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I found him in a trash heap.
My many centuries of searching, yearning, only to end in some midden.
There were many bones in the ground in that lonely place. Once it had been a thriving human city, but the hubris of the residents made them build their glittering towers atop a swamp. And nature always took her due.
What could take more lives than a natural disaster?
The warlord’s fortress still stood as a nightmarish answer to my question, though its grandeur had long since faded. The great double doors hung open on their hinges, revealing a front hallway that was not so much a structure as a gaping maw. The windows had long since been blown out, and the grounds were wet and sunken. Skyscrapers had fallen around it so that they leaned in as if they were begging a favor from some fantastical creature.
Best not to think about it, I thought, turning away.
My attention was once again claimed by the filth. Would I really find my Guardian here?
Even as I asked the question, I knew I would. I could feel him, somehow, even though the likelihood was that I would find aught but bone dust. Not for the first time, I wished I understood how such a thing was possible. Why do some Ghosts find their Guardians, while others search in vain? How did I know his essence from the other dead?
I flew into the heart of the dump. How had he ended up in this place?
Questions upon questions upon questions.
I had no heart to beat, but something in me quickened when I hovered over what remained of this man who would become my Guardian. I didn’t envy him having to dig his way free; I burned off a layer of trash with a shot from my shell, though the fire was reluctant considering how soggy everything was and burnt out too soon.
I ordered my systems on the task of rebuilding him from almost nothing. In my long life I had never resurrected anyone. Yet somehow, I knew what to do. My shell split apart, gathering Light in the middle as a spider spins her egg sac, a delicate sphere of illumination.
First, his bones. They knitted together and I came close to losing control out of sheer excitement. I turned my attention to building his muscles and tendons, managing to avoid ruining the spell. They were flush with life, the water of human existence. Fresh, red and purple.
Skin, layer after layer.
Wait.
Some strangeness in the proportion, something wrong with the alchemical ritual I was trying so hard to do perfectly. There were flaws, things even I couldn’t heal.
Wounds. It didn’t take me long to understand. Scars, made by the Light. And because it had been the Light, it was imprinted on his deepest places. The body taking shape had certain ingredients that I couldn’t change, like the futility of trying to unbake a cake.
The warlord who had made her home in the fortress looming behind me had been known for her cruelty. By the time Felwinter had come for her, her domain had become a shrine to all that was depraved and gruesome. I called up what records there were, still weaving, still compelling the body to fit together.
Saladin. A single report. An ancient one.
She keeps him like a pet dog, collared and chained.
His disgust radiated from the words, even this many years later.
I resolved to never tell my Guardian where he’d come from.
Eventually, I heard his first breath. It was a rattle in a throat newly made. I studied him then for the first time.
He had brown skin, fine, almost delicate fingers. True-black hair, and only one eye. There was a long, jagged scar down his face where the eye should have been, but it didn’t obscure the fact that he was handsome. His other eye was bright jade-green, with long lashes.
Another scar. This one on his throat. It was easy to tell that this had been the killing blow, a sharp weapon neatly severing essential arteries.
He groaned, pushed up from his grave. He was rangy, long-limbed and tall. He pulled a face at the smell of decay all around us and blinked the cobwebs away. His body was covered in yet more scars.
If I’d been human, I might have thrown up. Not because his scars were ugly. Because whoever had done such a thing had an ugly soul.
He saw me then.
“Yazata?” He said. His voice was smooth and warm. “Ashi?”
I searched for the terms and quickly identified that he was asking me if I was a divinity or a guardian angel.
Zoroastrian. Interesting.
It was a pre-Golden Age religion, though I supposed it could have survived beyond that. What surprised me was the obvious evidence he hadn’t quite forgotten everything of his life as he was meant to.
Traveler, please erase his memories of whatever happened to him. He deserves to be free of that.
“No,” I said, feeling quite shaky. “I’m your Ghost.”
We hiked through the swamp together.
Nary another soul for miles, so we spoke to one another.
“Who am I?” He asked. I’d found him some clothing, though it was stained and damp. He was too polite and too shaken to complain about it.
“You’re my Guardian. Someone who will protect those who cannot protect themselves. A spear, defending a gentle city. You’ll see when we get to where we’re going.”
He accepted this as if he’d been expecting my words.
A little later: “what’s my name?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I could have perhaps found it in the records Saladin (and likely Shaxx and Felwinter) had left behind. But no. Let it die, let my Guardian -who I already loved so-live free of whatever had shackled him before. “Do you want me to name you?”
He glanced at me and flashed a grin, showing his perfect teeth. It made him look rakish and I loved him all over again.
“Shall I name you in return, or do you already have a name?”
I had used many names over the years. But to have such a gift from my Guardian made all those aliases into cold, dead things I no longer wanted.
“All right,” I said, laughing. “What do you have in mind?”
“What about Shirin?” He said, and again I felt odd; how did he know it? It was Persian for sweet, a fairly common girl’s name. He shouldn’t have been able to access any of that, yet his previous life clung to him like plumes of fog.
“I like it.”
I did.
“Now what about me?” He asked, climbing over a broken piece of highway blocking our way forward. He grabbed the ragged edge of the second floor of the ruined building there and hauled himself up with surprising strength and grace.
He paused, framed by a doorway that hadn’t allowed passage in hundreds of years. I flew about and around him as if trying to assess him, to find a quality that would lead to the right moniker.
“Ash,” I finally said.
He smirked.
“Because you found me in a garbage heap?” he wanted to know. “Since you made me from dust?”
“Because you’re a phoenix, rising from ashes.”
He looked at me with love.
Perhaps Osiris was Saint-14’s fiery phoenix, but my Guardian was mine.