Halo: Epitaph E-Book

Kelly Gay

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 378

Beschreibung

An original novel set in the Halo universe - based on the New York Times best-selling video game series Stripped of armor and might, the Forerunner warrior known as the Didact was torn free from the physical world following his epic confrontation with the Master Chief, and sent reeling into the mysterious depths of a seemingly endless desert wasteland. His mind ravaged, he has no recollection of who he is or where he came from. This once powerful and terrifying figure is now a shadow of his former self—gaunt, broken, desiccated, and alone. But this wasteland is not as barren as it seems, as a blue light glints from the apex of a thin spire in the far distance…  Thus begins the tale of the Didact's final fate—the untold story of one of the most enigmatic and popular characters in all of HALO lore.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Acknowledgments

About The Author

DON’T MISS THESE OTHER THRILLING STORIES IN THE WORLDS OF

HALO INFINITE

Halo: The Rubicon Protocol

Kelly Gay

THE FERRETS

Troy Denning

Halo: Last Light

Halo: Retribution

Halo: Divine Wind

RION FORGE & ACE OF SPADES

Kelly Gay

Halo: Smoke and Shadow

Halo: Renegades

Halo: Point of Light

THE MASTER CHIEF & BLUE TEAM

Troy Denning

Halo: Silent Storm

Halo: Oblivion

Halo: Shadows of Reach

ALPHA-NINE

Matt Forbeck

Halo: New Blood

Halo: Bad Blood

GRAY TEAM

Tobias S. Buckell

Halo: The Cole Protocol

Halo: Envoy

THE FORERUNNER SAGA

Greg Bear

Halo: Cryptum

Halo: Primordium

Halo: Silentium

THE KILO-FIVE TRILOGY

Karen Traviss

Halo: Glasslands

Halo: The Thursday War

Halo: Mortal Dictata

THE ORIGINAL SERIES

Halo: The Fall of Reach

Eric Nylund

Halo: The Flood

William C. Dietz

Halo: First Strike

Eric Nylund

Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

Eric Nylund

STAND-ALONE STORIES

Halo: Contact Harvest

Joseph Staten

Halo: Broken Circle

John Shirley

Halo: Hunters in the Dark

Peter David

Halo: Saint’s Testimony

Frank O’Connor

Halo: Shadow of Intent

Joseph Staten

Halo: Legacy of Onyx

Matt Forbeck

Halo: The Rubicon Protocol

Kelly Gay

Halo: Outcasts

Troy Denning

SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGIES

Various Authors

Halo: Evolutions: Essential Tales of the Halo Universe

Halo: Fractures: More Essential Tales of the Halo Universe

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Halo: Epitaph

Print edition ISBN: 9781803369204

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803369211

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: February 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2024 by Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Microsoft, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox, and the Xbox logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

In memory of Greg Bear.You cast the light over the Forerunner’s ancientpast and drew us all in like moths to a flame.

chapter 1

Whether the warrior succeeds or fails, chooses rightly or wrongly, at least he dared act at all.

—The Mantle, Eleventh Permutation of the Didact’s Number

He was rage and fire. Cinder and storm. Burning remnants and echoes tearing madly over a barren landscape.

Star by star, world by world

Never peace, never solace, never rest

Disjointed, wailing voices darted and dove, amplified in the vast desert echo chamber of dust and sand. Embers and fragments churned and seethed, united into a molten core by a thousand centuries of wrath and resentment.

A deep shadow has fallen

The light shuns us

Stop this! Stop the pain!

Unable to contain the sweltering maelstrom, the molten core bloated and suddenly burst, flinging heat and light outward into the shape of a fiery figure.

The heat dissipated. Black smoke replaced flame, floating and curling and swaying around the figure’s outline, gradually settling like a living cloak over the wide shoulders of a tall, gaunt form, a few stubborn embers still clinging to life at its tattered edges.

His rage spent for now, the figure rolled his shoulders, straightened his spine, and then tipped his head from side to side, feeling the pull of thick neck muscles and the satisfying snap of tendons. Pressure in his legs and joints manifested as his weight eased down into his body.

No—not quite a body . . .

The remnant of one, perhaps. A shade. A memory. A poor imitation.

One with enough composition, however, to cause his bare feet to sink into the sand and anchor him to whatever reality this was.

Weariness came with the physical weight, burrowing deeply into sinew and bone and wasted muscle. With effort, he lifted an arm, the cloak sliding back to reveal shriveled skin and a large, almost skeletal hand tipped with brittle, sallow claws.

Denial and disgust rose with a sharp bite, some vague recollection telling him the view should be much different. He turned his hand and arm, seeing in his mind’s eye a more powerful and muscular physique, healthier gray skin endowed with fleshy-pink variation. . . .

