Chapter 19

“Regardless, those destined for promotion or instruction are typically removed from active duty after a five-year campaign so as to prevent this expiry. And those of us who have the luck to have survived through promotion and instruction; we still die early. It may be a statistical anomaly, it may simply be that our capability for risk assessment is permanently skewed by the intense danger of our campaigning years, but few to none of the Ardent leadership will last as long as their civilian counterpart. In this, I mark myself as a current exception, but one does not commit to writing out all that one knows for future generations if one is expecting to continue to survive. There is a degree of inevitability in my penning this work, that it will be the last thing that I ever write.”

—Sapient Resource Resilience, Remo Aurea, Part Two

Sylvas felt like his head was about to explode. “That is not my… thing. I don’t have a thing. It is entirely circumstantial that one of the women I was romantically involved with happened to be a little controlling.”

Kaya piped up again. “The one who takes control of your body even after she’s been dead for years?”

Sylvas laid the flat of his hand over her face in a desperate attempt to shut her up. “You are not helping.”

“Not trying to,” she said into his palm.

Malachai was too well-bred to roll his eyes at them, but there was a certain dismissiveness in his tone when he said, “Perhaps there will be a more opportune time for us to discuss Sylvas’ psychosexual issues when we are not stranded on Strife?”

The girls nodded their agreement, and Sylvas groaned. “Or never. Never would be good.”

Then Kaya bit his hand, and he snatched it back out of reach.

Vaelith gestured to them imperiously from beyond the massed Ardent, and they set off without another word. It was only as they were heading through the crowd that Sylvas realized he was adding credence to Rania’s warped perception of him by coming to heel when Vaelith snapped her fingers.

Oh, darling, you are never going to defeat the allegations at this rate.

Kerbo was the de facto leader of the Ardent that had come along with Sylvas, but he had quickly ceded all authority to Vaelith immediately. She had been his instructor once upon a time, and he clearly hadn’t ever gotten over the trauma of it. So it was she who spoke, loud enough that all the other Ardent in the cavern complex instantly fell silent. “We need to plan our next move. We holed up here expecting to be rescued rather than risking a counterattack, but if the incursions have happened everywhere, we are not going to be high priority.”

“Our first move needs to be getting a ship and getting back out there,” Sylvas spoke up, possibly out of turn, but he didn’t have time to stand on ceremony. None of them did. “Did the Ardent have anything in orbit or at the citadels?”

Vaelith cast an aside glance to Fahred, who sighed. “The citadels are no longer functional. Before we retreated underground, they… collided. Avoiding that particular cataclysm was the deciding factor in where we made our retreat. The shuttles were stationed on the citadels, so…”

Malachai cut off the meandering. “Nothing else was in orbit?”

“Not that we knew about,” Vaelith answered. “And given Strife’s overall charm and location, it’s not likely anyone will come looking for us either.”

“Intersystem comms.” Kaya didn’t so much ask as state the fact of their existence.

“Routed through the citadels,” Fahred was quick to reply.

“That doesn’t make sense.” Kaya’s brows had furrowed, and everyone turned to look at her. She startled at the sudden attention. “I mean, uh… for day-to-day stuff, yeah, route it through the citadels, makes life easier, but that can’t have been the only line out. I’ve seen how the Ardent build ships, backups of your backups, yeah? You wouldn’t have only one way to reach out.”

All the instructors looked to one another then, until Instructor Sagran, who’d been mostly ignored until now, said, “Bet Mengrammon had one, even if Aurea didn’t know about it.”

“The administrator?” Vaelith’s brows drew down. “He’s dead.”

“Almost everyone is dead. We get the delight of picking over what they left behind.” Fahred sighed, casting an illusory blueprint of the Blackhall that was all too familiar to Sylvas. Fahred pointed out the administrator’s offices, near the top of the temple complex, built into the cliff-face in sections Sylvas had never ventured to. “We’ll need to head in there, avoid all the eidolons roaming around, and see what apparatus he had available to him.”

