A dry wind blows through the deserted wastelands of old Russia. Amongst the red tainted wreckage of old times thick weeds grow, as a remainder of how life persists in spite of the odds being against it. In a clearance of the symbols of what made humanity great and proud of itself a scorched body lies. Seemingly untouched by time, as trapped in a rift of time and space. The guardian stares down his sniper rifle as he passes through all possible hiding spots for the cabal or the fallen. He almost ignored the body that stood in front of him. For a moment the guardian thought that there was nothing worthy in this section and proceeded when was about to move on he saw something. Something that in his travels through the whole solar system he never saw. The body inflated and deflated in a matter of seconds, as if it inhaled strongly, recovering for a while its former life, just to fall again to its current state. The Guardian hesitated for a moment and gave a look to his always trusty ghost. He dashed down the dusty hill that overlooked the wastes and began his walk towards the body, ever vigilant regarding his surroundings, slowly caressing the fusion rifle he took long time ago from a fallen commander. A tale of legend. Nevertheless nothing came out of the shadows, no ambush, no rain of bullets. Only the wind blowing through the boneyard of what once made up the golden age. He reached the body and realized how it had preserved through time as if had died just yesterday. The body was of a human female of slim build and accentuated curves, little cloth covered her and it definitely was not of this time. She was no guardian that had gone down. She was laying facing the soil and her face couldn't be seen from the angle the guardian approached her. He gave another quick look to his surroundings and decided to turn the body so he could see the woman's face. He thought for a moment how it could have ended up here such a perfectly preserved corpse. Then he dismissed the thought. These momentary lapses of reason we're the ones that got you killed. As he turned the body he felt something aside from the cold emotionless pragmatism that hovered over him as a black cloud since the day he had been awoken by his ghost. Nothing from before that day had came back to his mind, he became just a husk of his former self, of that human being with family, emotions, dreams and hopes. This thought came to him as he saw the face of the woman, the face of randomness: millions of traits shifted by the second as infinite combinations were made. First there were human faces, male and female, then awoken, with their pale skin and light eyes, then came the exos, with optic transmissors that communicated the same intelligence as the other two races. Then it became weird as fallen, vex, cabal and taken traits came into view. A canvass of color and diversity that ran faster and faster by the minute until it began calcifying. By the moment the guardian gathered these last thoughts the whole body was covered in a boney material that looked as hard as stone, until it began fading: becoming dust that sailed into the waves of wind that traversed the ruined cosmodrome. Only something was left, a trace that the body was ever there and that it was no hallucination what the guardian experienced: a blooming white flower. As he began breaking the calculating and pragmatic shell that encapsulated him since his once thought as second chance in life his body began to shake. The weight of his armor became more latent as his knees began trembling under its bulk. He began taking it off, wearing only his undercloth. The last piece he took off was his helmet, and as the wind struck his sensible skin and penetrated his lungs directly he realized that something was burning him deeply. He had still strapped his fusion and sniper rifles to his back, just in case an ambush befell him he was able to retaliate. He felt attacked at first, as if he was burning. Then he located the source of that burning: it came from his rifles. He reached to take hold of the fusion rifle and the moment his skin entered in contact with its cold metallic surface his mind went adrift through the currents of time, taking him to that moment when he took hold of that precious rifle, he had to cut through hordes of fallen just to challenge their commander, who fell on him as a beast from older times, making his blade sing to the rhythm of what the guardian once thought was the song of honor and pride, a song whose meaning was now revealed to the guardian as the one of uncontainable death. "I had to break his neck", the guardian remembered, "but he was like me, probably more similar to me than the people from the city, the humans I made my cause to fight. He was a brother. And I slashed through his flesh to get his gun. I killed him when he was a lost soul as mine is, his being guilty of only wanting to achieve survival, mine hoping to please the designs of the speaker and the traveler." He threw the rifle as far as his body allowed him, "who's right and who's wrong? Which fight is the good fight?" The man fell to his knees and placed the sniper rifle over his thighs, imitating the rituals of old from the honorful Warriors from Japan: the samurais. But he had no honor, he came to life again just to become judge of who shall keep and who shall not. He was no better than those that his guns, his hands had killed, he couldn't bear the feeling of self dread that assaulted him. Then the flower began blossoming and from its insides a ghost emerged that began staring at the man whose existence became unbearable. What once were trophies of war became uncleanable stains of blood in his soul. He broke the rifle with the same impetus as the one he had when he had broken the fallen's neck. Then the ghost talked, and it all made sense to the man, get his soul was not at peace. The ghost had told him that as he achieved illumination his true nation as an agent of light was to be discovered: that light was no synonym of good. And that as it became an entity with the shape of the traveler it had its own agenda, an agenda that he had obediently served since he came to be. The man bursted in tears as the ghost proceeded with its speech, digging into details the man didn't cared for, as a unemotional machine counting on the details. He fell deeper into his grief. At last the ghost presented the man choice: to continue being a tormented soul whose only comfort was to be found in the death of others. Or to be released from the bonds of this existence, to transcend as an illuminated being. The ghost turned into a hand cannon designed as two halves from a coin: one a blossoming flower, the other a dreadful thorn. He took it in his hands and checked its drum. One bullet the size of a grown man's thumb. He cried and rose to face the traveler, climbing over a nearby run down building. The traveler covered his full field of vision and even a bit of its light shone on his face. He hated it. He examined deeply the bullet and saw it was handcrafted specifically for this gun. This two sided mercy. He rose on his two feet, as proud as he was time ago when he sacked the corpses of his enemies for their guns and aimed down the sights of the cannon. Giving them one look and letting imagination fill the fantasy of how could it have been fighting with this unparalleled piece of equipment. Then he liberated one last battle cry and made his decision, now defying the symbol for which he had denied his humanity. [spoiler][/spoiler] [armory]