Two men, plain of face. One carries a mystic disposition, while the other marked plainly by physical courage. They are in the study of a cabin built in the 20th century, far from the Last City and the Tower, on a bright day around noon.
“I can’t believe you just made me read that. It’s been days, Lewen.”
“Please–we’re still on patrol in the Reef for all they know. And new cohorts are rising every day, they tell me.”
“I guess you’re not wrong.”
“Oh, far from it. So tell me, what did you think?”
“You’re telling me people used to understand this?”
Gutier looked at the tome in his hands with disbelief. It was written before the Golden Age, before the arrival of the Traveler and its gifts, and yet it was near as strange as the mad writings of the dredgens. Lewen merely nodded. He was suspended slightly above his seat, sipping on a cup of herbal tea. Their Ghosts rest on a shelf above a chimney.
“I think it contains useful insight.”
The Titan laid the book on the end table and took a seat next to the Warlock. Gutier rested his head in his hands. He looked over at their armors in the corner of the study.
“Ontology. The study of being itself. What does that have to do with anything, Lewen?”
“Everything, friend. Consider the division between the ontic and the ontological, per the text.”
“It’s like the difference between the players in the theater versus the play?”
Gutier looked up at Lewen for some sign of approval. Lewen made a face, then dithered his head back and forth.
“Well, consider the Hive and their magics. The Taken, too.”
“What’s there to consider? Witches can’t cast spells with broken jaws, ogres can’t case gazes if you shoot them in th-“
“These are ontic approaches to the ontological problems they raise.”
“Lewen, buddy, you’ve got to give me a little more.”
The Warlock firmly sat himself.
“Do you remember the time before the Red War?”
“Sure. The ‘Age of Triumph,’ or whatever we called it.”
“Do you remember how your gifts were back then?”
Gutier looked away. He put his finger tips together unconsciously, forming a space in his hands.
“The Light left and returned brighter. That’s what they said.”
“Granted, that does seem to be the case, but have you ever noticed how radically our abilities will change?”
“Ok, sure.”
“What of your things?”
“Fieldweave uses the Light. The Light shines through things differently at different times, I think someone told me that, too.”
“Are you satisfied with that answer?”
Lewen looked very serious, his eyes brightened with Void-Light. Gutier turned back to look at him, and noticed the room was starting to look a little brighter.
“The way I see it, we’re not even supposed to be alive. Walking impossibilities. Anything that changes after that is just part of the package, I figure.”
Gutier had apparently said the magic words.
“Right you are! We are impossible. But we are—our being is made an possible by the Traveler. It’s not just that our bodies are animated, it is that our being alive is not how things are supposed to be, and they are!”
“What does that have to do with the Hive or anything?”
Lewen traced a glowing circle of white, and began drawing Vanguard logograms in different colors inside.
“Hive, the Taken, what little we know of the Darkness proper, the Vex to some degree—and us—are playing with being itelf. The strongest weapons of the forces of both the Darkness and the Light both are ontological in nature. The Ahamkara, too, were ontological players of the strongest order.”
The Warlock began tracing lines from each logogram up to and through the edge of the circle like spokes. The Titan suddenly understood, and turned the spoked circle like a wheel with his finger, starting from the green spoke of the Hive. As he did so, the circle turned green. Gutier then pushed on the blue spoke of the Vanguard, and turned the wheel blue.
“So what you’re saying is, these changes we experience are wholesale changes in the being of everything. The boons, and the burderns.”
“That is exactly what I am saying. It is the real war we should be focused on, beneath everything we know.”
Gutier saw the look of Warlock conviction and had to laugh to break the tension immediately.
“I know what this is about.”
“What? What’s so funny about the ultimate fundamental struggle no one is talking about?”
“This is about that Skull, isn’t it.”
Lewen reared up and went red in the face.
“Losing an advantage to the forces of Darkness is not a joke!”