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“Yeah. I can’t really explain it, you know?”

“It’s a little unnerving. Even the big dinosaurs, big as houses or more— they can just slip away from the cameras and the sensors. Sure, Arnie can pull up a bio-map right now on the big screen like it’s the Super Bowl and show where everybody’s at, but, they just vanish. Into the undergrowth, into the trees. Like they were never there. That’s the thing with dinosaurs I don’t think people get. They’re fast. They’re quiet. It’s not like an elephant, even the Apatosaurs and the Brachiosaurs, they’re huge, and they move so gracefully.. It can make your goose flesh pop.”

“A lot of screen watching on all six main habitats, and I’d say we see an animal maybe, a third of the time. It’s easier than you think to feel like they’ve gotten loose. Had to send Muldoon down there a few times, see if everybody is still in the paddocks and safe. Don’t even get me started on the Raptors, Christ. When we see them, sure as hell feels like they want you to..”

Old Friends in WV

Accusations make the coffee bitter. The stranger doesn’t like his coffee bitter, if you can call his creamy slurry *coffee* at all. It’s the only thing the waitress has brought him since he arrived. Steady rain knocks at the window like it’s curious how he managed to pass through it without getting wet.

He’s pouring another dose of cream, unperturbed, while the diner stares at him. Twenty minutes ago it had been a vibrant place; workers between shifts meeting for their coffee and rumors, long distance haulers catching their moments relaxation. It had all slowly peeled away into silence. The stranger did not belong, tall and thin except for wide, heavy shoulders that hung like wings behind his coat a season too heavy. His shadow does not belong. He knows them all.

The stranger doesn’t need to lift his eyes, methodically stirring the concoction in his mug, to feel it. The spoon orbits the curve of the mug once, twice, nine times without scarcely a ripple. When he lifts the mug to his thin lips there is a man opposite him, broad and heavyset.

“Where you from?” It’s a blunt object as much as a question, and a nations worth of paranoia hangs behind the words. This man believes he should be afraid of foreign men in suits, invaders and nuclear bombs tucked into tidy suitcases. But the stranger can sense the deeper fear hiding behind his anger.

“The hell you smiling for?”

The stranger leans back, relaxed. Somewhere in the diner, a phone rings. No one moves to reach it, but every soul in the room feels its tug. Tommy Nichols most of all.

*Because, Tommy, we’re old friends. Don’t you remember?*

Tommy Nichols without warning, becomes a statue carved from terror. The anger that bubbled up out of him, like an animal trapped and caged striking at capturing hands, it vanishes into the cold in his stomach. Tommy Nichols remembers the phone calls. The nightly, incessant phone calls, rising out of bed in the dark, fumbling for a phone that rooted in place seems to run away from him. Listening to the clicking, hissing nothing from the receiver. Waiting. Every night, waiting for something, standing alone in the living room until the silence blended into sounds, and the sounds into words.

Words that he could not bear to remember. Words that come now like black wings across fifty nights.

The stranger turns his gaze to the others, stands. Moments ago they felt emboldened, maybe even ready to strike him. But now they look, all of them, exactly the same as they did in the dark, listening to the phone whisper its designs into their ears. Afraid, deliciously afraid.

*We are all friends*, the stranger says, smiling, *but I don’t believe you know my name*.

The strangers voice is a whisper, the itching familiarity that has lingered with every nightmare and half-remembered waking. It has tiptoed across every mind behind a booth or on a stool in the place, fingers brushing their every waking moment like a rising chill.

*Cold. My name is Cold*.

Ascendancy Calls

Bravery Atop The Flame

Juggernaut Of Progress

Shoulders of Giants

Manifest Destiny

Prometheus (Return)

Dawn Conquest

Doing It Right

Atop The Mountain

Blaze

Guys, I need a fuck-stupid name for the fuck-stupid rocket ship in my story. Think Titan submersible in space. It has to be something a Musk fanboy would think was cool. A monument to bad ideas. Help me out here.

this place is old wreckage, old memories. iron bones listing in dark sand as the foam and the sea turns it to rust, one cold sweep at a time.

You pad up to them quietly, in a reverence without source or reason.

the iron ruins list, more stuck between earth and sky than proudly defiant of either. like punishment for their arrogance.

You think they are more beautiful now than whatever shape they wore in the past— rendered into something that fits the mold, something that will wash away and contribute.

the sea groans, assuring the pillars of their place beneath the waves. huge, black shapes cruise with an assurance fit only for leviathans, exuding ancient patience.

You sit among the dunes, listening to the wind pass between iron pillars. Watching. Waiting.

EON, USA

This place feels old. Older than it has any right to be.

Hidden between cliffs and the plains, under an untamed sky. Civilization feels like a footnote, a temporary blip in pages eons deep. Even with roads and the first tentative electric lights to challenge the stars, even with the iron horses thumping this way and that across so much empty— the town *feels* old. Maybe it’s the land. Maybe it’s the bones of the earth that it lies upon.

Everyone can feel it, the strangeness. It lingers at the edge of their words and in the fringes of their long, quiet looks beyond the boundaries like an omen.

