Blaze-37 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rekindledtitan) wrote2018-05-15 10:30 pm
rekindledtitan) wrote2018-05-15 10:30 pm
Entry tags:
Fragment: In Cinders
Follows the 'Buried Embers' post and the Nightmare event in the Nexus.
Seventeen reboots. She remembered every one.
That didn’t normally happen and if her creators- builders – had done any damned thing with purpose it was never supposed to. You weren’t supposed to remember shutting down and locking up while everything spiraled away. You weren’t supposed to remember knowing it was coming, or the sheer helplessness of waiting for your own physiology to turn on you.
Seventeen versions of herself walking through the same sad little cycle, so short-lived they didn’t even feel distinct. They’d been as real as she was, even if their entire lives had been rolled up and merged back into her memory. Did the Nightmare do that? Or was it some protocol buried in her core programming that happened to anticipate just this? Not that it made a difference.
There hadn’t even been a catalyst. No event or stimulus or circumstance to trigger the reboot. Nothing she could pre-empt or counter.
Seventeen reboots. That would have shot her right past Banshee-44 back at the Tower. The old gunsmith was the only Exo she knew with a higher count than her. Pass by while he worked and you could hear him mutter to himself. Trying to keep things straight. Piecing his thoughts together out loud because he had to. When he said he knew you he never quite sounded convincing. Once he’d called her Blaze-11, and she’d left without remembering to pick up her ammunition.
Didn’t help that she was on Venus. She avoided the ruined civilian areas when she could, and she mostly kept Bryn’s memories shut away. Too many associations, all the same. Strong ones.
Her solution was the same as always: she kept moving. Scoured her path for any trace of Sunbreaker or enemy alike. She found plenty of the latter. Fallen holed up in old colony buildings. Vex tending their geometric constructions and glowing lattices. Blaze tore into them all gladly. She wrapped herself in Light and wreckage and the searing fire on her plate.
Force the mind back on the here and now. Make new memories. Drown out the dread.
She’d promised to teach Angel, but since the Nightmare their training sessions had dwindled. The more she tried to distract herself, the more Blaze spent her time targeting elite Vex or delving into Fallen lairs within the old Collective research grounds. That meant doing work in places even she wasn’t willing to bring the demon yet. And perhaps there was some avoidance to it. Ghost only talked her into checking in with Tina by pointing out the kid might be hanging around with Reynard again. Reynard in winter, with all his fangs bared. It got her to call someone besides the Tower, at least.
Ghost tended to let her work her feelings out, but after a couple of weeks he spoke up while she was clearing up from a minor battle. “
“The Nightmare is done.” She had a Vex sniper model on the stonework in front of her, internals bared to the sky. Shipwright Holliday had an open bounty on the parts. Even bundled and folded over her belt, the cloth at her hip dragged in the soil where she knelt, ragged and stained and much heavier than a regular mark.
“
“I know.”
“
“Doubt it.”
There was a flicker of blue light as he floated in front of her. Blaze glanced up at him, then pulled over another hobgoblin. Ghost waited.
She said, “Thirty-seven reboots. Or thirty-six, depending. Let’s be generous and figure I was around for a couple hundred years. Run that math, Ghost. That averages five and a half years per iteration.” She tore the Vex open, milky fluid spilling over her gauntlets. “It’s been six since you woke me.”
He was silent for a long minute. “
“You don’t know that. Nobody can tell us. They just don’t know any Exo Guardians who’ve rebooted. None of the others have a count even close to mine. Far as we know they just haven’t hit- whatever triggers it.” Metal squealed under her hands as she tore the alien machine open. “Next time I reboot it’ll be for real. Getting killed would be one thing, but you want to explain this to Steve? Angel? The kid?”
“
She took a moment before she tossed down her fistful of Vex guts and got to her feet. “It’s all right. We’ll go find another.”
She didn’t blame Ghost for being unable to answer her. There was no good answer. What would happen when she wiped? Learning what a Guardian is from scratch, every code and history and symbol to be memorized over again. Everything she’dlearned since she woke. Every joyful little discovery, every proud achievement, every dumb joke and embarrassing failure. Every gesture of affection. All gone for good. She imagined her friends in Reynard’s place: helping her relearn herself, trying to piece her back together from the outside. Babysitting the one who should be watching over them. Hoping Crypt processing even turned out the same base personality twice. And then wait a few years and do it over again, and again, on and on while the humans grew older and Angel stayed chained to her and…
And every time one died they’d become just another story. One more face in her dreams.
