Friendship is Paracausalby Cinder ScriptChaptersHow We Got To This Place With These PeopleFizzBuzzSongbirdHow We Got To This Place With These PeopleEquestria was never a simple land. Honestly, Equus in general has always been a particularly "interesting" place to live. Most worlds' legends are about fighting monsters and going on heroic quests to save the world. On Equus that was Saturday morning, and thoughtfully would wait until just after breakfast more often than not. Attacks by giant bee bug bear monsters, rather than being the end of a very short and very bad day for a large number of people, would more than likely end up as merely a side show to a spectacular wedding. Equestria, compared to the rest of Equus, could best be described as a conflux of all the interestingness that makes up Equus' unique proclivities. Reasons for this rose and fell throughout the ages, with two excuses consistently present. First, any place run by an immortal creature that moves the sun is going to be a hot spot for shenanigans, exacerbated when two to four ageless entities, whose power output can best be measured in terms most commonly used for tectonic plate mechanics, end up sitting on a variety of thrones. The second is more personable; Its inhabitants, and their offspring. Ponies are already pretty inclined towards weirdness, their traditional armories having weaponized pastries filed between hammers and spears for instance. Their children are known even more for bizarre occurrences, in what can best be described as magically induced coming of age adventures. When a parent's first response to their adolescent being escorted home covered in tree sap and noodles by an officer of the law is to squeal and give both a big hug, your concept of normal is going to be skewed. Whatever the reason, not a week went by in most Equestrian towns without something interesting happening, even without the yearly attacks by creatures with an eye for Armageddon. So if you look at things from that perspective, it really shouldn't be a surprise when they're the first to respond to reports of stars winking out and a new entity appearing near the surface of the fourth planet in their solar system. Within the day they established the first foundations of a space program, and within six months they had managed to put eight individuals on the planet's surface. When the expedition to Minmus arrived, it carried a single representative of each of the great species of Equus. In an act of unity and friendship not seen since the machinations of a history forgotten lunatic, every nation of Equus came together to reach the stars. And so eight beings stepped off their lander, each looking upon the barren world in wonder. Not because it was a new world, untouched by any sentient beings in all its history, but because it had been. Just recently, in fact. Before their very eyes, the barren hellscape they had been expecting was experiencing its first rainstorm. Cresting a nearby hill, they found It. The Traveller. A great orb of indescribable material hovering in the center of a storm of Light. Minmus was being terraformed, the perpetrator before them, and Equus made what has been argued to be its greatest friend. Reports of the moon princess' reaction have been lost to time. Equus' was thrust into a Golden Age, The Golden Age, achieving in years what had once taken centuries. Aging was abolished, the solar system settled, and friendship reigned. That's what the books will tell you, but nothing is ever that simple. Yes, age and disease became things of the past, but death is nothing if not stubborn. The solar system was colonized, but the darker deeds of groups like Neigh Corp are lost to time. Glimmer and Engram were discovered, ushering in a post scarcity society capable of creating nearly anything, including things best left buried. Friendship did her best, they all did of course, but even demigoddesses are fallible. We call it a Golden Age, and to a lot of creatures it was that and more. It wasn't perfect, but it was good. All good things must come to an end, as the saying goes. We call it The Darkening. Scholars call it The Collapse. Everyone who survived it call it "another cider." Records are pretty spotty, but we know a lot more about what happened during it than the days leading up to it. The stars were consumed. A great sword cleaved Minmus in twain. The screams of gods rang across the sky. The heavens became dust in the wind, and that dust was Darkness. The sun burned black. The Darkness claimed our world, our lives and homes meaningless beneath its power. Darkness won. But Darkness is not eternal. The Traveler protected us. What we faced in the Darkening was the runoff from a battle between deities. And though The Traveler has slumbered since, broken and dead, Its Light won out over The Darkness. That's when the First woke up. Her Ghost pulled her out of the ruins of a ruined train, and she started walking. No one remembers her first name, least of all her, but her friends used to call her Spark. She was the first Guardian, coined the name actually, back when most of us were called Lords or Ladies. She's gone now, left not too long after we got our heads together. She gave us our first real sense of unity, lead us into doing some good instead of fighting among ourselves like immortal foals, and then flew off past the Reef. No one's seen her since, in the flesh anyway. You'll see her statue in the Tower's Firebeak Courtyard, watching over the memorial flames with her friends. I should probably explain that. See, after the Darkening, everyone who survived did what they could to stay that way. We still had a lot of Golden Age tech, including the stuff in the aquifers that keeps everyone from dying of old age. Anything in someone's hooves got put to use pretty quickly, either keeping themselves alive or making someone else dead first. The Golden Age never cured the fundamental weakness to bullets, so a lot of people ended up banding together to keep themselves alive. That's when we started showing up. Before The Traveler died, or went to sleep if there's a difference, it saw that everyone would need new defenders. So it took all of its remaining Light and gave each little mote a breath, creating the Ghosts. The Ghosts spread across the system, hunting for someone worthy of wielding the Traveler's Light. Usually a corpse, but not always. The Ghost will search the entire system and beyond to find them, and when they do they pour the Traveler's Light into the new Guardian, resurrecting them from the dead for the first time of many. Spark may have been the "first," but there's better than even odds she wasn't the literal first one found by her Ghost. She certainly wasn't the first one who showed up, getting back up after getting filled full of holes. I won't try to defend most of the Lords and Ladies, and anyone who would try wasn't there. They did some horrible things, and yeah, a lot of them deserved the fates they got. The Darkening tore up more than our bodies and planet. I don't think anyone can describe what its like, to look at The Darkness and come back. The ones who did and were still sane are lying, one way or the other. It was about the time that we were making a good showing of trying to finish what The Darkness started when Spark stepped up. She joined up with someone who actually deserved the title of Lady. Lady Treebreaker, of the Oak Pillar. She gathered up every Lady and Lord who wanted to protect others, and started fighting back the Warlords. It started pretty small, but if you've seen the kind of damage three Guardians can do, imagine what three dozen can do when armed with Golden Age weapons. It was Spark who figured out how to kill us, and with Lady Treebreaker keeping her followers in line, they wiped out or recruited the Warlords. It was a bloodier time, but it set the groundwork for a belief that remains today. Guardians protect people, no matter the cost. Somewhere along the line they came across a growing settlement, protected by a single pony. The pony wore all white, her face hidden by a white