Destiny Horizon (Chapter 1: The Awakening)
Written by Sky Nite / Inspired by Destiny and Log Horizon
Suddenly, I was nowhere. Then, as my vision began to take in faint light, a voice called out to me. “Guardian… Guardian? Eyes up Guardian!”
I realized that I was face down on the ground, staring at dirt, so I pushed myself into a sitting position, lifting my eyes to the metallic voice. What I saw was impossible.
“It worked… You’re alive!” clanged the metal voice “You don’t know how long I’ve been looking for you.”
“Ghost!” I exclaimed, pointing at the metal flying polygon.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a Ghost!”
“Actually, now I’m your Ghost. And you… How do you know that? You’ve been dead a long time. According to my readings, you died long before Ghosts emerged from the Traveler.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but was interrupted by an alien roar echoing across the horizon. For the first time, I fully took in my surroundings. Rusted cars covered an overgrown and snow covered landscape, with a huge, run-down wall less than 100 meters away. This was unmistakably the area of Earth where new Destiny players learned the basics of warfare.
The Ghost continued, “This is Fallen territory, we aren’t safe here. I have to get you back to the city. Hold still.” The Ghost shimmered then disappeared. “Don’t worry, I’m still with you. We need to move, fast.”
“Enough! We know the rest of what happened.”
“Yep, we all had to to go through it after The Awakening.”
Ray pursed his lips. “So you both had the same experience? Your Ghost started by saying the lines from the game, then you fought through the tutorial mission?” The other two Guardians nodded their heads. “How did you handle the real life combat?”
Keif laughed. “By charging the enemy and punching them with my fists!” Keif was a Titan class, known for being able to take a beating and cause utter destruction up close to the enemy.
“Oh please, you probably hugged every piece of cover you could find when you figured out the bullets hurt.” Crystal asserted a confidence that only served to enhance her beautiful appearance.
“Oh yeah? What would a Hunter know about bravery?”
“How to use it intelligently! And know when people are faking it.”
“It’s too bad there’s no way to buy tents, would really complete your setup.”
“Camping is a legitimate…”
“Enough!” Both Guardians turned to Ray. “We’ve established that likely everyone started in this new world via the tutorial mission. We’ll have to talk to more people to be sure, but that is only ONE mystery. We have too many pressing issues to be fighting.”
Keif straightened, “Agreed. What’s our first plan of action?”
“Luke, how were we all able to find ships on Earth?”
“Who’s Luke?”
“My Ghost.” Luke the Ghost appeared with a shimmer of light.
Crystal was now smiling, “You named it?”
“I figured that calling him by his race was dehumanizing.”
“But he’s not human.”
“You know what I mean.”
Luke glanced at Keif and Crystal, then turned back to Ray. “I’ve been communicating with the other Ghosts, and it appears that all 3 million of us were sent into different timestreams this morning when we approached Earth.
“Different timestreams?” Keith scratched his head.
“From what I can tell, the Traveler sent us out of sync while on Earth, then brought us back into sync when entering the City. Still, this doesn’t explain why your personalities are all so… strange. Or why you know things you shouldn’t.”
Ray fingered his chin thoughtfully. In his real body, or rather, his old one, he’d made a habit of stroking his facial hair. In this new body he was an Awoken, and stroking his smooth face quickly reminded him of this. Having slightly blueish skin wasn’t bad overall given some alternatives. Ray wasn’t sure if he’d ever have gotten used to having a metal body.
Interestingly, people’s faces seemed to resemble their “real life” counterparts. Ray had known Keith in the “real world”, and his Human face matched exactly. The two had been friends since high school, but had not seen much of each other the past three years since they went to college in different countries. They had managed to keep their friendship strong by playing different games over the internet. Destiny had been their newest game of choice, beating out League of Legends (LoL), which they had both become burnt out on.
Ray had met Crystal through LoL, but had never actually seen her in person. When Ray switched over to Destiny, she had gotten into it as well.
When Ray first arrived at the Tower, he was one of the few people around. Everyone he saw looked afraid and nervous.
“There are several things we should take care of,” said his Ghost.
“Easy there, Dinklebot.” His Ghost looked at him unamusedly. “What, don’t like that name? What should I call you then? I can’t just keep calling you Ghost.”
Ray’s Ghost looked thoughtful for several seconds, “What would you like to call me? As long as it doesn’t sound condescending, I would be happy with it.”
“How about Luke?”
“Luke. Luuuke. LUKE! Yes, I think that will be a zwip identifying term.”
“Zwip?”
Luke began flying in quick zigzags through the air, causing a faint “zwip” sound to occur with each sharp cut.
“So that’s really all you can tell me?” Ray had spent the last 30 minutes trying to probe the Warlock Vanguard commander for answers. “So basically, as far as you know, we’ve been revived to help you push back the Darkness? We now work for you?”
“Not for us, with us,” the Warlock Vanguard replied. “We are set up to communicate to you where effort for the war is needed. We had only about 500,000 Guardians working up until today, but it appears that new Guardians are flooding into the Tower.”
“So what if I want to take an action against the Darkness that isn’t authorized by you?”
“Well, that’s the great thing about this system. Each Guardian is autonomous. We have suggestions of missions and things needed for the war effort, but each Guardian is responsible for what to do with their time. And, when something helpful is completed that didn’t have a pre-existing reward, it is not uncommon for rewards to be given anyways.”
Walking resignedly towards the central Tower area, Ray had received a call. “Incoming communication from Crystal Coloran” had popped up in front of his vision, startling him from his slump. “How do I answer?” asked Ray.
“Just click the answer button in front of you,” said Luke.
Sure enough, Ray was able to activate the answer button by simply reaching out his hand. Augmented reality at work. “Hello?”