When the wagon trains first came in their droves, there were stories of eerie stalking shapes across distant hills, and scouts puzzled over three-toed tracks big as a man. In the night there were no howls from wolves, just the sound and scent of an ocean long vanished into time; just the feeling of mighty shapes weightlessly swimming overhead.

The farmers have long since turned a blind eye to their mutilated cattle, butchered and battered into scant piles. Whatever it is that eats them can crack iron like frail bones, and eat a longhorn whole. Braggadocious hunters from both coasts have all retreated into quiet extinction, their eager crusades left with no legacy but disquieting nothingness. The cattle continue to disappear down unseen gullets.

The town is old. Weary, creaking. Even in the age of satellites and highways, it remains. Hidden between cliffs and plains, under an untamed sky, smelling of an ocean vanished to time.

Road Trip

This town is dust. Wooden buildings turned to half sand-submerged memories. Rusting train tracks to nowhere, empty, their iron horses like so many beached metal bones. Wind whistles between gaping doors, across barren frames.

___________________________________

Lights blaze up and down the Highway, islands of illumination standing proud against so much desert emptiness. We pass them one night, surprised how crowded the emptiness has suddenly become, but we’re too keen to stop and press on. Maybe later, we say, laughing.

We pass them again the next four nights, the exact same buildings.

Their lights are harshly bright, glaring.

On the fifth night, shadows of backlit forms stare out from their windows. The radio hisses with hostile static and the sun refuses to rise. We can’t see any stars. There are no stars. Just the lights, the shadows.

——————————————————————

*”Any volunteers?”*, implores the Man on Stage. His grin is big and white, almost leering.

Hot, dry wind blows. There are words there, like someone pressing a secret into your soul but they’re snatched into silence as quick as they came.

*”Any volunteers?”*, says the Man on the Stage again, but now is looking down into an unfamiliar face, his grin like a crescent moon, an omen. Hands sloughed by merciless winds and scorching sun reach out, fleshless, tender.

The crowd is all looking. Watching. Bottomless sockets so empty, and so hungry.

The noose sways, inviting and open as the blue sky looming. It fits around your neck like it was all meant to be.

______________________________________

There are smiles on all the billboards.

The teeth are fangs, caked and smeared with redness.

There are smiles on all the billboards.

The mouths are opened to black gullets.

There are smiles on all the billboards.

______________________________________

You wake in a dramatic place. It seems that way anyway, you think, dramatic.

The fear of waking and knowing *nothing* is a panic so deep that you shiver, exhaling a heavy racking breath. You have no name, plunging down into an empty darkness within trying to find any vestige of what you were—anything, anything, anything. But nothing comes. Just that first formative sense of illumination followed by a breath that feels like it’s been taken after far too long. It fills you entirely and for a moment, you cling to that calmness. Looking around you.

Great banners hang taut from huge, bulging structures done in crimson and azure. It’s seen better days, though, you think— craters litter dusty ground, many of the banners torn and sheered as if great claws have dragged down them. There’s a sky above you, crammed with brilliant stars swimming in languid vermillion waves. Far away stones vast as mountains silently stare back across that void. Something buzzes near you and, with preternatural awareness you did not know you had, you snatch it from the air.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you!”cries a small voice, and you snap to its source with panic and terror and a fragment of excitement. You do know when you were spoken to last (maybe you’ve never been spoken to!), but the notion of communication makes your heart sail. So, you open your fist, fixing your four eyes to them.

It’s a small thing, big enough to fit in your hand comfortably. It twirls, fidgeting with nervousness and excitement, a singular blue eye glowing brightly back at you. This— drone?— feels like it is smiling at you, even if it has no real face to speak of. A nervous smile, you think. You *laugh*. It is a deep, rumbly sound that fills this empty and dramatic place with a unique warmth. You and the drone feel it reverberate out into the silence, and then you laugh again. It feels *good*! The drone joins, it’s tinny voice almost musical.

When the laughter is gone, sailing outward to those far away starlight mountains, you turn back to your companion (yes, that feels *right*), you speak.

*What is your name?*, you ask, mouthparts clicking. Something deep down sparks inside you, something familiar. Words. Speaking. A faintest suggestion that once, words and speeches carried a weight to you, a naturalness—

“I am Clementia”, says your friend. It comes closer, just a few spans from your face. It’s brightness feels so welcoming, so familiar.

“I’m your Ghost, and you”, Clementia says twirling, “are a Guardian— my Guardian.”

When you stand from the ground of the dramatic place, turning to follow Clementias brilliance, you nearly trip over something in the dirt. It’s a great mantle, a thing of bone and metal. It was great *once*, at least, you can see that through the rust and signs of damage; one great horn scorched, the other shattered into several half-buried halves. Another flickering down deep inside you comes, hard as one of those tumbling mountains slamming into you: phantoms of burdens and designs, betrayals that stole sleep and peace from you, a final trial—

“Guardian?” Clementia hovers, pleasant as starlight.

In silence, warmed by a new purpose, you leave the place of your rebirth. Together.