Despite his initial reaction, the withered skin and desiccated muscle did not trouble him much. In fact, it felt . . . familiar, as though he had experienced the similarity before and all that was required to remedy the situation was to initiate—

Initiate . . . what?

Aya. He knew it. Could almost reach it . . .

The lost knowledge seemed to teeter on the precipice of revelation before it evaporated, leaving him unsteady, as if the sandy ground weakened beneath him. He rubbed at the vague ache in his right eye, a faint tease of identity skipping through his mind, but that too faded.

Try as he might, he could not mentally grasp a single important thing. Who he was, what he was, or how he came to be here, all seemed equally out of reach.

His cloak flapped as a line of tepid wind blew over his position, drawing attention to the dust and sand caught up in the current. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but low sand dunes watched over by a dirty dull-blue sky and the bright flare of a sun hidden behind muddled clouds.

An arrogant snort flared softly through his nostrils, indicating a strong, ingrained confidence, one that told him not all was lost. Memory might escape him, but instinct and basic knowledge did not. His senses were intact, and his traits and emotions felt strong within him, some still gnawing and churning in his gut—indignation, contempt, bitterness, fury, obsession. But these he left alone for the time being.

No need to stir the serpent’s nest just yet . . .

He stared across the desolate landscape, contemplating his current situation. Had he been brought here? Forced here? Or had he fled here? Was his presence by chance or deliberate?

When weighed against the consuming rage he’d experienced earlier, one surety stood out above all others. It was certainly not by choice.

With nothing in any direction but the endless waste, his options were decidedly simplistic. Stay put or move on.

Without hesitation, he chose the latter, the sand folding over his feet as he started off in no particular direction.

The going was tedious and slow, his corporeal form stiff and uncooperative, though his bare skin on earth and the tiny grains pushing between his toes were oddly satisfying, the basic physical connection to the environment feeling very much like a novelty.

After trekking across several dunes, he paused to rest at a high point, revising his previous opinion. The sand was far from satisfying. His soles and toes were now raw, his body ached all over, and his mouth felt like tinder picked from the loose bark of the rataa trees that had once lined his family estate on Nomdagro.

The clarity of the vision struck harsh and quick. The force of it had him by the throat, stealing his breath.

Tree line. Children picking bark. A fire already smoking in the clearing by the white, chalky banks of the River Dweha . . .

The entire moment lay suspended.

His legs trembled and he dropped to one knee, gasping, struggling to keep hold of the vision, to place it in the context of his life, but it dodged just out of reach.

Disappeared. Gone. As though it had never existed.

Defeated, he collapsed with an angry growl, sitting in the sand and shaking his head, appalled at his own wretched incompetence. Heat crept up the back of his neck. Absently he rubbed the warm skin as his brow drew into a deep frown. His inability to capture the memory was discouraging, but there was also hope. It meant that his past was not completely lost. It was still there, under the surface.

More will come, he told himself, eyeing the next sand dune in his path—the tallest yet.

While exhaustion threatened to immobilize him, he was apparently nothing if not stubborn. Rousing his dwindling reserves, he got up and let gravity carry him in big strides down the dune’s long slope.

Once he made it to the next pile of sand, his head tipped back at its height. Such a menial, unnecessary, and time-consuming task when he could simply . . .

What? Wish himself to the top?

He braced against the now endless aches and pains plaguing his frail body, and with no small amount of grumbling began yet another climb—one sore foot in front of the other—until he finally reached the summit, out of breath, but rewarded for his efforts. A dark and dirty horizon stretched in the far distance, and within it or perhaps preceding it—it was too far to tell—a mote of blue glowed.

Finally, something out there in the sea of sand. Relief flooded him and he slumped to the ground.

Once down, he did not attempt to get back up. No matter what might lie beckoning ahead, it felt too good to stop and rest. Something told him that this too felt like a novelty. He pulled a foot closer to his body to knead the aching heel and arch, then cleared the sand between his toes. As he tended to the other foot, small dark specks appeared in the sky.

Instantly, there it was again, the precipice of knowledge. Along with an urge to assess the threat, to meet it with swift and decisive action. All he had to do was—

And . . . it was gone. Again.

“Aya,” he grunted in frustration as the specks drew close enough to see in detail.

There were five creatures of flight with crested heads and long, imposing beaks. They were larger than him in both body and wingspan, and their dirty-brown color blended in well with the desert landscape. Double sets of large leathery wings protruded from each narrow torso and flapped rather slowly. As they glided overhead, the length of their tails was displayed and the—

Rangmejo

The word whispered with sudden clarity.

