//------------------------------//
// Songbird 
// Story: Friendship is Paracausal 
// by Cinder Script 
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Falling is unpleasant. A quick burst of Light can nullify momentum, as can a quick meeting of face and stone. If given the choice, I suggest the former. The sole redeeming factor is that it is often a quick death, assuming one can angle themselves to land on their head or you are provided a convenient cave in by a companion. As an aside: being crushed to death is also quite quick, as long as one positions herself beneath a sufficiently large boulder. 

Unfortunately Death By Sudden Deceleration is very high in my list of most common demise, below FizzBuzz Collateral and above Hive Boomer.  More often than not, as I've gotten quite good at Glide Braking, performed horizontally at the gentle suggestion of a shield bash to the muzzle. 

You may ask, Songbird, why do you keep a list of most common demise? The answer is as simple as it is disheartening: I am very, very bad at the task of staying alive, despite my best efforts. To many this would be a temporary burden, a curse lifted by a swift descent into the harmonious silence of the Void. I am a Guardian however, a Warlock in fact, and I have no intention of staying dead for longer than necessary. A sentiment my Ghost shared, as he made very clear, regardless of whatever memories the Void may bring. His memory is not one I am willing to stain by defying his wishes.

For many Guardians, death is only a common state of affairs while in the field, with only the occasional pancaking caused by attempts to climb the many precarious overhangs one can find along the City's wall. I am not most Guardians. I have been crushed to death by falling scaffolding, impaled by broken windows, frozen in the freezer of my favorite restaurant, and in one notable case shredded in a wood chipper while helping clear condemned buildings. Staying in the libraries of my peers, or my own, is no shield from my horrid luck. It is the height of irony to be reduced to the consistency of paste by a falling bookshelf containing the preserved journals of lost Guardians. Fizzbuzz has not let me forget it, though I am glad that my remains are reconstituted into Light during the resurrection process, otherwise I would have made quite a few enemies among the cryptarchs that day. 

Most Guardians would be disheartened by such regular meetings with the Pale Pony, perhaps going so far as to believe themselves cursed by the Traveler. I am not most Guardians. In the early days, before Fizzbuzz, I grew... Frustrated by the regularity of my demise. Oak Blossom would suggest I try looking up more, and did once attempt to fashion me a helmet durable enough to survive a fall from orbit. It could, by the way, though it was not enough to deflect the thrice cursed blade of a Hive Prince. Daredevil seconded the helmet idea, and attempted to help Blossom create armor suitable to surviving in those Dark days. If anyone ever asks, they did not create the Hadronic Essence most Warlocks use to this day, and most certainly have not spent years attempting to blend it with Golden Age technology. 

These responses certainly helped, but they were not an answer to my true problem. All that lives must die, though Paracausal entities such as Guardians do have a safety net in the Traveler's Light. Most rely upon their Ghost for this, allowing their Ghost to pour the Light of the Traveler through themselves into the Guardian, igniting the Light that makes up our being. Thus we return ourselves to life, despite the universe's insistence that we are too dead to do so. Such is the nature of Light, and those who wield its Paracausal power. It was this understanding that began my road to understanding the song of the Void, and the foundation of the Starsinger Warlock Tradition. 

The establishment of that word, Paracausal, is relatively new. Established from a pre-Golden Age language, which we discovered in the buried remains of Romane, it roughly means "Beyond Causality." A rudimentary, if not incorrect, summary of what we've known for centuries. The Light, and the Darkness, are Paracausal. They are beyond the realm of Fate and causality, because their sources are beyond this mere plane of reality. I will use the explanation which was used to educate new Warlords, before it was replaced by the more succinct title of Guardian. 

Before me rests a sword. Upon its table nothing more than a lump of metal, shaped by the heat and hammers of its foundry. It cannot harm you. It cannot cut you. It cannot destroy. All it can do is weigh down the table, carrying with it the weight which gravity imbues it. I can give it to a griffin, and she will give it direction. In her claws it gains force, momentum, and so it can cut. In her claws, it can end a life, or sever a branch. It does this through the sharpness and weight of its blade, through the force given to it by its wielder, as the laws of physics describe. These laws are intrinsic to our universe, to the best of our knowledge. Should the griffin lift her sword and plant it in my chest, it would pierce my heart and, without medical treatment, my brain's blood flow would be interrupted for long enough that it would cease to function, and thus I would die. 

