Chapter 35

“We deserve better than what they left us. We deserve better than what they gave us. If I could take a hammer to every vault still standing and crack it open, I’d help everyone. But they’ve locked them away, made it impossible to open them unless you’ve already got more power than you know what to do with. What’s the point of that, do you think? What’s the point of making it so that the folks who need it most can’t get anything, and the folks who have it all just have to snap their fingers for service? That’s how you know the Aions were scum. Because they left behind a universe where scum rises to the top. Where it’s all set up to make people like them into the most powerful and leave everyone else behind in the dirt.”

—On Seeking Truth, Anonymous, Part Two

As the darkness faded, Sylvas took some time to realize what he was watching. The light that was coming into being all around him wasn’t the sourceless ambient glow of some spell; it was starlight. All around him, there were tiny sparks, and the ignition, stars coming alive in all quarters. He was watching the birth of the universe, or at least, he was watching it taking its first breath. 

Stars burned, planets spun together out of dust, and throughout it all, the mana flowed, connecting everything in a dense web that extended out and out, wider and wider, as the individual stars and planets spread. Where there was light, life followed soon after. Not life as Sylvas knew it now, not talking, thinking people, but life all the same. Microbes and plants. Insects and fish. Creatures so alien to his understanding that he couldn’t even begin to recognize them as they spun by. Then, finally, the races of men, elves, dwarves, and all the rest sprang fully formed into being. All of them, and the Aions.

He couldn’t be entirely sure at what point the Aions set themselves apart from all the other species, it must have been when they discovered magic, but wherever that had happened, or whenever that had happened, it was missing from this historical record. What was certain, though, was that the Aions spread across the universe almost as fast as the stars had blossomed to life in their flaming cascade. They were everywhere, watching over the other species who had yet to reach maturity, helping where they could from beyond the periphery of perception to guide them towards the magic that had allowed the Aions themselves to ascend to their current positions of power. 

Sylvas was so distracted, staring at the minutiae of the Aion’s actions, that he didn’t notice what was happening out on the periphery until the lights started to go out. One planet then another, severed from the web of magic. The world souls were destroyed and devoured. The Aions had rushed to the aid of those worlds, only to discover the eidolons.

Back outside, in the real world, Sylvas’ body had gone rigid and still, his eyes rolling up into his head as the vast swathes of information were poured into him. Rania moved to his side, but she was too scared to touch him in case whatever force was acting on him spread to her, too. All she could do was stand there and be ready to catch him when he finally broke free of the vault’s hold.

The eidolons were made of magic, born of it, their flesh carved out of the words of magic that every Aion learned as a child. They were the embodiments of the affinities that they represented, as immutable and inseparable from the magic as the component molecules that made up matter. One could not exist without the other. The more magic there was in the universe, the more eidolons it would create. They were magic made flesh, mindless power unbound by any thought.

The Aions fought against the eidolons, and the Aions won. They had a mastery of magic that Sylvas could scarcely understand, even as he watched each spell being played out, and they used that mastery to devastating effect, driving the eidolons out into the cold of distant space, raising a wall around all of creation so that they could not get in.

The spell that formed that wall was poured right into his brain alongside all the rest of the sensory information that was being dumped in. A trickle of blood began to seep from his nose. He shook as it took root in his brain, tiny vibrations.

It should have been enough. It should have held them off forever and allowed those within the wall to live peaceful lives. But more and more eidolons continued to manifest. Not breaking through the wall but coming into existence inside it. The other species had begun their own mastering of magic now, and while the Aions rushed to warn them of the dangers inherent in wielding such power, it was too late for so many of them. Eidolons sprang into existence everywhere magic was used with reckless abandon, and soon the eidolons were being worshiped as gods, the way that the Aions had fought so hard to prevent themselves from being worshiped.

The younger races took flight, spreading their gospel of magic and eidolon worship across the cosmos, and the Aions had no clue how to intervene. They were powerful enough to wipe out the lesser races in one bloody day, and some argued that it would be the kindest option, rather than leaving them to suffer the depravations of the eidolons. But the Aions were nothing if not moral. They would not willingly sacrifice the life of any other species just to be rid of the eidolons.

Sylvas had spittle flying from his lips. Kaya and Rania were both shouting, trying to reach him, as more and more of the history and magic of the Aions poured into him from the vault. The Aions wouldn’t sacrifice anyone… except him. Him they’d make into their tool. Him they’d torture and warp until he was the creature that they needed him to be.

Bred and manipulated from the fiercest creatures across the universe, the shikari would hunt the eidolons across all of creation. They would offer no sustenance to the enemy, being purely biological, and they would kill them all before they could spread. With certainty in the righteousness of their cause, the Aions unleashed them.

The slaughter of the lesser species was not immediate. It took the shikari time to spread and longer still before they first encountered a covenant mage, but from then on, they were convinced that any living creature could be hiding an eidolon within, and what little restrictions the Aions had managed to program into their proto-minds were dissolved. Those shikari that were not destroyed in the aftermath were fearsome, feral things that could no longer be trusted to fulfill their purpose. 

A few were sequestered away on garden worlds, far from conflict and strife, in the hope that one day a use for them might be found again. They would be deployed in the final days of the Aion Empire, to places where they might serve some purpose, but for the most part, they had served only to drive a wedge between the Aions and their mortal allies.

