Chapter 46

“This week, I met the most interesting gentleman: handsome, charming, and utterly insane. I guess I have a type. The only real problem that I can see standing between me and him and a long night of knocking the furniture around is the fact that he’s got this copy of his dead girlfriend living in his head, watching everything that he does. She’s so intrusive that you can’t even write on your own slate without her digging through the files later on. Yes, I know what you are doing, Mira. I don’t know how you’re doing it. But I know it’s you. Stop being such a creep and give me a shot.”

—Selected Daybook Musings, R. Clarendon

Gratitude could buy you a great many ship repairs, as it turned out. The Obsidian Dominion’s ship had hit orbit before Sylvas and the others had made it back to the compound, but with the monsters dead and transport possible again, it was only a matter of time before life got back to some semblance of normalcy for everyone on Cantobus, and that meant that people were willing to wait a little while longer to do repairs to their own homes when there was a ship needing patched up. The majority of the work fell to Mira and Kaya, who worked surprisingly well as a team. Sylvas would slip into the hindquarters of his own brain, letting his thoughts turn to matters of prophecy as they got on with the practical work. He had conveyed some part of what had happened to him when he ‘blacked out’ during the opening of the vault, without mentioning that it wasn’t the first time he’d encountered the Aion watcher to the others, but the specifics, he’d kept to himself.

The ship was slowly pieced back together over the course of several days. With Mira’s memorized maps of the correct placement of every system and Kaya’s ability to mold metal into any shape that took her fancy, they were able to make it capable of flight, if not beauty.

Sylvas had half-expected to spend more of his free time with Rania now that they were both free of their guilt and obligations, but she seemed to have sunk entirely into her work once they returned to the compound. Instead, he devoted some of his time each day to Hector, pouring the same next-to-useless healing spell into him over and over in the hopes that there might be some incremental improvement. It kept him stable, if nothing else. The doctor, if he could even be called that, had suggested returning him to stasis when the opportunity arose, and Sylvas couldn’t really disagree that it was the best option now that they’d exhausted all the others.

So they had Hector back in a long sleep, wrapped up in blankets and safely stowed away in his reconstructed cabin, which Sylvas couldn’t help but feel was considerably nicer than the den of filth that he’d been living in before. Sylvas placed himself carefully in the silver circle set in the Folly’s cockpit and let his senses extend. The circle had been one of the only things that didn’t get destroyed or even damaged in the crash. There had been some sooty marks on it from where his molten flesh had dribbled, but apart from that, it was in optimal condition. Expanding his awareness through the ship, he became almost immediately aware of how badly it had been put back together. All of the systems that had flowed into one another like rivers into the ocean were now more like separate holes in a dam that he had to stopper and unstop to get anything useful from. But everything was there, with the exception of most of the consoles, half of the miscellaneous systems, and a good portion of their engines. So long as he was piloting, they wouldn’t need them.

When all the repairs were done and Hector was safely sequestered away under Kaya’s watchful gaze back on the ship, Sylvas headed into town to say goodbye. The settlement still hadn’t torn down the barricades, nor did they seem inclined to. Sylvas couldn’t promise them that there were none of the shikari drones left on the planet, only that they’d slaughtered so many of them it seemed unlikely. Until they had certainty, the barricades would remain. Not that they proved any sort of impediment to Sylvas. He hopped over the wall and did a quick tour of the place, thanking everyone for their help and receiving heaped praise and attention in return. He promised to relay the planet’s call for help as soon as they were back in range of Empyrean space, and then he sidled his way over to a certain partially collapsed room.

Rania wasn’t there. None of her belongings were there either. She’d packed up and gone without even saying goodbye. They’d only spent a couple of days together, but Sylvas had felt certain that there was something between them. He couldn’t deny that this stung a little.

Launching himself into the air after some pointless dawdling around, he returned to the downed ship, checked in on Malachai, where he was snoozing in his bunk, and headed for the cockpit to finally get them off this rock. There had only been one good thing about the whole planet so far as Sylvas was concerned, and she hadn’t even said goodbye. 

Kaya stuck her head into the doorway. “We taking off?”