mask, and her voice was soft. You've probably seen her, if you've spent any time in The City. They found The Speaker, and finally found someone who could show them how to build something out of the ash. The Speaker and Lady Treebreaker and Spark all came together, and together they hashed out a plan. Even if they had to crane their necks to look the Speaker in the eye, they were equals. That plan, as should be obvious by now, was The City. The Last City of Equus, if you look at the archives. Its not exactly the last city, and certainly not the last settlement, but its the biggest and the best defended. They built it miles away from Old Canterlot, beneath the Traveler. Its been hanging there ever since The Darkening, providing the closest thing we have to natural light. So we built a city underneath it, surrounded it with walls, and have been expanding ever since. If you close your eyes, and drink enough without your Ghost fixing it, you can almost remember what real sunlight felt like. If it weren't for that Light from the Traveler, and Equus being a bit neurotic when it come to evolution, everyone would have starved ages ago. A lot of stuff will grow from raw magic alone, some things have even adapted to grow off of the Light, but it's the Traveler's light, with a lower case L, that lets us grow most of our crops. As tasty as Moon Noodles are, we've come to rely on the Traveler for a lot. Food, protection, and something to believe in. You can thank the Speaker for that last part, she's done a lot over the years to keep everyone unified, and belief in the Traveler is pretty ubiquitous. So what really keeps everyone way from each other's throats? There's a lot more history I could go into, and if you ask I'll probably do it so don't give me that pout. Let's focus, at least for now. The Council is the primary ruling body of the City. Its got representatives from every major faction in this city, those that're left after the Faction Conflict, including the Vanguard. They mostly keep things running smoothly in the City, with the Vanguard reps primarily present to listen and advise. The Speaker sits at the head of the table, but its been decades since she last spoke during a meeting. The last time was after the Disaster of Mareius, when we went to war with the Hive on the moon. It didn't end well, and we lost a lot of heroes. The Speaker spoke, declaring no Guardian would go to the Moon under the Vanguard's flag, and hasn't piped up in there since. The Vanguard agreed, and the Council has stayed out of Vanguard matters ever since. It was the Council's idea in the first place after all, and when nobody dies of old age that much blood on someone's hooves tends to weigh pretty heavily. So where does that leave us? Well, we've managed to hold back the Fallen for the most part, despite a few sieges of The City. The Hive have mostly stayed up on what's left of Minmus, digging out tunnels in the fragments. The Vex have been doing Traveler knows what throughout the system, and we've done what we can to kick them out whenever they show up. We're holding the line, seeing what we can take back whenever the opportunity presents itself. Shakes has his Crucible, letting Guardians blow each other up for fame and profit as the best funded training exercise you'll ever see. Lady Treebreaker will sometimes show back up to run her Ironwood Banner, though her and Shakes keep butting heads. And then there's the Vanguard. They're the ones who're going to point you at things that need to die, and more often at particularly interesting vistas to look at. They're split up into three groups, one for each discipline Guardians trend towards, and are headed by three Vanguards: Guardians who act as mentors and cat herders for the rest of us. Each Vanguard is responsible for their class of Guardian, loosely collected as Titans, Hunters, and Warlocks. They've all been around for ages, but none of them are the original Vanguard. And yes, they're all girls. If that surprises you, you haven't been around Equus long enough. Rock Candy is the Titan Vanguard. She's calm, and confident, and she never ever smiles. When she does its because she's proud of you, and when she frowns you're about to realize what it feels like to be kicked into a thin mist. The others are more energetic, and get more things done, but she's the one who keeps everyone together. She's an earth pony, and might as well have been the one to start the idea of Titan Orders. She'll never admit it though, she's all business until someone's in real danger. She's got the highest number of failed missions out of anyone authorized to give them to us, but she's got the lowest casualty count. If you want a story about how things were in the Golden Age, find her off duty. Her Ghost has been gone for a long time, but that hasn't stopped her from being one of the baddest Titans around, and she'll trade first hoof accounts of legends for her namesake treat. Then there's the Hunter Vanguard, Bubble-8. She's an Exo pegasus, one of the sentient war machines you'll sometimes see running around. One of the oldest Guardians in the City, even if she doesn't act it. Don't go out for drinks with her, she cheats. If you've got the patience to keep up with her pranks, antics, and complaining? Well, her instincts usually aren't wrong, as long as gambling isn't involved. She's been trying to get out of the job for a while now, ever since she lost the Vanguard Dare to Prism, but no one's been willing to take her bet. She's better at field work, according to her, but the Hunters haven't been better organized in years. She's the reason we've got the courier beacons keeping everyone in contact, and she's actually managed to get Hunters to give scouting reports instead of just wandering around forever. Just be careful if she ever offers to swap stories. Half of what she says is an exaggeration, half is lies, and somewhere in there is the truth. Last one is the Warlock Vanguard: Gabriel. Her mentor was a minotaur, and she's a griffin. The Warlock Vanguard's never been the same species twice, much less "normal." Don't let her cute looks, small stature, or being leader of a bunch of Light wielding librarians fool you. She'll rip you in half and shove a shotgun up your tail if you get on the wrong side of her in the Crucible. Then laugh, pick you back up, and take you out for dinner if you put up a good enough fight. She's an exercise in opposition, and one of the first Skydancers if the rumors are to be believed. A good girl regardless, and basically the smartest one in the room ninety nine percent of the time. She's also the biggest supporter of Guardians trying to find out about their past, much to everyone's frustration. It doesn't help that her mentor was the one who championed the law banning that kind of research. And then there's you. What are you going to do? I'd like to have a plan, but where you go I go. I spent long enough trying to find you, I'm not going to just abandon you. But I would like to know what you had in mind, after we're done training. You handled yourself really well out there, you know. Don't know if I mentioned that or not. Have you decided on a name for yourself yet? Me? I'm Ghost, your Ghost. Trust me, I can tell when you're talking to me. Fine. I'll be Pip. But I get to name you now. Hey, no whining, its only fair. How about... FizzBuzzIn hindsight, I probably shouldn't be surprised things had turned out like this. Yeah, jumping into the dark bottomless pit had been a laugh. I could hear Daredevil complaining all the way down, and... Yup, still smashing things. She's fine. Songbird's gone quiet, probably dead again. With her luck, she's probably at the bottom of that cave in I caused earlier, I'll dig her out later. First thing... "What are you waiting for? An invitation?" A bang, a scream, and that lovely popping sound I've come to love. "There! Now start actually TRYING to kill me!" "FizzBuzz, do you have to antagonize the Fallen?" And Pip's annoyed. Lovely, I was wondering when he'd wake up. "Did you get the picture? Bubble-8 will love it." I can feel his