He turned and watched their diminishing passage. Just as they faded from view, they suddenly dispersed into dust.

Like a mirage.

A dream.

He closed his eyes tightly, giving his head a hard shake, before looking again. But the avian creatures were indeed gone.

An unsettling sensation bloomed in the pit of his stomach. While he did not want to admit it, he knew. He’d known all along.

Wherever this was could not be based in the physical world. The landscape was not quite right, and neither was he—formed as he’d been from embers and emotion. His arms were wizened and old. His garb was wholly unfamiliar. Even his face, which he mapped with his fingers, felt bony and unrecognizable. He pinched his sallow cheeks and tugged at the tuft of hair on his head. The pain was real, at least. He studied his hands. All six fingers accounted for . . .

It was right, and yet not right. He felt solid, and yet . . . he was not whole.

Questions assailed him. None of which he could definitively answer. He must have had a past life, but there was nothing to prove his brief recollections were real or that they even belonged to him.

The mote of blue lingering far on the horizon was the only point of significance so far. If he had indeed been brought here, sent here, forced here—whatever the case might be—there must be a reason.

He stayed on the dune for a time, mildly contemplating his predicament while tending to his other aching foot. After his fingers grew tired, he lay back and put a hand behind his head, wondering if there had ever existed such a lackluster, dirty blue sky before.

Aya. But it was quiet here.

Perhaps he should simply accept his fate, enjoy the peace, and wait for something to happen. Amusement tugged a corner of his mouth. If he did have a past life, he was certain such an inane and useless thought had never crossed his mind.

Gradually, his mind drifted. As sleep took over, he wondered in what reality he might awaken.

*   *   *

He dreamed of fire.

From flesh to bone, it ate away at him, ripping him apart one layer at a time, tearing and burning.

Stripped, pulled asunder, until even his consciousness peeled free, and he was nothing but writhing, screaming embers.

Chapter 2

The nightmare lingered around him as he left the high dunes for an expansive region of desert sand shaped like currents on a windy lake. Between these crescent-shaped mounds, the ground was windswept and hard, offering an easier, if not longer, path to follow. The smudge of blue ahead hovered unchanged, guiding, urging him on when he grew weary. Without its murky glow, he would surely be lost to this sea of never-ending dirt, dust, and sand.

Never-ending sameness.

Much like the state of his mind—unfilled with the clutter of the life he must have led.

Occasionally memories erupted unbidden, dispersing images like spores ejected from their host, gone into the wind in the blink of an eye and not worth his time; he knew he couldn’t catch them.

Most often, however, his thoughts stayed firmly on the present. The soft, painful scrape of his feet on the ground. The brush of his cloak against his ankles. The phantom ache plaguing his right eye. The inhaling and exhaling through fragile lungs. The way the dusty atmosphere cleared as time wore on, giving way to twilight and the blackness of space with its orchestra of stars.

Desolate, perhaps. But not without its merits.

After traveling some distance, his steps slowed, and his eyes narrowed on a stretch of thin white clouds that had begun to settle above the ground’s surface about half a kilometer away. With the arrival of night, the environment had grown unnaturally quiet. Even the wind had ceased and, in turn, the constant scrape and whispering patter of sand. His skin grew cold even though the temperature remained constant and unremarkable.

Would that he could see what danger might lurk in the growing fog.

His mood soured as a strong instinct told him that even from this distance his vision should be able to penetrate the hazy depths. Any inquiry or surveillance should be relayed to him in an instant simply by virtue of thought. Yet he was handicapped, unable to know any but the most basic details.

He felt blind even when he could see.

Resting and waiting for the fog to clear was the better and more conservative course of action, but such calmer notions paled beside his mounting irritation. With a huff, he pressed on—the quicker he found answers, the better.

The long stretch of haze preceding the fog was minuscule at first, its subtlety drawing him in until gradually he was surrounded by temperate and strangely dry clouds.

With each step, the milky gauze split and then folded back on itself, gathering around him and blurring the path in all directions. In the shifting haze, illusions seemed to float and morph, the dunes ebbing and flowing like waves, growing and changing shapes.

Eventually the hazy view grew marginally clearer, revealing great simian-like shadows listing or lying prone, partially submerged in the sand, hulking things bearing the semblance of heads, arms, torsos, and tails. Figments of the fog and his tired mind, or perhaps they’d been there all along.

Mist curled around his legs as he approached the dark, sandy graveyard of these immense beasts, the identity of which was just on the tip of his tongue. . . .

As he drew closer, their true size unfolded, and he guessed their prone length to be close to twenty meters. A strange mix of recognition and wariness gathered in his chest, as though he should guard himself.

Not from danger . . .

But from pain.

