{"id":105041,"date":"2019-12-06T18:00:39","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T18:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BungieNet_ContentItem_48436"},"modified":"2019-12-06T18:00:39","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T18:00:39","slug":"the-sundial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/12\/06\/the-sundial\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sundial"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Some time after the death of Panoptes, Infinite Mind and the City\u2019s venture to the Infinite Forest:<\/i><\/p>\n

Osiris stepped back to look upon his work. It towered stories above him.<\/p>\n

The Sundial was complete, a shining beacon in Mercury\u2019s sky. He needed only to seal the chronometric core, which lay bare at the center of the spire, and activate the Arc conduits that ran for miles under the planet\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

Sagira circled the superstructure, scanning every inch of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know about this,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have full confidence. It\u2019s your design.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat work was theoretical! If the Vanguard find out what you did to build it\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this works, the Vanguard will find out either way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sagira darted down as if to dive bomb her chosen, but stopped just short and met him eye to eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know you feel guilty, but there\u2019s no telling what will happen if you turn this thing on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s dead because of me. I\u2019ve made every precaution. I\u2019ve had my Echoes check against trillions of disaster scenarios.\u201d He turned to look at the fluctuating glow of the exposed chronometric core. \u201cMercury is the only planet that will be affected. Because that\u2019s where he died.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere will this stop? Who else will you decide deserves a second chance?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know I can\u2019t make another bargain like this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to make sure you know that.\u201d <\/p>\n

Osiris blinked. She rarely spoke this bluntly, and without irony.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, hey, hey!\u201d came a far-off, echoing shout. \u201cNo! That ain\u2019t right!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Drifter came into view from behind one of the Sundial\u2019s auxiliary pylons, pointing a jabbing finger at Osiris\u2019s machine.<\/p>\n

Sagira narrowed her eye at the rogue Lightbearer and lowered herself to Osiris\u2019s shoulder. \u201cWhy\u2019s he here?\u201d she asked quietly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked him to consult on the engineering work,\u201d Osiris replied, crossing his arms.<\/p>\n

 \u201cYou sicko,\u201d the other man declared, walking a circle around the Warlock, his eyes darting along every surface of the Sundial around them.<\/p>\n

As the Drifter rapped his knuckles on the north pylon, he mumbled, \u201cGhost, do the numbers.\u201d An armored Ghost with a red eye unfolded out of transmat and began a scan pattern on each Sundial spire.<\/p>\n

Drifter walked to the central spire and put his ear up against it. \u201cThis core\u2026\u201d he said, leaning close. His eyes darted back to Osiris. \u201cIt\u2019s whispering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osiris\u2019s expression didn\u2019t change; his arms didn\u2019t uncross. \u201cWe\u2019ll seal the core away. I understand the ramifications.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGood luck keeping that contained. Not something I would bargain with, hotshot.\u201d Drifter stood up and beckoned his Ghost with two fingers. It floated earthward and unleashed a holographic array of statistics along the Sundial deck. <\/p>\n

The red light reflected off the Drifter\u2019s eyes as he drank the numbers in.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour math checks out,\u201d he said, finally, as his Ghost folded away. \u201cIt\u2019ll work. But will you find him? At the exact moment that you need? No guarantees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me worry about that,\u201d Osiris said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust one more question, then. Why all the fuss?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI owe him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI owe a lotta people, Warlock. You\u2019re opening the gates of hell with a Vex key.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Traveler brought me back, I had no friends. No family\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one had anything in the Dark Age.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Saint was always there. And I saw him grow from neophyte to demigod.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drifter shrugged. \u201cWe\u2019ve all had to flex a little. Win a gun fight or two. It\u2019s why we\u2019re still here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all gain strength. But some Lightbearers never grasp a wider view of the world. They\u2019re happy to stick to their ways\u2026 languish. When they could be so much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drifter chuckled and spat, saluting Osiris with a single finger. \u201cI get by.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course you do. I\u2019m like you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drifter smirked.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Saint faced his fears and failure better than any of us, and never strayed from his path. He should get a chance to walk to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe already did. But I\u2019ll leave you to your devices. You lunatic.\u201d The Drifter turned, hands in his pockets, to leave. \u201cIf you short-circuit the universe, you\u2019re on your own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I make a mistake here, you might cease to exist,\u201d Osiris replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe that wouldn\u2019t be so bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t talked about payment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you live through this little experiment, you can be sure I\u2019ll be back to collect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo home. There\u2019s a Guardian you should meet,\u201d Osiris said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, yeah. Hero. Red War. Can\u2019t wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2756\u2756\u2756<\/p>\n

A dozen Echoes flanked Osiris.<\/p>\n

The Sundial spun and sparked above them, around them.<\/p>\n

His Echoes vanished in staccato bursts of chronometric Arc, stepping not elsewhere, but elsewhen, as the Sundial fell silent.<\/p>\n