The thought disgusted her. Better if they grew exhausted and left- or she forced them to. She could always take off to the beyond and leave it all to the Vanguard, Nexus and Tower alike. But the loneliness of that was frightening, too. Worse because she knew Ghost wouldn’t, couldn’t leave her no matter what, and to be the sole caretaker of a perpetual amnesiac was no better than being alone.
She told Ghost all this as they trekked through the sulphurous jungle. She said then, “I won’t let it get that far.” Blaze made it sound determined. She meant it as an assurance.
“
She hadn’t thought an Exo could feel sick, until the Nightmare.
With so much preying on her mind, her actual purpose on Venus had become little more than something to busy her hands with. Winding her Sparrow between the roots of towering trees, the crack of gunfire meant nothing more than the promise of another distraction. Blaze turned the bike and headed toward it. Closer to she stonework bursting from the forest floor, pushing the trees aside. Heard the unholy electronic squeals of harpy units, an unfamiliar whumph.
/
Blaze pulled herself up on the Sparrow, crouched and bounded up, Light lifting her onto a ledge above. She hit the stonework and drew her rifle, barely glancing around for snipers as she ran to get a view…
Below her was a wide well with a courtyard at the bottom, and it was filled with fire. A squadron and of harpies circled, metallic tentacles a-flutter; goblins crept out from the shadowed alcoves; a pair of minotaurs leveled cannonades of purple voidfire. At the centre of them all, back to the arch of a Vex gate, stood a burning figure. A Titan cloaked in searing flame, the golden mark at her side fluttering in the heat that rippled from her. The walls were awash with her glow, casting black shadows over the metal and stone. In her hand was a hammer almost too bright to look at; it spun as she threw it into a minotaur and the hulking machine erupted into a molten cloud with all the nearby goblins. Blaze could feel the heat of it even from her vantage.
/
/”Tell Zavala.”/ Blaze was moving again, charging toward the edge of the pit.
/
/”Not standing back to watch.”/ She leapt from the edge. Gravity hauled against her momentum for a few moments. Long enough for her to pick a target below.
The Light answered instantly. The path opened, the Arc sang and the Fist of Havoc brought her down down into the stone. The Vex around her shattered or fell. The air sparked, the orbs of residual Light bouncing in her wake. The nearest survivors ported closer to attack. She rose with readied fists and fed them plasteel and lightning in equal measure. When she had a second she saluted the other Titan. The Sunbreaker barely seemed to notice her, but she didn’t object when Blaze fell into formation at her side.
Without a word they went to it, alternating guns, grenades and fists. They killed every machine that came marching out to them, until Blaze could hear the crackle of sparks and the low roar of flame louder than the dissonant Vex cries.
/
/”Not now, Ghost. I’m not passing this up.”/ She glances aside at the burning warrior. /”I won’t walk away from her.”/
/
/”She’s fighting the enemy. I don’t need anything more. Tell Zavala I’ve already engaged. I’m not going to turn tail now!”/
A minotaur teleported in behind them and she saw the Sunbreaker wreathe herself in flame as she whirled and took it down. She delighted to see that hammer explode through the Vex ranks, leaving the ground molten where it fell. She leapt to their flank to join in with her own assault, but the crash of her Light seemed brief and intermittent beside the steady drumbreat of the Sunbreaker’s unyielding ferocity. They were glorious and unstoppable.
The Vex were determined to break them.
Ghost felt it coming. Blaze heard his warning and looked to see the crackling murk condense across their battlefield. A cloud darker and deeper than any before it, that gave way to the massive length of a serpentine machine. Its vertebral segments were heavy with plated ridges, and it held before it the curving wall of its shield, a brilliant lattice of crystallized space-time no weapon could penetrate.
It was the biggest hydra she’d ever seen. Blaze rejoiced.
The shrapnel of dead Vex flew out from beneath her boots as she charged. Through the veil of its shield monster turned a single red optic to watch her. She dropped and slid beneath the glowing lattice and lunged upward, storm fist driving between the plated segments-
Everything went white. Space twisted.
She fell onto stone, onto her back.
The hydra wasn’t alone. There were two of them looking down at her.
She saw the cannon either side of their heads blaze purple-
Rust under her fingers. The sweet slick scent of oil and the world lurched as she returned to it. She rolled to her feet, but she could already feel it was over. The air felt lighter about her, the cloying Darkness purged from the walls. The only sounds were tiny uneven clinks of cooling metal and the snap of sparks from broken circuits.