exasperation in the sigh. Odd, I didn't know he breathed. "Yes. I also picked up reports of an Archon Priest in the area. It looks like we crashed his birthday party." Well that was news. Fallen celebrate birthdays? With the way they keep throwing themselves at us, you'd think they- oh, good place for a tripmine- wouldn't have enough self preservation to care about surviving another year. Or was it- Okay, be careful of shockwaves while down here- just the higher ups? "You know I can see into your helmet, right? I know that grin, that's your narrating face. What are you planning?" "The surrender of every Fallen in this cave. Failing that, party." "You'll be doing it alone. I haven't gotten the chance to fix your armor's radio, we can only receive until you clear out the Fallen chasing you." "They're still back there? Tenacious spiders. Give me a second." I glanced back, finding far more than I thought. What's left in the hand cannon after the scuffle upstairs would be enough for some of them, and I could clean up enough of the rest with Double Tap's ammo generator. The ones on the ceiling will be the biggest problem, they've got good sightlines over the tunnel and enough guns to make dodging difficult. Good. I've been wanting to try this out for a while. "Hold on Pip." I couldn't hear his response, whatever it was. I threw myself forward, grunting as my side hit the ground, sliding backwards. The trigger bit still tasted like Hive blood after the Headbutt incident, but it still worked. My foreleg rose, leveling the hand cannon harnessed to it at the closest Dreg's head. His look of surprise vanished in a spray of blood and ether, my aim already moving before his scream ended. Two more kicks, two bodies falling from the ceiling, and the massive revolver clicked empty. I really need an autoloader. What I didn't need anymore was a gun. I've been trying to explain this since I woke up that first time. I even wrote a suitably dramatic song, but operatic musical numbers aren't the best medium for explaining how the Light feels to wield. If you're a Guardian, you'll understand. It starts as a spark, but that's misleading. It doesn't start, it started before I woke up, and Pip is tight lipped about the details of resurrecting a pile of bones. Let's call it an ember, a little sparking warmth all over. It grows every second, every heartbeat, until I can almost taste it. I described it to Pip once, and that's how he came up with my name: Like soda fizz and static and nothing at all. Even when its growing I can use it, making my body bend easier or move faster, poured into what's left of my horn to charge a grenade or ignite a knife. I can feel it in every gunshot, a jagged fragment of Light poured into the bullets and embedded in my enemies. My Light is me, more than magic ever was. Not to say I can't use both. I can feel the Light roiling under my fur, like a lightning storm in a bottle. I roll back to my hooves and lift my head, horn spitting sparks of crackling arc energy through the hole in my helmet. The floodgates break, and the universe sings. The blade at my flank calls to me, but I shun it. My Light recoils from its sheathe, spreading through every atom of my body, armor covered fur buzzing like a trillion lightning rods. The Bladedancer's way is precision and speed, balanced on the edge of a razor. The Storm isn't precise, it seeks out every potential path until it finds one. The Storm is fast, yes, but power is what makes the Storm deadly. I've been many things, a lot more than I can remember, but deadly is right at the top. For a split second, everything stops. Arc Light fills the air, tracing between atoms like a great web, spreading from the tips of electric wings at my sides. I can see the jagged lightning bolt my horn's become, filling in where something pre-FizzBuzz had broken it. And I can feel the world around me between heartbeats, the eye of the Storm. Let's go for... That one. A tendril of Arc zigzags out, making contact with the end of the Captain's snout. Time starts, and my sight is filled with disintegrating Fallen, my horn of lightning spearing through the dust his skull once was. A thunderclap rebounds down the stone tunnel, the remaining Fallen cringing in fear. Good. Light roils and crackles through me, straining to be released, eager to be unleashed. My knife slips from its sheathe, hilt humming in the grasp of my electric wing. It springs forward as I flip back from the dusted captain, a vein of Arc connecting it to my body. I can feel it sink into the chest of a vandal on the ceiling, as my hoof crushes the skull of the Captain's second. Bouncing off his smoking corpse, singing Arc Light weaves through the tether and pulls. Another clap of thunder rings through the stone, my hindlegs wrapped around the skull of the Vandal. Arc surges, cooking his organs and charging his body. As the Storm begins to fade I roll to the side, weight pulling his body off the ceiling, arc charged wings springing out to launch him and myself forward. He crashes into the ceiling between four others, Arc discharging to sunder flesh and bone, five bodies reduced to ash. I am the Storm, a Goddess of charge and Light, and my will is reality. The Storm begins to fade, my senses fading from charged zen as wings and horn dissipate once more. The cold bolt of adrenaline can never compare to Light induced divinity, but the song of Arc never leaves. A flick of my head pulls Double Tap's trigger bit between my teeth, the ornate double barrel flipping out of its protective sheath to wait on my side. I could taste the fading static charge in the Bit, rolling up from the Golden Age Arc generator embedded in the stock. I said something intimidating, I promise, but it was lost in the bit. Daredevil found me just as the enchantment from Double Tap was fading, my hoof stuffing a pair of shells into the chambers to be turned into electrical fury. I spat out the bit, giving her a grin beneath my helmet, stretching non-existent kinks from my legs. "Look who's here. I've been getting bored. Did you dig up Songbird yet?" I'll admit, I probably deserved the rock to the forehead. The grenade that welded itself to my chest plate and started glowing bright red was probably called for as well. I'm pretty sure it means Hello in Titan. "I'll take that as a no?" On the plus side, Pip had enough time to fix my radio while he was reviving me. SongbirdFalling is unpleasant. A quick burst of Light can nullify momentum, as can a quick meeting of face and stone. If given the choice, I suggest the former. The sole redeeming factor is that it is often a quick death, assuming one can angle themselves to land on their head or you are provided a convenient cave in by a companion. As an aside: being crushed to death is also quite quick, as long as one positions herself beneath a sufficiently large boulder. Unfortunately Death By Sudden Deceleration is very high in my list of most common demise, below FizzBuzz Collateral and above Hive Boomer. More often than not, as I've gotten quite good at Glide Braking, performed horizontally at the gentle suggestion of a shield bash to the muzzle. You may ask, Songbird, why do you keep a list of most common demise? The answer is as simple as it is disheartening: I am very, very bad at the task of staying alive, despite my best efforts. To many this would be a temporary burden, a curse lifted by a swift descent into the harmonious silence of the Void. I am a Guardian however, a Warlock in fact, and I have no intention of staying dead for longer than necessary. A sentiment my Ghost shared, as he made very clear, regardless of whatever memories the Void may bring. His memory is not one I am willing to stain by defying his wishes. For many Guardians, death is only a common state of affairs while in the field, with only the occasional pancaking caused by attempts to climb the many precarious overhangs one can find along the City's wall. I am not most Guardians. I have been crushed to death by falling scaffolding, impaled by broken windows, frozen in the freezer of my favorite restaurant, and in