I am destructive

Interesting Post-War storylines:

*Human Supremacy*: Haunting Faces

In the aftermath of the Human-Covenant War, and the discovery— at least amongst the upper echelons— that humanity are the reclaimers of a vast interstellar empire; it seems almost inevitable that among any number of powerful forces in human society would move heaven and earth to assert human dominion over the Galaxy. A “dark” ONI and UNSC cabal of admiralty, generals, or extremely capable corporate interests harnessing military secrets to harvest Forerunner technologies: the milieu of interesting human villains is countless.

What about the genuine, understandable concerns of colonials and earthlings, unaware of the shared and successful relationships of UNSC and alien cooperation, fearing that any day now, Covenant ships will loom large over their worlds again? The Post-War era should be *rife*with explorations of trauma, conflict, and the complicated nature on *all* sides. What is it like to feel like an insurgent against your own government, your own *species*? How do people react against extraterrestrial resettlement, refugees? What’s the beautiful, what’s the ugly?

Not only do we get a painfully familiar enemy and complicated conflicts— but an engaging and active mirroring of those first true schisms in Forerunner society millennia ago, the first signs of interior societal stress that spelled their end at the hand of the Flood.

*Forerunner and Covenant Technology:* Tools of the Trade

The War is over. Across countless worlds lie the ruins and remnants of impossible, fearsome technologies: devastated Covenant armories, hastily excavated Forerunner complexes, and even experimental UNSC technologies dispatched to the field in desperate Hail Mary assaults against extinction. And it’s all just *waiting*. Scavengers, salvagers, zealots, historians, thrill-seekers; all anyone truly has to do to discover what’s been lost is some credits, a ship, and guns.

Imagine a Galaxy desperately holding its breath, knowing full well that any Insurrectionist, Covenant remnant, Banished mercenary, or corporate fixer could be wielding the next world-killer purely on looting the right battlefield, at the right time. Imagine the highest ranks of ONI and the UNSC, furious to form temporary alliances with unsavory and inhumane characters to do everything possible as means to neutralize the truly abominable. Give us stories of unlikely and unhappy alliances that truly mirror the history (and in all honesty, present) of international intelligence agencies. I understand the hatred of Forerunner-doomsday machines, but it just makes so much sense. And applying it to Covenant or even Human technology adds so much more interesting flavor. The Galaxy needs to not only feel full of threats— but *reasons to cooperate*.

*SPARTANS go Open Source*: Factory Floor Warriors

We’ve had it increasingly often, but I have always enjoyed the idea of SPARTAN-iterative programs as a cornerstone of the Post-War era. Humanity has been saved by extremely convenient weapons, controlled by an incredibly select few. What next?

*Everything*. Corporate programs to engineer augmentations and advanced exoskeletons, rampant tests and homegrown failures on backwards colony worlds. The idea isn’t to minimize or lesson the power of the SPARTANs we know, but to *diversify* the field, and showcase the dangers not just in new potential competitors, but inherit even in the program we grew up with.

Unfinished???????

The monster is a beautiful thing.

Cindy has been practicing the ritual for weeks, months. Murmuring each word under her breath on the brisk November walks to and from work. Laying naked on her bed, sprawled and feline, tracing every dark curving line of its shape etched into the odd book. The book was a gift, leaning on her doorstep one evening— but from whom or for what— she had no idea.

It was a perfect nightmare, a beautiful thing of corded muscle and dark chitinous armor. It’s horns tangled and bent, every bit the artistry of Hell itself. Each pristinely detailed picture had the jaws smiling a broad, wolffish smirk etched by terrible teeth and the hands spread wide were more talons than anything remotely human.

*Pleasure and pain mingle like tangled lovers*, the words said, ringed by arcane symbols. And Cindy, special girl she was— *craved* pain. Fantastical, enduring pain.

Cindy lit matches and clutched them, or doused her own cigarettes on her arms.

Cindy dribbled candle wax down her own pale, ivory skin.

Cindy found chemicals and cleaners, liquids that dangled just on the edge of poison, and doused her more sensitive regions in it, writhing at every sparking sensation.

So when she laid eyes on the monster, when she read it’s promise of liberating agony, and her eyes scoured over every thorn curve of it: how could she deny it?

It came to her, one night, when she spoke the words in the dark and everything bristled with unholy redness.

The monster had come. It loomed tall and hateful and dripping with insatiable hunger. It’s horns dragged at the ceiling like fingernails on chalkboard, it’s thorns glared like dozens of hateful eyes with their own little fervent fires. It’s maw blazed with the signature grin and Cindy could smell the inferno within, that burgeoning furnace she lusted to fill her.

It crushed her beneath a sprawling claw and it’s skin bristled with heat, stealing the voice and the words from her throat. It’s wordless, inhuman desires override her brain and turn Cindy into something pathetic, and tiny. A toy that bent to a greater will. The claws mark skin, sign gouging crimson marks into flesh. The monster presses her to the floor beneath its grip,

The Great Hunt.

She runs through the snow, breathing hard. Every tree a charcoal sketch against white. Naked as every leafless, grasping branch above.

The Hunter.

Striding and perfect. Inhuman. Taller than any man, who wears the night like mortals wear their cloaks and coats. Sword whispering to him of its insatiable hunger. The pale Moon above is his God.

The Chase.

