"They have to be around here somewhere, I can feel it. I KNOW they're here!"
The air crackled from a wayward wire-rifle shot, just barely missing the Ghost, leaving behind the faint smell of ozone.
"I just need a little more time..."
Time that the Ghost was running out of. Faint blue light flickered from her eye as she struggled to stay aloft, much less move with the same urgency in her voice. In addition to being hunted by Fallen, the area was littered with light suppressing technology from Cabal deserters, though to what end nobody could be certain. The why of it mattered little to the Ghost, more pressing were the effects in limiting her connection to the Traveler, threatening at any point to put her in an unresponsive state it might not recover from. For now, she was able to hold on, but she needed to get out of here, and quickly.
As the Ghost rounded the corner and darted into an adjacent room, the shrill resonance of a tampered shock grenade exploding several rooms away filled the air, followed immediately by the pained screams of Eliksni raiders, echoing throughout the weathered hallways of the abandoned structure.
The subsequent silence that permeated the ruined building felt oppressive. The Ghost couldn't be sure that the blast took care of the Fallen, and that they weren't still hunting her down. She had already taken so much damage from them while trying to get here, and it was a miracle she was able to sabotage their ordinance to buy herself some more time. She couldn't risk going out to check if it was clear, but as the silence lingered heavily in the air with each passing moment, the Ghost finally felt like she at least had a brief reprieve to catch her breath, metaphorically anyway.
For countless years the Ghost had wandered aimlessly, trying to find her guardian, but despite her efforts, nobody felt like the right fit. It wasn't until the traveler's reawakening that the Ghost noticed it. Something had changed in the light, and something was calling her far, far away from the last city, deep within the American Dead Zone. What would she find here? The archives of the Cryptarchy suggested that this location was once a pre-golden age museum, though as to what was left or even what was stored here before the collapse remained a mystery, with only sparse reports from other guardians ever adding to what little information there was. Could a great historic warrior be entombed here? Such a lucky find wouldn't go unappreciated...
The crisp sound of dust and gravel falling to the floor, agitated from the earlier grenade detonation, called the Ghost back to attention. She had to find the source of what called her here in the first place. She had to find her guardian.
As the Ghost flew carefully into the next room, light from a hole in the ceiling flooded the area as the clouds above parted to reveal the glow of the moon. Overgrowth from a myriad of different plants sprawled throughout the room, covering frames of what must have been at one point display cases. In the middle of the pool of lunar light, strewn from another damaged display, laid a collection of what appeared to be bones. There wasn't a full body that the Ghost could see, but as she approached them, she could feel it. Here was her guardian.
"I hope this works..." the Ghost said as she prepped herself for the Guardian's resurrection. She hadn't heard of any previous instances where a Ghost revived a guardian from just a couple bones, but with the traveler re-awakened, everything was being called into question. Regardless, there was no going back now. With a flash of blue light, the Ghost started her work. Whoever, or whatever, was waiting on the other side would be her new Guardian.
Moments ticked by, as what would normally be a fairly quick process was being slowed substantially by the suppression of the Ghost's connection to the Traveler and its Light. In the back of her mind, the Ghost wondered if it was really safe to be doing this, if there wasn't another Eliksni waiting in the shadows. But she kept to her task, and finally, with a bright blue flash, the Guardian was risen.
"You’re… you’re finally here…” the Ghost said weakly, the resurrection having taken almost all of her energy, the light in her eye flickering as it drifted slowly into the newly awoken Guardian’s hand.
“Where… where am I?” the guardian asked, barely able to see in the dark of night. “What’s going on?”
“You’re…” the Ghost stopped, her vision coming back into focus after taking a moment to regain its energy. What was in front of it was not what it expected. Slumped against the remains of the display and starting to sit herself upright was a monstrous creature, humanoid in shape, but very decidedly not human, nor awoken or exo. Indeed the creature looked more like a Cabal mixed with a Vex, yet the Ghost could tell that this creature was indeed of Earth.
“You’re in the American Dead Zone,” the Ghost started, “and as for what’s going on… I don’t know anymore.”
“You… don’t know?” the guardian responded, a look of concern and confusion on her face.
The Ghost continued to look over her new Guardian. She was indeed massive on all accounts, and estimated she’d tower over even Lord Shaxx. She might even give some Cabal legionaries a run for their money. Though somewhat embarrassingly, in her weakened state, the Ghost couldn’t even manage to construct a proper set of gear for a guardian of regular proportions, but with her immense size, this Guardian was at risk of bursting out of her gear completely.
“Sorry, what I mean to say is, you’re a Guardian, but you’re not like any I’ve seen before,” the Ghost said, composing herself the best she could. Suddenly, the roar of a Fallen Captain echoed throughout the corridors of the crumbling structure, catching both the Ghost and her Guardian by surprise.
“I’m sorry, I’m sure you have a lot of questions—I know I do—but they’ll have to wait for now,” the Ghost said, hurriedly. “Right now, we need to get you out of here!”

Commission for NinjaKing, featuring a new characters of theirs, a triceratops Guardian named Ceres! This is one of three of their new characters, each one belonging to one of the three Guardian classes in the game Destiny, with Ceres here being a Warlock! Though technically at this point in her story, neither Ceres nor her ghost have names yet, but I'm including them here for ease of reference.

This was a really fun piece to work on, and I actually had a larger composition planned, but unfortunately the scope of it was well outside of the bounds of the commission, so I had to pare it down just a bit. I'm still quite pleased with the results, and had a lot of fun doing a piece taking place in a game I've sunk so many hours into over the years!

Be sure to check out NinjaKing's version of the submission here, which contains some additional context to Ceres' story! The vignette I wrote was only run by NinjaKing afterwards to check for major errors in plot points, so some details may be omitted or different from the character's canon.