The Apostate

They didn’t mean to be heroes. They didn’t mean to save the world. Between the Fallen picking apart what little the human civilization had left on Earth, the Cabal dominating Mars and using it as a beachhead for what might well be an eventual invasion, and the Hive already sending incursions onto the planet’s surface in preparation for their unholy crusade, the Guardians of the Tower and the Last City on Earth were certainly overwhelmed. And probably worst of all, the Vex, bio-mechanical monsters they were, held some sort of secret allegiance to their otherworldly god, who through time and space seeks to… well, no one knew what the Vex wanted. For indeed the Vex motivations defied comprehension. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. If I’m to tell you this tale, I must be more intelligible. Ah but where to begin? Hmm… Oh yes! I shall start where they did. I must preclude you from interrupting. This will be quite a tale and I dare to say that it is one that must be told. They began where all Guardians do. Dead. Oh, no I should skip some of that shouldn’t I? Yes, yes that seems prudent. I shall start with their victory. Yea, their victory over the Heart in the Black Garden. You know about it, young Guardian? The Heart? That abominable mass of Darkness that was worshipped by the Vex. The Vex in their timeless clairvoyance, wisdom and power, came to worship the Heart as a God. It was something they could not understand, in all their knowledge, and so they chose subservience. It is certain the Heart was of the Darkness, but were the Vex always so? To this day we do not know, but we are slowly, piece by puzzling piece, fitting the clues of their existence together. Tell me young Guardian. Your Ghost must have spoken to you of them, but do you truly know them? It has been many years since their threat has been imminent, and I find it hard to imagine a time when we weren’t living, terrified beneath the shadow of their impending machinations. But you surely…? Only those who have fought the Vex know the feeling. That inspiring fear we all felt at one time or another; the fear of our own ignorance – of the difference in magnitude between their thoughts and ours. They stood there once. The three Guardians we call legends. They violated the Black Garden with their Light, stamped on its ancient flowers, and stood against the Heart. Its efforts were for naught against the three Guardians, as they destroyed the Heart’s Vex servants, smothered the Heart and claimed the garden. We now bathe it in our Light. But the Heart was not, or perhaps I should say is not, and won’t be the only Vex threat. For it was in our hasty foolishness that we opposed the Vex. How could we think them so dissimilar to us? What children we were – are! Oh, I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Right then; the Vault. You’ve heard of it, yes? Once a strange labyrinth of evil and danger. On Venus, during the Golden Age according to records, Humanity found the Vex citadel. But we never had time to understand it before the collapse. And so with ancient fear and terror Guardians were sent to investigate the Vault of Glass; that’s its name. So many were lost to its maddening realities. It’s soothing tones. Hm? What is the Vault? I will explain it soon. As best I can. Long ago, a Guardian, Kabr, entered the Vault and penetrated its secrets. He did not return. But he left a legacy. Years later, six guardians rose to take his place. Among those six were the Three. It was thanks to Kabr’s efforts that they were able to enter and defeat the horrible fates inside. I dare not attempt to explain the Vault’s strangeness to you. Ultimately, they encountered an unbelievable Vex entity. We fought it, in our arrogance, and though half the fellowship was lost, the Three finally stood alone in the Vault. Only now do we know a little of the Truth of the Vault – what it was, and what the entity was that we supposedly destroyed in there. Supposedly, yes. For I doubt you’ve heard the truth of it. It’s a dark secret, even here in the Tower. Many older Guardians do not speak of it. Even the Speaker is loath to touch the subject. But the three did not destroy the enigma. Its form changed, but it was not gone. I don’t mean to deceive you, this is not the story of the Three. Not really. This is the story of it. Of the mind within the Vault. Listen well Guardian and I will tell you of him, her and it. I will tell you of the Guardian Atheon. [b]--------------------------------------------------------------[/b] It existed. That was all. It, that which was called Atheon existed. It knew from the mind of Kabr. The Guardian, he who ripped a gash in its precious Vault, was no more. But his legacy lived on, inspiring another team to tread upon the muck of the Vault’s depths. Had they been ordinary, like so many pitiful children before them they would have perished within. Nay. They never would have been. But they, by sacrifice of the Legionless, forever may he be remembered, punctured the blanketing night of the Vault. Trial after trial they advanced. The Templar. Smashed. The Gorgons. Eluded. The Gatekeepers. Crushed. The infinite ranks of the Vex that were and were to be. Beaten aside. And finally, the end of the Vault. It was roused to action. It became and straddled the path to our salvation. The six did not waver. Through time and torment, shattered space and expunged matter, they succeeded. The broke the entity of Atheon and brought the Vault into the realm of the Light. Though valorous, victorious and celebrated, the elimination of it was not as we expected. To this day we do not know much about the Vex; indeed, they befitting their namesake, they are infuriatingly vexing. Yet there is one truth we know about them. About the Vault, and the Sol Imminent and Primeval. It has become popular belief that the Vault Vex were planning something big. Groundbreaking, even for them. They sought to a part of the universe. To become a necessity to reality; a constant entity. Had they succeeded, the Earth and her outlying colonies of Mars and Venus would belong to them. I wonder if even the Hive would have been able to withstand them… They did not succeed, thank the gods. Or at least, that is what we thought. But for all we assumed about the Vex we ignorantly bypassed one key note. The Sol Imminent was not what we thought it was. To think of the Vex as a conventional civilization would be unforgivable. But there are a few distinctions we can compare. First, the Sol Divisive, the Vex subtype found… worshiping, if such a word can be used, the Beating Evil. We might call the Divisive a, or rather, the “religious subtype.” The other distinction is the Sol Imminent and the Sol Primeval, the Vault Vex. They might be defined as the “research subtype.” But in our foolishness, we believed the Vex were of one will. Separate Minds guiding Vex legions in concert with an ultimate goal. We were wrong. The Vex are more like ourselves than we could imagine. We know this now. The Vex were not unified. We did not question why the Heart did not form the Vault around itself. We did not ask why the Vault held the ability to dictate reality within itself. We did not wonder why the great Kabr named the entity Atheon. In ancient pre-Golden Age language, we find many words etched and scrawled in data and paper, stone and tile. Some of them belong to a language called Greek. Most Guardians don’t learn it, but besides English, it is the most prominent of the pre-Golden Age languages we find. In it, the word Atheon means, quite literally, “godless.” So many questioned begged and yet so precious few answered. Why would Kabr name a Vex entity as godless? Perhaps the Vault was not what we thought it was. Perhaps the Vault, was a prison. A jail built by order of the Heart to contain the atheistic heathens who denied its authority. This in mind, it is plausible to think Atheon was the will of the Vault, and desired to, perhaps, ascend beyond its brethren’s incomprehensible deity. Atheon and his Vex would become gods themselves. Perhaps Atheon wished to free the Vex. In our foolishness we did not consider this. In our foolishness we invaded. In our foolishness we ordered its destruction. And in our foolishness we thought we’d succeeded. We thought that if the Vex had managed to ascend into reality, Earth and the universe would alter, become theirs as they conquered our past present and future unstoppably. The terrifying truth was that they’d already ascended.