They were not a figment, not part of the fog or sand playing tricks with him, but real enough to touch. There were two near him, both made of metal—machine-cell alloy, the information whispered through his mind—one buried and canted in the sand, only its giant torso and head visible, and the second prone and partly submerged on its side, revealing one large arm-like appendage and a long tail. He reached for the colossal arm, its metal eroded and pitted by the elements, the surface rough against his touch.

Old machines. Vestiges ofwar . . .

Thrusters in the tail. Control cabin in the head. Multi-use mandibles for arms.

Instantly his mind built the missing parts beneath the sand. He knew these metal beasts, had seen them before. Their name was right there, dancing out of reach . . .

A sense of smallness surrounded him as he moved around the old, discarded giants. With each step, a deep aching sadness inched its way inside until his bones felt brittle. He rubbed at the tightness in his chest, but the gesture was useless. Despair gathered around him like an old ghostly acquaintance.

Why these war sphinxes should make him—

War sphinxes.

“Yes.” The word echoed on a long, relieved breath as his gaze returned to stare in awe at the massive head, or command center, lying in the sand. The angles of its “face” were designed to appear menacing, but to him it was unquestionably mighty and profoundly bittersweet. Great pride suddenly swelled, and he patted the surface, nodding in approval. “I know what you are.”

Aya. He remembered now.

And wished he did not.

He slumped against the war sphinx, and just like that, with a simple connection, gravity ceased to exist and the world as he knew it was simply . . . gone.

A gasp stuck in his throat as the sensation of falling from a harrowing height blew through him. The view blurred, the colors of the landscape and night sky stretched, pulled apart and put back together again, blending into one, until only blackness remained. A split second passed before a new reality solidified, snapping into being with a hard clap and the tang of ozone in his mouth.

A turbulent mix of sounds and smells assaulted his senses, and instantly, even before opening his eyes, he knew that he was somewhere else—some other place, some other time.

Acrid smoke billowed across his field of vision, stinging his eyes and the inside of his nose and throat, making him gag and cough until tears streamed down his face.

Wiping his eyes, he blinked a few times as the smoke cleared, his muddled mind slow to come to terms with the scene in front of him.

Spent battlefield. The ground churned up. Starships broken and burning. Streams of fire lit the smoky sky.

As the scream and whine of engines and bombardment thundered in his ears, he staggered to his feet to see bodies strewn across the landscape, burned beyond recognition, while others were hidden within damaged or partially exposed armor.

A glance down revealed that he too wore armor. His chest, hands, and arms were encased in unadorned storm-blue battle plates. The plates rested over a film of light that protected him from head to toe and shone through the joints and spaces of the armor. As if in a dream, he moved forward, armored legs and feet stepping in time with what felt like a ghost, a memory, like walking in the footsteps of an earlier version of himself.

He breathed in deeply, feeling both the strength of his past self and the veil of weakness defining his current state.

“I walked this path before,” he murmured with certainty as he strode among the dead.

And a thousand times over in mymind. . . .

Distressed voices cascaded through his helmet and armor. He was linked with thousands, able to precisely catalog every word as reports poured in from his staff of . . . Warrior-Servants.

Warrior-Servants.

Forerunners.

A current ran beneath his skin. His step faltered. The battlefield came into sharp focus as details flooded back, and he was able to distinguish the dead, the Forerunners—hiskind—from the enemies. Humans.

Commander, the line is broken!

Reserve fleet incoming! It’s not over yet! Watch your back!

Under heavy fire . . . request harrier strike onmy—

Get out of there now!

He hadn’t walked this path before. He ran it.

Lost in the memory, propelled by dread, he ran, dodging debris and spacecraft rocketing into the ground nearby.

Their last words to him, to each other, were branded on his soul.

Two of his many children. The eldest and the youngest. Lost here. On Faun Hakkor, the last pivotal defensive outpost before reaching the humans’ stronghold planet of Charum Hakkor.

His heavy footfalls vibrated the space around him, shaking his field of vision. War sphinxes were burning dead ahead. One canted on its side, half-crushed in the dirt, with his youngest, his beloved son, mangled inside. Ever the rebel, ever the one to take chances with little regard to his safety, and without question one of the finest Warrior-Servants of his day.

Nearby his eldest, his daughter, the one most like him, a born leader, intensely loyal to her rate, her family—especially the youngest—burned to death inside of her armor, already gone. They’d finally broken the outer planetary defenses of Faun Hakkor and were poised to crush the infernal human resistance, but had paid a heavy price as the enemy’s reserve fleet lay in wait on the surface.

Aya, it was all coming back.