Two great coils of slag lay heaped on the ground, smoking gently. Before them the Sunbreaker stood and watched Blaze impassively. Before the younger Titan could find words she gestured at a chest by her feet and strode off between the smelted hydras.
“Hey! Wait a second!” Blaze was moving now, running after her. But the Sunbreaker never slowed, and the silent Vex gate suddenly shimmered to life at her approach. “I’ve been searching for-”
She was gone, and the gate went dark again. Blaze stumbled to a halt and stared at the wall behind the empty archway. Ghost spun uneasily at her side.
“
“Can you trace where she went?”
“
“Do it, then.” She went back to the chest. It unsealed beneath her hands, and inside lay a helm. It was built to a Titan pattern, but unlike any make she’d seen in the City. The plates were angled sharp and graceful in black and gold and silver. She knew the moment she picked it up that she wasn’t rated for anything like this. There was something to the skillful platework and the easy heft of it that hinted at latent power… no, not power yet. Potential…
/“Guardian! Are you still there?”/
“Sir, the Sunbreaker went through a Vex gate. I wasn’t able to speak with her. My Ghost is trying to trace her destination.” She fought so bravely. She left me this gift and I don’t even know her name…
/
Zavala let out a long sigh. /“Guardian, you broke orders out there. Do you understand that?”/
“Yes, sir.” She should be more bothered by that. There’d been a time that was unthinkable, she was sure. And yet here and now, looking down at the strange gift from a silent warrior… that all felt very far away. “Felt like the right thing to do, sir.”
/“I see.”/ Three-point-three seconds’ silence. /“Return to the Tower. Bring the gate data. We will discuss this in person.”/
Blaze almost refused- she had to go after the Sunbreakers, she’d come so close and she had so many questions- but she didn’t know where it was she should chase, after all. “Yes sir. On our way.”
Zavala would have plenty of things to say himself, she could hear that in his voice. She could handle that.
Besides, she was starting to think she had plenty of questions for him too.
Seventeen reboots. She remembered every one.
That didn’t normally happen and if her creators- builders – had done any damned thing with purpose it was never supposed to. You weren’t supposed to remember shutting down and locking up while everything spiraled away. You weren’t supposed to remember knowing it was coming, or the sheer helplessness of waiting for your own physiology to turn on you.
Seventeen versions of herself walking through the same sad little cycle, so short-lived they didn’t even feel distinct. They’d been as real as she was, even if their entire lives had been rolled up and merged back into her memory. Did the Nightmare do that? Or was it some protocol buried in her core programming that happened to anticipate just this? Not that it made a difference.
There hadn’t even been a catalyst. No event or stimulus or circumstance to trigger the reboot. Nothing she could pre-empt or counter.
Seventeen reboots. That would have shot her right past Banshee-44 back at the Tower. The old gunsmith was the only Exo she knew with a higher count than her. Pass by while he worked and you could hear him mutter to himself. Trying to keep things straight. Piecing his thoughts together out loud because he had to. When he said he knew you he never quite sounded convincing. Once he’d called her Blaze-11, and she’d left without remembering to pick up her ammunition.
Didn’t help that she was on Venus. She avoided the ruined civilian areas when she could, and she mostly kept Bryn’s memories shut away. Too many associations, all the same. Strong ones.
Her solution was the same as always: she kept moving. Scoured her path for any trace of Sunbreaker or enemy alike. She found plenty of the latter. Fallen holed up in old colony buildings. Vex tending their geometric constructions and glowing lattices. Blaze tore into them all gladly. She wrapped herself in Light and wreckage and the searing fire on her plate.
Force the mind back on the here and now. Make new memories. Drown out the dread.
She’d promised to teach Angel, but since the Nightmare their training sessions had dwindled. The more she tried to distract herself, the more Blaze spent her time targeting elite Vex or delving into Fallen lairs within the old Collective research grounds. That meant doing work in places even she wasn’t willing to bring the demon yet. And perhaps there was some avoidance to it. Ghost only talked her into checking in with Tina by pointing out the kid might be hanging around with Reynard again. Reynard in winter, with all his fangs bared. It got her to call someone besides the Tower, at least.
Ghost tended to let her work her feelings out, but after a couple of weeks he spoke up while she was clearing up from a minor battle. “
You know, I don’t think you’ve enjoyed these last few fights at all. And you’re still wearing that mark. The Nightmare’s still bothering you, isn’t it?”“The Nightmare is done.” She had a Vex sniper model on the stonework in front of her, internals bared to the sky. Shipwright Holliday had an open bounty on the parts. Even bundled and folded over her belt, the cloth at her hip dragged in the soil where she knelt, ragged and stained and much heavier than a regular mark.