He crossed his arms and concentrated, letting his mana flow out to empower all the systems of the ship. “Momentarily.”

“Anything else you want to do before we go?” She was obviously trying to pry, but Sylvas wasn’t in the mood.

“I just want to get out of here.”

The ship made an awful creaking sound as the different parts settled during takeoff. Sylvas’ will held it together, and Kaya made spot repairs as they went. They passed slowly up through the atmosphere in case they did spring a leak, but eventually, they emerged into the chill of space without any cause for alarm. The platforms that had tried to kill them now drifted as moons around the planet, and the other one, that they’d managed to destroy, was breaking apart into an asteroid belt, forming a ring around the equator. 

Rania looked out the windows and whistled. “Let’s never come back here again, right?”

The whole ship lurched as Sylvas was surprised. He turned around with confusion written on every feature, and she laughed in his face.

You really don’t understand women, do you?

“Rania? You’re… but I… I went looking for you and—”

“I was already here the whole time. Yeah, turns out I didn’t really want to stick around to be arrested when the Empyrean show up, and you guys happened to have a ship—”

“Oh, good. I’m helping a criminal escape justice.”

“Actually, I’m helping you.” She ignored his incredulous look. “It turns out that you have to go hunting for vaults. Specifically, vaults that relate to this prophecy of yours. And wouldn’t you know it, I’m an expert on finding vaults.”

“I’m not sure about this.” Sylvas had turned his attention back to the ship, lining them up for a jump to the closest Empyrean planet with a decent medical facility to tend to Hector’s injuries.

“You still don’t trust me.” She leaned in and kissed him, and once again, the whole ship shook. “How about now?”

“I—” Sylvas fought every natural impulse to put his foot in his mouth and say something that would upset her and ruin this wonderful possibility before it had even begun. “Am happy to have you aboard.”

She patted his cheek. “Good answer.”

As he tried to gather what was left of his wits, she sauntered out of the room.

Very good answer, darling.

He brushed his fingers over his lips and repeated. “Good.”

Then he plotted a course and tore a hole in reality to drop them into null-space.

The journey was markedly shorter than the outbound one because they weren’t heading across a huge swathe of the galaxy, just travelling to the nearest possible point. Given the damage and repairs to the ship, Sylvas took a great deal of care not to push anything too hard as they navigated through null-space. He and Kaya went back and forth through the ship repeatedly, reinforcing some substructure here or insulating there. The ship would probably never be as good as it had been again, but it worked, and they were all alive, and for now, that felt like enough. The sleeping arrangements were of some concern to Sylvas, given that there were three bunks and four passengers, and he didn’t really feel right plucking the stasis-bound body of Hector out of his own bed to borrow it. Luckily, the trip only took about seven hours in the end before they dropped back into reality.

The jump gate into and out of the system hung large on the periphery of Sylvas’ vision, but he steered them well clear of it and headed for the third planet in the system, where there was allegedly the best hospital in light-years.

The moment they came close to the planet, they received a hail, and Sylvas flicked it onto the only surviving console screen. “Identify yourselves.”

It was a little brusque but not unreasonable. “This is the Ironfist’s Folly returning from the Cantobus System. The colony has run into some trouble with—”

“There’s trouble everywhere.” The curt voice cut him off. “How many injured on board?”

“Two,” Sylvas answered as politely as he could muster. “But one is critically injured.”

If that detail elicited any sympathy from the voice on the other end of the call, Sylvas couldn’t hear the change. “Understood. Join the line for descent to the surface, and you’ll be seen as soon as there are medics available.”

Now that they were closer to the planet, Sylvas could make out the long spiral of ships heading down towards the surface, stretching back for miles and miles, almost as far as the next planet in the system. They’d be waiting for hours, if not days, to be seen.

Sylvas would be the first to admit that his experience of medical care was far from normal, but the whole situation was verging on the bizarre, even by his standards. “Is there some sort of staff shortage?”

There was a long pause, and then the voice came through sounding much more human than before. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“There has been a mass incursion.” The bureaucrat sounded as if he didn’t believe it himself. “Those are refugees lined up ahead of you. The Empyrean just lost seven systems to the eidolons.”