Part 1

Based on the "Destiny" Franchise by Bungie

My story started soon after the fall of humankind in which our god The Traveler, who had brought The Golden Age upon us, sacrificed himself to stop the forces of The Darkness. But knowing that he would not be able to halt the Darkness forever, he decided to bring a last breath of light to us to save the remnants of humanity. With this last breath, The Traveler created The Ghosts. Tiny flying machines of light that would search for true warriors all around the solar system that had given their lives to save humanity.

I would be brought back as one of them. As a Guardian or as our kind was called back then, a Risen.

When I woke up from the afterlife, the first thing I would see was a blast of light from my Ghost repeatedly telling me to wake up. I woke up in a big wasteland full of rusty wreckages, surrounded by a dense conifer forest on the one and a high cliff on the other side. Along the edge, a road led to nowhere, merging with the horizon on the big ocean. At its other exit, the street would be the only thing separating the forest.

I could see the icy cold wind rushing through the trees.

At least I wore a thin suit of armor that protected me from the cold temperatures.

The outfit was a mix of flight suit and plated battle armor with a helmet covering my whole head additionally able to condition the bad outside air.

As I do not remember my previous life, all I have previously told you about the time before my resurrection is either a guess or what the people that I would encounter in my new life told me. And even though I had no memory of what was before, I knew that I was alive for a reason and that I held a power, paracausal in its behavior, that I would have to learn to control.

There I stood. A warrior, fallen long ago in an ongoing war, but brought back to continue the fight.

With my focus lost to all of the thoughts spinning around my head, my Ghost tried to tell me something. But I did not listen.

I only regained my focus when a loud bone-shattering animalistic noise drowned the whole area.

The noise would wake my most primal impulses.

I began to run. Run for the life that I had just got back a few minutes ago, running from the unknown threats of this world.

But even though I did not know where to run, my Ghost did.

He advised me to search for a weapon as soon as possible.

I started by searching through the two halves of a broken fighter jet and quickly found what I was looking for. Next to the shattered skeleton of the former pilot, I found a throwing knife. It was not much, but it at least was something.

I heard steps and intentionally decided to hide behind the jet.

I could sense the enemy coming closer and full of fear, I clasped the handle of the knife with both hands and starred at its sharp tip.

I did not feel ready to fight, but I knew that I had to.

In this instant, I did not even know if they were searching for me or even knew I existed. Were they even dangerous at all?

I tried to look around the plane to see what was trying to find me, and with my first glance, I could tell that they indeed were dangerous. Not only because of their appearance but because they were armed.

The three creatures in front of me had a shadow that could appear almost human-like.

I turned my head back to see my Ghost's reaction to these beings, but except for interest, I could see nothing in his glowing blue electronic eye in the core of his body. Somehow there was no fear as I had expected. Still, his gaze was fixed towards the enemy.

He seemed speechless.

I turned my head back around the plane and took a closer look at the three strangers.

Two of them looked pretty alike, almost like twins. They were sleek, did not have much armor, and were as tall as I was. Most of their suits were just worn-out fabric and some small parts of plated armor. A few areas of their armor had a note of red.

I could see their four glowing, glacier blue eyes and razor-sharp teeth lurking from under their helmets, which had small red fur cristas on top. The two had only three thick toes and fingers with a thick, sharp claw on each of them.

They also had a second pair of mutilated arms under their other ones, which were covered with steel caps.

With their scaly grey skin, they could best be described as a kind of mixture of human and reptile with a note of extraterrestrial.

Both of them had a knife in their left and a small pistol in their right hand.

The grey-brown pistols of unusual shape were ornamented with small spikes on top and radiated some sort of energy that glowed faintly from the barrel of the gun.

The third, however, was different from the two. Not only was the third one taller and more muscular, but also was he equipped with more robust armor and mightier weapons. An arsenal consisting of the rifle in his hands and two swords kept crossed behind his hip.

