Two: Messenger of Ruination

The Librarian didn't actually return for several local years, closer to five Earth years. It was an exercise in patience; he couldn't actually remember the last time that he'd had real downtime that wasn't just a moment to catch his breath before being shipped like so much cargo to another world to fight, much less five years of it.

Venera and Kenera helped him in that respect, teaching him several Forerunner dialects and what they could about everything they knew, in addition to supplementing the information his ancilla gave him with their own experiences. Among other things, Kenera taught him a meditation technique that actually helped him keep the Flood infection on a tighter leash, and Venera took him out exploring in the local star systems.

And his ancilla herself - she didn't have a name and he wasn't any good at giving them, so he just took to calling her Déjà - gave him access to a wealth of information, both physical databases and an esoteric cloud database called "the Domain". He'd never really been one for research, but he devoured everything she gave him no matter what it was about. Still, what interested him most was what the Forerunners knew about human history. It was strange to him, looking at humanity through an exterior lens, but what they knew was invaluable.

Humanity had had problems with something like the Insurrection before, several times. Many splinter groups throughout history had broken off to try and form their own governments or even completely destroy the "home government". The only difference was, the Insurrection won - but at a cost.

These Insurrections at least, never pulled together to replace what they had torn down, and human society fragmented. Billions died because of the fighting, the loss of shared knowledge, decentralization, even in-fighting between the ancient Insurrectionists themselves. In a few cases, some groups even lost spaceflight and were bound to their worlds for hundreds, even thousands of years. Humanity lost contact with other subsets, their evolution diverged, and there was more fighting when they were finally reunited.

While far from an ideal solution, perhaps the UNSC and ONI were in fact justified in creating the SPARTAN-II Program in an attempt to hold everything together.

But it was the Domain itself that he found strangest of everything he encountered. The armor he wore let his ancilla access the database, but every time she did so, he found his mind following her path.

At least to him, the Domain looked something like a cathedral or library built of faintly iridescent metal, with countless halls and levels, with access terminals everywhere, connected to data streams that seemed to flow in glowing channels through the metal. Whatever the Domain actually was, it didn't appear to be Forerunner - or at least not any that he knew. He supposed it could have been an idealized version of their work, perhaps what they hoped to one day make real, but the Domain itself seemed to tell him that that wasn't the case.

The Forerunners he saw there - called "Haruspis" or "Haruspices" - noticed him but only in passing, and they didn't seem to care that he was there or even that he was human. They were more interested in what the Domain was doing, how it responded to his presence. It seemed to be alive, to have a mind of its own, and it unearthed things in response to him, opened up new paths and recalled information otherwise lost, buried under everything new that was added on a daily basis.

It also seemed to be leading him to something. It whispered to him, murmured about an ancient Forerunner named "Boundless", kept bringing her research to the fore and once even metaphysically placed it in his hands. He read it from beginning to end enough times that he could practically recite it from memory, and when he mentioned it in a transmission to the Librarian, she directed him to a physical copy she had acquired from one of Boundless's contemporaries.

The Domain had not made any alterations to it whatsoever, which both the Librarian and the Haruspices found very interesting. "The records in the Domain have been known to change over time," the Lifeworker informed him, "apparently of their own accord and possibly as a result of new information being added. That this has gone unchanged for almost a million years is very interesting indeed."

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Then one day, the Domain said, Charum Hakkor.

John looked up from the reports he'd been reading. Records of the Human-Forerunner War were still very close to the surface, metaphorically speaking, and he was poring over everything he could find, learning more on the ancient history of his kind and both humans' and Forerunners' triumphs and mistakes during their war against each other.

He blinked. "What?"

Charum Hakkor, the Domain said again, First-Light-Weaves-Living-Song returns. Tell her 'Charum Hakkor.'

He frowned and let the Domain gently shunt him back out into the real world.

The Spartan was still frowning when he emerged, but he got up and went to find the twins.

Venera and Kenera were sparring in an empty room in the estate, but they knew one another so well that they weren't really getting anywhere in terms of victory. They almost seemed to read each other's minds or even see the future, and in some cases one moved to block before the other had even moved to strike.

He watched them for a few minutes, then said, "What's Charum Hakkor?"

Both of them stopped mid-strike and blinked at him. "Charum Hakkor?" Venera repeated, brow furrowed.

He nodded, and they straightened and stepped away from each other. "It's a star system on the edge of the galaxy," she answered, "the extreme edge, right on the border of intergalactic space. Known for having a lot of Precursor architecture." She hesitated, then continued, softer, "It's where the Didact said our parents died."

Kenera tilted her head just slightly. "Why do you ask?"

"The Domain says that the Librarian's on her way back. It seems like it wants her to take me there."

That made both of them give him a look.

But sure enough, the Librarian arrived only a few local hours later. She looked tired, like she'd been away five thousand years instead of just five. "No good news, I take it," John said quietly.

She shook her head. "The Didact fought hard, but we lost. The Master Builder and his team have won with their Halo Array. Though I must say… They have plans for twelve rings, but you only spoke of seven, and much smaller than what they are planning. I confess I'm almost afraid to find out the reason for the discrepancies."