Between skeletal forest fingers and down across yawning frigid rivers, cold scouring everything in blissful numbness. The wind howling, the Hunter laughing hollow as breaking bones.

The Capture.

Ensnared. A net that brings welling redness from a thousand fine cuts across pristine skin. The bone-breaking laughter emanating from the dark. Promises of liberating pain, gifts that burn and boil and bleed.

The Night Church has many followers.

Beneath moist, worn floorboards and in the bellies of listing ships moored at graveyard harbor, they wait.

The Night Church has many hymns.

They rise up from cavernous mausoleum keeps and ring out in churches claimed twice; once by the fires of ruin, twice by the hunger of green roots.

The Night Church has many commandments.

Thou shalt stain the snows with hoof prints, thy shalt knock thrice at the windows of fearful parish, thou shalt not cease thy march until row upon row of abbey lies empty and lifeless..

The Night Church has many teachers.

The headless, bare-bodied feminine statue in that hidden garden, where the whispers come from more places than just breeze. The starless-night colored monolith standing sentinel on its cliff faced sanctuary, lulling sailors to dash their fates on razor rocks. The book that weeps bloody tears, tucked under a floorboard, waiting for frightful pages to be turned.

The Night Church has many paths.

Up through rotten cellars and across harvest moon skies, down bottles tainted black by feral touch and into dreams you dare not speak of.

The Night Church is boundless.

The Night Church is eternal.

The Night Church is coming.

Godforsaken Place

The Gods have not finished this place. The Gods have abandoned this place.

The Gods have forsaken this place.

When we landed on its shores, we were five hundred thousand. Five thousand remain. Shambling. Pale. Gaunt.

The land is chaos and disaster. Black rock bellows it’s rebellion against the sky and hurls upward into the night. Bone-chilling wind screams across the waste and slashes ceaseless raking claws over us, snatching away breath and tearing our fragile wills into so many ribbons. My footsteps over the ice are little more than stumbling confusion, kept only forward by the men behind me, and those behind them, on and on by discombobulated thousands. The overseers amongst us are mirages, ghosts; even their cruelty has been obliterated by this godforsaken place.

We are running from an angry, rioting Earth. Running at the pace of dead men. We surge toward a looming plateau of barren stone and clinging, hardy grasses. A place of stability. I pray Azh, and Yu-Hueq, and so many others to grant us this place to stand. My frozen toes knock against the ground, my eyes weep and flutter against agonizing cold.

I am not ready to die.

Far away, across the ice, Hell is in revolt. Our army stands in silent awe as the elements do their battle and all the murmuring voices of ten thousand fighting men is vanished. We have become like sentinel statutes on desolate land; monolithic and wordless in the dark. Down below I can see the last vestiges of our straggling legion hurling themselves onto this island of stability and even far so from away their countless star-illuminated faces shine with fear, scrabbling and scurrying like vermin discovered by a wrathful lord. Even now the ground is splitting, swaying under their boots and I know many, too many, will not find safe ground to perch upon.

I can’t look away. Many of us collapse to the hard, unforgiving earth. Men who have fought and killed with spears, with hands and teeth; weep openly. They whisper the name of far away divinities, hands clutching in satchels and beneath frigid plate for effigies, offerings.

Mountains erect themselves in heaving juts where once there had been plains and lowlands like bones in insurrection against the flesh they inhabited. We feel it tremble. Hear the almighty groans surging in waves greater than any battle hymn we have sung. Everything shakes, everything becomes uncertain and unmoored, the foundations of all that is unshackled from order into free-falling pandemonium. We watch in frozen terror as a thousand, more, are swallowed up by darkness which was once ground. Their voices rise up like the begging chorus of the damned.

The glow of an inferno seethes down in those craters and I sway on the lip of the island, mesmerized by a terrifying sight. A glimpse into a world far beneath us. Unfit for Men. Unfit for his Gods.

Added 30+ more original stories to my site! Check ‘em out! @ https://thesovereignarchive.blogspot.com/?m=1

Time is the great band. Beginnings bleed into endings, bleed into beginnings. This is the nature of all things. What dies nurtures the soil, and life rises out of its black foam, and what falls upon it is consumed in turn to nurture what comes next. Out of the muck from the earliest days until the hammer blow of extinction sent it back, only to crawl once again forward— ever forward. Defiant to the cyclical ends that are so numerous. Death. Plague. Conflict.

How many times were our ancestors reduced, resigned back to primitive form? How many generations of potential obliterated by so many fearsome ends, each form cut away by that cold scythe that dictates what lives and what dies? Ninety-nine percent of all life forms upon the Earth have withered and died. A cathedral of the extinct is the greatest achievement of this living world, not the things it has produced that breath and fight and breed, no— it’s mightiest haul is all the bones, all the skeletal remnants tucked away in her soils. The chorus of life is but a whisper to the requiem that follows, millions upon millions of voices strong.

When my people arose it seemed that we were the inheritors of a mighty mantle. An impossible age was upon us. Immortal, invincible— the apotheosis of industries and arts that our minds had summoned from purest imagination to hardest realities. Continents became little more than gardens for us to shape, the weather and its rebellious storms tamed with simple amusement until every day was pleasant and demure to our liking. We forged metal, flesh. Even light became just another palette to the artist and the engineer in all the shapes of our divine whim. We kissed other worlds until the stars in the night sky sang with the influence we wrought. Those first travelers, machines as they may be— they were the heralds of our coming upon the Galaxy..