one notable case shredded in a wood chipper while helping clear condemned buildings. Staying in the libraries of my peers, or my own, is no shield from my horrid luck. It is the height of irony to be reduced to the consistency of paste by a falling bookshelf containing the preserved journals of lost Guardians. Fizzbuzz has not let me forget it, though I am glad that my remains are reconstituted into Light during the resurrection process, otherwise I would have made quite a few enemies among the cryptarchs that day. Most Guardians would be disheartened by such regular meetings with the Pale Pony, perhaps going so far as to believe themselves cursed by the Traveler. I am not most Guardians. In the early days, before Fizzbuzz, I grew... Frustrated by the regularity of my demise. Oak Blossom would suggest I try looking up more, and did once attempt to fashion me a helmet durable enough to survive a fall from orbit. It could, by the way, though it was not enough to deflect the thrice cursed blade of a Hive Prince. Daredevil seconded the helmet idea, and attempted to help Blossom create armor suitable to surviving in those Dark days. If anyone ever asks, they did not create the Hadronic Essence most Warlocks use to this day, and most certainly have not spent years attempting to blend it with Golden Age technology. These responses certainly helped, but they were not an answer to my true problem. All that lives must die, though Paracausal entities such as Guardians do have a safety net in the Traveler's Light. Most rely upon their Ghost for this, allowing their Ghost to pour the Light of the Traveler through themselves into the Guardian, igniting the Light that makes up our being. Thus we return ourselves to life, despite the universe's insistence that we are too dead to do so. Such is the nature of Light, and those who wield its Paracausal power. It was this understanding that began my road to understanding the song of the Void, and the foundation of the Starsinger Warlock Tradition. The establishment of that word, Paracausal, is relatively new. Established from a pre-Golden Age language, which we discovered in the buried remains of Romane, it roughly means "Beyond Causality." A rudimentary, if not incorrect, summary of what we've known for centuries. The Light, and the Darkness, are Paracausal. They are beyond the realm of Fate and causality, because their sources are beyond this mere plane of reality. I will use the explanation which was used to educate new Warlords, before it was replaced by the more succinct title of Guardian. Before me rests a sword. Upon its table nothing more than a lump of metal, shaped by the heat and hammers of its foundry. It cannot harm you. It cannot cut you. It cannot destroy. All it can do is weigh down the table, carrying with it the weight which gravity imbues it. I can give it to a griffin, and she will give it direction. In her claws it gains force, momentum, and so it can cut. In her claws, it can end a life, or sever a branch. It does this through the sharpness and weight of its blade, through the force given to it by its wielder, as the laws of physics describe. These laws are intrinsic to our universe, to the best of our knowledge. Should the griffin lift her sword and plant it in my chest, it would pierce my heart and, without medical treatment, my brain's blood flow would be interrupted for long enough that it would cease to function, and thus I would die. This is one potential outcome. Perhaps her aim is off, and she pierces my lung instead. In this case I would find breathing difficult, and would need to stop the flow of blood escaping my veins, but I could potentially live. In doing so, I could lift my gun and shoot her in the head, and thus she would die. Another outcome. Perhaps she chooses to present the sword back to me, and I will return it to the armory, and she would go about her life until another event ends it. A third outcome. All three are, on a cosmic sense, equally valid. It is not until one is chosen that her fate is solidified, and our universe continues on that specific branch of causality. But what if I reached out to the sword, and it was annihilated to nothing but sparks? I am a unicorn, yes, but I cannot perform such magic with my horn. In none of fate's threads is this a possibility, for there is no cause within the scenario which would allow such a result to occur. I do not have the tool, magical or otherwise, which could bring about such an end. Just as a Titan's grenade should not explode into lightning, and Hunters do not bear an infinite number of knives. And yet, if such an event were to occur, fate would need to account for this result. No longer could she stab my heart, or lung, or give me the sword. This is what it means to be Paracausal, as through my will and Light alone I can choose such a fate. I can destroy the sword, and remove the possibilities causality decreed possible. Through my Light I can manifest great vortexes of annihilation, or teleport at will, or even return from the clutches of death. With my Light I can force those weaker than I to shatter, even if their own paracausal will is to remain unbroken. Together we Guardians can chip away at the strength of an entity capable of shattering planets, until it is destroyed in all realities. I can look into the eye of a machine which decides if I exist or not, and declare that I Am. It is this understanding, before any other, which forms the foundation of our power, and that of our enemies. Everything is determined, through our actions and other's. There are only so many possibilities in fate. But Guardians make their own fate. This I discovered, hanging in the formless Void beyond death, as my Ghost lay in fragments and my body ground down to atoms. I was to die, and slip into the realm beyond death, never to return. I could not leave my friends to suffer such a fate. I could not allow them to fall against Him. My story would not end upon the surface of the moon. And by the power of my Light, I heard the song of the Void. In the nothingness between realities, I grasped the harmony, and by my will it was remade. In the scale of the Void it was minuscule, but I am told the explosion of Void Light was cataclysmic to the keep within which we battled. Within the blast, I was remade, and through me the song flowed. Gravity was an inconvenience, and so its hold was removed. The Hive Thrall separating my Fireteam and I were an obstacle, and so they were consumed. Through my body flowed the Void, and it was unleashed upon the world around me. Today they refer to the second art as Voidwalking. Reaching into the Void and channeling it as a conduit, releasing uncontrolled eruptions of powerful nothingness to consume and eradicate one's foes at our will. The first art is known as Starsinging, to delve into the emptiness between atoms and channel the power found within to force one's self back into Reality. Usually in the place and condition one had a handful of seconds, often ten or so, before one's demise. Neither requires the other, but with effort and study one can learn to effortlessly transfer from the first to second. These are the arts I am known and named for. It is these that have allowed me to continue to protect my friends, even though my Ghost's Light has faded. It was these arts that lead, after many years, to the eternal death of the Hive Prince who slew my best friend and the release of her Light from the Darkness' grasp. It was this power that formed the throne by which my will commands the world. I am the Songbird, and within my breast is the symphony of the Void. I am a Guardian, protector of the City and all who live in the Traveler's Light. I am a Warlock, seeking scholar of all worlds and beyond. I am a Warlord, the Sweet Embrace, harbinger of death feared even today by Fallen legend. I am the Traveler's Risen, my will and Light sharpened like the finest sword upon the bones of the Darkness. Before it all, as the world was torn asunder in the Darkest night and my Ghost found me broken and bleeding my last beneath what was my home, I was Sweetie Belle. And for their sake, I will never be forgotten.