Osiris could still see and feel through them as twelve of him walked the corridors of time. <\/p>\n

Where those halls were intersected by the Vex network, his Echoes hacked Hobgoblins and Minotaurs apart using Solar Swords powered by sheer will. They hid their shadows and stood still, unblinking, to avoid the Network Minds. Together, they pushed to corners that gave way to the Mercurian Dark Age.<\/p>\n

From there, they separated, entering myriad moments of Saint\u2019s visits to Mercury.<\/p>\n

An Echo encounters a battle-hardened Saint at the mouth of Caloris Basin. Saint is a member of the Pilgrim Guard, and he and his fireteam descend on batteries of Vex Goblins, the bloom of heavy gunfire leading their way. This Saint is too early. The Echo does not approach.<\/i><\/p>\n

Neither does the Echo who watches in a dark corner as Saint\u2019s jumpship lands at a Lighthouse at the Caloris Spires. Its interior is cloaked in shadow. The Cult of Osiris\u2019s retrofit of the structure isn\u2019t due for another age. Saint comes here to keep it clear of Vex attempting to reclaim it. He lights the darkness as he tears Minotaurs apart with Solar fists.<\/i><\/p>\n

An Echo crouches on a cliffside out of sight as, far below, Saint uses his Solar Light to cut through the armor-plated Mercurian soil. Solitary stones line a series of holes that stretch for a dozen meters to either side.<\/i><\/p>\n

An Echo hides in burning light as Saint works shoulder to shoulder with the Sunbreakers to construct the Burning Forge. Their hammering and soldering with Solar knuckles and sledges draws a silent parade of Vex to the building site. The Sunbreakers take turns stepping away from construction to dismantle the intruders using the same Solar implements.<\/i><\/p>\n

An Echo spies Saint from a vantage point on the high plains of the Fields of Glass. The Titan fights for his life against purple-bannered Fallen, bearing the same symbol as modern Dusk soldiers. They are the House of Rain, the lowest House. The burning camp around them is curiously absent of bodies\u2014but Osiris has heard Saint tell this story before. One of Saint\u2019s first missions for the Speaker brought him to Mercury in a failed attempt to \u201cre-take\u201d that planet for humanity. They had not known at the time that the Vex had already started to transform the \u201cgarden world\u201d into a machine. House Rain followed Saint\u2019s jumpship and waited \u2019til the expedition had made camp. Then the Fallen annihilated the colonists Saint was charged to protect and beat him to within an inch of his life. The Echo lives that story first-hand now, and finds himself looking away at the terraformed vegetation at his feet instead. It\u2019s already half machine\u2014grass and metal blades growing beside each other under his boots. A Ketch roars down from the sky and rains heavy munitions on the battlefield, and the Echo\u2019s vantage point fills with rolling clouds of dust. The Echo takes his leave. He\u2019s seen enough.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2756\u2756\u2756<\/p>\n

Osiris\u2019s Echoes scour Saint-14\u2019s timeline on Mercury. But the corridors of time refuse to give way to the moment they need: Saint and the Martyr Mind in the depths of the Infinite Forest. The Echoes work tirelessly for weeks, then months in the space between moments. In desperation, he splits the dozen copies into many thousands more as the work continues fruitlessly.<\/i><\/p>\n

One Echo stays for years against Osiris\u2019s orders. He has never lost control of one before; he didn\u2019t think that was even possible. He and the Echoes are the same. He feels this aberrant copy lose his sense of self. Another few years in, he feels this Echo press the touch of cold metal to his head. <\/i><\/p>\n

And then he feels nothing. <\/i><\/p>\n

Two Echoes wander into the corridors of time with orders not to stop. Brute force has worked for Osiris before. To this day, he can still feel them. Their search continues.<\/i><\/p>\n

The rest eventually succumb to Vex security measures where the network intersects with the corridors of time. Even Osiris\u2019s Light has limits.<\/i><\/p>\n

None of the Echoes ever approaches a Saint. They never find the right one.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2756\u2756\u2756<\/p>\n

Osiris sat quietly at the base of the Sundial. No time had passed since the machine\u2019s activation, but he had just lived a multitude of lives.<\/p>\n

Sagira hovered over his shoulder and asked, hopefully, \u201cDid it work?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Warlock stood, and made his way to the southern border of the Sundial. \u201cShut it down. Wrap everything in a stealth skin. Let nothing, no one, find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osiris disappeared into an incandescent flame.<\/p>\n

Sagira stared at the Sundial\u2019s central spire.<\/p>\n

\u201cDammit,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some time after the death of Panoptes, Infinite Mind and the City\u2019s venture to the Infinite Forest: Osiris stepped back to look upon his work. It towered stories above him. The Sundial was complete, a shining beacon in Mercury\u2019s sky. He needed only to seal the chronometric core, which lay bare at the center of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bungie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}