None of this was a solution. In the covenants, the lesser races had found a way to contend with the power of the Aions, to fight back against any attempt that was made to save them from the nightmarish realm that they were creating. Simply culling the eidolons, or the other species that kept summoning them, was no longer an option. Something needed to be done to put a permanent end to the Aions.

More complex spells and theories were dumped into Sylvas’ mind in a wild flurry. Eidolon detection, the methods of their formation, the points of interaction between the eidolon and reality, and the manner in which their manifestations could be rendered predictable.

The mechanism by which eidolons were created was beginning to be understood by this point in Aion history, but the existence of covenants was not. To grasp the covenants and their significance fully, Aions began to undergo the process. In this, it seemed there was a solution to the eidolon menace. If each Aion took it upon themselves to become jailer of a single dangerous eidolon through covenant, granting it sentience and will, the destructive rampages plaguing the universe could be ended.

Through their mastery of magic, the eidolons had extended their lifespans immensely. Through making use of certain embodiments, they had removed physical sickness and weakness from their bodies alongside aging. This had resulted in stagnant population growth. There were not enough Aions to accommodate all of the covenants that would be required.

Blood was running from his ears, his eyes, and his nose. His jaw was clenched so hard that his teeth should have come pinging out of his mouth, if he weren’t so enhanced. Sylvas quaked as the eidolons showed him how covenants were formed in those earliest days, not through rite and ritual but through the alignment of emotions and the finding of shared purpose. The way that Sylvas had drawn in the eidolon Strife.

The increase in power amongst the Aions as a result of their covenants opened up new possibilities. New solutions were explored, and new wars waged, but every spell that was cast to drive the eidolons back just produced more eidolons. The output required to keep them at bay constantly massed more enemies. The equation dropped into Sylvas’ mind: the exact level of efficiency a spell would require to make it worth casting at an eidolon.

The wall that had been constructed around the periphery of known space had been insufficient to keep the eidolons out, but that did not mean that the idea was flawed in principle, only in application. Revisiting it, the plan to banish the eidolons to an alternate, unoccupied plane of existence began to take form. 

If permanent enchantments could be laid over all of reality, redirecting the manifestation of new eidolons to this alternate plane, then the problem with the initial plan would not be recreated. Anchors could be placed in this alternate plane, driven through the dimensional barrier to pin it in place and keep it impermeable. Anchors that would also serve as the targets of the redirection, forcing any eidolon that would manifest into existence to instead appear on that alternate plane.

The temple world shook, not from the gravity anomalies that the torn anchor hole was causing, but as though some giant had just taken a step on its surface for the first time. Beneath their feet, Malachai sensed the presence of the eidolon first. The inevitability of death radiated off the Crimson King as he rose through the tear in reality.

It was the perfect solution, in the short term. In the long term, the eidolons would mass in incredible numbers until such time as the sheer weight of so many of them brought down the dimensional barrier, tearing the anchors loose and returning all of the eidolons that had been created in the intervening years back to reality.

Using all of their power and knowledge, the Aions turned their attention to the future. They could come up with no solution to the eidolon threat, but that did not mean that one would never be found. They hunted through every possible future, searching for some magic or tool that would allow the universe to live in peace. What they found was the Starbreaker. 

A singular mage, shaped by the most chaotic of circumstances into the ideal tool to deal with the eidolon menace. A mage who grew more powerful the closer in proximity they were to eidolons, draining the enemy of their strength to empower their own. A mage who could wield all affinities of magic. A mage unlike any other who had ever existed. The Aions predicted when he would come, and then they engineered events as they could to ensure that it occurred at the same time as the end of the eidolon’s exile.

The Crimson King rose from the tear in reality as smoothly as if it were being born underwater. Slipping out into reality as gently as a whisper before the power radiating from it began to destroy everything. What had been solid ground beneath their feet gave way, crumbling away to ash and dust.

The return of the eidolons was inevitable. So long as people were using magic, more eidolons would be created, and there was no way to prevent the use of magic. The only thing that could be done was to curb the usage of magic to the bare minimum. Something that the Aions could do, given that the majority of magic used in the universe was still used by them. 

In a singular act of sacrifice, the Aions gave their lives. Lives so entangled with magic at this point in their existence that there was no going back. Death provided the only end to their magic, and as one, they agreed to self-sacrifice to preserve the lives of the other species, who they considered to be essentially innocent of creating the eidolons to begin with.

In their wake, the Aions left two final gifts to the universe, to be opened only when needed. The first were the vaults, repositories of knowledge that were coded to specific keys, preventing those who were insufficiently advanced from accessing them. To give every advantage possible to the people who would face the return of the eidolons from their exile, without hastening the return of the eidolons. The second gift was the Nexus. A vault of immense size, built not as another repository of knowledge but as a tool for the Starbreaker. The hero whom the Aions had foreseen the arrival of millennia after their passing.

Inside the Nexus, the Starbreaker would find everything that they needed to put an end to the eidolon menace permanently. Part machine, part spell, the Nexus would open only to the correct combination of eidolons and magics, proving that the time was right for its use. To ensure that only one with the strength of the Starbreaker could access it, the Nexus was hidden between two black holes, completely beyond the reach of normal mages.

There, in the Nexus, when the time was right, the Starbreaker would fulfill their purpose and put an end to the threat of the eidolons…. permanently.

The location of the Nexus was burned into Sylvas’ brain as he hung there, staring gormlessly into space while his friends were fighting for their lives.