soul of an incomprehensibly powerful Hive God she was one third responsible for slaying. No matter what Naxos tried, or how close he got to Oryx’s titanic corpse, inching ever closer to Saturn’s crushing depths, he was ultimately unable to bring her back.It’s quite the shock, then, when he feels that pull again. The undeniable magnetism of a chosen, a heroic soul meant to be raised from the dead in defense of life, freedom, and of course, the Traveller.The corpse he finds at the epicenter of the pull - in a suspiciously sealed off section of the Arcology on Titan - is not human. Not Awoken, or Exo either. It’s not ancient, either, like Ariadne’s body was, brittle bones bleached by centuries of exposure in the desolate reaches of the russian Cosmodrome.No, this Fallen - Eliksni now, regardless of the colors of Dusk he apparently wore in life - died recently. Naxos can only guess at the exact circumstances, but it’s plain for anyone to see that he perished in battle with the Taken, like most of the life forms who die in Sol since the Hive Dreadnought arrived in-system. His upper right hand still clutches onto a Taken Hive sword - a rare sight, as most Taken weapons disintegrate along with their bearers upon defeat - and most of his body bears burns so intense that his armor and leathery hide have hideously fused in places. The hand that clutches onto the sword is corrupted, of course, the darkest black imaginable, pockmarked with white pinpricks of transdimensional light. It twitches, still, ‘glitching’ the way all Taken bodies do.It’s unorthodox, to be sure. But still, Naxos is as confident as he was when he found Ariadne. He brings him back.His tiny form splits open, like a flower in bloom, petals spread to catch every iota of the Traveller’s omnidirectional power, syphoning the paracausal current into the Captain’s lifeless corpse. Light burns away his broken armor, washes away his myriad injuries, and seeps into the trillions upon trillions of molecules that make up his being. The energy bonds with his every atom, becoming intrinsically tied with the particles that make those up, in turn. The body, now alight with life, gives back in the form of memories, the sole price the process demands in return for eternal life. Only one of these stays with Naxos, and it’s a name. Most Guardians don’t even get that.The Ghost can’t smile, not corporeally, but his one blue eye does seem to glow brighter as the Eliksni draws breath for the first time in his remaining lives. “Hello, Misraks! I am Naxos, your Ghost, and you...you are a Guardian.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Misraaks has only spoken once on their journey off the Arcology, and it’s to correct Naxos on his name’s pronunciation. How he remembered that detail when he clearly recalls nothing else of his previous life, the Ghost doesn’t know, and can only chalk up to the quirks of resurrection.
In the two years since the end of the Taken War, Titan’s Arcology network has steadily lost most of its inhabitants. The precarious balance of Golden Age tech abandoned for centuries being restored to
mostly
functional state and the enormous distance from Earth, which only the more advanced ships - Guardian Jumpships, Eliksni Ketches, and the like - can make trivial, was completely wrecked by the general Taken plague on the system, and the scores of hostile Hive making planetfall from Oryx’s moon-sized derelict Dreadnought. It’s been an exile in slow motion, and the only reason it hasn’t been a complete bloodbath is the massive coordination efforts between the Last City, the Awoken of the Reef, and the ever disruptive nature of a Vex presence on the Cronian moon.
It’s the latter that have proven a boon, rather than the usual, hyper-territorial nuisance. Vex will never go out of their way to do
anything
but defend their modest holdings - well, modest on the
surface
, not counting the non-Euclidean mega-spaces within - so most people just...
avoid
them. In his and Misraaks case, it’s using them as weapons, drawing the Hive hordes towards the myriad Vex patrols in a dangerous game of alien tag that ends in narrow, harrowing escapes, broken, sparking robot parts, and boiling, oily blood bursting from laser-etched wounds on chitin. Naxos is quite impressed that the former Captain hasn’t died yet, considering all he could give him for armor was a mess of old, mismatched armor pieces lying around in Ariadne’s old inventory, broken down to glimmer and reforged to fit his
much
larger frame. And, y’know,
extra arms
.
He really should be over his new chosen’s species already. Eliksni Guardians are not all that uncommon nowadays, after all, but Ariadne’s old biases still lurk within his system, and he’s not quite sure how - or if he even wants - to purge them.
Still, the pride he feels when they burst free from the haven-turned-dungeon, out into the gale-force winds, salted, stinging air, and unbearable humidity atop the rigs, mostly untouched by enemy fire, is genuine. Two Guardian fireteams - five humans and an Exo, in classic 2-2-2 class configuration - guard the entrance to the Arcology, trigger fingers ready to put down whatever enemy the Arcology vomits next. They don’t acknowledge Misraaks’ species, used by now to the mix of refugees fleeing Titan for the inner worlds, only referring him to Sloane for off-world transport assignment. Misraaks hasn’t said a thing, but Naxos can tell he feels the pull of the Traveller; they need to visit the Last City, if for nothing else than orientation and registration.
When they meet the ashen-haired Titan, she’s sighing at a veritable
wall
of reports, both holographically projected and stacked on paper that’s only kept from sticking together by the industrial dehumidifier cobbled together in a corner of the control room. Eventually, she turns to face them, and
stares
.
Sloane wasn’t Ariadne’s friend or anything, but she did
know
her. Knew her Ghost, too.
“Well.
That’s
new.” -she says.