Other than the small twins, number Three still had his two lower arms, which lurked out from under his mud-covered red cape.

Suddenly he turned his head in my direction, and within flashes, I put my head down, pressed my back against the plane, and tried to be as small as feasible.

I quivered.

I weighed out my few options. Option one was to fight and eventually die. Option two was to hide and die as soon as they would find me.

I went for option one, but to fight my way out, I would have to wait for the right moment.

And the moment came.

It did not take long until the beings started to communicate. I could not understand what they spoke about, but that did not matter anyway. What mattered was that they were distracted.

Quickly I jumped out from behind my guard with my knife tight in my hand and sprinted towards the enemy. My Ghost stayed hidden behind the plane.

They did not shoot out of instant as they were still in shock what gave me the chance to charge my first strike. The first one tried to hit me with his knife, and I dodged by sliding underneath it. As I slid, I cut through his left leg, making him fall back.

I jumped back up, finding myself in front of the big one.

I took my knife in both hands, trying to hit his head from above, but he quickly dodged to the side, making me fall from my own forward force.

I turned around on the cold, dusty ground with my knife heading upwards to block incoming attacks, but that would not help me as the big one had pulled out his electrified sword.

While I realized my defeat, He then looked down at me for a second before taking his sword and piercing through my left eye right into my head, killing me instantly.

But this would not be the ending of my story. Because the powers I had been gifted with showed themselves in many ways. And one of these powers, as I would soon find out, was the ability to be revived by my Ghost.

There I had been. Killed, with a big hole in my head. And then my Ghost showed up at my corpse.

He opened himself up and let the light flow through my body.

I woke up again with the hole in my head gone. But not the hole in my helmet, through which a burst of cold, wet air stung my eye, blinding me for a few seconds.

I was shocked and confused as I had thought myself dead.

I already thought that I had reached the afterlife, but then my Ghost floated over my head and looked down on me. For a short moment, his presence gave me a feeling of safety. But it did not take long until fear struck.

Within one fluid motion, I took the knife to my right and stood up to finish the fight.

But little did I know that I had been dead long enough for the enemies to leave my corpse. They probably thought that I would stay deceased. And who could blame them, to be honest?

Then a quiet, painful whimper reached my ear.

I turned around to see where it came from, and there I saw him. The creature I had hurt in the fight.

He was trying to pull himself away from me with his right hand pulling him over the ground while holding his wound with his left.

When I looked into his glowing eyes, I could see that they were not only filled with pain but also with fear.

His quiet whimpering drowned out the sound of the waves hitting the cliff in the background.

I somehow felt helpless because I did not know what I should do. Meanwhile, the extraterrestrial must have felt helpless too. Left behind by his comrades.

I asked my Ghost for advice, who then, instead of telling me what to do, instructed me about the creature's race.

He told me that they were called The Fallen and that they were a bunch of scavengers trying to get the Traveler for their purposes.

He explained that the one in front of me was from the lowest rung in Fallen-society. That he was a Dreg meaning, that as long as he did not kill or do something else to increase his rung to that of a vandal, he was worth nothing.

After hearing about this, a feeling of guilt arose in me. I felt miserable for what I had done. And when my Ghost then told me that to show the Dregs their worth, their lower arms were cut off, the guilt and pity in me reached their peak.

I felt like I had to do something and intentionally decided to help the alien, which was kind of crazy when I think about it now.

slowly I approached the Dreg, who must have thought that I would now attempt to kill him, as he cut the air in front of me with his knife, trying to keep me at a distance. To signalize him that I did not want to hurt him, I threw my knife on the ground and away from the Dreg.

His gaze wandered with the flying knife.

He looked back at me and bowed his head in astonishment. The extraterrestrial understood my message.

Then his eyes wandered over his injured leg in silence, saying more than a thousand words.

I slowly kneeled over the injury.

The cut had gone through his knee pads under which the wound was already flooded with light blue blood flowing down the Dreg's leg, dripping down on the bare ground, emitting cold blue smoke on its way down.

