[i]It's been... weeks? Months? I don't even keep track of time much anymore. I sleep when I'm tired, eat when I'm hungry, fight when I'm threatened. All the jumping around planets to answer the call or deal with the next threat has kind of thrown off the 24 hour rotation I once knew. It's a familiar sensation. I remember bits and pieces of before I was... revived? Resurrected? It's like a dream now. My name is Kalienthia. And I am a Guardian of the Last City. I am one of the many Titans of the Striker Discipline. I was once a soldier during the collapse. I barely remember what it was we were fighting. I don't even remember how I died. One minute I was with others firing at... something. Then there was a white hot sensation. Then cold darkness. The next thing I know, a voice is telling me to wake up and I'm in a field of rusted cars in a suit of armor that I have no recollection of putting on. The voice was that of my Ghost. Since that day, I have continued the fight that started back then. We lost so much. Once in a distance past, we dominated our Solar System. We were the Masters of what we saw. Now... there is only the City. The Last City. How did we lose so much? I have taken to calling my Ghost, Steve. Or sometimes "Little Light" when it "forgets" my name and refers to me as just "Guardian". It hates that. Hopefully the lesson will stick one of these days. Steve is getting better about my name. When I first woke up, Steve was right. There was a lot that I didn't know or understand. Fortunately I do remember that sometimes if you shut up and just listen, you can learn a whole lot. There was certainly plenty to learn following my rebirth as I'll just refer to it. I have started a Field Guild as a personal project to the various threats I have faced since my Rebirth. Everyone needs a hobby besides just killing things. Perhaps by understanding how better to deal with our enemies, I can save a few more lives. Our Ghosts certainly make death little more then an inconvenience, but Guardians still get permakilled regularly. The alarming number of Dead Ghosts I've found as well as the bodies of various Guardians troubles me. These threats, the Fallen, the Hive, the Vex, and the Cabal. They seem familiar but at the same time they seem unlike anything I've faced before. Why do they fight among each other? Clearly they hate us most of all, willing to ignore each other in order to gang up on us if we get spotted. I've witnessed and been caught up between skirmishes between the four. Normally as soon as they sight me, they'll drop whatever they're doing to kill me. Sometimes if I sneak up behind one side, I can catch them in a pincer and work with my enemies to eliminate one side. Sometimes I sit back and hide and let them thin each other out before swooping in for the kill. Which leaves the question of where are they getting the numbers? We Guardians are undying if we're careful. I have theorized based on observations that the Fallen are like us. With Servitors serving like Ghosts, using Ether to Rebirth the Fallen. Without Servitors, the Fallen well... fall easily. Between killing the Archons and the Prime Servitor, breaking a house is simple. There must be thousands of Fallen Houses since they seem to be just about everywhere we can reach. Here on Earth, the Moon, Venus... okay I haven't seen any on Mars to be fair but that a fair bit of distance they cover. Even so they only seem to deploy mainly from ships. There's not many ground based dens they seem to have and most of their deployments seem to come from Skiffs. The Hive seem more insectoid in nature. The breeding ground in the Cosmodrome demonstrated something akin to like roaches. Fairly obvious. The Vex are perhaps well... Vexing (ha ha very punny there). Based on my exhaustive testing to destruction to learn the weaknesses of the Vex, and from what other Guardians have learned from various databank caches, the Vex are able to travel through time as well as space almost instantly. The use of Gates however puzzles me. If they're capable of teleporting anywhere, any time, why do they need gates? Maybe they can only individually deploy locally and require a Gate to move between planets and systems? And if they can teleport through time, why bother engaging us at all? They can move instantly and know where we are at any given second if they track us. It would be child's play to ensure they never get caught or even seen. I know, I know, the sensor net on Venus but what about Mars? Or anywhere else for that matter? What if... the Vex only have one of each unit and it just teleports through time to make it LOOK like there's an army of Vex out there? Ugh... maybe I need to stop thinking about time travel for a bit. It makes the Vex hard to think about. Speaking of hard things about the Vex. I'm still wondering why the Vex just don't mass produce the Minotaur designation. It's near perfect. I went through eight full sets of armor trying to find ANY easily exploitable weakness in the Minotaur design and nothing. It's perfect. The only way to kill one is through sheer overkill. I'm on first name terms with the Armorsmith in the Tower and he knows my body's measurements more intimately then I'm comfortable with he's fitted me so much following my testing to destruction. Still, a girl could do worse. Then there's the Cabal. The most perplexing of all in terms of being reinforced. While the others have the obvious means to refill their ranks, what is keeping the Cabal in the fight? Do they have a supply line that running fresh troops in? They honestly seem run down considerably. Maybe we'll know more when we get more of a grasp on our own system and can push outwards again. But even with every Legionnaire I put down, am I even making a dent in their numbers? Even with the losses they take, they just don't seem to break. They must have some amazing moral officers. Fortunately, I am a Titan. I am just as indomitable. I refuse to yield before any of these major threats. Though there is one thing that still nags at me. The Darkness. Nobody seems to know what it is exactly. Yet when I hear the designation, I can feel something nagging at me. Sometimes, when I'm in the field, I can feel something familiar. More memories. From before. Something... pressing on my skull. Digging it's teeth into my brain and draining something from me. Feeding from my darkest fears and greatest regrets. It was strongest when I was in the middle of trying to destroy one of the many Shrines of Oyrx. Steve was telling me the Shrine itself was communing with something beyond the system. The hairs on the back of my neck upright. My armor seemed to be turning against me and trying to crush me inside of it. Something staring at me from across the Universe and... laughing at me? Cursing me? Mocking me? I don't know how to describe it. Tales of the Darkness that I've heard passed around amuse me. They're full of inaccuracies and wild speculation. I lived that war. It was nothing like how the tales go. It was worse. That much I do know. Still, thinking about the Vex has me curious. If they have the power to control time... what about the Ghosts? What if it's not resurrection in the biblical sense... but the Ghost rewinding time around the Guardian to the point where they're back in their prime? It's said that when Jesus rose again, he had the scars of where he was nailed to the cross. Every time my Ghost has resurrected me, not only is there no pain, but there are no scars or other marks or indicators of any damage I've taken. Especially what killed me. My armor is also in pre-mission pristine condition. Not a ding, dent, scratch, or hole in it. The same cannot be said if I survive said firefight. There have been times during extended patrols I've had to make makeshift repairs to my equipment. Stripping plates and weapons parts from scavenged sources to keep myself in the fight. Not to mention the various smiths still doing a brisk business back at the Tower. I think that the Ghosts often take "snapshots" of their Guardians at a point in time to rewind to should a Guardian get killed. Seeing as how I don't wake back up the scavenged hodgepodge set Steve put me in following my Rebirth. The biggest indicator are the scars on my face that I was reborn with. I've since had them inked in as blue camouflage stripes and they remain that way. Which is honestly a good thing. I get gawked at much less having permanent stripes on my face rather then ugly scars. Makes me feel less self conscious about it. Steve of course, completely refuses to confirm my theory. However it doesn't outright refute it ether.[/i]