“
It’s not the real Kaolin’s cloak. He’s fine.”“I know.”
“
He’s still here on Venus. We could go see him. Maybe that would help you feel better.”“Doubt it.”
There was a flicker of blue light as he floated in front of her. Blaze glanced up at him, then pulled over another hobgoblin. Ghost waited.
She said, “Thirty-seven reboots. Or thirty-six, depending. Let’s be generous and figure I was around for a couple hundred years. Run that math, Ghost. That averages five and a half years per iteration.” She tore the Vex open, milky fluid spilling over her gauntlets. “It’s been six since you woke me.”
He was silent for a long minute. “
The Light stops human Guardians from aging. Why shouldn’t it protect you?”“You don’t know that. Nobody can tell us. They just don’t know any Exo Guardians who’ve rebooted. None of the others have a count even close to mine. Far as we know they just haven’t hit- whatever triggers it.” Metal squealed under her hands as she tore the alien machine open. “Next time I reboot it’ll be for real. Getting killed would be one thing, but you want to explain this to Steve? Angel? The kid?”
“
Um, you just crushed the stream siphon. That’s… the part we’re meant to harvest.”She took a moment before she tossed down her fistful of Vex guts and got to her feet. “It’s all right. We’ll go find another.”
She didn’t blame Ghost for being unable to answer her. There was no good answer. What would happen when she wiped? Learning what a Guardian is from scratch, every code and history and symbol to be memorized over again. Everything she’dlearned since she woke. Every joyful little discovery, every proud achievement, every dumb joke and embarrassing failure. Every gesture of affection. All gone for good. She imagined her friends in Reynard’s place: helping her relearn herself, trying to piece her back together from the outside. Babysitting the one who should be watching over them. Hoping Crypt processing even turned out the same base personality twice. And then wait a few years and do it over again, and again, on and on while the humans grew older and Angel stayed chained to her and…
And every time one died they’d become just another story. One more face in her dreams.
The thought disgusted her. Better if they grew exhausted and left- or she forced them to. She could always take off to the beyond and leave it all to the Vanguard, Nexus and Tower alike. But the loneliness of that was frightening, too. Worse because she knew Ghost wouldn’t, couldn’t leave her no matter what, and to be the sole caretaker of a perpetual amnesiac was no better than being alone.
She told Ghost all this as they trekked through the sulphurous jungle. She said then, “I won’t let it get that far.” Blaze made it sound determined. She meant it as an assurance.
“
What are you saying?” His voice was small and very quiet, and she felt too ashamed to tell him. She hadn’t thought an Exo could feel sick, until the Nightmare.
With so much preying on her mind, her actual purpose on Venus had become little more than something to busy her hands with. Winding her Sparrow between the roots of towering trees, the crack of gunfire meant nothing more than the promise of another distraction. Blaze turned the bike and headed toward it. Closer to she stonework bursting from the forest floor, pushing the trees aside. Heard the unholy electronic squeals of harpy units, an unfamiliar whumph.
/
There’s a Guardian ahead,/ said Ghost. /I can detect their Light. I’m trying to hail their Ghost but they’re not answering on any of the Tower frequencies./Blaze pulled herself up on the Sparrow, crouched and bounded up, Light lifting her onto a ledge above. She hit the stonework and drew her rifle, barely glancing around for snipers as she ran to get a view…
Below her was a wide well with a courtyard at the bottom, and it was filled with fire. A squadron and of harpies circled, metallic tentacles a-flutter; goblins crept out from the shadowed alcoves; a pair of minotaurs leveled cannonades of purple voidfire. At the centre of them all, back to the arch of a Vex gate, stood a burning figure. A Titan cloaked in searing flame, the golden mark at her side fluttering in the heat that rippled from her. The walls were awash with her glow, casting black shadows over the metal and stone. In her hand was a hammer almost too bright to look at; it spun as she threw it into a minotaur and the hulking machine erupted into a molten cloud with all the nearby goblins. Blaze could feel the heat of it even from her vantage.
/
A Sunbreaker…//”Tell Zavala.”/ Blaze was moving again, charging toward the edge of the pit.
/
He said not to make contact. What are you-//”Not standing back to watch.”/ She leapt from the edge. Gravity hauled against her momentum for a few moments. Long enough for her to pick a target below.