How We Got To This Place With These PeopleEquestria was never a simple land. Honestly, Equus in general has always been a particularly "interesting" place to live. Most worlds' legends are about fighting monsters and going on heroic quests to save the world. On Equus that was Saturday morning, and thoughtfully would wait until just after breakfast more often than not. Attacks by giant bee bug bear monsters, rather than being the end of a very short and very bad day for a large number of people, would more than likely end up as merely a side show to a spectacular wedding. Equestria, compared to the rest of Equus, could best be described as a conflux of all the interestingness that makes up Equus' unique proclivities. Reasons for this rose and fell throughout the ages, with two excuses consistently present. First, any place run by an immortal creature that moves the sun is going to be a hot spot for shenanigans, exacerbated when two to four ageless entities, whose power output can best be measured in terms most commonly used for tectonic plate mechanics, end up sitting on a variety of thrones. The second is more personable; Its inhabitants, and their offspring. Ponies are already pretty inclined towards weirdness, their traditional armories having weaponized pastries filed between hammers and spears for instance. Their children are known even more for bizarre occurrences, in what can best be described as magically induced coming of age adventures. When a parent's first response to their adolescent being escorted home covered in tree sap and noodles by an officer of the law is to squeal and give both a big hug, your concept of normal is going to be skewed. Whatever the reason, not a week went by in most Equestrian towns without something interesting happening, even without the yearly attacks by creatures with an eye for Armageddon. So if you look at things from that perspective, it really shouldn't be a surprise when they're the first to respond to reports of stars winking out and a new entity appearing near the surface of the fourth planet in their solar system. Within the day they established the first foundations of a space program, and within six months they had managed to put eight individuals on the planet's surface. When the expedition to Minmus arrived, it carried a single representative of each of the great species of Equus. In an act of unity and friendship not seen since the machinations of a history forgotten lunatic, every nation of Equus came together to reach the stars. And so eight beings stepped off their lander, each looking upon the barren world in wonder. Not because it was a new world, untouched by any sentient beings in all its history, but because it had been. Just recently, in fact. Before their very eyes, the barren hellscape they had been expecting was experiencing its first rainstorm. Cresting a nearby hill, they found It. The Traveller. A great orb of indescribable material hovering in the center of a storm of Light. Minmus was being terraformed, the perpetrator before them, and Equus made what has been argued to be its greatest friend. Reports of the moon princess' reaction have been lost to time. Equus' was thrust into a Golden Age, The Golden Age, achieving in years what had once taken centuries. Aging was abolished, the solar system settled, and friendship reigned. That's what the books will tell you, but nothing is ever that simple. Yes, age and disease became things of the past, but death is nothing if not stubborn. The solar system was colonized, but the darker deeds of groups like Neigh Corp are lost to time. Glimmer and Engram were discovered, ushering in a post scarcity society capable of creating nearly anything, including things best left buried. Friendship did her best, they all did of course, but even demigoddesses are fallible. We call it a Golden Age, and to a lot of creatures it was that and more. It wasn't perfect, but it was good. All good things must come to an end, as the saying goes. We call it The Darkening. Scholars call it The Collapse. Everyone who survived it call it "another cider." Records are pretty spotty, but we know a lot more about what happened during it than the days leading up to it. The stars were consumed. A great sword cleaved Minmus in twain. The screams of gods rang across the sky. The heavens became dust in the wind, and that dust was Darkness. The sun burned black. The Darkness claimed our world, our lives and homes meaningless beneath its power. Darkness won. But Darkness is not eternal. The Traveler protected us. What we faced in the Darkening was the runoff from a battle between deities. And though The Traveler has slumbered since, broken and dead, Its Light won out over The Darkness. That's when the First woke up. Her Ghost pulled her out of the ruins of a ruined train, and she started walking. No one remembers her first name, least of all her, but her friends used to call her Spark. She was the first Guardian, coined the name actually, back when most of us were called Lords or Ladies. She's gone now, left not too long after we got our heads together. She gave us our first real sense of unity, lead us into doing some good instead of fighting among ourselves like immortal foals, and then flew off past the Reef. No one's seen her since, in the flesh anyway. You'll see her statue in the Tower's Firebeak Courtyard, watching over the memorial flames with her friends. I should probably explain that. See, after the Darkening, everyone who survived did what they could to stay that way. We still had a lot of Golden Age tech, including the stuff in the aquifers that keeps everyone from dying of old age. Anything in someone's hooves got put to use pretty quickly, either keeping themselves alive or making someone else dead first. The Golden Age never cured the fundamental weakness to bullets, so a lot of people ended up banding together to keep themselves alive. That's when we started showing up. Before The Traveler died, or went to sleep if there's a difference, it saw that everyone would need new defenders. So it took all of its remaining Light and gave each little mote a breath, creating the Ghosts. The Ghosts spread across the system, hunting for someone worthy of wielding the Traveler's Light. Usually a corpse, but not always. The Ghost will search the entire system and beyond to find them, and when they do they pour the Traveler's Light into the new Guardian, resurrecting them from the dead for the first time of many. Spark may have been the "first," but there's better than even odds she wasn't the literal first one found by her Ghost. She certainly wasn't the first one who showed up, getting back up after getting filled full of holes. I won't try to defend most of the Lords and Ladies, and anyone who would try wasn't there. They did some horrible things, and yeah, a lot of them deserved the fates they got. The Darkening tore up more than our bodies and planet. I don't think anyone can describe what its like, to look at The Darkness and come back. The ones who did and were still sane are lying, one way or the other. It was about the time that we were making a good showing of trying to finish what The Darkness started when Spark stepped up. She joined up with someone who actually deserved the title of Lady. Lady Treebreaker, of the Oak Pillar. She gathered up every Lady and Lord who wanted to protect others, and started fighting back the Warlords. It started pretty small, but if you've seen the kind of damage three Guardians can do, imagine what three dozen can do when armed with Golden Age weapons. It was Spark who figured out how to kill us, and with Lady Treebreaker keeping her followers in line, they wiped out or recruited the Warlords. It was a bloodier time, but it set the groundwork for a belief that remains today. Guardians protect people, no matter the cost. Somewhere along the line they came across a growing settlement, protected by a single pony. The pony wore all white, her face hidden by a white mask, and her voice was soft. You've probably seen her, if