Fighting for balance, he placed a steadying hand on the scarred and blackened surface of the war sphinx. His lungs struggled to take in enough oxygen. Tears blurred his vision. If only the memories would stop, would give him time to process, but they battered him until his thoughts spun and his gut twisted into a bitter knot. The grief was suffocating, building and bloating until he roared his loss to the fiery sky, the many voices of the ongoing battle fading into the background.

Gradually the recollections played their course and finally faded on a gentler note.

The sound of laughter.

He could see them, his beloved children. In better days. The best days. Playing in the riverbed, coated in white clay. And those same children grown, serving in the rate of their father, formidable warriors in their own right. And he, as their commander, haunted by their last moments.

Every last one of them gone in the human-Forerunner wars.

The veins at his temples throbbed. A wet film of tears lay over his eyes. The phantom strength of his former self was utterly depleted, leaving behind a feeble, trembling shell.

I shouldn’t be here. Take me back.

Take me back.

His eyes closed and he repeated the words like a mantra, unsure to whom or what he was pleading, but wanting it to be over, for this miserable experience to finally end.

With a sudden ping vibrating his eardrums, the ground beneath him gave way once more. Gravity evaporated along with everything else as he was sucked out of the memory and flung back to where he’d begun in the endless wasteland, dizzy and sick and gasping for air, enraged at being pulled and pushed and tossed around with little control over what happened to him . . . and for what he had lost.

He was a father.

The heavy truth settled on his shoulders until he was bent over from the sheer, absolute weight of it. To have forgotten such an important aspect of his life, only to remember it, suddenly and with such shocking clarity, filled him with a sense of awe and disbelief and confusion.

He slumped to the ground next to one of the old war sphinxes. It was silent, of course, a time-worn shell long since divested of its operator and the personality pattern imprinted upon its systems. His heart longed to mourn, but he held the desire at bay, experiencing the physical blowback instead—the twisting gnaw in his gut, the choking glob in the back of his throat, the tightening of his chest. . . . A small price to pay to suppress and avoid such heartbreak.

Tuning out the agony, he curled his body against the construct, drawing his arms around his knees and resting his head against the pitted alloy. On a long, defeated exhale, his eyes closed as a small voice worked its way into his weary mind.

You were a father.

Once it had mattered.

Then came a time when it didnot. . . .

*   *   *

Disjointed memories. Vivid flashes. Countless battles. Faces he recognized. Death in untold numbers.

“There is something rotten inside you.”

Resonant and unyielding. Haughty and merciless. He knew this voice well, for it was his own. From long, long ago. During the prime of his life.

“It crawled in, burrowed down deep. Festered. Waited.

“And you let it in.

“YOU LET IT IN!”

The voice faded as another rose in its place.

Deep laughter rumbled from the blackness, like thunder beneath the ground, cut and shaped against bedrock over eons of time. It wormed and twisted its way, growing louder and louder.

His heart hammered. Sweat clung to his skin. He spun around in the darkness. The sound lashed out and grabbed his throat.

“There is something rotten inside you.”

*   *   *

He woke with a jerk, heart racing, choking on his own saliva as the words receded into the murky depths of his mind.

After rubbing the crusty sleep from his eyes and taking a moment to shake off the effects of his nightmare, he pushed to his feet. Day had risen, the fog was gone, and the landscape was just as boring and unremarkable as it had been the day before.

Only, the war sphinxes were gone.

“What madness is this?”

No traces, no indentations in the sand. He rubbed his face and slapped his cheeks. But his current reality stayed the same. He was not dreaming, and he certainly was not imagining things.

He walked a few paces, then retraced his steps, searching for any evidence to support what he had seen and experienced. But there was nothing. Nothing but sand and windswept ground. Had everything been merely a dream?

“No,” he whispered. No. He refused to believe that. What he’d witnessed, what he remembered . . . it was real.

His children. The war with humanity. It was all real.

Or had been real.

He rubbed a hand down his face and then exhaled loudly, releasing the grief-stricken emotions before they could overwhelm him again.

Whatever had happened, be it dream or vision or insanity, it was clear he wouldn’t find answers in this empty place. With that in mind, he lifted his chin and scanned the horizon, locating his guide—that ever-present azure glow—and began his journey toward it.

The continuous travel allowed him to focus and reflect on his recovered memories without the initial sting of emotion, and what he realized opened a floodgate. Within those harsh recollections, context fell into place, supporting and surrounding every scene and detail, providing impressions of the life he had led along with a wealth of additional knowledge to digest.

He knew he was Forerunner, a species of unrivaled technological achievement. As the preeminent power in the galaxy, his kind upheld the Mantle of Responsibility for millions of years, using its guiding tenets to act as stewards and guardians for all lesser species and worlds within their vast ecumene.