This is one potential outcome. Perhaps her aim is off, and she pierces my lung instead. In this case I would find breathing difficult, and would need to stop the flow of blood escaping my veins, but I could potentially live. In doing so, I could lift my gun and shoot her in the head, and thus she would die. Another outcome. Perhaps she chooses to present the sword back to me, and I will return it to the armory, and she would go about her life until another event ends it. A third outcome. All three are, on a cosmic sense, equally valid. It is not until one is chosen that her fate is solidified, and our universe continues on that specific branch of causality. 

But what if I reached out to the sword, and it was annihilated to nothing but sparks? I am a unicorn, yes, but I cannot perform such magic with my horn. In none of fate's threads is this a possibility, for there is no cause within the scenario which would allow such a result to occur. I do not have the tool, magical or otherwise, which could bring about such an end. Just as a Titan's grenade should not explode into lightning, and Hunters do not bear an infinite number of knives. And yet, if such an event were to occur, fate would need to account for this result. No longer could she stab my heart, or lung, or give me the sword. This is what it means to be Paracausal, as through my will and Light alone I can choose such a fate. I can destroy the sword, and remove the possibilities causality decreed possible. Through my Light I can manifest great vortexes of annihilation, or teleport at will, or even return from the clutches of death. With my Light I can force those weaker than I to shatter, even if their own paracausal will is to remain unbroken. Together we Guardians can chip away at the strength of an entity capable of shattering planets, until it is destroyed in all realities. I can look into the eye of a machine which decides if I exist or not, and declare that I Am. 

It is this understanding, before any other, which forms the foundation of our power, and that of our enemies. Everything is determined, through our actions and other's. There are only so many possibilities in fate. But Guardians make their own fate. This I discovered, hanging in the formless Void beyond death, as my Ghost lay in fragments and my body ground down to atoms. I was to die, and slip into the realm beyond death, never to return. 

I could not leave my friends to suffer such a fate. I could not allow them to fall against Him. My story would not end upon the surface of the moon. And by the power of my Light, I heard the song of the Void. In the nothingness between realities, I grasped the harmony, and by my will it was remade. In the scale of the Void it was minuscule, but I am told the explosion of Void Light was cataclysmic to the keep within which we battled. Within the blast, I was remade, and through me the song flowed. Gravity was an inconvenience, and so its hold was removed. The Hive Thrall separating my Fireteam and I were an obstacle, and so they were consumed. Through my body flowed the Void, and it was unleashed upon the world around me. 

Today they refer to the second art as Voidwalking. Reaching into the Void and channeling it as a conduit, releasing uncontrolled eruptions of powerful nothingness to consume and eradicate one's foes at our will. The first art is known as Starsinging, to delve into the emptiness between atoms and channel the power found within to force one's self back into Reality. Usually in the place and condition one had a handful of seconds, often ten or so, before one's demise. Neither requires the other, but with effort and study one can learn to effortlessly transfer from the first to second. These are the arts I am known and named for. It is these that have allowed me to continue to protect my friends, even though my Ghost's Light has faded. It was these arts that lead, after many years, to the eternal death of the Hive Prince who slew my best friend and the release of her Light from the Darkness' grasp. It was this power that formed the throne by which my will commands the world.

I am the Songbird, and within my breast is the symphony of the Void. I am a Guardian, protector of the City and all who live in the Traveler's Light. I am a Warlock, seeking scholar of all worlds and beyond. I am a Warlord, the Sweet Embrace, harbinger of death feared even today by Fallen legend. I am the Traveler's Risen, my will and Light sharpened like the finest sword upon the bones of the Darkness. 

Before it all, as the world was torn asunder in the Darkest night and my Ghost found me broken and bleeding my last beneath what was my home, I was Sweetie Belle. And for their sake, I will never be forgotten.