you've spent any time in The City. They found The Speaker, and finally found someone who could show them how to build something out of the ash. The Speaker and Lady Treebreaker and Spark all came together, and together they hashed out a plan. Even if they had to crane their necks to look the Speaker in the eye, they were equals. That plan, as should be obvious by now, was The City. The Last City of Equus, if you look at the archives. Its not exactly the last city, and certainly not the last settlement, but its the biggest and the best defended. They built it miles away from Old Canterlot, beneath the Traveler. Its been hanging there ever since The Darkening, providing the closest thing we have to natural light. So we built a city underneath it, surrounded it with walls, and have been expanding ever since. If you close your eyes, and drink enough without your Ghost fixing it, you can almost remember what real sunlight felt like. If it weren't for that Light from the Traveler, and Equus being a bit neurotic when it come to evolution, everyone would have starved ages ago. A lot of stuff will grow from raw magic alone, some things have even adapted to grow off of the Light, but it's the Traveler's light, with a lower case L, that lets us grow most of our crops. As tasty as Moon Noodles are, we've come to rely on the Traveler for a lot. Food, protection, and something to believe in. You can thank the Speaker for that last part, she's done a lot over the years to keep everyone unified, and belief in the Traveler is pretty ubiquitous. So what really keeps everyone way from each other's throats? There's a lot more history I could go into, and if you ask I'll probably do it so don't give me that pout. Let's focus, at least for now. The Council is the primary ruling body of the City. Its got representatives from every major faction in this city, those that're left after the Faction Conflict, including the Vanguard. They mostly keep things running smoothly in the City, with the Vanguard reps primarily present to listen and advise. The Speaker sits at the head of the table, but its been decades since she last spoke during a meeting. The last time was after the Disaster of Mareius, when we went to war with the Hive on the moon. It didn't end well, and we lost a lot of heroes. The Speaker spoke, declaring no Guardian would go to the Moon under the Vanguard's flag, and hasn't piped up in there since. The Vanguard agreed, and the Council has stayed out of Vanguard matters ever since. It was the Council's idea in the first place after all, and when nobody dies of old age that much blood on someone's hooves tends to weigh pretty heavily. So where does that leave us? Well, we've managed to hold back the Fallen for the most part, despite a few sieges of The City. The Hive have mostly stayed up on what's left of Minmus, digging out tunnels in the fragments. The Vex have been doing Traveler knows what throughout the system, and we've done what we can to kick them out whenever they show up. We're holding the line, seeing what we can take back whenever the opportunity presents itself. Shakes has his Crucible, letting Guardians blow each other up for fame and profit as the best funded training exercise you'll ever see. Lady Treebreaker will sometimes show back up to run her Ironwood Banner, though her and Shakes keep butting heads. And then there's the Vanguard. They're the ones who're going to point you at things that need to die, and more often at particularly interesting vistas to look at. They're split up into three groups, one for each discipline Guardians trend towards, and are headed by three Vanguards: Guardians who act as mentors and cat herders for the rest of us. Each Vanguard is responsible for their class of Guardian, loosely collected as Titans, Hunters, and Warlocks. They've all been around for ages, but none of them are the original Vanguard. And yes, they're all girls. If that surprises you, you haven't been around Equus long enough. Rock Candy is the Titan Vanguard. She's calm, and confident, and she never ever smiles. When she does its because she's proud of you, and when she frowns you're about to realize what it feels like to be kicked into a thin mist. The others are more energetic, and get more things done, but she's the one who keeps everyone together. She's an earth pony, and might as well have been the one to start the idea of Titan Orders. She'll never admit it though, she's all business until someone's in real danger. She's got the highest number of failed missions out of anyone authorized to give them to us, but she's got the lowest casualty count. If you want a story about how things were in the Golden Age, find her off duty. Her Ghost has been gone for a long time, but that hasn't stopped her from being one of the baddest Titans around, and she'll trade first hoof accounts of legends for her namesake treat. Then there's the Hunter Vanguard, Bubble-8. She's an Exo pegasus, one of the sentient war machines you'll sometimes see running around. One of the oldest Guardians in the City, even if she doesn't act it. Don't go out for drinks with her, she cheats. If you've got the patience to keep up with her pranks, antics, and complaining? Well, her instincts usually aren't wrong, as long as gambling isn't involved. She's been trying to get out of the job for a while now, ever since she lost the Vanguard Dare to Prism, but no one's been willing to take her bet. She's better at field work, according to her, but the Hunters haven't been better organized in years. She's the reason we've got the courier beacons keeping everyone in contact, and she's actually managed to get Hunters to give scouting reports instead of just wandering around forever. Just be careful if she ever offers to swap stories. Half of what she says is an exaggeration, half is lies, and somewhere in there is the truth. Last one is the Warlock Vanguard: Gabriel. Her mentor was a minotaur, and she's a griffin. The Warlock Vanguard's never been the same species twice, much less "normal." Don't let her cute looks, small stature, or being leader of a bunch of Light wielding librarians fool you. She'll rip you in half and shove a shotgun up your tail if you get on the wrong side of her in the Crucible. Then laugh, pick you back up, and take you out for dinner if you put up a good enough fight. She's an exercise in opposition, and one of the first Skydancers if the rumors are to be believed. A good girl regardless, and basically the smartest one in the room ninety nine percent of the time. She's also the biggest supporter of Guardians trying to find out about their past, much to everyone's frustration. It doesn't help that her mentor was the one who championed the law banning that kind of research. And then there's you. What are you going to do? I'd like to have a plan, but where you go I go. I spent long enough trying to find you, I'm not going to just abandon you. But I would like to know what you had in mind, after we're done training. You handled yourself really well out there, you know. Don't know if I mentioned that or not. Have you decided on a name for yourself yet? Me? I'm Ghost, your Ghost. Trust me, I can tell when you're talking to me. Fine. I'll be Pip. But I get to name you now. Hey, no whining, its only fair. How about...