He knew he was born into the rate of Warrior-Servant and defended a realm that spread across three million inhabited worlds. He had faint memories of serving with distinction, achieving recognition, and even teaching at the College of Strategic Defense of the Mantle. He married a Forerunner outside of his rate, a Lifeworker named First-Light-Weaves-Living-Song, though most called her the Librarian due to her unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He could not clearly see her face or remember the love he must have had for her, but he knew that together, united in their combined ambitions, they rose swiftly in rank—she on a path to obtaining the title of Lifeshaper, the highest in her rate, and he . . .

His step faltered as the flow of memory suddenly evaporated.

With a mumbled curse, he continued on. It seemed his identity would elude him for now, though at the rate his memories were returning it would not be long before the knowledge came.

There were other recollections as well, lurking like shadows, hounding him. Disjointed flashes of war, of humanity annihilating entire worlds within the Forerunners’ ecumene, driven by their aggression and lust for expansion, destroying planet after planet without mercy, an affront to the galaxy and all that the Mantle of Responsibility held dear.

Up until the battle on Faun Hakkor, the war with the human empire had raged for nearly five decades. But his memories after this point remained a stubborn blur, and for all that he had regained since manifesting in whatever mysterious place this was, his mind seemed unhurried to offer a clear and precise picture of exactly who he was and how he came to be here. Despite the lag and the bouts of frustration it brought, he was content in the knowledge that he had led a distinguished life with a wife and family, that his children had filled the large traditional mansion he designed himself with happiness and love and laughter.

That was something, at least. And eventually the rest would come. Of that, he was certain.

Chapter 3

A hard line of wind blew across the desert. He gathered the frayed edges of his hood to protect his face against the stinging sand, only glancing out occasionally to stay on course with the blue beacon still in the distance. His mood grew ever more eroded and irritated by the environment. Grit was everywhere, in his nose and the corners of his eyes and mouth, between his fangs and bottom lip, the space rubbed raw. His feet were in far worse condition, making his pace slow and cumbersome.

He remembered walking in the shoes of his past self at Faun Hakkor, remembered what it felt like to move through the hazards of battle with all the protections and benefits of Forerunner armor. Would that he had access to such advantages now. . .

Now that he recalled what he was missing, a heightened sense of annoyance and vulnerability dogged every ache, every tiresome step, every labored breath. As a result, he could not help but reminisce on the boundless wonders of the Forerunners’ most prominent and important technology.

Boasting near-limitless life-sustaining capabilities, body-assist armor with its neural-interfaced ancilla guarded against injury, disease, and aging; healed the mind; amplified the senses; sharpened the intellect, memory, and perception. It could satiate the body’s natural need for sleep, thereby erasing the function altogether and providing Forerunners with unlimited time without suffering any of the consequences. It even protected a wearer from psychological harm by diminishing or completely eliminating certain harmful experiences and memories.

All aspects were continuously monitored; indeed, every facet of a Forerunner’s mental, physical, and environmental life was maintained. In an instant, moods and dangers and desires were perceived, the armor adjusting its form to account for every situation a Forerunner might face—combat, emotional, ceremonial . . . even adjusting to fit various sizes and different species. Connections to other Forerunners near and far, and to any interface, were superlative, enabling the operation of all manner of technology. Boundless stores of information across the ecumene were promptly available to the wearer, as was a vital pathway to the Domain, the enigmatic quantum archive containing the immense collective experience, knowledge, history, and culture of the Forerunners.

He glanced down at his withered form, grateful to bear such humiliation alone, though the small blessing paled against the intense inadequacy he felt without his body-assist armor.

Perhaps there were some memories better left forgotten.

Longing for what was lost to him could easily send him down a spiraling path. Indeed, care needed to be taken. While he could now put a bit of history to his life and species, he felt some concern over whatever memories had yet to surface. His children, their laughter, their deaths, still echoed in his mind and heart. And those memories were but small fragments. The emotional price of recovering his past might very well be too great to bear.

He pulled his hood tighter as a gust of wind peppered him with sand and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

More than once, he considered the possibility of his demise, that his current form—though it felt emotion and pain and had physical substance—might be nothing but an echo, an essence, the cumulation of his life and consciousness, his personality and biological pattern saved and reduced to data.

Normally after death, the complete essence and sum of a Forerunner’s life experience would be uploaded into the vast repository of the Domain, in order to join the ancestral, collective record. Thinking back to the lifetime he was able to remember, his memories of the Domain were shadowy at best, though he had vague impressions of exploring its dark, mystifying architecture brimming with information—a far cry from the never-ending dullness of sand spread out around him now.

