Chapter 5

“Evidence of a higher power in the cosmos but placed in contrast to all that is good and righteous. Interestingly, it is typically in less socially conservative groups that we tend to see the latter occurring, as the religious structures in place have more flexibility, while those with a hardline doctrine tend to be brittle in the face of otherworldly powers other than those that they themselves have proscribed. Regardless of the particular form that the worship takes, the end result is always similar once the planet is contacted and brought into the interstellar community at large: conflict.”

—On Eidolon Worship and Similar Stupidities, Galian Jurd, Part Two

The planetary surface looked like a meteor-pocked desert of dull grey with strange, fungal-looking growths stretching up to meet him. It was only as they grew closer that he realized those odd-shaped spires had once been buildings or mountains, now shattered into unrecognizable shapes. 

The pod rocked as it was hit by some artillery fire from an eidolon down on the surface. Waves of magical bombardment rose up from the world beneath as he fell, trying to smite him out of the sky, trying to kill all of them before they could touch down. If they had been up against a thinking foe, he would have assumed that they were desperate to protect whatever was down on the planet, but in truth, it was just the mindless hate of the eidolons at work. There was something that could be destroyed, so they tried to destroy it.

In spite of coming under attack and burning down through the atmosphere, communications were now being played out on the window. A message from the captain. “The Basquiat will not be able to endure this intensity of fire for long, so we are withdrawing to the edge of the system. When you are ready for pick-up, contact us. If we have received no communications from your team for eight hours, we will withdraw and report your mission’s failure.”

Sylvas couldn’t even take offense at that. Given the nightmarish world that they were descending into and the firestorm that the Basquiat had been consumed in since arriving, eight hours seemed fairly generous.

From side to side, Sylvas was flung. Another shot, then another hit the pod, shearing off the ablative armor that was meant to protect him and cutting into the spells that were meant to make his landing survivable after he hit the surface with the force of a bomb. 

He’d been bracing his back against the padding and holding onto the handles for dear life, but now even that wasn’t enough to keep him steady. The tiny shard of etherium powering the pod was shattered when the next spell hit, and all of the inscribed spells and systems died. Glowing red claws sprang from Sylvas’ hand as he reached for the metal paneling beside him and tore it like paper. 

Beneath, he could make out a line of the spell-script that made the ship work, and he slapped his hand flat against it, letting his mana flow out into the pod, letting his will seize control over its motions. The pod was a part of him now, infused with his mana, and that meant he could move it as he pleased. The ground was fast approaching, but with a little twitch of intention, Sylvas brought his pod to a halt just above the dusty grey surface of the world. 

All around him, the other pods of the Ardent fell like a meteor shower, hammering home into the plain, knocking the rapidly gathering eidolons off their feet and off their guard. The impact of their landings had bought them the time to extricate themselves from the pods before the fighting began, but Sylvas had no such luck. From every direction, the eidolon horde descended on him. The flying eidolons that had tried to knock him out of the air divebombed into the tin-can shell of the pod, the artillery beasts levelled their spells on him, and those eidolons that had grown into forms best suited to fight at close range began peeling the pod around him open, one layer at a time, to get at the delicious treat inside.

“No.”

Throwing out his arms, Sylvas also threw out a pulse of inverted gravity, bursting apart the ruined pod and sending the shards of steel out to tear through the gathered eidolons. They had packed in so tight around his pod that the unleashed shrapnel shredded dozens of them before they could even react, and even the ones that did try to leap aside were still blasted away by the wave of force that followed.

Jagged arcs of war and shearing gravity leapt from Sylvas’ hands as he launched himself into the air, carving through the scattered eidolons where they lay. Yet more of the same circles fell into orbit around him in a lethal orrery of curved red, ready to be unleashed with just a push of will. Mira had been particularly proud of that particular modification to the spell. He was surrounded by them, and they spun as he moved through the air, each one pivoting around him as their central point, so that whatever direction danger lay, there would be a curved and lethal blade of raw force awaiting it.

They proved necessary. As Sylvas flew across the ruined landscape, weaving between the elongated and shattered remains of the world’s surface, he was beset by endless waves of eidolons. In the chaos of their arrival, his focus hadn’t been on them, but he had plenty of time to scry them now. With a wave of his hand, he sent a blade out to split one of the diving fliers in half. It was bird-like in shape with widespread wings but without legs or any real distinctive features beyond being completely smooth, shiny, and chrome.

Alloyed Shrike
Tier-Four Eidolon

• Health: 0%
• Mana: 100%
• Affinity: Metal
• Strength: B
• Resilience: B
• Speed: A
• Potency: D 
• Focus: D
• Regeneration: E

The more common attackers were low slung to the ground, shaped like boars, if boars were made from jagged iron-filings gathered around a magnet and possessed of more tusks than they had room for in their mouths. They fell apart just as easily when his war-shear arc carved through them.

