Chapter 9

“The Technocratic Union is one of the few major institutions of the Empyrean that has its founding well documented. For the most part, the various factions of the Empyrean developed organically out of planetary ethnic conglomerations or shared projects in a manner that defies specific dating, but the Technocratic Union’s origin can be set. Both magic and technology have seen widespread use throughout the cultures that make up the Empyrean, but as time passed, it became increasingly apparent that the latter was lagging behind in comparison to the former. 

Information left behind by the Aion civilization provided a ‘leg up’ to those interested in pursuing the betterment of arcane studies, while there was no technological counterpart to provide those pursuing that course with a similar boost to their progress. As such, all the technologically-minded segments of the existing populations elected to collaborate and pool research rather than allowing the more piecemeal experimentation and research typical of the study of magic.”

—A History of the Empyrean Alliance, Elenya Starweaver

The ships of the Empyrean fleet were not the sleek, mass-manufactured warships of the Dominion one; they were more piecemeal. 

Whole sub-fleets were made up of identical craft, but then there would be an entirely different one just a ship over. Elvish, dwarvish, and then dozens of designs that Sylvas couldn’t place at all but had to represent one specific kingdom or culture within the Empyrean. They weren’t all the same, but they were all working towards the same goal, bringing their own unique strengths to bear.

Immediately, the fleet began to spread around the ragtag group of ships that had been trying to hold the line, absorbing them into its formation, and just as swiftly, specific ships spun into new positions within that formation. Huge angular dwarvish ships that looked like massive hammers in shape took up equidistant positions across the whole wall of the fleet, deploying interlocking shield spells that connected up in a vast honeycomb pattern over the enemy-facing side. Smaller ships darted out from them to dock with the battered freighters that had been holding the Dominion back, and repairs and medical assistance flooded through them as fast as the dwarves could move. 

If he only had the official history of the elves of the Empyrean, then Sylvas would probably have been surprised to see their elegant ships like smooth matte needles, were not involved in assembling defenses for the fleet at all but instead took up position to maximize the damage that their impending assault was going to do, some arrayed around the flanks of the fleet so they could pincer in around the Dominion, but most just angled so their points were aimed at the center of mass in the opposing fleet. 

Spells began to wash out over the fleet from a particular set of ships shimmering silver in the night that Sylvas recognized as belonging to the Veilbohr Institute. What should have been exploratory vessels and floating universities converted into battleships, layering complex protections across every ship in the fleet.

In the midst of each of the five distinct groups of different craft, there were a few that remained still in the position that they had first deployed to from null-space, and in their stillness, they caught Sylvas’ attention. It took only a moment for communications to open up, and for him to realize why those particular ships weighed so heavily on his perception despite looking like any other.

Across the viewscreens, five faces appeared. The High Council of the Empyrean, deployed for war. Elenya Starweaver and her elves, front and center. Durgan Ironfist had a full mouth of shining golden teeth on display behind his beard as he commanded his dwarves into place. By comparison, Karth Veilbohr looked absolutely miserable to be here, commanding his Institute’s forces in battle. 

Theron Greenmantle of the Technocratic Union seemed to make up the leadership of the odds and ends craft that filled out the bulk of the fleet, all of the different ships built to different purposes, and all of them now repurposed for war. They had gone from having three Covenant Mages to face down the whole enemy fleet to having seven, with each of the new additions having more experience in magic and warfare than Sylvas’ whole team combined. He was feeling better about their odds.

Elenya Starweaver seemed to be the first to notice Sylvas’ face in amongst all the other ship captains that must have been appearing to her. It felt as though she met his gaze despite the impossibility of it. Despite that, it was Durgan Ironfist who stopped dead in the midst of the rattle of orders to say, “Wait a minute. Sylvas Runemaul?!”

“Thank you for the timely intervention, sir.” Sylvas had no idea what the correct title to use for the dwarf was, especially since he was currently, technically, a traitor to the Empyrean after abandoning his post.

“We thought you were still off chasing dreams.” Veilbohr barely managed to contain his contempt as he spoke.

“I found them, sir.” Sylvas smiled with just a tinge of spite. “The Aion’s prepared solution to the universal eidolon incursion is good to go.”