And then came the loss. The disease that was upon us then was slow and ancient already, a stilling sickness that did not rot flesh or weaken bone; no, no, this silent dredge did nothing more but dull our minds, weaken our wills. Immortality brought weakness, endless resources stifled creativity. Our art, majestic and vast and mighty as it was, and it was mighty!— all of it blended, meshed. We were all doing the same in our countless, same-same-same heavens.

That was not what killed us, no, but it did weaken us just enough. Cracks in the walls from tenacious vines, hungry mold. Just waiting for the right push.

The Adversary came. Our Nemesis. And it was relentless. Merciless. It was the face of annihilation. An out-of-context event that turned so much divinity and so much power into ash, into the painfully folly that was. We crashed, we burned. We broke. So many beautiful fresco shards immolated. The continents we had tended melted away into slag, the storms we had tamed became raging gales that stripped the soil and stone from so many surfaces until all that was left was obliteration. They scoured all that we had touched. Like God erasing our hubris from his creation.

We ran. What else was there to do?

We vanished into the dark. Burning and burying all that was left behind, all that might incriminate the direction of our exodus. Some fled to a distant galaxy, believing this affliction was here and here only, amongst familiar stars. Others buried themselves in obscure, esoteric ritual and mindsets, hoping to vanish into regressive pasts that might unfold. Legions of dreamers and acolytes wove wonderful delusions for themselves, for the minds that remained, bodiless and hidden in tiny alcoves scattered. Others still went out into the Maw, believing they could reason with our oncoming extinction. Their questions were all silenced. One by one.

In our flight we found the ruins. The tombs and abandoned projects, the memories; all of it came with the realization of what had come before. The endless cycles of time realized in fragments, in pieces. Life arose, mind igniting in the sludge and the cold and the harshness, the inevitable ascension. And then the hurried, black silence that was total and uncompromising. Snuffing out civilizations in a methodical diminishing. One by one. Until nothing remained but the silence. When we found the remnants of our distant, forgotten forebears, and the telltale signs of their own inescapable fates, we had no time to mourn. The Adversary was already upon us.

It still is. We are at our Cradle now, though it is unlike to be where we truly originate from. It is all that remains. Our enemy walks the surface and soon will be amongst here, down beneath. Finishing their ultimate work. We do not why. Never will we know.

In our final hour, in our last struggle, we leave this record for you. These few, precious gifts.

May the cycle end with you.

Or let your end be sudden and complete.

We step into the daylight.

Me, from the shade of a hospitable tree. All bone branches, gnarled roots. Like hands reaching. Whether in warning or blessing, it doesn’t matter.

Him, from his lair, his tavern and dominion, all shadows. All menacing tricks, all dark turns of mind to shape others. Break them. With words, or with steel.

Around us, watchful and frightful expressions. Faces drawn tight by merciless predators, and a yet still merciless sun. Receded eyes and recessed hopes looking out.

Me, set. Silent. I make my peace. With the sand and stone that may claim me as it has claimed so many others, regardless of their legend. Let it claim what it will. My victory, or my bones.

Him, smile wide as a raging wildlife, and as friendly. Chattering like a murder of ravens. Hollow words for a man filled only by darkness, by blood, and hollowed in return by it. Smirking like my blood has already hit this silent, stoic sand.

Waiting.

The heavy iron clock speaks its word, declares the contest open.

And with a single report, it is closed.

HALO: GREEN AND BLUE; an Essay

One of my favorite moments in *Halo* can be completely missed without so much as a blink. You can (and I certainly did) *run* right over it, several times. In the level *Requiem*, attempting to reactivate the Cartographer and beneath a gleaming Forerunner bridge, is a strange artifact at the end of a small chamber. It’s a medallion, the omnipresent symbol for the Mantle and Reclaimers. Interacting with it yields a brief but meaningful interaction between Cortana, the Master Chief, and the mysterious environment around them. Cortana recognizes bits and pieces of Forerunner lore, Chief understands that it holds no pragmatic value in saving his friend and returning them home, and Requiem beckons. Silent, unknown, and rich with an ancient history.

I played through *Halo 4*, and subsequently ran right over this little piece of storytelling, numerous times. And now, after discovering it, I have played through and interacted with this medallion of the Mantle. It’s overall tiny addition to an already meaningful campaign to me represents something genuinely exciting for what the future of *Halo* could mean. *Halo 4* especially is rife with what 343 has manifested in different forms across all of its entries. Wandering around Requiem especially: things feel big, beautiful, majestic, in a way that is entirely unique to that game. Even the smaller, “on-rail” hallways and rooms feel *big* in the sense that at some point in development, even conceptually, it feels like a prime direction to be explored was genuine exploration. Guns down, monolithic spaces with an ethereal and mysterious vibe that feels like they would’ve been even more impressive, more meaningful, with something like that Medallion in *Requiem*: sentinels unfurling from Forerunner gateways like eerie metallic insects, the vividly alive machinery of the Shield World moving and pulsing as John and Cortana quietly converse.