“Who do we call?” Rania asked, looking even more perturbed when all eyes turned to her. “I mean… it’s chaos out there. The Empyrean’s communications network is down; we only got this far by borrowing from friends.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Sylvas smiled at her, and the tension seemed to melt away from her shoulders. “We’ll reach out to everyone, anyone, who might lend us a ship. Call in any favors we’ve got.”

“With all due respect to your importance, which is of course absolutely none,” Fahred was as charming as he’d ever been, “why do you think that anyone is going to spare a ship to help you when the entire universe is on fire?”

Sylvas didn’t even bother feigning modesty. “Because we’re the ones who can put it out.”

The people who had been holed up on Strife took that statement with a degree of amusement, but Kerbo and the others, who had seen Sylvas fight, who had seen what they were capable of, had no doubt whatsoever on their faces.

Sylvas looked around at all of them, this small army who would follow him into the mouth of hell if he asked them politely, and for the first time, he recognized how many of them were at their breaking point. They had been thrown from one battle to another over the past day, and many of them were trembling with exhaustion just trying to stay upright. He had been about to send them all marching up onto the surface to fight eidolons and head for the Blackhall, but after that moment of recognition, he reconsidered. “Rest up, everybody. We’ll head out in six hours.”

Vaelith’s frown was immediate, but she didn’t contradict him in front of the abruptly grateful and wilting Ardent. Instead, she sidled her way through the crowd as it dispersed in search of food and shelter and caught him by the elbow. “Do you have any idea how much could happen in six hours?”

“Everything or nothing,” Sylvas replied with a shrug. “But the soldiers need rest if I want them to fight.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve changed. The Sylvas Vail that I knew would not shy away from his duty just because he was tired. What happened to the boy rising before the sun sets to run laps?”

“Oh, I’m not going to be sleeping.” Sylvas chuckled. “I’ve got much stupider plans I need fulfilled.”

It had been a long time since he saw the medic from Strife who had spent half of his time on the planet patching him up. She had cut her hair short, showing off her partially pointed ears, as if she was no longer ashamed of her mixed heritage. That was good, he supposed.

“Not you again,” she said the moment she saw him, though there was a hint of a smile on her face.

“When you’re done patching everyone up, can I interest you in doing some surgery?” He flashed her a grin, and he could already see her fond memories of him slipping away in recollection of what he was actually like. 

“Come again?” she replied flatly.

“I need you to extract the mana crystals inserted throughout my body and implant something else in their place.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose as if she had a headache, but Sylvas knew she just didn’t want to look at him. “And if I say no?”

“Then I’ll do it myself? I mean, you have to know how this works by now.”

She finally lowered her hand from her face. “Have I told you lately that I hate you?”

While his friends and allies ate, drank, and made as merry as it was possible to make in a cavern beneath the surface of a dead world, Sylvas underwent the surgery in stoic silence. The usual spells to numb pain didn’t work on him anymore, the potions were metabolized by his new body before they could have any effect, but he could simply turn of his pain receptors with a paradigm, so he was able to remain conscious throughout the whole procedure, offering guidance and steering the medic to the mana crystals of the various different types that he’d implanted in his body so long ago. “So just to clarify for my records, you underwent multiple sessions of intrusive surgery to implant all of these into your body so that you could use the minuscule amounts of magic that you stowed in them to get around the limitations of affinity.”

“That’s right.” Sylvas’ voice hitched a little as she tugged on a nerve ganglion that had formed around one of the embedded crystals, actively working to suppress the healing factor that his eidolon granted him so his flesh wouldn’t close up around the scalpel. It hadn’t hurt exactly, but he had certainly felt it.

She finally gave up tugging and just cut through the clustered nerves. “And now you’re having them all removed because…”

“Because I have found a better option.” He was taking care not to mention what it was that he was implanting into his body so that she didn’t have time to object.

“I can’t imagine that there were many worse options.” She rolled her eyes as she made the next incision. “What was your grand solution? Have you finally come to peace with the fact that you can’t actually transcend the limitations of all known magic with a little trick?”

“You’ll see in a minute.” Sylvas looked back over his bared, bloodied shoulder at her and smiled.

“This is why I never told you my name,” she snapped as she went digging in a new section of flesh none too gently. “I can’t trust you.”