The Light answered instantly. The path opened, the Arc sang and the Fist of Havoc brought her down down into the stone. The Vex around her shattered or fell. The air sparked, the orbs of residual Light bouncing in her wake. The nearest survivors ported closer to attack. She rose with readied fists and fed them plasteel and lightning in equal measure. When she had a second she saluted the other Titan. The Sunbreaker barely seemed to notice her, but she didn’t object when Blaze fell into formation at her side.
Without a word they went to it, alternating guns, grenades and fists. They killed every machine that came marching out to them, until Blaze could hear the crackle of sparks and the low roar of flame louder than the dissonant Vex cries.
/
Zavala’s not happy, Blaze. He’s ordering-//”Not now, Ghost. I’m not passing this up.”/ She glances aside at the burning warrior. /”I won’t walk away from her.”/
/
We don’t even know what she’s doing here! //”She’s fighting the enemy. I don’t need anything more. Tell Zavala I’ve already engaged. I’m not going to turn tail now!”/
A minotaur teleported in behind them and she saw the Sunbreaker wreathe herself in flame as she whirled and took it down. She delighted to see that hammer explode through the Vex ranks, leaving the ground molten where it fell. She leapt to their flank to join in with her own assault, but the crash of her Light seemed brief and intermittent beside the steady drumbreat of the Sunbreaker’s unyielding ferocity. They were glorious and unstoppable.
The Vex were determined to break them.
Ghost felt it coming. Blaze heard his warning and looked to see the crackling murk condense across their battlefield. A cloud darker and deeper than any before it, that gave way to the massive length of a serpentine machine. Its vertebral segments were heavy with plated ridges, and it held before it the curving wall of its shield, a brilliant lattice of crystallized space-time no weapon could penetrate.
It was the biggest hydra she’d ever seen. Blaze rejoiced.
The shrapnel of dead Vex flew out from beneath her boots as she charged. Through the veil of its shield monster turned a single red optic to watch her. She dropped and slid beneath the glowing lattice and lunged upward, storm fist driving between the plated segments-
Everything went white. Space twisted.
She fell onto stone, onto her back.
The hydra wasn’t alone. There were two of them looking down at her.
She saw the cannon either side of their heads blaze purple-
Rust under her fingers. The sweet slick scent of oil and the world lurched as she returned to it. She rolled to her feet, but she could already feel it was over. The air felt lighter about her, the cloying Darkness purged from the walls. The only sounds were tiny uneven clinks of cooling metal and the snap of sparks from broken circuits.
Two great coils of slag lay heaped on the ground, smoking gently. Before them the Sunbreaker stood and watched Blaze impassively. Before the younger Titan could find words she gestured at a chest by her feet and strode off between the smelted hydras.
“Hey! Wait a second!” Blaze was moving now, running after her. But the Sunbreaker never slowed, and the silent Vex gate suddenly shimmered to life at her approach. “I’ve been searching for-”
She was gone, and the gate went dark again. Blaze stumbled to a halt and stared at the wall behind the empty archway. Ghost spun uneasily at her side.
“
She actually used a Vex gate?”“Can you trace where she went?”
“
I can try.”“Do it, then.” She went back to the chest. It unsealed beneath her hands, and inside lay a helm. It was built to a Titan pattern, but unlike any make she’d seen in the City. The plates were angled sharp and graceful in black and gold and silver. She knew the moment she picked it up that she wasn’t rated for anything like this. There was something to the skillful platework and the easy heft of it that hinted at latent power… no, not power yet. Potential…
/“Guardian! Are you still there?”/
“Sir, the Sunbreaker went through a Vex gate. I wasn’t able to speak with her. My Ghost is trying to trace her destination.” She fought so bravely. She left me this gift and I don’t even know her name…
/
I’ve pulled the data, but I can’t make sense of it without a lot more information about the Vex network, Blaze./Zavala let out a long sigh. /“Guardian, you broke orders out there. Do you understand that?”/
“Yes, sir.” She should be more bothered by that. There’d been a time that was unthinkable, she was sure. And yet here and now, looking down at the strange gift from a silent warrior… that all felt very far away. “Felt like the right thing to do, sir.”
/“I see.”/ Three-point-three seconds’ silence. /“Return to the Tower. Bring the gate data. We will discuss this in person.”/
Blaze almost refused- she had to go after the Sunbreakers, she’d come so close and she had so many questions- but she didn’t know where it was she should chase, after all. “Yes sir. On our way.”
Zavala would have plenty of things to say himself, she could hear that in his voice. She could handle that.
Besides, she was starting to think she had plenty of questions for him too.