*Guardians*, as well, explored this formula further with the actual realizations of its weapons-down missions. The two protagonist fireteams in a beautifully realized space, interacting briefly with NPCs and scannables. This was one of the best parts of that game, and felt like a deeply exciting glimpse into the future. Sanghelios and Meridian especially highlighted the depth of *Halo* as a universe, whether it was hearing Grunts alongside their Elite counterparts admiring a sunset, or hardy frontier types on an Outer Colony telling Spartans to get lost. Cheesy as it could be, *Guardians* felt like a step towards worlds that were more alive.

Enter *Halo: Infinite*. Lauded rightly for its detailed environmental storytelling (and criticized for an incomplete open world), *Infinite* feels somewhat like a step back. Maybe less instead of a deliberate drop in quality, and more because of a lack of capitalizing on those previous successes. FOBs, marine squads, and High Value Targets are all positive additions, but are lacking in connection. Imagine a *Halo: Infinite* where singular marines or rescued squads could be interacted with as NPCs, ascertaining the location of areas of interests or even just hearing a story of how someone was captured, a war story from back when this particular veteran survived against the Covenant. Imagine interacting with hidden Forerunner terminals and unlocking new ways of transport and exploration like hidden passageways, teleports, or interesting tools of engagement like friendly turrets and Sentinels. *Halo: Infinite* has all the tools to create a cohesive narrative-connected-world, and instead drops the ball.

- An exciting way of telling stories in Halo should reflect the mindsets of its characters. Cortana was curious, but driven by cleverness and an infiltrators mind. The Weapon is curious, but guided by naive excitement and interest, perfect for introducing complex concepts to generalized audiences. Master Chief (and Blue Team should they return) is pragmatic, determined, and fiercely aware. Locke (and Fireteam Osiris should they return) are more multifaceted, made up of specialist/intelligence operatives, somewhere between cautious and curious, intuitive to out-of-the-box solutions.

- Marines are a staple of *Halo*. Elites, NPC Spartans, even Sentinels and other Forerunner constructs should become outlets for genuine interaction. Let me talk to my allies at a FOB, let me engage with freed marines or even have little things like radio chatter out in the field, etc. *Far Cry 5* does this surprisingly well where any number of NPC groups can be interacted with, spoken to, and information gleaned. The world feels much more alive and fluid where instead of placing a marker on a map I follow, I can listen to someone directly, and then follow said directions at my leisure or pace.

- Give me tools, mysteries, and adventures to interact with. The environment of Zeta Halo is absolutely stunning. It’s also incredibly empty of anything that feels remotely *present*. There’s nothing to touch, nothing to stumble into that responds to the presence of a Reclaimer or a Meddler. Nothing. Nothing replicates that brief, wonderful moment under the bridge in Requiem. Zeta Halo especially is fantastic for this kind of innovation because it seems at one time or another that was the intention: large caves, Forerunner pylons, and numerous empty chambers seem to indicate heavily that one point or another the environment was much more lively. Give us signals that lead to Domain-intertwined areas, or terminal areas filled with more than just a few shielded enemies and an upgrade cache.

*Halo* has an astoundingly rich universe. That’s why we’re here. Regardless of the mistakes and missteps 343 has taken in each of the entries into the franchise, I am in the belief that the games have improved in one way or another, even if they’re small or isolated. *Infinite* is the skeletal outline of something that could be so much bigger, so much more immersive, and innovative.

An overpowering night. Even with the backbone of stars above its ancient darkness sprawls, swallows up the earth beneath like an oncoming ocean from above. It is the greatest enemy of the People. The night shelters their foes and predators, cloaks the stalking tigers even as helpless familiars are dragged off into tall grass or hides marauding Others, their fierce gazes and fiercer obsidian knives unseen. The night is the first and final God, a beautiful destroyer, merciless and immutable to the fates that play out beneath. The People fear it, respect it in a matter-of-fact absolutism. It *is*.

They pay little mind to an unfamiliar star above.

They are few. Numbers and abstractions are as far away as those twinkling, cold constellations. These people have short memories, awareness like a mirage over far away sands. But they know that they are less. The People are dwindling just as cool water dwindles under scornful sun. Voices forever vanished and dexterous, shaping hands stilled. In a world so big with the People so few, each loss is a Holocaust. Soon there will be none.

Bodies huddle in the dark as attentive, fearful eyes peer out into the blackness. Waiting. Each breath is an anxious rattle bound by animal-fear heartbeats pounding, sometimes screams erupt and throw themselves echoing into the darkness. Long grass bends, under sun rustling as antagonizing shapes manifest for the briefest of seconds before vanishing. Unseen Others circle. Hooting to themselves. Preparing. Starlight glints over sharp, brutal looking stone knives like so many lifeless eyes.

A frenzy passes between the People. No prayers exist yet, no gods have been born to give name and respect and loyalty to what lives deep within mankind. Even their emotions are thin things. More instinct than empathy. A frost of humanity over primordial depth. The hoots rise, hands thump at muscular chests, teeth barred and feet kicking, stamping into dry season dust. No rallying cries. No sympathies pass between adults and their clutching, cooing infants. When the Others emerge, all that awaits them is untamed fear and territorial aggression. War is an ancient impulse.