I realized that I could not close the wound.

Neither did I have the equipment to seal the wound, nor did I know anything about alien anatomy. But what I could do was to dress it.

For that, I used the Dreg's ragged scarf that he let me take unwillingly.

When the wound was bandaged, I jumped back up and reached out my hand to him.

Without thinking twice, the extraterrestrial grabbed it and slowly pulled himself up. At that moment, it felt like a strong bond was forming between us. But it still was a strange and somewhat uncomfortable feeling.

I gently grabbed his upper left arm and pulled it over my shoulder to give him support.

My Ghost, who had been silently watching the whole procedure, expeditiously floated in front of me and asked where we should go.

I do not know if the Dreg understood my Ghost back then or if he just guessed what my Ghost wanted, but right after the question, the Dreg raised his upper right arm and pointed down the road that split the forest.

His reaction left me dumbfounded and speechless, as I had not thought that the Dreg would even understand what we said. But I decided not to question it further.

Before we left the coast, I quickly picked up my knife and put it into the empty holster on my armor. Just in case I would need it later.

We started walking towards the forest following the road, and while I helped the Dreg limp forward, my Ghost explored the area in front of us.

We had already been on the road for some time as the twilight approached.

I realized that the Dreg was already drained of his powers, so I decided we should take a rest soon. I told my Ghost about it, and he decided to search for a suitable place for us.

He then quickly found a small cave at the roadside not far away, where we then made ourselves comfortable as far as it was possible in our situation.

At first, I let the Dreg sit down to lean against the cave wall and then knelt in front of him to inspect his wound. Meanwhile, my Ghost kept watching at the cave entrance. I removed the improvised bandage and looked at the condition of the cut. It was not bleeding anymore, but it was hard to assess the wound under the Dreg's tight kneecaps. I then tried to remove them for a better view of the cut, but they were laced so tightly that it was almost as if they were a part of his body.

Because of that and because I did not want to break something that was working, I stopped trying to remove it.

I put the scarf back on as a precaution in case the wound would open again and then leaned back at the opposite side of the cave. I looked in the Dreg's eyes for a moment and could see that he was still in great pain. Night fell, and it got bitterly cold in the cave. I realized that I had to make a campfire to prevent hypothermia from killing us.

When I got out of the cave, I told my Ghost about my plan and that he should look after the Dreg.

I quickly gathered the firewood in the bright shine of the moonlight and returned to the cave entrance. I briefly looked inside to check for the others and then started building a campfire. I was already done building when I realized that I had nothing to set the wood on fire. I had to improvise.

The best thing I could think of was to generate sparks by striking my knife along a stone, which was harder than I thought. And even when I was able to create sparks, they did not set anything on fire.

It frustrated me, and I tried harder and harder, holding my knife tighter in my hands with every try.

But then, out of a sudden, at the peak of my efforts, my knife literally caught fire.

I was so frightened that I flinched back with my head and screamed briefly. I would have dropped the knife if my fingers had not stiffened in their position. And if it had not been for my stiff fingers, I maybe would have never realized that the fire did not hurt me. It just felt warm in my hand and did not jump over on my suit.

Quickly my Ghost and even the injured Dreg who had heard my screams peaked out of the cave.

Both of them stopped, full of astonishment when they saw the small fire burning warm in my hand. All of us were left speechless, and I asked myself what I should do. I just took a few seconds until I had connected the flaming knife with the campfire inside of my head. I held the knife into the middle of the campfire and lit it.

When I then pulled it out of the campfire, the fire around the blade was extinguished.

My Ghost then asked me what happened, and I explained that I did not have an answer to that. That the fire was just there out of a sudden.

We just left it there and stayed quiet as we warmed ourselves together with the Dreg by the fire.

Then we crawled back inside the cave and fell asleep under the watchful eye of my Ghost.

And by this, the first day of my new life came to an end.