FizzBuzzIn hindsight, I probably shouldn't be surprised things had turned out like this. Yeah, jumping into the dark bottomless pit had been a laugh. I could hear Daredevil complaining all the way down, and... Yup, still smashing things. She's fine. Songbird's gone quiet, probably dead again. With her luck, she's probably at the bottom of that cave in I caused earlier, I'll dig her out later. First thing... "What are you waiting for? An invitation?" A bang, a scream, and that lovely popping sound I've come to love. "There! Now start actually TRYING to kill me!" "FizzBuzz, do you have to antagonize the Fallen?" And Pip's annoyed. Lovely, I was wondering when he'd wake up. "Did you get the picture? Bubble-8 will love it." I can feel his exasperation in the sigh. Odd, I didn't know he breathed. "Yes. I also picked up reports of an Archon Priest in the area. It looks like we crashed his birthday party." Well that was news. Fallen celebrate birthdays? With the way they keep throwing themselves at us, you'd think they- oh, good place for a tripmine- wouldn't have enough self preservation to care about surviving another year. Or was it- Okay, be careful of shockwaves while down here- just the higher ups? "You know I can see into your helmet, right? I know that grin, that's your narrating face. What are you planning?" "The surrender of every Fallen in this cave. Failing that, party." "You'll be doing it alone. I haven't gotten the chance to fix your armor's radio, we can only receive until you clear out the Fallen chasing you." "They're still back there? Tenacious spiders. Give me a second." I glanced back, finding far more than I thought. What's left in the hand cannon after the scuffle upstairs would be enough for some of them, and I could clean up enough of the rest with Double Tap's ammo generator. The ones on the ceiling will be the biggest problem, they've got good sightlines over the tunnel and enough guns to make dodging difficult. Good. I've been wanting to try this out for a while. "Hold on Pip." I couldn't hear his response, whatever it was. I threw myself forward, grunting as my side hit the ground, sliding backwards. The trigger bit still tasted like Hive blood after the Headbutt incident, but it still worked. My foreleg rose, leveling the hand cannon harnessed to it at the closest Dreg's head. His look of surprise vanished in a spray of blood and ether, my aim already moving before his scream ended. Two more kicks, two bodies falling from the ceiling, and the massive revolver clicked empty. I really need an autoloader. What I didn't need anymore was a gun. I've been trying to explain this since I woke up that first time. I even wrote a suitably dramatic song, but operatic musical numbers aren't the best medium for explaining how the Light feels to wield. If you're a Guardian, you'll understand. It starts as a spark, but that's misleading. It doesn't start, it started before I woke up, and Pip is tight lipped about the details of resurrecting a pile of bones. Let's call it an ember, a little sparking warmth all over. It grows every second, every heartbeat, until I can almost taste it. I described it to Pip once, and that's how he came up with my name: Like soda fizz and static and nothing at all. Even when its growing I can use it, making my body bend easier or move faster, poured into what's left of my horn to charge a grenade or ignite a knife. I can feel it in every gunshot, a jagged fragment of Light poured into the bullets and embedded in my enemies. My Light is me, more than magic ever was. Not to say I can't use both. I can feel the Light roiling under my fur, like a lightning storm in a bottle. I roll back to my hooves and lift my head, horn spitting sparks of crackling arc energy through the hole in my helmet. The floodgates break, and the universe sings. The blade at my flank calls to me, but I shun it. My Light recoils from its sheathe, spreading through every atom of my body, armor covered fur buzzing like a trillion lightning rods. The Bladedancer's way is precision and speed, balanced on the edge of a razor. The Storm isn't precise, it seeks out every potential path until it finds one. The Storm is fast, yes, but power is what makes the Storm deadly. I've been many things, a lot more than I can remember, but deadly is right at the top. For a split second, everything stops. Arc Light fills the air, tracing between atoms like a great web, spreading from the tips of electric wings at my sides. I can see the jagged lightning bolt my horn's become, filling in where something pre-FizzBuzz had broken it. And I can feel the world around me between heartbeats, the eye of the Storm. Let's go for... That one. A tendril of Arc zigzags out, making contact with the end of the Captain's snout. Time starts, and my sight is filled with disintegrating Fallen, my horn of lightning spearing through the dust his skull once was. A thunderclap rebounds down the stone tunnel, the remaining Fallen cringing in fear. Good. Light roils and crackles through me, straining to be released, eager to be unleashed. My knife slips from its sheathe, hilt humming in the grasp of my electric wing. It springs forward as I flip back from the dusted captain, a vein of Arc connecting it to my body. I can feel it sink into the chest of a vandal on the ceiling, as my hoof crushes the skull of the Captain's second. Bouncing off his smoking corpse, singing Arc Light weaves through the tether and pulls. Another clap of thunder rings through the stone, my hindlegs wrapped around the skull of the Vandal. Arc surges, cooking his organs and charging his body. As the Storm begins to fade I roll to the side, weight pulling his body off the ceiling, arc charged wings springing out to launch him and myself forward. He crashes into the ceiling between four others, Arc discharging to sunder flesh and bone, five bodies reduced to ash. I am the Storm, a Goddess of charge and Light, and my will is reality. The Storm begins to fade, my senses fading from charged zen as wings and horn dissipate once more. The cold bolt of adrenaline can never compare to Light induced divinity, but the song of Arc never leaves. A flick of my head pulls Double Tap's trigger bit between my teeth, the ornate double barrel flipping out of its protective sheath to wait on my side. I could taste the fading static charge in the Bit, rolling up from the Golden Age Arc generator embedded in the stock. I said something intimidating, I promise, but it was lost in the bit. Daredevil found me just as the enchantment from Double Tap was fading, my hoof stuffing a pair of shells into the chambers to be turned into electrical fury. I spat out the bit, giving her a grin beneath my helmet, stretching non-existent kinks from my legs. "Look who's here. I've been getting bored. Did you dig up Songbird yet?" I'll admit, I probably deserved the rock to the forehead. The grenade that welded itself to my chest plate and started glowing bright red was probably called for as well. I'm pretty sure it means Hello in Titan. "I'll take that as a no?" On the plus side, Pip had enough time to fix my radio while he was reviving me.
SongbirdFalling is unpleasant. A quick burst of Light can nullify momentum, as can a quick meeting of face and stone. If given the choice, I suggest the former. The sole redeeming factor is that it is often a quick death, assuming one can angle themselves to land on their head or you are provided a convenient cave in by a companion. As an aside: being crushed to death is also quite quick, as long as one positions herself beneath a sufficiently large boulder. Unfortunately Death By Sudden Deceleration is very high in my list of most common demise, below FizzBuzz Collateral and above Hive Boomer. More often than not, as I've gotten quite good at Glide Braking, performed horizontally at the gentle suggestion of a shield bash to the muzzle. You may ask, Songbird, why do you keep a list of most common demise? The answer is as simple as it is disheartening: I am very, very bad at the task of staying alive, despite my best efforts. To many this would be a temporary burden, a curse lifted by a swift descent into the harmonious silence of the Void. I am a Guardian however, a Warlock in fact, and I have no intention of staying dead for longer than necessary. A sentiment my Ghost shared, as he made very clear, regardless of whatever memories the Void may bring. His memory is not one I am willing to stain by defying his wishes. For many Guardians, death is only a common state of affairs while in the field, with only the occasional pancaking caused by attempts to climb the many precarious overhangs one can find along the City's wall. I am not most Guardians. I have been crushed to death by falling scaffolding, impaled by broken windows, frozen in the freezer of my favorite restaurant, and in one notable case shredded in a wood chipper while