The foreign star observes, sentinel over a dim world. Words-without-words are exchanged. Unfathomable processes respond. *Thy will be done* relayed with majestic computational composure. The prairie below experiences sudden, catastrophic daylight as golden-red illumination splashes in all directions, like a rippling sea of wildfire. Everything in a hundred miles skitters, runs, jumps, howls. Undisturbed, natural darkness has been violated, and the terror it invokes is absolute. Even the elephants, giants of memory thousands of years long and deep, scatter, turning the savanna into pandemonium as all that lives beneath their command responds. *Flee*.

The Others are there. The Others are not there. Binary thinking shatters like predawn darkness meeting glorious, gilded morning. The world is burning. The Night is banished. The grass is alive with motion and sound, People falling to their knees, hands upraised by this intrusive sunrise. Silent. No sounds to conjure in the face of this. Unanimous clatter as brandished weapons meet solid earth below.

The foreign star looms. It is the first *made* thing to ever kiss the soil of this place. It will not be the last. A passageway opens, unfurling with the same practiced and liquid ease of a blossom in springtime. And like a blossom, it bears something within. Many somethings. New, and strange to this world. They stand. Taller than the mightiest matriarch amongst those tusked behemoths. Too many feet for one individual touches down amongst the undulating grasses. The People are laid bare before their visitors. Small as children, quivering in fireball illumination.

The night has been usurped and it’s place comes new, unfamiliar daylight for unspoken centuries to come.

The Strange Man comes for Harvest

A strange man came to the heroes one day. Impossible to detect until politely, from under his slouching hat, he cleared his throat. Concerned, tired faces looked up from their deliberations as if an important meeting on Olympus itself had been interrupted. Energies swirled, and powers blossomed. This room had more than enough capability to atomize whole universes— let alone one strange, quiet man.

*You bear so many burdens. I offer to ease them. I will erase those who oppose you.* Simple, matter of fact. His voice echoed slightly in their roomy chamber.

The faces were all seemingly carved from granite, not in perfection (for some were most definitely.. *different*), but in emotion. Schemes, plots, contraptions; they had heard it all, seen it all. The strange man knew even that some in that very chamber had known death and returned. More than *once*.

A woman with raven black hair and shimmering golden eyes stood, spoke. She knew the Absolute Truth, be it burden or boon. With a quiet, even voice she told her comrades that their visitor was truthful. Completely. The granite faces seemed to erode and crack with quiet emotion.

*Freedom is enticing*, intoned the strange man. He smiled politely, hands still raised. The gods over mankind looked to one another. Born, manufactured, mutants, divinity. All together afraid, all together hopeful.

*I’ll be outside if you need me*, and with quiet steps, the strange man stepped out into the sunlight among so many chirping birds, crisp green grass. A gentle summer breeze whispered in his ear.

This dance was always the same. The strange man remembered how it had all began. How his people had discovered where heroes and monsters truly emerged, and that they grew as fruits for a very *difficult* tree. But a tree with a harvest bountiful beyond imagining.

The wind blew quietly against his skin, his thin coat and worn hat. And it carried messages that even these wondrous people-beyond-people could not hear. And in his silence, the strange man smiled.

Come and Play

It sits there. How long has it been? No one remembers where it came from, when it arrived here in this dank little corner, silent and watchful. None of the bright multicolored lights illuminate it-- this place is cursed, *here by dragons* says the darkness. Turn back.

It's a tall unit. Taller than most others. Imposing. Geometric, sharp sides that scream *"future!",* and *"I'm not for kids!".* Exactly the right bait for those willing to try. To undertake the test at the behest of small clustered crowds staring into the corner domain with eager, youthful bravado. A looming black display crisscrossed by thin red stripes, silver hexagonal patterns. Slick. New.

The screen glows green. Stares out at the world in quiet, unsettling judgement. Black patterns unfold and unfurl in complicated miasma, an interlocking labyrinth scrolling past. The simplicity is potent. Powerful. Almost too.. *mature.* It feels mathematical. There's something more there in the flickering. Something hungry.

No joysticks. No buttons. Just the black sheen of the case, the green stare of the screen. Not even a slot for coins.

*What the hell?*

It feels the eyes on it. The watchful stares, eager and nervous voices close by. Feels their intentions.

*Come and play,* it says.

At the head of the case lies one word, emblazoned by the same esoteric hexagonal structures.

*P O L Y B I U S*

Whisper-Whisper-Whisper-Whisper

Flick the lights *on*.

Flick the lights *off*.

Flick the lights *on*.

Flick the lights *off*.

He stands in the doorway of the kitchen. His kitchen. Ugly, half-sterile faded white and outdated yellows that make everything seem smeared. Fuzzy. The faucet leaks. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. It’s dark out. Night. Chilly, too, with tendrils of frost on the window as eerie, clawing fingers splayed.

Flick the lights *on*.

Flick the lights *off*.

