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 used 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.
 
There must be some kind of way out of here.
 
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.
 
There’s too much confusion.
 
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.
 
It starts, shocked from its slumber. An image of…
 
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.
 
And as it ponders this, it realises. Something else 
has changed.
 
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.
 
Has the day arrived at last? Shall its ascension be 
unopposed, its return trumpeted by the death keens of millions once again?
 
And in a brief moment of clarity, it touches their 
minds…
 
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!
 
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.
 
And then…
 
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.
 
But time has taught it patience. It has waited for a 
hundred thousand years. It can wait a little longer.
 
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…
Category:Minorca Saga