“And here I am trusting you with my life…” He grunted in spite of himself as she yanked out a crystal that had been lodged near his diaphragm. 

“You’ve got something up your sleeve.” She scoffed. “If you thought you were dying, you’d have some spell or potion or somebody in the wings ready to come fix you up. You aren’t risking anything. I know you too well by now.”

He smiled at her. There was no point in lying. He even managed an attempt at being funny. “And I don’t even know your name.”

She turned her attention back to her work inside him, letting the conversation lull into comfortable silence for a moment. “What’s your new girlfriend called?”

He considered demurring about whether or not they were boyfriend and girlfriend. He had never really been all that familiar or comfortable with that sort of terminology. Back on Croesia, you were courting, then engaged, and then married. The more casual approach of the Empyrean had always confused him more than a little. “Rania? She’s a renegade archaeologist genius. Charges into fights she can’t win without flinching. She’s amazing.”

The medic didn’t look upset over his ready admission, or the praise he was heaping on Rania. If anything, she seemed pleased. “Explains why you’re so much less creepy this time around. You’ve got somewhere to put all that weird energy.”

Sylvas chuckled. “That and what you helped me with before I…left, worked. That makes conversation easier, too.”

She stopped in the midst of sawing into a plane of muscle, frozen entirely still as she paused to contemplate what he’d just said, then she went right back to work. “It worked? Then that means…”

Sylvas nodded as she trailed off. “Yes. Her name is Mira. After my dead girlfriend from…well, before. And before you ask, yes, it’s complicated. But the whole concept worked perfectly. She can even take command of my body, mostly with permission. I’ll introduce you once through all this.”

There was no hesitation from her this time. “I’m starting to think that you say things just to see if you can get a response out of me.”

He cocked his head to one side as if he were confused. “Didn’t you just describe conversation in general?”

“I’m going to go back to cutting you now. It seems safer.”

I have had a thought, darling.

“Never a good sign,” Sylvas quipped back without thinking, drawing a puzzled look from the medic. “Sorry, talking to my ghost.”

Now that the war-eidolon has been rendered entirely protean and shaped by our respective imaginations for the purposes of making it a medium for spellcasting instantly, it would be quite possible for me to occupy it in a somewhat less canine form?

The thought of it both excited and terrified Sylvas.

While that is entirely the correct response to my making an entrance, it is a little rude.

“Not now,” he said out loud again. “Maybe when she isn’t up to her elbows in me?”

“Just talking to your ghost. Perfectly normal pastime. Nothing noteworthy going on.” She frowned at her diagnostic spells, which were producing less than clear results of his alien biology. “I think that was the last of them?”

Sylvas turned his attention inwards for a moment, examining the affinity of the mana flowing through his etherium veins. “It seems that way.”

She settled back on her stool, looking down at her gruesome handiwork. “So are you going to tell me what I’m implanting and where?”

He produced the world soul from out of Cold Storage and passed it back to her. “We’re implanting this in the middle of my torso. As close as possible to my core. Physically touching it, for preference.”

“I can always rely on you for the most deranged reply to any question.” She plucked it from his hands and turned it over to examine it. “And what is it?”

“Another mana crystal.” He wasn’t exactly lying about what it was or what it did. He was just downplaying certain aspects of it. “One that lets me store all types of mana instead of being limited by affinity.”

When she made no move to continue with the surgery despite his blood continuing to dribble down off the chair where he was perched, he turned around to meet her scowling gaze. She was not pleased. “After all this, do you think I’m stupid?”

“If I did, letting you perform surgery on me would probably be—” She poked a finger through one of the incisions and hit him in an exposed section of lung, setting him coughing and interrupting his quip.

“I know what a mana crystal looks like. I just pulled a load of them out of you. This isn’t a mana crystal.” She peered into the swirling colors of the world soul, now smeared with his blood from her hands. “And there is no such thing as a multi-affinity mana crystal. Crystalline formations wouldn’t be able to stand up to the forces being exerted by the chaotic interactions of the different affinities.”