He traveled until the daystar began to sink into the horizon behind him, his form cast ahead in a long, thin shadow while the waning light pierced the dusty air and reflected on minuscule particles of sand. The effect blurred the line of delineation between land and sky, the view onward becoming nothing but a muddy mix of grayish-yellow, browns, and dusky blue. Even his beacon had lost its luster, mutating into a dirty cerulean that was eventually lost in the background altogether.

Without that glowing blue guide, there was nothing to do but wait and rest, so he gathered his tattered cloak around his body and chose a spot where he could recline against the slope of a dune, grateful the wind had died down and savoring the respite.

Idleness did have its virtue.

He used the time to pick the grit from the corners of his eyes and rub his aching feet until a thought occurred to him, making him pause. Without his armor to provide nourishment, he should be thirsty and hungry, ravenous in fact. And yet, despite his journey across the desert, these needs and the cravings they produced had simply not manifested. . . .

A slight vibration rattled up through the desert floor, scattering his thoughts.

Grains of displaced sand skittered down the dune’s slope. After the last grain came to a stop, seconds passed in utter stillness. The fur on the nape of his neck tingled in warning.

The shallow dune imploded, dropping into a massive hole opening in the ground beneath it.

A surprised shout lodged in his throat and his arms pedaled wildly as he fell with a waterfall of sand into the opening hatch of an enormous sphere as it rose slowly to the surface.

Swallowed up, weightless, he had no way to counter or protect himself. He landed hard on a floating pedestal within the sphere, biting his tongue in the process, the breath jolted from his lungs and jarring pain radiating through his spine and the back of his skull.

He spat out blood and lay there awhile, regrouping, before gathering enough strength to sit up and brace his hands against the pedestal to steady himself. As the sand continued to stream down, a sense of familiarity filled him. The geometric lines cut into the dark inner surface of the sphere were quintessentially Forerunner in design, and the cavernous space was large enough to fit several war sphinxes.

As the hatch closed, the streams of sand slowed to an unnatural stop, hovering for a frozen second before moving horizontally, picking up speed, circling the inside circumference of the sphere until the sound was deafening. Light began to thread through the strange, sandy storm, gradually becoming flashes that delivered brief, indistinct images.

The faster the sand spun, the clearer the images became.

He recognized Faun Hakkor. Pictures of Forerunner victory sped past, followed by an enormous fleet in space approaching another planet. With the image, the accompanying knowledge flooded in, a single scene generating an avalanche of memories. The planet was the humans’ last stronghold, Charum Hakkor.

As he watched the images appear and disappear, his mind grew full and overwhelmed with memories of his past. And though it was almost too much to process, his body instinctually bracing against the onslaught, he counseled himself to relax and accept the flow of information.

Above Charum Hakkor, six massive Forerunner fleets awaited the arrival of a seventh through a portal that conveyed a staggering collection of the finest Fortress- and Sojourner-class starships.

The human capital below with its orbital arches, great sky towers, and urban sprawl had been built atop and around the colossal architecture of its previous inhabitants, the Forerunners’ enigmatic creators—the Precursors, an ancient transsentient species long since gone from the galaxy, though their constructions remained scattered throughout the stars. On Charum Hakkor, these ruins turned a technologically impressive capital city into something awe-inspiring; the crystalline superstructures left behind by the near-godlike beings dominated the city. The citadel, armory, arena, and great highway were not stylized or adorned, but they were magnificent in scope and transcendent in their creation.

The distinct sense of wonder he’d experienced upon seeing those constructions had only grown with the knowledge that they had been built with the Precursors’ use of neural physics, an elusive technology that the Forerunners, with all of their intellectual prowess and advancements, had yet to fully comprehend.

He saw himself in full combat armor, meeting the Librarian at the head of the escort cruiser’s open bay shortly after it had landed near the citadel. Happiness and love, pain and regret, wrapped around his chest and squeezed until his breath turned shallow.

He was awed by the sight of them together, husband and wife, side by side, the differences striking. In her customary Lifeworker attire—a slender form-fitting lucent white shift worn over her personal armor, and her white hair coiled beneath a stately headdress—she floated next him on her personal antigravity dais. Immense intelligence shone brightly in her dark eyes and her face was alight, as always, with that youthful aura and innate grace and elegance that made his pulse leap even now. And he, every ounce a warrior, dwarfing his wife, standing over three meters tall and powerfully built.

Together they had stepped onto the planet for the first time.

He touched his fangs and ran his fingers over a sunken cheek. The picture presented was nothing like his physical image now. What horrors had befallen him to bring a once formidable warrior to such a state?

Images continued to streak by.

Entering Citadel Charum. Inspecting the human prisoners laid out in rows, hundreds upon hundreds of men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands more within the city. They wore no armor or adornments. Stripped themselves to prevent identification, he recalled.

