Whispers. They were always present in his mind. As the Guardian roamed the time-shattered deserts of Mars, he reflected on the early days of his legend. A quest to save the Traveller, and by extension, the City. How little he had known of the Universe then. At that time, all the various enemies he fought were mere target practice to him, scarcely worth thought beyond how to eliminate them. He had been so naive, then. He wished he could be so again. He felt good, fantastic even, to be cresting the dunes of Mars again. He was so blissfully free here, free of the politicking on Earth, of his responsibilities and the tedium that fighting had become. Alas, if he could only be free of the whispers. They had plagued him ever since he laid eyes on the Black Heart of that verdant, poisonous garden beyond time. The portal he took to go there should be close to where he was now. For a long time, he refused to acknowledge those whispers. He dismissed them as his own imaginings, or as Ghost messing with him. He wished it had been. The whispers got worse when Oryx arrived. Before any sensors picked that malicious hid up, he knew something was there. The first time he saw a Taken aperture, he stuck his hand into it. When he had, those whispers became screams. The screams of an anguished being, or of many. Ghost had taken his hand from that aperture by slicing it off. It regenerated, of course, but it had shocked him that his Little Light had immediately done that. Only, he hadn't. Ghost spent a whole minute trying to coax him out of that, that tear in reality. The whispers went back to just that, whispers, but the screams... They were the first thing that had truly scared the Guardian. When the light was stripped from him by Ghaul, they became louder. As if his Light was acting as a wall against it, sheltering him. It was then he felt the temptation of the Dark for the first time in years. The whispers had seemed to make way for that temptation. Every time he had embraced, or come close to the Darkness, the whispers grew more numerous, more focused, but worst of all, they became intelligible. Unconsciously, it seemed that while in his thoughtful stupor, he had turned to look straight at the Traveller. No, not the Gardener, a.. Where did that come from? He ha never before thought of her as a Gardener, she was the Traveller. Wasn't she? Strangely enough, it felt so... Natural, to think of the Traveller not as "it" or the "Traveller", but as her, the Gardener. And what was he looking at? The Guardian transmatted to his ship, inputting coordinates to the City, and sending a message to Eido. He wanted to go over those documents she received recently.