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Published:
2024-10-27
Completed:
2025-04-15
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2/2
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Out Of Bounds

Summary:

Breaking out of map for fun and profit.

Or: the existential horror of learning that Guardians can clip out of reality.

Notes:

I love going out of bounds in Destiny. Since in theory, everything we do in-game is canon, does that mean there's a group of Guardians out there just casually breaking out of reality.

The Strider's Gate stasis thing is a real OOB :)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Ember has been sitting at the edge of the tower in Strider's Gate watching a Hunter do... something, for the past half hour – they cover a large area with a thick spread of stasis crystals, blow themself up, get resurrected by their exhausted looking Ghost, curse profusely, and then repeat the whole process. She's not sure what they're trying to achieve honestly (besides their Ghost's eternal ire) but whatever it is, they don't seem to be getting very far with it.

Eventually the Hunter is joined by a Titan, who passes them a canteen. The Hunter drinks and then they lean in to talk in urgent whispers. She can't hear what they're saying and that just makes her more curious. The Titan pats the Hunter's shoulder and steps back, even gives them an encouraging thumbs up.

And then the Hunter goes right back to the ice-explosion-resurrection cycle.

She watches for a while longer before she realises that the Titan is still hanging around, watching proceedings. She sees him wince at a particularly painful looking death. She glances around, and then sidles over to him. "What are they doing?"

The Titan looks surprised to be addressed. "Oh, you know..."

"No. I don't. I wouldn't be asking if I knew. They've been doing it for the better part of an hour and I have no idea why."

The Titan gives her a look, and then glances around surrepticiously, as though he's worried that someone might be listening in. "It's out of bounds stuff."

Ember stares at him. She understands the words of course but she doesn't know how they apply to what the Hunter is doing. "What?"

The Titan scrutinises her for a long moment and then sighs. "If I tell you, promise not to spread it around?"

How bad can it be if they don't want other people to know? She should probably find out in case it's something the Vanguard need to be told about for security.

And also she really wants to know. "On my honour as a Warlock."

"Alright, so, if you cover the spot where your Ghost resurrects you and then..."

A few minutes of explanation later and Ember is questioning everything about her understanding of the universe. Is this what an existential crisis feels like?

"So basically you're saying that you can 'clip out of reality'?"

The Titan gives an enthusiastic nod, and somehow doesn't seem to realise that the whole concept is either preposterous or horrifying on a level that is massively above her pay grade. This is an Osiris-getting-exiled level of horrifying and heretical. "Not everywhere, and sometimes it takes some work but..."

"Do the Vanguard know about this?" She has to ask. The question is a point of normalcy that she is desperately clinging onto.

The Hunter blows themself up once more and the air is filled with the sound of Stasis crystals shattering.

The Titan shrugs and manages to look awkward despite being over six feet tall and wearing heavy armour. "We did try to tell Commander Zavala a few years ago," he says. "Operational security and all that. But he got that expression on his face. You know the one? Looks like he's questioning the point of existence, specifically yours, and we were a bit worried he was going to have a breakdown so we decided it was best to just... let him live in blissful ignorance."

Across the courtyard, the Hunter blows themself up once more, but this time they vanish. Their Ghost rolls its eye and then presumably follows them.

Ember tries not to consider where the Ghost follows them to too closely.

"Yeah, I think that was probably the right choice," she says.

Chapter 2

Notes:

This was not going to be more than one chapter, but what can I say? I was inspired.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"You're taking the piss," Ember says as she stares up into the gap left by a missing ceiling tile. It looks like a hundred other spots in the Buried City. The buildings of Freehold have been slowly decaying in the centuries since the Collapse – missing ceiling tiles (and windows, and walls, and occasionally floors) are common.

"No, I swear!" the Hunter, a human man called Eerik says, holding up his hands placatingly. "Not making fun. Our mutual friends said you wanted to try a bit of 'getting outside'," he says, complete with finger quotes. "This one's pretty easy, and it's more fun than patrolling rooms of Golden Age filing cabinets while I'm assigned here."

Ember gives him a flat look. She wants to believe this is some kind of prank. Some really elaborate prank involving multiple people and Ghosts and some truly baffling pictures. But the idea of a grand conspiracy to trick her specifically into climbing into the ceiling of a ruined building is... somehow less believable than this.

"I thought the Vex moved the entrance to the Black Garden to Luna when the Red Legion arrived?" she says, as though any of this adheres to logic.