“Ray! I’m so glad you’re here. Or rather, I’d prefer that we weren’t here, but since we are, I’m glad I’m not alone. Where are you?”
“Just on my way to the center of the Tower from the Vanguard tables.”
“Ok, I was just about to go there, how about if I meet you at the stairs?”
As Ray approached the stairs, he caught sight of a Hunter girl waiting there. She waved a little timidly at him, and just as he raised his hand to return the greeting, Keif descended behind her.
“Keif!”
“Ray!”
The two had embraced as Crystal looked on sourly, then, sensing Crystal felt left out, Ray had attempted to embrace her, only to have Keif do the same, ending in an awkward three way hug with Ray hugging an unresponsive Crystal, crushed into her by the Titan Keif.
“Picture perfect moment.” said Luke, as he made an obvious camera shutter sound. “If you ever try to do that to me, I’ll swap your liver and intestines.”
Keif relaxed his hug and Ray quickly scooted away from Crystal.
“So,” said Keif, “did you guys just run through the tutorial mission?”
It had been 12 hours since what was now being referred to as “The Awakening”. 3 million Destiny players had simultaneously awoken on Earth in Old Russia, and after completing the tutorial mission had been taken to the Tower. In Destiny, there had been many different “instances” of the Tower, since servers in what was being referred to as “the old world” had been unable to handle 3 million players simultaneously. The Tower in this world was made up of many thousands of exact replicas of the Tower in the Destiny game, and could be accessed by transmatter teleportation or walking up a staircase that hadn’t existed in the game. The Tower was essentially floor after floor of what players had previously known as the Tower. Additionally, each floor had its own sleeping quarters, which were essentially small dorm rooms, and cost 100 glimmer a night to sleep in.
The only other difference in the Tower from the game they had all played was the appearance of several different food booths. They sold different food items ranging from 50 to 200 glimmer, with different food options available every day (but every location in the Tower having the same options available at the same time). Ray had been surprised at how good the food was. His first order of space-grown chicken (apparently the Zero-G made the meat more tender) and some vegetables he’d never seen before had been well worth the 200 glimmer, but left him low on cash.
By now, people had realized that if they took their ship out to orbit, they could fly and go anywhere they wanted, but if people attempted to navigate to an area outside of the recommended drop points, a popup would appear in their HUD that permanent death could possibly result if they went to unsupported areas.
When people went to the marked areas, if they died, their Ghosts could usually revive them after a few seconds of work. However, some areas had what the Ghosts referred to as “darkness energy”. This energy would interfere with the Ghosts healing abilities, making it so that all one Ghost could do was stop their Guardian from completely dying. The only way to revive players in these areas was to have a fellow Guardian supply the Ghost with extra energy (although, Luke would correct me in saying that they are actually supplied with Light, which, like in the game, seems to be some sort of mystical energy).
Like in the Destiny game, certain areas could only be accessed by a limited number of people. When a group approached one of the areas where Guardian numbers were limited, their timestream was divided, like what happened during the tutorial mission. If an entire party died in one of these timestreams, they were transmitted back to their ships. Unfortunately, any gear or glimmer found on that trek was not recoverable through the warped timestream, so to do more than level yourself, your team had to survive the entire mission without wiping. Missions and strikes seemed to follow the same basic structure as in the Destiny game, meaning they were repeatable (although once you’d done a story mission, your Ghost became as aware of the repetition as you were). This led some Ghosts to theorize that the Traveler was dividing timestreams so that Guardians could gain experience and equipment for later battles, while others argued that perhaps the Darkness was multidimensional, and had to be stopped in multiple time streams.
After The Awakening, everyone had been level 1. Light seemed to have some sort of transmutational power. When a person earned enough experience points (which Ray was starting to suspect might be Light trapped in living beings), that person would level up like in the game, and their armor would suddenly gain new powers. “Transmutational Armor of Light,” Luke had once called it.
At first, people had been afraid to journey outside of the Tower. However, when the braver individuals jumped into difficult challenges and died, word quickly got around that, in the marked areas at least, death was not permanent. This was not to say that fighting immediately went back to what it had been. Being the person actually performing the actions made it much more difficult to fight then simply controlling an in-game character. And of course, getting shot HURT. While your shields were up, enemy fire felt like light punches. However, as soon as that shield broke, it felt like, well, like getting shot. Ghosts would repair your wounds on the fly, as long as you didn’t pass out, but the experience was far from pleasant. Dying repeatedly was horrible, or at least that’s what Ray had heard, and could imagine. Keif had died once taking out a tank with his Super, but apart from that no one in his initial Fireteam had died yet.
After their initial meeting on the stairs, the three had agreed to team up as a Fireteam and try to figure out what was going on. They had been one of the initial groups to go into the story missions, and despite having to adjust to the new style of fighting, were able to use their knowledge of the missions and practiced teamwork to succeed.
“Hey Ray.” Ray looked up from his notes. Crystal had just entered his dorm room. “What are you working on?”
“Oh, you know, just compiling what we know so far. I’m going to upload this to the G-Net tonight so that other Guardians can use it.” The G-Net functioned exactly like the Internet, but only contained content made by Guardians. Some pages existed from the 500,000 or so Guardians that had existed before today, but there was an overall lack of content. Luke dismissed this as obvious, since most Guardians simply relied on their Ghosts to be the brains, and the Ghosts had their own networks and channels that didn’t require a Graphic User Interface (GUI). Ray realized that if they were going to successfully figure out what was going on, they would need to set up an efficient way for Guardians to share ideas.
“What’s with that look?”
“What look?”
“You look like you have a nefarious plan.”
Ray smiled. “We’re going to create the number one G-NET website. We’ll call it Reddit.”
“That already exists.”
Ray’s smile grew even wider. “Not here it doesn’t. Not yet.”