Then, looking for someone—

Ah, yes. There.

That face—dark-skinned; high, broad cheekbones and forehead; strong jaw; white streaks tattooed on his forehead, across the bridge of his nose, cheeks, and chin; his black hair knotted high on his head and secured with an austere hair needle—was one he remembered well.

Forthencho Oborune. Lord of Admirals.

The greatest and most formidable adversary he’d ever fought now lay wounded among his own people, a chilling light in his dark eyes, a touch of pity and tragic humor too, as though the human commander held one final volley, a dreadful secret the Forerunners would soon discover.

Seeing this moment unleashed another wave of recollections, shocking revelations, compounding one after another. The humans had been fighting a war on two fronts—annihilating Forerunner worlds and settlements, not out of aggression and warmongering, but to sterilize, to hold back a new, highly intelligent threat to the galaxy, a horrifying parasite that fed on and assimilated all sentient life.

The Flood.

While the truth was stunning in its own right, it did not negate humanity’s crimes. They had dared to raise arms against the stewards of the Mantle. They had murdered his children—hischildren! For these transgressions alone, they deserved to be eradicated. Only their experience battling the Flood had saved them.

Or rather, doomed them to a fate far worse than extinction.

Forthencho, along with every man, woman, and child in the citadel, had faced the Composers: devices capable of separating consciousness and biological patterns from their physical bodies and transforming them into raw data intended to be studied and probed in an effort to learn as much as possible about humanity’s interactions with the Flood, while other humans were devolved back into the hunter-gatherers of old and placed on their natal world.

He remembered conversing with the Lord of Admirals when it was the human commander’s turn to face the Composer, although the words eluded him now. But the disturbing smile on the human’s face as his essence was viciously torn from his body? That remained a memory quite clear and deep.

The recall was relentless, racing along like a turbulent river.

He saw his entry into the depths of the now-destroyed Citadel Charum to a once fiercely guarded pit sunk millions of years deep into the layers of former Precursor occupation and the inescapable domed prison the humans had created there.

Fear hatched in an instant, like spiderlings scattering across his skin.

The creature held cushioned in a timelock was unlike anything he had ever seen before, an unnatural union of mammal, arthropod, and cephalopod, a hulking gray mass at least six meters wide and nearly as tall with strange, faceted eyes broadly set in a massive flat head atop a simian-like torso. It possessed a multitude of fat, irregular limbs and an exposed segmented spine and tail.

The Timeless One, or the Captive, they’d called it. Theories on its origins were inconclusive. Was it propaganda to unnerve the Forerunners? A last-resort weapon?

But he would soon learn from the ancient creature itself that it professed to be the last Precursor, the Primordial, imparting the startling revelation that the Precursors hadn’t simply faded from the galaxy as Forerunners believed—they’d been wiped out millions of years earlier by Forerunners who had risen up in rebellion against their creators, committing an irreconcilable act of genocide.

New images suddenly eclipsed those of Charum Hakkor, taking him across the galaxy to another place, the sights and locations instantly in his mind, as if opening a door long shut.

The Forerunner capital of Maethrillian, a planet-sized, artificially created hub composed of several habitable stacked circular disks attached in a spiral pattern to a long central core.

Accessible by bridges and ferries, a basin-shaped structure that housed the Council Chamber was suspended from one of the main disks. Large enough to hold six hundred councilors, judges, witnesses, speakers, and mediators in ornate boxes and seats, its walls were decorated with millions of spent slipspace crystals, while above, sculptures of quantum-engineered crystals orbited the amphitheater.

His former self stood in austere Warrior-Servant attire on one of four speaking pedestals placed at the four compass points of the chamber, and opposite the tall, imposing figure of Faber-of-Will-and-Might, the Master Builder, considered by many a near-perfect male Forerunner in face and form, in his richly stylized and perfumed armor—both of them there to discuss all they had learned in the aftermath of humanity’s defeat and, most importantly, to debate the new threat of the Flood and the preparations that must be made.

Arguing against the Master Builder, he had presented his case succinctly and honestly: they should build artificial planets, shield worlds capable of protecting and defending populations. But his words fell on deaf ears. The only thing the assemblage heard was the political fearmongering and embellishments of the Master Builder, arguing to construct a weapon of mass destruction instead. Halo, he called it. Giant rings that would be inelegant in their original assembly, but would later be designed with the power to mass-sterilize all forms of sentient life, each one capable of firing a superluminal pulse of cross-phased supermassive neutrinos with a range of twenty-five thousand light-years. When fired in concert, their range covered the entire galaxy.

They were an affront to the very teachings of the Mantle of Responsibility.