She wonders if it's too late to join the Cryptarchy. Even studying the Nine would probably make more sense.

Eerik shrugs. "I mean yeah. The Gate in the station is as dead as Ghaul, and the one in the Valley of the Kings is mostly buried by sand now, but... what do they call it? It's some kind of transdimensional temporal anomaly, existing outside of reality so..."

He does have a point.

"And I just climb into the ceiling and enter the Black Garden?" She can't believe she's trying this, but Eerik nods brightly.

"Yep! I mean, there's a bit of a crawl first and then... you'll see."

He hauls himself up and Ember hears him moving, can see the way the remaining ceiling tiles flex and shudder.

Traveller's Light, she's really doing this isn't she?

She takes a deep breath, and climbs through the hole in the ceiling.

It is... about what she'd expect for the ceiling space of an abandoned building. Dark, obviously. Full of the dust and grit born of several centuries of neglect. Not like the Vex or the Taken were going to do a bit of spring cleaning.

Eerik gives her a thumbs up, and then continues crawling.

It's cramped, and the dust tickles her nose, and she worries that the ceiling tiles might give out beneath her. It takes a while before she realises that what is beneath her hands and knees is no longer flimsy tile. No, it's much more solid, and oddly smooth. And there... is that a light? It isn't daylight, but it isn't electric lighting or fire either. She can't place it at all, and can't tell where it's coming from. It's odd.

There's a small wall ahead. Eerik straightens up, and hops it, and Ember follows him.

She is no longer in darkness. But it isn't light either. And the walls... the walls are gone. Not ruined, not broken, just gone. Beneath her feet she can see Freehold Station – broken trains half swallowed by sand – as though she's standing on a glass floor. Across a vast flat plain, the distinctive blocky stonework of the Vex rises against the horizon, into a sky that is devoid of stars and moons and colour. It is nothing but a beige expanse where the sky should be.

Where are they?

Eerik gives a teasing salute, then he's off at a run, dashing towards the Vex structures as though this is nothing more unsettling than a morning jog through the Cosmodrome.

Ember moves more gingerly, half expecting something to lunge at her, or for the world to dissolve around her like the Vex Network. There's a point where the ground beneath her changes from glass to a featureless grey material. She's seen sheet metal with more topography. It looks like it should be slippery but it isn't. And yet there is no friction either. It just... is.

Between one step and the next, the light changes. The whole sky changes from beige to the blue-black of night. A pale moon glows far above.

At least she thinks it's a moon. Who knows what is going on here?

"Pretty cool, huh?" Eerik calls to her from where he's perched on the rocks.

"What is going on with the light?" she asks. It is the first thing that comes to mind, and staves off the bigger questions threatening to spill out.

"Yeah, it does that sometimes. This one's pretty mild though."

She gives him an incredulous look – mild?! – but he's already moving again, climbing up the rocks with the sort of enthusiasm in the face of the weird that only a Hunter can manage.

The rock, at least, seems normal. She gives it a hesitant pat and yep, good, solid, utterly normal rock. She can do this! It's like exploring Nessus or Venus. Just focus on that!

Focus on that and not the gaping expanse of absolutely nothing over the edge.

She drops down to a ledge next to Eerik. There is an opening in the stone which leads into what is definitely a Vex tunnel, though it seems longer than should be possible. Much longer.

Her mouth goes dry. She could still leave, right? Just turn right around now, climb back over the rocks, back to a place where things make sense. Where she can carefully lock away all of the emotions bubbling at the back of her mind and pretend that she had never heard about 'out of bounds' stuff. She could go back to the City and...

Yeah, who is she kidding? There isn't a Warlock worth their salt who'd get this far into a mystery and then just turn around and go home.

(Sometimes she wonders if the Traveller had just chosen people who have no sense of self-preservation.)

"Black Garden, huh?" she says.

Eerik nods. "Yup!"

He sounds delighted.

Ember takes a breath, clenches her hands into fists, and steps into the tunnel.

The Black Garden greets her, dark and fragrant with life.

She glances back at Eerik as he emerges. The opening is gone. All that is there is a different hallway, light pooling in through a grate in the wall. It looks as though it has always been there.

"Well... fuck."

Notes:

It will never not amuse me that the OOB to the Black Garden in D1 is through a missing ceiling tile on Mars XD The lighting really does do that too!