"Where is your Ghost?" The boy looked at her, hopping from one foot to the other.

"Koryl prefers not to bother me when I'm studying." Zara did not look up from On Circles: Revised Edition and prayed to the Traveler that the kid understood the message.

"You're a Warlock, aren't you? With your dress..."

"Those are robes."

"Whatever ... You' re reading something about the Traveler?"

"Uh-huh."

"And what does it say? Apart from the circles, I don't understand much."

"It is written that complete calm is required to understand the ontological conventions outlined in this work."

The boy sniffed, looking unconvinced. Zara hoped that he would finally find her too boring for his taste and go bother the Hunters on patrol in the area, but he stood next to her, his dirty shoes soiling the library floor.

The Guardian could feel the boy's gaze pressing down on her. After rereading the same sentence five times, she sighed in exasperation and loudly closed the grimoire.

She crossed the gaze of the little human. His hazelnut eyes were lost under a tuft of hair of the same color. A long scar crossed his forehead.

"What's your name?"

"Orion. And you?"

"Zara. Don't you have parents, someone to take care of you?"

"My mother is helping with the archives. She's going to be there for a while, so she asked me to wait in the library."

"I see." So, she was going to have to put up with him until her mother came to pick him up. But since it was for the archives, she would have been ungrateful to reject the kid.

"Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face?"

"Have you ever been to The Reef?" Orion examined her like a Cryptarch in front of a Golden Age engram.

"Yes."

"What are they like there? The Awoken."

"As in the City, from the outside. A little less talkative, and very secretive. »

"And you, aren't you one? I have a friend who's an Awoken, and she talks all the time."

"You have to get along well with each other."

"Yeah. But you're a Guardian! You do a lot of cool stuff, like..."

"Studying books?"

"... Killing bad guys!" Orion stood on the bench, brandishing two fingers like a pistol. He imitated the sound of a battle, contorting himself to shoot imaginary enemies.

Other Warlocks stood up and left the room, looking daggers at Zara. She shrugged helplessly but did not take her eyes off the kid. It would have been unwelcome if he had broken an artifact by accident...

"Do you have a gun? Or you don't need one? I've heard that the Warlocks can create black holes!"

"It's true. But we also need weapons." Zara sighed and drew her bow. "There it is."

"A bow?" The boy seemed baffled. "But..."

"Why do you think I was wearing it?"

"I don't know, to decorate?"

"Listen carefully, Orion. This has nothing to do with the wooden bows you make."

She handed him the weapon. "Try to draw it." The boy struggled as hard as he could, but the pulleys refused to move.

"You see? It' s not a toy." She gently ran her fingers over the branch, which was covered by a white polished metal shell. "Elastic string. Less accurate, but faster. Fiberglass arrow shaft. Heavy, strong, and precise. It is called Subtle Calamity."

She took an arrow out of the quiver. The tip radiated faintly of void energy. Orion grasped the object and brought the glow closer to his eyes.

"Be careful. On impact, the arrow created a Dragonfly – an elemental explosion. You don't want to be near it when it strikes."

"Okay," the kid apologized and handed her the weapon. "I get it, it's not for decoration. Do you have others? The Guardians always carry a lot of weapons."

"Of course. When the enemies get closer, I use a firearm, Breachlight."

"Who finds the names?"

"It's top-secret. Otherwise, I always carry a replica of the Chaperone. It's a precision shotgun, it can kill a Gladiator with a single bullet before he's even within range of blades."

Zara saw the kid shiver and regretted using this example. The Red War had left deep scars that still lingered two years later.

"Don't you have bigger guns? I heard a Titan talking about an Ogre of the Hive as big as this," he said as he climbed up on the table and raised his hands above his head. He could not even measure up to a Knight. "Your Chaperone can't kill that, huh?"

"Indeed." Zara brought the boy down and wiped the table clean. "When the bow is not enough, I have the Fighting Lion, Wei Ning's grenade launcher."

Orion's gaze lightened with the evocation of the famous Titan. "And when we really must face many enemies, I have my sword, the Worldline Zero."

"What's that?"

"It's based on Vex technology. When I run, I can project myself into the future of the sword and decimate an entire Fallen crew before they even see me coming."

The boy tried to understand what she meant by 'projecting herself into the future'. "I've been fighting with sword and bow for centuries," she continued. "But sometimes you come across a monster that's too big for us, or our Light. So, I use One Thousand Voices."

"It's a rifle that screams very loud?"

"You could say that. It's the breath of a dragon that comes out of the barrel."

Orion raised an eyebrow. Obviously, he did not believe such a weapon existed.

"That's all well and good, but I don't have any proof that you're not just spinning a yarn."

"Why would I—"

"So, I challenge you." The boy stood up on the bench with a fist on his hip and his finger pointed at her. "Prove to me that you're as good at archery as you say you are, and I'll let you go!"

Zara could not hold back a mocking smile. She could have transmatted to the Tower at any time, but the kid did end up amusing her. "All right," she said. "Find me a target, and I'll shoot it."

Orion nodded proudly and ran off in search of a good target. Zara left the library and headed for the waste ground next to the entrance to the archives.

The boy came back a few minutes later with a Red Legionnaire's helmet in his hands.

"I'm going over there with the helmet," he explained with undisguised enthusiasm. "If you can touch it, you win the challenge."

"No way, it's too dangerous. Put the helmet on the ground and step aside."

"If you're such a good shot, you're not going to hit me, are you?" A mischievous smile stretched his lips.

"I have another idea. Why don't you throw the helmet as high as you can? A moving target is harder to hit."

"Deal!"

Orion placed himself at the other end of the field, a hundred meters away. Zara placed herself in shooting position. She had taken care to remove the void charge from her arrow. That way, no one would get hurt, unless she missed.

The boy threw the helmet in the air. The object rose, describing a narrow parabola in the air. Zara waited for the object to approach its peak. She drew her bow, aimed, and fired in a fluid motion. The arrow sliced through the air and crashed into the middle of the target with a loud snap.

The helmet was carried away by the power of the projectile and fell a few meters further. Orion, ecstatic, picked up his trophy and touched the shaft of the arrow protruding from what once contained a cabal skull.

This was the moment chosen by the boy's mother to leave the archives. Devastated and outraged by the deadly risk the Guardian had placed her child in, she chased her bluntly away.

Zara was called to order by Ikora, but the Vanguard had other concerns, and this adventure lasted only a few days. The Warlock met Orion's mother several times, apologized, but never had the opportunity to see the child again. It bothered her: he had kept the arrow.