Flick the lights—

Jennifer’s voice splits the silence and shatters the faint rhythm of the drip-drip-drip. Her voice is all craggy, irritable topography marred by too many cigarettes, split between nasally whine and roughness. It sounds like a voice that cracks the words it wants to say. Makes mountains out of molehills. She’s somewhere upstairs away from this kitchen. He shrinks from it, presses to the wall. Silence returns shortly. He doesn’t even know what she said.

He waits.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

*On.*

*Off.*

*On—*

The kitchen is gone. Jennifer is gone. The drip-drip-drip-drip, all of it— gone. Just darkness. Just the Moon, slivered and thin and sharp, surveying from on high. A cool wind blows. Tussles evergreen branches in soft, whispering tones. There are voices. Words. Pure, burrowing meaning that shivers and splits, blooms, even if it’s almost entirely unheard. Soft, hissing words like an endless rain turned down to near-silence. Whisper. Whisper. Whisper. Whisper.

He looks. His heart is slowly crawling up his throat. Pounding.

There are no stars in the sky. Just pristine, primordial blackness and the sickle Moon. Trees cut by sharp moonlight into twisted leering shapes.

Buildings far away. Tall. Monolithic. They are all shadow, all depth. All alien, inhumane. The buildings look back. The whisper-whisper-whisper-whisper originates there, hissing unsettling silence-without-silence.

Watching.

*Off.*

The ugly, fading kitchen. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Back again. He closes his eyes. Feels something crawling up his neck, sliding down his ear. Back to Jennifer. Back to bed.

Review

“It’s you this time.”

Look at everyone. All the staring faces. So many wide, watching eyes trying to mask their terror. The macabre interest hidden just behind is all to obvious— because you’ve done the same thing when the Calls came. It was you a few days ago, watching the Selection, feeling the strange thrill spasm through you. Fear from the potential, arousal from the promise, and all of it mixed by relief when someone else was chosen. You too had been part of the many quiet whispers and loaded, meaningful wordless looks. Thinking. *Who would it be this time? Who? Why? Why were they chosen?*

Someone coughs and all your thinking implodes. That was *then*. This is now. It’s you. The stares, the quiet whispers and exchanged glances; a solar system of human emotion all about what you will undertake. You lower your gaze to the Phone.

That’s just what it is. A Phone. Sharp, elegant glistening black. It should be worn, scuffed from all that usage, it’s paint changed from how many gripping sweating hands have held it tight to their faces. It seems almost embryonic. Fragile. Too small for the transaction it undertakes. But that’s the power of it, you think, isn’t it? That’s why all of this happens, why it all comes through. Because the *thing* itself is part of it, because—

The Phone rings. The hand holding it trembles. Slightly. The presenter has been holding it too long already, you should’ve already been holding it, already waiting and prepared. Suddenly you are drenched in sweat, slick like something caught in a downpour, needing to be shaken and dried and cleaned. Your suit is your tomb. It clings to your skin, mummification robes prepared. Completed.

The Phone rings. A second ring is unheard of. Sacrilegious. Anger and fear splits the clustered crowd across so many watchful faces, dances from expression to expression. You study each finger clinging around the receiver. They are bone-white. *Will they even let you answer?*, you think, seeing each finger curled around them like that. So tight.

A blink and the Phone is in your hand. Your fingers are the ones tight around it, gripping, sweating against the impossible paint that refuses to wear. Flesh against cool, black metal. Everyone is watching. Holding their breath.

Driving

Driving in the dark, tired. Trying to remember something. Out into night beyond the road is endless, still fields. Tall shadows under a clear and moonless sky. The backbone of the Milky Way sprawls in glorious omnipresence, and I feel diminished beneath it, rightfully. Window cracked so I can smoke because Stacy hates getting in and smelling the signature *Camel* scent. Radio crackles to me in whispers— think it’s jazz.

Driving. A straight road to the end of the horizon. A pre-Columbian vision where the world ends, drops off into the dark, and I can imagine so many castaways drifting as payment for their reckless exploration. Twist the dial for the radio, looking for *WQ34-9*, thinking they’ll say something about the game—

I blinked. Jolt. The road is dirt. Narrow. I’m in a field, surrounded by tall shadows. The radio hisses in long, droning notes like I’m listening to the sea crashing on the shore. Sitting in the dark. No wind. No stars. Fingers caked in ash from a stumped cigarette. Something ancient twitches inside me and makes me look skyward, pressing back into my seat, hand clawing for the glovebox, for the gun—

The stars are going out. Darkness spreads. Silence. The radio hissing mixes with the rush of my blood until it’s all I can hear, all I can feel. Something above, something coming, shaking hand closing around cold metal, fumbling and grabbing, trying to pull—

Light cuts the darkness. Bright, unnerving sunlight done in red. An ugly sunrise at midnight. I’m shaking. Sweating, drenched, pulling at the seatbelt, throwing the door open. *Run, run, run*—

The red engulfs me. Numbness erupts, engulfs me. I can *feel* it looking down at me, looking into me, and the familiarity all comes back, the memories explode from hissing silence. Driving to run from the light, to hide. Hoping if I cross state lines I can retreat—

*D O N O T B E A F R A I D*

A chorus of voices.

I’m surrounded. The red light dominates the sky and the darkness of the night fills countless, bottomless eyes.