[b] A Guardians Story[/b] It was a chilled early evening when I finally found a good place to rest in between an old overgrown storage building and a rusting hulk of a car just off some forgotten highway. I was completely drained. What I had been through over last few days had me wondering if I would ever make it back to the safety of the Tower. Completely spent from my many days travel on foot, hungry and with little ammunition left to fend off the what I know will be another certain Fallen attack, my chances seemed slim. The enemy knew I was out here, somewhere, and they would not give up their efforts to find me. Even I had little idea where I was or how far off the path I plotted to return home my hurried choices of evading the Fallen had taken me. The landscape offered no features I recognized from the countless flights I had taken high above earth enroute to distant battles and without the Traveler's sphere as a beacon to guide me, the suns path and the night stars would have to be my compass. Still tough, I had to find the strength to continue my journey home. I thought of the Speakers words of encouragement the last time we had met, the commitment that was buried deep within me to protect the city and those who lived there and a quote from my faction, "Our choice is simple, Find our strength, or face extinction.". Somewhere within all those thoughts that now began strengthening my resolve I found that old comforting warmth of inner peace that spread through me as I pulled my tattered Cloak of the Justicars over me to rest before moving off in the dark of night. As I relaxed and slowly began drift off to a restless slumber I thought of my ghost. It that had once guided me and kept me company and now lay motionless in a torn fragment of my cloak tucked behind my chest plate. I could still feel the powerful connection we shared for so long. It had saved my life earlier this morning in our last confrontation with a Fallen pack, but at what cost. I had been occupied fighting three Fallen vandals that had performed flanking move to get in behind me, when I heard my ghost yell out from behind me, "Nooooo...........not my Guardian!". At that time I had no idea of what was happening as I tore through the vandals with my hunters knife. Turning around to find their Fallen captain I had been battling and gravely weakened atop a hill before he jumped behind some cover and my attention was turned towards the vandals, I saw him not 30 feet away. He stood again atop the same hill oddly balanced on one foot, the other drawn high in the air. As I brought the scope of my sniper to bear on his head, his foot crashed down hard to the ground as I fired......killing him instantly. I searched the area for any remaining enemy and finding none, I returned to the captains lifeless corpse to search him for any map or device that could show me the enemies patrol routes or camps so I could avoid them in the future. That is when I saw what had had this mighty and fierce creature poised in such a peculiar way. My ghost lay on the rocky surface crushed and void of that inner light that had always shined through from within. I stood there, frozen in time, staring down at my motionless guide as the sun quickly rose above shifting shadows through it's broken remains. A Fallen cry, far off in the distance, broke my stunned gaze. Scanning the surrounding area I found no immediate threat so I knelt down to inspect my fallen companion. The outer shell which had once whirled around it's inner core now lay scattered. The center orb which contained the Traveler's wisdom and light was nestled lifelessly against one of the many small yellow flowering plants that were scattered across the landscape. Another foreboding howl in the distance reminded me again of my need to press on. I quickly gathered the pieces of my ghost and placed them into a piece of fabric I tore from my cloak and tucked it behind the armor on my chest. This was no time to be in the open in a terrain that offered little cover from the surrounding mountains as the sun exposed everything against the pale orange and muted whites of the endless rock surfaces as far as the eye could see. I began to move off in the direction I had been traveling prior to this fateful meeting, then paused after a few steps. I turned back to the place where my companion had lay and pulled the small yellow flower free of it's anchor on the cracked surface and moved on........... ..........as the Guardian drifted off to a fitful sleep, a recurring dream took him back to his memories of a time before the darkness had consumed most of Earth. It was in a time not long after the Traveler had first appeared in the sky. He was working for the local security forces in the city he had found while serving in his countries national army when he was still a young man. He had proven himself as a soldier over his years of military service which is why he had been selected to be part of a global peacekeeping initiative that his and many other countries supported. The threat from a growing effort to create discord between countries that had were unified in promoting peaceful relations around the world. There were a few countries and a good number of dissidents from most of the unified countries that wanted to keep their countries free of the influences of the common goal to have a single economy and sharing of resources that where the stated interests of combined nations. Some even felt there was an underlying plan by a few key people in this group that held powerful positions to control the worlds wealth for themselves. The future Guardian believed none of the things that the naysayers and agitators were saying and saw them as the real threat to world peace. His final post before being forced to leave the service because of an incident that happened between his squad and a group they were assigned to capture was near a city sat close to the military complex in Russia where he had just been stationed. They had been given restrictive orders about how they could operate which is what he felt caused the problem. His team had found the............. 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