[i]This is a work in progress of pure fan based lore, I thoroughly enjoy writing, and thought it might be fun to dive into the mysteries of Destiny and spin up a series based on my favorite place....The Black Garden. If you don't like it...stop reading. If you do like it, good! Enjoy..or don't.[/i] [b]Prologue[/b] It has hunted us since before the concept of time existed. It is the embodiment of an ancient hunger, relentless in the pursuit to engulf every last light. It is a being void of all color, of all existence, and consumes everything within Its vicinity. It seeks out its prey, moving, and hunting until It finds the light. I have seen It devour civilizations whole, absorbing the light of entire races to extinction. No amount of light satisfies It. Nothing will make It stop. It had caught up to us once again, the Darkness, despite my pleas and warnings of Its approach, the Speakers defied me, and we stayed. We have always ran. That is the way, it is what we have done since we came into existence. It is all we know how to do. And it was a tiring game of the deadliest hide and seek imaginable, but we always ran. It was the only thing that guaranteed our survival. This time, because of their defiance for reasons I do not know, or understand, we did not run soon enough. And now, we watched through tear shrouded eyes, our homes burn with the hiss, and crackle of black flames. Our hearts imploding as we listened to the cries, and screams of our dying loved ones as their wails pierced our ever hearing ears, we feared the only thing that would stop It, was the complete annihilation of the light. Until It hunted all of us down and fed upon every last spark of light within us, the ravaging and destruction would not end. It would not end with our elimination either. But there would be no one left for It to feed upon, and It would forever prowl the furthest reaches of space, always looking for the tiniest of flickers of light. It had no purpose but to extinguish the light. We knew we couldn’t stop It, but we knew we could slow It down. We just hoped it was long enough. We fled to the Garden that fateful day It found us, that horrific day that we lost our homes, our families, and our friends. That was the day that I changed. Seeing everything and everyone I loved burned and engulfed in the Darkness caused something to snap within me. A piece of me that tied down the stand-and-fight part of me, with the more rational flee-and-survive part. With that cord cut, the stand-and-fight part of me ran rampant through my veins now, causing every fiber within me to bristle with electricity that I never knew existed. I would not do that again. I would never run again. I had nothing left to live for, but this place. This Garden of never ending red blossoms that whispered to the very depths of your soul, and caressed the tendrils of light that exuded from within us in this place. It was our safe haven. Our new home while we waited for It to find us once again. But I was done fleeing, I would not run again. And I knew it also meant the death of me, because It could not be stopped. Not by me alone, and not by the handful of us that managed to escape. And I could not dream up a better place to breathe my last breath than within the rows of the crimson petals that stretched beyond any constraints of time. We called it the Garden. It is an ancient place that we were born from, that everything is born from. Light and Dark. We remembered the Garden because the Garden created us with the presence of ever reaching memories. We do not forget. This is a curse, and a blessing. The Garden spoke to me unlike it spoke to any other being within it. I heard its voice loud and clear, while others thought they heard only whispers upon a breeze, a faint hush that could be easily mistaken as the velvety petals brushing against each other. But not me. I heard the voice. And because of that undeniable connection, I was named the Gardener.