There had still been a lot of background chatter between all the various ships and wing-leaders as the Council recognized Sylvas, but it fell dead silent now.

Elenya managed to find her composure first. “You have a way to stop the incursion?”

Sylvas nodded with a confidence that he didn’t feel.

“Then we had best clear up this little mess and get your plan into motion.” The elf had the same knowing smile as ever, as if she’d been expecting this exact outcome all along. Sylvas supposed that after ruling the Empyrean for a century or so, an expression like that would probably come in handy. To disarm enemies and bolster the opinions of allies. He didn’t think that he’d ever master it, though.

The Dominion fleet had been stunned into stillness by the destruction of one of their ships and the subsequent arrival of the Empyrean fleet, but that moment of peace had passed, and they were opening up on the newly arrived fleet with all the spells they could muster. A single warship could unleash a relentless wave of destruction, working in harmony with all of the others. It was like there was a solid wall of lethal magic crashing against the honeycomb shield that the dwarves had raised. Ironfist tutted. “Clumsy work.”

The elvish ships began to unleash their spells. Not the rough and ready battle magic that Sylvas had been taught to channel through a ship’s weapon arrays, but complex ritual magic that had to have been inscribed into the ships from the outset. Magic crawled like lightning along the lengths of the needle ships, spiraling along their length until it hit the point, and then, in conjunction with every other one of the ships casting at the same time, the spell was unleashed. 

Each beam projected from the tips of the ships could not have been wider than the span of Sylvas’ hand, but in them, such power was focused that it sliced cleanly through the Dominion’s shields, shattering the spells that had been there to protect the warships that were now scattering like frightened pigeons to try and avoid being punctured in exactly the same way.

The Dominion fleet began to fall back as the warships scattered around those puncture points. It wasn’t chaotic or lacking in discipline like a rout would have been, they fell away in stages, with some maintaining their position and maintaining suppressing fire against the Empyrean fleet, but nonetheless, they were being driven back by this new onslaught, and the Empyrean fleet that had been on the back foot since the beginning could pull forward, reposition, and continue the push back.

The elf ships cycled back up to another casting, and this time, the Dominion seemed better prepared. It was simple enough to project where the spells were going to hit based on the directions the needle ships were pointed, so they flooded out from those points. Exactly what the tacticians of the Empyrean had intended. The rituals completed, the needle-thin spikes of magic shattered through the peripheral shielding that was left behind where the enemy ships had fled, and that was when the next barrage of spells were unleashed. 

Not bolt of fire or beams of disruption, but tumbling spheres launched from the handful of Empyrean ships that Sylvas could have sworn were mangled by extreme heat. Each one of them was oddly shaped, oblong, and stuttering with power the moment that they were cast, but as they slipped through the holes in the enemy shield wall, the reason for that instability became immediately clear. They were so overcharged with destructive magic that they were barely holding together. 

The moment they were behind the shields, they detonated in catastrophic explosions that could rival little suns in their brief burning intensity. Fire did little in the cold of space, but these explosions went beyond fire and into the kind of heat only found in an atomic furnace. They flashed into life, erupting across the interior surface of the shields and rippling out. 

The charred and molten shape of the Empyrean ships that had launched the firebombs were now reflected back at them from the other side of the battle. Scorched and warped out of their crescent shapes, the warships that had been fleeing the pierced shields now drifted powerless and broken.

Before there was even the slightest opportunity for the enemy formation to reform, the needle ships launched into their next barrage, and the telltale flaming glow began to gather around the melt ships. The all-powerful covenant mages weren’t even required. Just good old-fashioned weight of numbers and precise coordination.

Everyone was over their bouts of travel sickness after being turned to lightning, and they were elated. With the possible exception of Saizen, who was now completely surrounded by the kind of people who would arrest him the moment they recognized him. Hector had been laughing from the moment the council arrived with their fleet, and now even stoic Malachai had a smile spreading across his face. The enemy that had been stalking and preying on them, that they’d had to run and hide from so long, were being blown out of the sky.

Darling, the numbers aren’t matching.

Sylvas tore his gaze away from the fireworks display of the retreating Dominion fleet. “What?”

The number of ships in this fleet. It is only a fraction of what we saw in Dominion Space. They had almost thrice as many by my count. This isn’t everything.

