shards of myth

When I drift on the edges of sleep, the memory plays within my mind, just barely within reach. Enough that I can grasp it in spite of myself.

I remember the anger.

They cultivated my rage issues, and I know it better than anyone else aboard this ship. It took Sakura to bring me back from the edge of oblivion, and when I did, the Empire paid for it with their lives. I didn’t have to betray them. The Executor who took our father and killed our older brother did that for me. I hated the Old War just as much as any other, and I still fought in it, because those beings still wanted me to die.

They all wanted us dead, as far as I saw it. We were nothing but demons to them, and still are. But I might have cemented that in their minds forever.

I remember the battlefield, and my platoon – me, my sister, Sakura and Jackdaw. The only family I knew I had. My sister was not a fighter, and the Sentients swarmed her. The other two were in just as much danger, for Sakura, despite her sheer talent with her gifts, still could not walk anymore. I remembered the shadow of Hunhow himself. I always knew about him, but when he made himself known to me, I still didn’t remember. On that battlefield, we were going to die with no pomp or circumstance.

I remember the switch flipping in my brain. A howl so mighty that it rattled the ground beneath us and tore a rift open in the sky. It poisoned the lesser Sentients to death, and it weakened their king. From the rift, I felt fragments of myself that had been long sent scattered across the Void, and I pulled on the strongest one I could in that moment. Anything, to save them. In that moment, I summoned a demon far more powerful than they believed I was.

The being was not much larger than I was, only maybe having a few inches on me. But she had muscle to rival the greatest Dax, and tattoos that depicted lilies and ancient Earth constellations and poems in Orokin script that I had never once heard before. She stood there in a dress of brightest violet, and scarves that blinked and flickered in every color of the rainbow. In one hand, a Galatine like mine. Her hair was much longer and fuller than my own. When she looked around, I saw hollow eye sockets filled with nothing more than faint prismatic light. Her hands, permanently stained with a black ichor.

I saw the confusion and the wrath in what remained of her eyes as she felt around the battlefield. I saw pain and sorrow as she stood over me. This terrible being, this reflection of my worst, was more broken than even what they did to our frames.

When she turned toward the battlefield, everything stilled. Frozen in stasis, while the rift in the sky melted them. Already, their king had been sent running from fear that this void devil could summon something as powerful and terrifying as him. The sheer carnage, as her blade cleaved anything that had gotten caught, was something I never forgot, even after waking.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but I knew in my heart that it was me.

And that terrified me.

Most of the legends across the Origin System these days are the tales of what people actually saw – warframes who did great deeds to save the colonies and the people who lived in them. They are noble and should be proud to protect the innocent, even in death.

My legend on the other hand, is a warning story. A cautionary tale about the girl who summoned a demon who still, supposedly, roams the system, unfettered by the airless expanses of space or the evils that plague the colonies. They only know what they saw, so I can’t blame them. I know the being left just as suddenly as she had arrived. She told me to stay strong, and vanished, back to wherever across the Void she had come from.

Soon after, I was taken to the moon, and put to rest, unknowing of my tumultuous future. I dreamed of being those other splinters.

I dreamed of being from ancient Earth, being a heroic fusion of wolf and man, or being taken by Others the same way the Void took we survivors of the Zariman.

I dreamed of a vast multiverse, and a small apartment in the spires of a city that nearly consumed a whole planet.

I dreamed of being a being who was built from a fox and shaped like a human, who culled the source of the Infestation while being able to stand in it barefoot. It did not claim her Origin System, instead it claimed a whole other world, far away.

I dreamed of a world of my own creation. A miracle, that required a sacrifice. My family was gone, and I mourned them in a tower in a place away from time. But I was given hope, and was drawn out. I found them again, they lived again, in a world of magic and wonder.

I dreamed of a violet dragon, who fell fast and hard for a vampire and a true demon who turned out to be gods. I would die for Jackdaw and Sakura, and I knew it even in my real mind. They were familiar, and wonderful.

And I dreamed of that reflection of my worst, drifting through a far away and unknown space, trying to destroy that strange voidscape… or perhaps mend it. I couldn’t tell.

I saw our world through the lens of an ancient Earth video game when first my chosen frame was roused from its cryopod. Where others saw through the eyes of their chosen, I saw through the eyes of myself, at a computer console, reflecting the Origin System I knew through its screen. When I woke, I was shocked to learn that my true reality was this one.

When I truly remembered all I had been through… I feared it. I feared the day I summoned that horror, like they did. I feared that I had that power within me, somewhere, though I haven’t been able to reach out and touch those shards again since.

I fear the day that I will.