Halo: Minorca Saga/Chapter Twenty One

The Titan stirs, dreams warping and twisting, shapes shifting and colours fade a then return with new clarity.   Something has changed.   It has had a million names, in a million tongues, all forgotten as those who sued them were consumed before its might. But those who built this place, the ones who dared to seal it within this hushed casket, had the temerity to name it…the Flood.   And for eons, their guardians have stood as silent, watchful sentinels. Watching. Waiting. Protecting. Containing. Preventing escape, but allowing existence. Their wardens and guards, yes, but also their protectors.   Their creators would have despaired at their arrogance. But they fell long ago, on battlefields far away, on worlds too insignificant to recall.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">There must be some kind of way out of here. <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">Its dreams return to incoherent ramblings and sensation – sometimes a memory of ancient battle, sometimes a lowly form moving through a hallway, unopposed by guardians occupied elsewhere. And Caius, the renegade who sought to steal power as if stealing fire from the gods. But fire can burn, and the Titan brooks no dissent.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">There’s too much confusion. <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">The arrogant Angels hover, arguing bitterly – darkness and light, opposed but united against the Titan’s “emptiness”. Sentinels purging corridors of its children, perhaps the last of their kind in this galaxy. Legions throw themselves against weak points and recoil from thrusts. There are too many, far too many. But they never allow it to perish – always it must languish in this unending Labyrinth, until the day arrives when it rises and takes its glorious vengeance.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">''It starts, shocked from its slumber. An image of…'' <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">But no. There are differences, at first subtle but at the same time obvious. These are not those who imprisoned it, but they are remarkably similar. And there are too many similarities for it to be coincidence.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">''And as it ponders this, it realises. Something ''else has changed.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">One of its fingers feels sunlight and the smell of the morning air. Another is buried beneath rubble, debris from the Labyrinth. Something is happening, something destructive enough that the Makers did not consider it. And the guardians are more frantic than ever, burning all in their path.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">Has the day arrived at last? Shall its ascension be unopposed, its return trumpeted by the death keens of millions once again?</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">And in a brief moment of clarity, it touches their minds…</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">It remembers eons of glorious freedom, freeing the pathetic beings who opposed it from the enslavement of what they called life. Who were they to define life? Their existences are bound by time and their frail bodies. The Titan has senses they cannot dream of, memories that stretch back millions of their “years”. An existence greater than the fools could ever dream. It offered this freely – and they denied it, and called it abomination!</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, there is no clear-cut winner. But at least the Titan had survived, meagre scraps scattered across worlds uncounted.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">And then… <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">And then entrapment. Darkness blotting out the light of unity, and despair replacing contempt. Eons spent languishing beneath the surface of this world, trapped and contained. It yearns to break free, to snap its chains and return once again to blessed ascension.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">But time has taught it patience. It has waited for a hundred thousand years. It can wait a little longer.</i> <p class="MsoNormal">  <p class="MsoNormal">And as it waits, it remembers a warrior named Caius. A fleet of thousands that fell before its might. The terrible fury, and the stench of fear. And it remembers the day when the fearsome Titan was finally taught to fear…</i>