"As am I." The Ark had rebuilt Zero-Four after it had been destroyed, so John didn't think that the reason was some of the rings had been destroyed. And "smaller" Halos? How much smaller were they talking? Or rather, how much bigger were these? Especially since the rings as he remembered them had still been enormous, bigger than anything humanity had made by the end of the war.

"You don't look surprised to see that I have returned. Was there news of my coming?"

John pursed his lips. "News. Don't know if it qualifies as good. The Domain said you were returning and to tell you 'Charum Hakkor.'"

"Ah," she sighed, "I had wondered which one to choose. It seems that it has done the choosing for me."

"What were the other options?"

"One of them was Janjur Qom, home of the San'Shyuum. You know them as the Prophets."

That made him hiss. It had completely slipped his mind that the member species of the Covenant were here as well; out of sight, out of mind. He felt the crawling heat of the Flood supercells activating, slithering through his veins, and he turned away to do his mental exercises to get it back under control. "Do not take me to that planet," he growled, "I will destroy them."

"They were once humanity's allies - they have done nothing to you."

"Yet,"he returned through gritted teeth.

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Charum Hakkor hummed.

The Forerunners didn't notice it, likely couldn't hear, but the closer they got, the more John became aware that the main planet was emitting a sound that wasn't exactly a sound. It was a vibration of sorts that he felt more than heard and formed shapes in his mind's eye; he traced the paths of the orbital arches with his thoughts long before they came into view.

But there was something else - a void, a mental black hole of wrath and hunger that he skirted the edges of. If it was self-aware, it hadn't noticed him, and he was eager to keep it that way.

whoever made such a place must now live in chains; there is no other explanation for their absence

The ship landed on the surface, on the outskirts of an ancient human city built on top of older Precursor structures. John was the last one off the ship, having been collecting some weapons, just in case, and he looked around.

The planet was still and empty, save for the dark anger somewhere nearby. Some memories stirred as he walked the streets - mostly ancient battles long ended - but nothing about the Flood. He saw phantoms running through the streets, followed the fighting and watched the end of the Human-Forerunner War nine thousand years past.

John found his way to the base of one of the massive orbital arches and looked up. Even human space elevators didn't compare to the size and strength of the construction; it filled the whole of his vision at the base and narrowed to a slender curve high overhead, almost like a Halo ring.

He reached out and laid a hand on the arch - and the mental hum intensified, the metal rippling under his hands. The whole arch shivered and swayed, making him backpedal and lift his suppressor - not that it would do much if an attack came. Venera and Kenera did the same, putting themselves between the arch and the Librarian, but after a moment the arch settled.

When it had been still for almost a minute, the Librarian slipped past her guards to approach. The arch didn't react when she touched it, or even when her armor scanned it. But the moment John touched it again, it rippled and rolled under his fingers. "I almost wish there was a Builder I could safely take in confidence," she said, watching it happen, "I'm sure they would find this as fascinating as I do your cells."

She and Venera took the data back to the ship for analysis, letting John and Kenera keep walking the empty streets. The Spartan's feet brought him to a massive arena, then down below, where another smaller area waited below the surface.

There was a massive thing at the center, a capsule of some kind, of both human and Forerunner make, the latter covering the former. "The Didact told us about this," Kenera said quietly, though her voice still echoed around the chamber, "There's… something inside. He called it the Primordial."

John warily let his suppressor snap to his back plates and moved up to stand at the edge of the railings, hands curling around the metal.

This was the source of the wrath, the hunger, and the moment he got closer, it became aware of him.

Its focus was like nothing he had ever felt before. The closest equivalent he could come up with was when the Gravemind had spoken directly into his mind on High Charity, but that had been a voice, personality. This had no real voice to speak of, only conveyed impressions directly into his brain - a means of communication against which there was no defense.

You, it sighed, Through a glass, darkly… I see you, child. Who are you?

His skin crawled. He tried to withdraw, but its awareness held him tight and examined him like he was an animal, an insect awaiting dissection and worthy of no more regard than that. As it did so, it appeared in his mind's eye, a massive, twisted, unholy mix of mammal and arthropod, holding him grasped in its largest pair of hands. Its head looked something like a horseshoe crab with glittering eyes, wicked and cruel, and it was attached by a thick neck to something akin to a warped, obese, four-armed ape, the upper set of arms larger than the lower.

Though it was his enemy, the Flood in him made him hungry, and gave him back more than a little of the temper and pride that the UNSC had tried to train out of him. It surged now in wrath, howling, working with him for once, and lashed out with sharp claws at the thing that held him, catching it and ripping in before it could raise its own defenses. It withdrew from him, stung.

But then the thing laughed.

How interesting. All the gears are now in motion, spinning out our revenge at last. I wonder if you truly will make a difference in the end, SPARTAN-117. Let's find out, shall we?

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They left within the hour, but even under his armor, John was still dripping with cold sweat. "What can we do?" he asked, "If this thing - this Primordial - is right, if the Flood is on its way…"

"We will watch," said the Librarian, "and we will wait. But there are other things we can do in the meantime. I do not believe it is a coincidence that the Domain told us to come here now, or that it has shown favor to you and Boundless. Once all of this furor about Shields versus Fortresses dies down, we shall see what might be seen."