Sylvas sighed now that he could breathe steadily again. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to belittle your intelligence in any way. I’m just not sure if you have the clearance to know what it is.”

“You want me to implant something in your body, without me knowing what it is,” she said to him slowly, as if to make sure he understood how absurd what she was saying was. “And you think I’m going to do that? You do realize I have healer oaths binding me, right?”

He paused for a moment, trying to come up with any way out of this other than the obvious one, even hoping that Mira might intercede with a suggestion, but she was smugly silent in the back half of his cerebellum. “I can tell you what it is, but you can’t tell anyone else. Ever.”

“It isn’t like I’m unfamiliar with keeping embarrassing secrets. If you knew the number of foreign objects I’ve had to extract from—”

He cut off that line of thinking fast. “It’s a world soul.”

She stared at it blankly for a couple of moments, then said, “I’m pretty sure those are bigger.”

Sylvas tried not to chuckle. It wasn’t a good idea to shake things when he had his organs exposed. “I don’t know if it’s a juvenile one, or if it was deliberately made smaller in some way by the Aions, but that’s what it is.”

She leaned in a little closer, exasperation playing over her features. Apparently, she believed him, even if she still thought he was a moron. “And you want that implanted in your body?”

“I can’t afford to lose it.” Sylvas couldn’t imagine the chaos that might unfold if he did. “And I can’t use it without having it connected to my system.”

She tried to keep herself from screaming, but there was an edge to her voice all the same. “How exactly are you planning on using it?”

“The same way I used the crystals: to gain access to mana of different affinities than I have access to naturally.” She stared at him, eyes boring into his soul for a long moment before he crumbled and told her the rest. “And… it’s a lure. Eidolons are drawn to it, wherever it is. If I have the choice between eidolons coming for my friends or me, I know what I’ll choose. Every time.”

She sat back with a groan. Sylvas was sure she’d be pinching her nose if her hands weren’t still sticky with his blood. “So what you’re saying is that this is, in fact, another overly elaborate suicide attempt?”

“Eidolons don’t scare me.” He was surprised to realize that was the truth. They were a threat, like any other, but they didn’t make him afraid the way that they used to. Not with all the power he now had to bring to bear against them. “Not anymore.”

“Then you’re even more stupid than I think you are, and I have to tell you, I think that you are exceedingly stupid.”

He managed to smile at that last insult. “Will you perform the implantation, or do I have to try and do it myself?”

She picked up a fresh scalpel. “I’m going to do it, but I want my objection noted in case you spontaneously implode or something afterwards.”

“Thank you.” He groaned as she cut into him, parting crystalline tissue and metallic veins that looked more like the innards of a mountain than a body.

“This isn’t a thanking situation. This could very well be a death sentence. If I do this, I have no idea what is going to happen.” She paused in her work. “The only reason I’m even contemplating it is that you seem to know what you’re doing in spite of all evidence to the contrary.”

He spoke softly. “Thank you for trusting me, then.”

There was another long pause as she took this on board, then, finally, she blurted out, “Aida.”

He cocked his head to look back at her again. “Pardon?”

“My name. Now, shut up. I’m going to cut you some more, and I need to concentrate.”

The rest of the surgery went surprisingly smoothly, and by the time that Sylvas allowed his healing factor to repair the damage that had been done, the world soul was nestled up between his lungs, just below his heart. The internal damage of the surgery actually took longer to heal and weed out than the obvious gaping wounds. His body was used to stitching those, while careful and precise cuts designed to do him the minimum of harm were an unfamiliar concept.

Aida sat and watched him as he healed, stopping him every so often to adjust the position of a layer of muscle or a string of nerves so that they were sealed back into their natural position instead of being contorted and twisted. He was sure that, given time, his body would have corrected anything he got wrong, but it was nice to have that level of attention paid to his wellbeing by somebody other than Mira.

Nobody will ever love you like I love you, Darling. Not even you.

With the last of his wounds stitched and the scars fading away, Sylvas opened his eyes and gave Aida a smile. “Looks like I’m not going to implode.”

“There’s still time,” she quipped back.

Which was the exact unfortunate moment that Mira decided to manifest herself a body.