Stannic Gorer
Tier-Three Eidolon

• Health: 0%
• Mana: 100%
• Affinity: Earth/Metal
• Strength: A
• Resilience: C
• Speed: C
• Potency: C 
• Focus: E
• Regeneration: E

There were others, of course—the waddling, froglike hulks that had been launching the barrage at the falling pods, and some creatures that seemed like a blend of the fast-flitting Shrikes and their earthbound kin—but throughout them all, the only consistency was an affinity for metal and a level of threat that made everything Sylvas had faced back on Strife seem fairly insignificant. Yet despite that, he was tearing through them without effort. These were the monsters that the Ardent had been so afraid of facing, and now they were nothing to him.

He reached the first drop-pod and cut down the massed Gorers that were attempting to rush it. The metalwork still glowed red from its drop to the ground, and with the heat had come expansion. The door was jammed until he ripped it off with a tug. The Ardent inside looked out at him with the terror he would have expected to be reserved for an eidolon bursting in. It took her a moment to reach out and take Sylvas’ offered hand, and then they were in flight again, heading for the next cluster of pods.

The Ardent had emerged from their pod and hit the ground fighting. Kaya was in the midst of the eidolons, carving through them as fast as they could charge her. The other Ardent were following the playbook, some shielding, some blasting away, and the others using their magic to raise ramparts, control the flow of the battle, and shift the focus of the enemy to where they wanted it to be. Fighting a mindless foe was exactly what they’d been trained for, funneling the eidolons where they wanted them to be to maximize the firepower that could be brought to bear on them. It made everything almost too easy.

“Kaya!” Sylvas yelled over the sound of screeching metal. “Any sign of Malachai?”

She sliced one of the boars’ heads in half vertically, formed a massive cube of metal on her other hand to hammer the next one down into the ground, and then paused just long enough to shrug before getting back into the melee. Sylvas dropped the woman he was carrying down into the beachhead that they’d established around the clustered pods and then took off for where he’d seen others fall.

His flight was interrupted over and over again by the shrikes swooping in at him, the razor-sharp edges of their wings meant to slice cleanly through him as they dive bombed. Each one was met with either his claws or one of the remaining sickles of destruction that remained in orbit around him. Blade met blade, and every time, the one forged from gravity and war proved stronger than the ones made of metal. The ones that didn’t die instantly plummeted to the ground, deprived of their wings, and Sylvas didn’t even need to increase the gravity to ground them. The ones that lived were trampled under the hooves of the Gorers.

Once or twice, the squat toad eidolons attempted a shot at him, but the ragged tangle of barbed wire that they disgorged from the gaping wounds on their backs were too slow, and he dodged around them with a casual ease. Not that it would have taken him long to carve through them anyway. The eidolons he was facing here would have been an absolute terror to any normal person, a challenge to trained troops of the Ardent, and he outclassed them by so much that they were an afterthought in his own progress.

He felt the chill in the air before he saw Malachai and the cohort of spirits around him. The necromancer had pulled formless and shifting shapes from the grave this time around, spirits of those departed so long ago that they’d entirely lost the appearance of what they were in life. Still, they served well enough as a shield to buffet back the eidolons attempting to charge him while he cast. He’d summoned his scythe and was sweeping it back and forth before him, unleashing sickle blades of radiant death that left no mark on the eidolons’ metallic exterior but killed them all the same. The more that he killed, the more power flowed back into him and the fiercer his next assault became. Left alone, Sylvas had no doubt that eventually Malachai could wipe out every single eidolon on the planet. Unfortunately, he was not alone. In the midst of the tempest of souls, squatted down to avoid crossfire, was Rania.

Sylvas dropped like a stone to land beside her, casting a gravity shear around them the moment he touched down. She was shaking violently. Proximity to so much death mana could leave even a powerful mage with all the enhancements of their circles weakened, so what the full weight of all of this had done to her, Sylvas could barely imagine. His shear couldn’t hold back the cold or the dead. All that could would be a barrier made from life mana. He didn’t have that, but he did have himself. He wrapped his arms around her, trying his best to shield her from the storm, letting the life affinity mana stored in the crystal embedded in him filter out through his etherium channels, through his hands, and into her body, pushing back the encroaching death that had found its way inside. Her breath came in a rattle. “Any… excuse to… to… get your hands on me…”

Laughter escaped him in a bark. “Are you alright?”

Her breathing came easier now, and he could feel the warmth returning to her body, even as the cold pounded at his back. “Nothing… a few years of therapy and a long holiday on a tropical island won’t fix.”

“Let’s get you out of here.” He rose to his feet, lifting her with him almost accidentally. He had known that the changes he made to his body had made him stronger in the abstract, he’d used that strength in battle countless times, but this was the first time he’d accidentally lifted another person. He pretended it was on purpose. “Malachai, rally with the rest of the Ardent to the north. I’m going to round up everyone else.”

“As you say.” Malachai’s words came clipped and sharp in between spells.

Sylvas lingered a moment longer. “Thanks for looking out for her.”

There was a brief moment where it seemed like Malachai had more to say, and then he turned his attention back to the battle. “We are all in this together.”