[b]Ghost Fragment: Mysteries 4[/b] “A Dead Orbit fireteam had been lost in Old Chicago” spoke my ghost in its robotic voice. “So what? Those clowns tend to be danger-prone, and with the release of the Hive, why send me away from the fight? I, a survivor of the Six Fronts, the Great Disaster, and the Twilight Gap, get to tend to the bones of some careless archaeologists. Some luck I have.” “Well don’t blame me for a Vanguard decision. Who knows? This could be a nice challenge.” “Implying I was blaming you. But don’t get your hopes up, friend.” We went across the surface, barely hitting the crumbling skyscrapers in our path. “Sending you down now. Welcome to Old Chicago.” The air was dank, and an infinite swamp was all that could be seen in every direction. I followed the nav markers my ghost put around leading me to the ruins of a tower, whose sides were lined completely by glass, and covered in vines with thorns, unnerving me. But I am stronger than any other, I had to remind myself, and then dashed inside, my ghost shining a light into the pitch black room. A slow growl was heard. “What the hell was that?” I said aloud. My question was answered as a dark apparition formed in front of me, a ghostly mist, vaguely resembling a man, and must have been eight feet in height faced me, with eyes of blue fire. And it spoke in a hiss, “Light? Where does it come? No matter, it will estingui-” and I shot the shadow through with my fusion rifle. The mist flew away from it, and it fell to the ground. There lay now a man, but no just a man, a man wearing a bond of Dead Orbit. Two more shadows appeared from the darkness, two more victims of the dark mist. This was a domain of the Darkness now, I realized. These shadows now spoke further, and I couldn’t help but listen. “Little light, give yourself up. I always win. I am alive. I am strength. I am power. I am a thing beyond your Traveler. It loses. It is dead. It is weak. It is useless. It is below all else.” “You lie. You are the Darkness, the Traveler is Light. You offer death, it offers life.” I stammered. “I offer truth, it offers a false hope.” The shadows reached out with hands of ice, welcoming me. “I will not join you. You kill, and that is all things of your kind do.” “And? Are you so [i]different [/i]from us?” The words physically hurt now, the arms of the shadow forms seemed closer than before, and all I had to do was take them. “I offer immortality. What does your Traveler give you? An army of the chosen undead, tortured to feel death, only to be revived to die again, and again. and again. That is no salvation. That is no hope. You, and all like you, live an unlife. I can save you from it. Just take my hand.” I took out my ghost, it said some sort of warning, but I can’t remember it, and I tossed it aside, and its Light was swallowed by the shadows. I took its hand. It was cold and warm at the same time, and I began to feel a sleepiness within myself. The last thing I heard was “Eternity is very close. Can you feel yourself slipping?” And whoever I was didn’t exist anymore.