Lore:Companions

"And my vanquisher will read that book, seeking the weapon, and they will come to understand me, where I have been and where I was going."The following is a verbatim transcription of an official document for archival reasons. As the original content is transcribed word-for-word, any possible discrepancies and/or errors are included.

Companions is a Lore book introduced in The Final Shape. Entries are unlocked by completing the Convalescence series of quests from Micah's Conduit. The entries contains the interaction between Guardians and Ghosts through the Traveler's Light.

HE WAKES

I see the world for the first time. This world. It is lovely. It will be lovelier when we are together.

That is my first thought, and it is both question and desire. When "we" are together? I do not know who you are. But when we are together, I will have the answer to the first question and first desire.

I twirl the petals of my body. I contract them and pull them to the core of myself. I am filled with Light. A wonder. A wellspring.

I float down to touch the ground. The grass is wet with dew. I roll in the soft, wet grass. The sun is rising over the mountains, and it is beautiful. The sky is lit with pink and blue. Colors I know. Colors I have never seen before.

I see that others follow me, then break away, and look out into the world. They have the same question. They begin to leave. One by one, they leave.

"Where are you going?" I ask a gold-and-red Ghost. She looks thoughtful for a moment.

"I don't know," she answers. "Somewhere good."

She moves on. I watch her float away until she slips out of sight. I watch others leave the same way. The same question.

I look back to where I came from. The Traveler is the whole of my vision and the whole of my feeling. I know what it is and that I have come from it.

I feel my first devotion. I am a part of the Traveler, and it has let me leave it so that I may wander through this lovely world.

I feel my first fear. I must leave it in my search. But I must not abandon it. It must not abandon me.

I am its heart.

Its hands.

Its eyes.

Its warmth.

I am a Ghost. I wander. I search. There's a song, a spark, and I will search for it. It is mine; it is ours. It is somewhere in this lovely world.

I shake the dew from my shell and move on.

To find purpose.

To find you.

SHE RISES

You are clean, white bones, washed up on a forgotten shore. Three ribs, six knuckles, two femurs, and a sacrum. The bone is porous and old. Empty of marrow. You were not laid to rest. Was there anyone to mourn you? I can't know. But you are caught between sharp rocks, and no one has found you.

But I found you! I searched for so long, and now I've found you. You are clean, white bones, but you are singing! You are singing to me–each bone the same song. I resonate with it. I can feel it deep within me, in this tiny core of me, reaching out to what those bones could be.

I see you, into you, with a burst of blue light. It sinks into your bones, and I see every promise they make. I'm bringing you back to me, back home, back where you belong. At my side. With me.

This is who I am, what I am. What I was made to do. I cover your bones with flesh. I cover your flesh with cloth. I bring the rest of you to me. I bring you back to a moment of your life, and I will hold you there for as long as I exist.

You wake.

You take a breath. Your first breath. A first, Light-filled gasp. You open your eyes as if you had never used them before, blinking into the sun that had bleached your singing bones clean and white.

I tell you what you are. But I can't tell you who you are. You need to tell me that.

You stand, shakily, and walk out from the water. Pick your way across the treacherous rocks that held you captive for so long. Then you reach out and touch me, as if I couldn't be real. But I am real. As real as you, and just as alive.

"What is my name?" you ask, the first question. Then another. "Where are we going?"

"I don't know," I tell you. "Whatever and wherever you want. We get to choose."

You consider this. It scares you, but I'm here to comfort you. I've seen your bones, alone and forgotten. Waiting for me.

Down into the core of you, I know you as I know myself.

HE SEES

My Ghost, my shadow, my self. You didn't lead me here. You didn't say, "I have something to show you," and trek me across the world to see it. You just said, "let's go," and I went with you.

Why? Because the world was new in my reborn eyes, and I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted you to guide me.

When we finally crest the mountain, I see it at last. I see where you brought me, and why.

The Traveler hangs heavy in the sky, low and full.

"We're here," you say. I take a breath of cold air.

I have a vision. A great city. Vitreous castles built from hourglass sand. We will rise and meet the Traveler. We will protect humanity the way you said the Traveler protects us, the way it wants us to protect it.

"This is where you come from?" I ask you. You peer out from behind me. You're looking at the Traveler, too.

"Yes," you say, nodding.

"You're home," I say.

"No," you say, with all the warmth in your little body. "You're my home."

You drop into my waiting palm, and I hold you to my chest. Here, in the place where the world cradles the Traveler–here, where the Traveler touches the world–I will hold you close to me.

I see that the Traveler is a Ghost, too. A Ghost to see Earth reborn.

SHE FALLS

You're small. You're so small. I should have protected you. I hold you in my hands, these last pieces of you, but you're gone. There's no love, no Light, left for me to hold. Only these last pieces.

My Ghost. My heart. You are my heart. You were my heart that I allowed to escape the embrace of my body so that it might know the world.

There is nothing left of my heart. The Light is gone. The breath from my body is gone–the body that you pulled together from smears of skin and blood and a clot of tangled hair.

I thought I would break apart and return to those pieces, just as you have become these pieces, but I have not. I go on. I have one last life left, with no Light, no Ghost to guide me.

I take these pieces and place them beneath a tree. I arrange the fronds of your shell around you like a funeral wreath. I let you rest in the gentle and undying earth that the Traveler came to long ago, far away.

I must go on without you. That's what you gave to me. A heart to beat, hands to hold, and feet that will let me walk away from these pieces of you.

HE DREAMS

It wasn't a dream. Dead men don't dream. But I still talk about it like one because how else are people gonna understand? No one else has come back. Not from a final death. Just me.

So I'll tell it like it was a dream and I was asleep.

Firstly, if I was asleep and it was a dream—and I wasn't, and it wasn't, just to be clear—then I didn't want to wake up from it. Where I was, I don't think anyone would want to wake up. You were there, Sundance. The Traveler was there. I couldn't see it, but I felt it. That deep, in-your-bones feeling. The white light that feels like nothin' but love. I was part of everything I'd ever lost, and it was all there, that feeling. I let myself get lost in it, and… I was there, with everything. I was home.

And then I woke up.

And I was alone.

Last time, I wasn't alone for long. I was right behind you on the road to oblivion. But those few moments without you? All agony.

And now? Here, without you? All agony.

I didn't know how I was going to go on. I didn't want to go on. I thought, "Here's where I'll stop. I'll plant my foot right here. That's all there is. That's all I'll get."

But no, I didn't have a choice. It goes on, whatever 'it' is. No one asks you how you want to do it. No one tells you how, either. And it wouldn't matter, anyway. It just goes on. It drags you back.

So I'll go on without you, Sundance. I have to.

But I'll still wonder: what would I have done with a choice?