It had been 2 years. The Warlock Nemesis Black sat in his study, his desk a junkyard of pages and data slates, antediluvian academia and quantum arcana. Nothing but dust and light… A bottle of New Moniack Mead sat among the curios, a tower above a sprawl. He poured himself another glass. It was a pointless exercise, drinking. Just another habitual ritual, another echo of a state that could no longer hold it’s form. No matter. With no bloodstream to infiltrate only Light ran in his veins now. It infused his being, subsumed the laws of physics that held his atoms together. When your body regenerates gunshot wounds in seconds, absorbs enough fusion to fuel a small star, and pulls itself back together from bodily dismemberment, what Earthly liquor is going to dent a few brain-cells? What did the Eliksni call it? Sha’Ir – The Gift of Light. That’s what they call being a Guardian. One of the things. Osiris, Timur, Toland, Pujari…what was it about being a Warlock that sought revelation gazing into the abyss? The human part maybe. Deprived of their small measures of self-obliviation some Warlocks had taken extreme measures: Thanatonautics – Death Diving, leaving your Ghost on record while you eat your own gun in order to explore the insights of temporary death. Or to gain a brief reprieve for a Light-driven mind no longer capable of sleep, only wading daily, cyclically through a sea of cosmic horrors: The unyielding military blunt-force trauma of The Cabal one could respect but the mind shattering ontological assaults of the skeleto-clockwork Vex, the ossified astral voodoo of the Hive, the gibbering shadow-eaten revenants of the Taken; the desperate, over-reaching gambits of the Traveller-forsaken Fallen… …Throwing themselves again, and again onto the same guns for just one final, fleeting glimpse of what we were before the whirlwind.. …All under the milky eye of a dead god… Nemesis took a pistol from his robes and placed it slowly upon the table. Timur’s Lash made a gentle tap as it made contact with the surface. And yet it echoed. The Iron Lords. The first true Guardians; an order born of the most and noble of human desires: To build, protect, endure. Dead of course. Slain, reanimated, slain, reanimated… By SIVA, a man-made nano-tech programmed with the most basic of human desires: Consume, enhance, replicate… …And our other promethean son, that Old World name that couldn’t stay dead, grown arrogant and esoteric in the Russian soil, like some foul daemon-seed fed on the blood of the world... …And that Jovian Thing bartering our own dead’s relics from the shadows… A phantom chill ran down the Warlock's spine. He took another drink, for the sake of ritual. It tasted bitter like contempt. Why? Nemesis eyed the pistol, it's burnished gold frame and engraved wolves and willow spoke of brotherhood, legacy, and the promise of something greater. He set down the glass and reached for it, his hands felt slow from the weight of the years, from the ceaseless killing, from the weight of a city on his shoulders. He took Timur’s Lash, felt the sting of duty, of ambition denied, of the loss of stories and myth, of fellowship and the secrets that he would never know... Brotherhood…Legacy…The Promise of Something Greater… …Destiny… Before he knew it it had gone to his head. The hammer struck metal. Empty. He looked around. Nothing had changed. Nothing but dust and light. His Ghost materialised at his side, it’s luminous eye stared up at him in concern then drifted off to gaze beyond far wall. It floated silently for an eternity. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, Guardian. Truly.” The Warlock stared off. His mind was searching. “Sometimes I think I can remember fragments …a word…a smell…" Nemesis rose and moved a window. He looked out at the The City below. He had walked there before; shopping for curios amid the bazaar, helmless in his robe, he thought his power locked away unseen. A wolf in sheeps clothing. But even then they knew,. They always did somehow. All eyes on him, he didn't need to be a Warlock read the minds behind them: Admiration as they looked up Gratitude as offered their wares Respect as they called him Guardian Fear as they kept their distance. For clarity he had sought out a patch of parkland, an area set aside and left to grow, tended by the citizens to remind them that life was returning, that hope could still grow, that the Earth still endured. That we were still human. "I sat on a veranda there once drinking strong coffee. It was October but the night was warm. I remember a man, brown skin, lines around his mouth from where he had laughed. He was not well dressed , just a beaten grey sweater. But he had a warmth and dignity that I havn't seen in a Guardian. In the distance, the Traveller shone against the stars He sat opposite a child, I couldn't see their face. The man was reading from a book, old. I was jealous to know it's pages so I strained to listen." Nemesis looked down to the gun in his hand. He rolled Timur's Lash over in the moon-light reflected by that other orb dominating the night. He had won the gun in the Crucible - at the Iron Banner- where Guardians kill other Guardians to become better Guardians. Two Wolves and Willow. "The story was about the order of things. How to be a better wolf. I thought nothing of it then. The next night I died. Aksor, the Wolf Priest tore off my arm and crushed my chest. You remember." The Ghost nodded. The Wolf Priest would not let his Guardian's companions near the Warlock's remain, he had to pull him back from the Darkness alone. It took longer than he'd liked." Perhaps longer than was healthy. The Ghost stared off as the Warlock continued. "That's when I remembered the rest of the story. A boy raised by wolf-mother to fight a devil tiger who is chasing her. He goes a human village the tiger also threatens, is given fire and vows to slay the beast in the night. And he does. But the villagers do not rejoice. The villagers do not welcome their saviour... " A storm was starting to build "...They call him a Warlock. They take up the arms they had no strength to use against the devil in the darkness and turn on the witch-boy. They drive him away. Back into the wilderness. Back to the wolves. And why not - when all you ever been raised to be is a wolf, if all you've ever know is the pack and the hunt; the storm and the fury, how can you ever expect go back to being just a Man" Nemesis threw back his head to howl at the silent orb he in the sky. "ISN'T THAT RIGHT, ALPHA LUPI?" There was a Ghost of a whisper. “You need to let it go.” "I CAN'T" Crackling blue/white arcs leaped from wall to wall, pages flew like leaves in a whirlwind, fire crawled along the ceiling in screaming, rolling sheets; the ground opened up beneath in a starry, sucking yawning abyss. In a word the Warlock became a supernova. The air stank of ozone. "...I can't..." The Lash Fell. "... Because of the Cabal…The Fallen-The Eliksni -every year we look more and more like them. And I…I need something to hold onto. To let myself believe we are not going to become them, when we take their weapons and use them over our own, when the walls come down, when there's no more Light to raise our dead…” Nemesis bore his gaze down to the little light, his face wore thunder. “…When you hide from us the truth of just what brought us back and why.” The light stared back heroically “To fight, to win, to prevail!” “You sound like Rasputin.” It was a soft rebuke but the Ghost’s gazed dropped to the floor, weighed down by the shame. It’s Light flickered ever so slightly. The Warlock turned and stalked away. As he did he began to speak, but the words were not his own. His Ghost knew them. They were Pujari's; the first Warlock who sought the enlightment of Death on the Shores of Time and came back with a vision. A vision of that place... ...a wound that wouldn't heal. “At the end of the path grew a flower in the shape of a Ghost. I reached out to pluck it and it cut me with a thorn. I bled and the blood was Light. The Ghost said to me: You are a dead thing made by a dead power in the shape of the dead. All you will ever do is kill. You do not belong here. This is a place of life...” He let his master leave; no words could molify time spent in the Garden. Not when your whole world was a graveyard. No, he would stay behind for now, near the window, baptised again in the Traveller’s polar glow. Even if it cast more shadows now than illumination.