helping clear condemned buildings. Staying in the libraries of my peers, or my own, is no shield from my horrid luck. It is the height of irony to be reduced to the consistency of paste by a falling bookshelf containing the preserved journals of lost Guardians. Fizzbuzz has not let me forget it, though I am glad that my remains are reconstituted into Light during the resurrection process, otherwise I would have made quite a few enemies among the cryptarchs that day. Most Guardians would be disheartened by such regular meetings with the Pale Pony, perhaps going so far as to believe themselves cursed by the Traveler. I am not most Guardians. In the early days, before Fizzbuzz, I grew... Frustrated by the regularity of my demise. Oak Blossom would suggest I try looking up more, and did once attempt to fashion me a helmet durable enough to survive a fall from orbit. It could, by the way, though it was not enough to deflect the thrice cursed blade of a Hive Prince. Daredevil seconded the helmet idea, and attempted to help Blossom create armor suitable to surviving in those Dark days. If anyone ever asks, they did not create the Hadronic Essence most Warlocks use to this day, and most certainly have not spent years attempting to blend it with Golden Age technology. These responses certainly helped, but they were not an answer to my true problem. All that lives must die, though Paracausal entities such as Guardians do have a safety net in the Traveler's Light. Most rely upon their Ghost for this, allowing their Ghost to pour the Light of the Traveler through themselves into the Guardian, igniting the Light that makes up our being. Thus we return ourselves to life, despite the universe's insistence that we are too dead to do so. Such is the nature of Light, and those who wield its Paracausal power. It was this understanding that began my road to understanding the song of the Void, and the foundation of the Starsinger Warlock Tradition. The establishment of that word, Paracausal, is relatively new. Established from a pre-Golden Age language, which we discovered in the buried remains of Romane, it roughly means "Beyond Causality." A rudimentary, if not incorrect, summary of what we've known for centuries. The Light, and the Darkness, are Paracausal. They are beyond the realm of Fate and causality, because their sources are beyond this mere plane of reality. I will use the explanation which was used to educate new Warlords, before it was replaced by the more succinct title of Guardian. Before me rests a sword. Upon its table nothing more than a lump of metal, shaped by the heat and hammers of its foundry. It cannot harm you. It cannot cut you. It cannot destroy. All it can do is weigh down the table, carrying with it the weight which gravity imbues it. I can give it to a griffin, and she will give it direction. In her claws it gains force, momentum, and so it can cut. In her claws, it can end a life, or sever a branch. It does this through the sharpness and weight of its blade, through the force given to it by its wielder, as the laws of physics describe. These laws are intrinsic to our universe, to the best of our knowledge. Should the griffin lift her sword and plant it in my chest, it would pierce my heart and, without medical treatment, my brain's blood flow would be interrupted for long enough that it would cease to function, and thus I would die. This is one potential outcome. Perhaps her aim is off, and she pierces my lung instead. In this case I would find breathing difficult, and would need to stop the flow of blood escaping my veins, but I could potentially live. In doing so, I could lift my gun and shoot her in the head, and thus she would die. Another outcome. Perhaps she chooses to present the sword back to me, and I will return it to the armory, and she would go about her life until another event ends it. A third outcome. All three are, on a cosmic sense, equally valid. It is not until one is chosen that her fate is solidified, and our universe continues on that specific branch of causality. But what if I reached out to the sword, and it was annihilated to nothing but sparks? I am a unicorn, yes, but I cannot perform such magic with my horn. In none of fate's threads is this a possibility, for there is no cause within the scenario which would allow such a result to occur. I do not have the tool, magical or otherwise, which could bring about such an end. Just as a Titan's grenade should not explode into lightning, and Hunters do not bear an infinite number of knives. And yet, if such an event were to occur, fate would need to account for this result. No longer could she stab my heart, or lung, or give me the sword. This is what it means to be Paracausal, as through my will and Light alone I can choose such a fate. I can destroy the sword, and remove the possibilities causality decreed possible. Through my Light I can manifest great vortexes of annihilation, or teleport at will, or even return from the clutches of death. With my Light I can force those weaker than I to shatter, even if their own paracausal will is to remain unbroken. Together we Guardians can chip away at the strength of an entity capable of shattering planets, until it is destroyed in all realities. I can look into the eye of a machine which decides if I exist or not, and declare that I Am. It is this understanding, before any other, which forms the foundation of our power, and that of our enemies. Everything is determined, through our actions and other's. There are only so many possibilities in fate. But Guardians make their own fate. This I discovered, hanging in the formless Void beyond death, as my Ghost lay in fragments and my body ground down to atoms. I was to die, and slip into the realm beyond death, never to return. I could not leave my friends to suffer such a fate. I could not allow them to fall against Him. My story would not end upon the surface of the moon. And by the power of my Light, I heard the song of the Void. In the nothingness between realities, I grasped the harmony, and by my will it was remade. In the scale of the Void it was minuscule, but I am told the explosion of Void Light was cataclysmic to the keep within which we battled. Within the blast, I was remade, and through me the song flowed. Gravity was an inconvenience, and so its hold was removed. The Hive Thrall separating my Fireteam and I were an obstacle, and so they were consumed. Through my body flowed the Void, and it was unleashed upon the world around me. Today they refer to the second art as Voidwalking. Reaching into the Void and channeling it as a conduit, releasing uncontrolled eruptions of powerful nothingness to consume and eradicate one's foes at our will. The first art is known as Starsinging, to delve into the emptiness between atoms and channel the power found within to force one's self back into Reality. Usually in the place and condition one had a handful of seconds, often ten or so, before one's demise. Neither requires the other, but with effort and study one can learn to effortlessly transfer from the first to second. These are the arts I am known and named for. It is these that have allowed me to continue to protect my friends, even though my Ghost's Light has faded. It was these arts that lead, after many years, to the eternal death of the Hive Prince who slew my best friend and the release of her Light from the Darkness' grasp. It was this power that formed the throne by which my will commands the world. I am the Songbird, and within my breast is the symphony of the Void. I am a Guardian, protector of the City and all who live in the Traveler's Light. I am a Warlock, seeking scholar of all worlds and beyond. I am a Warlord, the Sweet Embrace, harbinger of death feared even today by Fallen legend. I am the Traveler's Risen, my will and Light sharpened like the finest sword upon the bones of the Darkness. Before it all, as the world was torn asunder in the Darkest night and my Ghost found me broken and bleeding my last beneath what was my home, I was Sweetie Belle. And for their sake, I will never be forgotten.