Sylvas tapped into the comms panel and sent out a call to whoever was listening. “We need our own null-space disruption. I don’t have the spell, can anyone…”

They were too slow. Every ship in the Empyrean fleet, old and new, was pushing forward after the Dominion, inching closer and closer to them as their ships burst in brief pops of light when flame took them. The enemy fleet had seemed so massive and overwhelming when there were only a few defenders that it probably hadn’t crossed a single mind that there might be so many more. 

A single ship appeared out of null-space.

It was not one of the standard-issue warships. There were two crescents to it, interlocking at 90 degrees so that it made a cross when it was facing toward them as it was now. It was considerably bigger than the warships as well as the modified design. Not double the size, but near to it, with the bridge extended forward into a jagged spire reaching out from the midpoint where the inner crescents met. 

The weapons arrays were ablaze the moment it emerged into real space, and while Sylvas would have trusted in the hex-grid shield the dwarves were generating if it had been coming at them head-on, it was not. It had emerged on their flank, separate from the rest of the fleet, as though it didn’t need interlocking shields to protect it.

Sylvas spun the Folly and launched them forwards, dodging through the Empyrean formation, dashing through the obstacle course of their ships of the line, and spinning through the clouds of fighters with a gentle push of gravity to part them out of his way as he drove them to the limits of speed. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but instinct and whatever premonitions his paradigm could grant him were screaming a warning to him about that ship. Everyone else on the Folly was falling about in disarray, but Sylvas was immovable in the circle of command, eyes and mind locked on that new ship.

The spells were unleashed from the cross of weapons arrays as Sylvas reached the farthest ship of the Empyrean fleet, but what should have been a pair of interlocking lines spiraled together as it was unleashed. There was not a dozen mages on this ship unleashing their spells in harmony, but one mage, casting one spell, of such potency and power that it was meant to destroy the whole Empyrean fleet in a single shot. 

It was fire and shadow bound together, coiling like some serpent of primordial myth, leaping from the ship and swelling in size the closer it came until the spell’s jaws hung open wide enough to swallow the whole fleet. Nothing Sylvas could cast would stop it. He had no shield that he could extend out wide enough to protect the fleet or the council without it crumbling apart. All he could do was throw up his hands, fling out his gravity, and catch the spell.

The charging serpent of shadow and flame stopped dead in space. Time and gravity had both thickened around it, freezing it on its course. Finally, the other ships in the fleet seemed to notice the doom that had come for them. They saw the trajectory that the spell was set on once it had burned its way through Sylvas and the Folly, and they scattered from its path. The careful and precise formation that they’d been using to maximize their effectiveness and burn through the Dominion fleet was abandoned in their haste to be out of the line of fire, and that gave the Dominion the time they needed to reform their battle line, lock together their shield wall, and grant safe passage to the rest of the ships coming out of null-space. 

In a moment, their numbers doubled, and in the back of Sylvas’ head, Mira was still keeping count, still warning him that this wasn’t all that they’d already seen the Dominion deploy. Sylvas had no time to think about it.

Sweat was running in rivulets down his face as he strained against the incoming flame. Usually, if he reached out with his will and moved objects around, it was an effort, particularly if it was something as huge as this spell, but it was also uncontested. It had taken him a moment to realize, as he pushed and pushed to hold the spell in place and give the fleet time to get clear, that things were not as simple as they usually were. 

That he was not just fighting against the forces of nature, but an actual force of will pressing back against his. The spell wanted to move forward, it had all the momentum that its casting had granted it, and against that pressure, Sylvas’ will could hold without question. He had thrown plasma from the coronas of stars around like a child splashing in a paddling pool before. It should have been painless to stop a spell, even as vast a spell of fire and shadow as this. 

On that other ship, what he guessed now was the Dominion flagship, there was a mind and a will trying to drive the spell through. Sylvas had his mastery of gravity on his side, but that was only enough to carry him as far as stopping the spell to begin with. To fight back against what was driving it forwards now was taking raw willpower, and to his mounting dismay, Sylvas was coming to realize that he was not the only person in the galaxy possessed of raw willpower. 

Whoever was on the enemy ship was pushing the spell forward. Sylvas and Mira worked in harmony, casting out gravity spikes, shears, and every other variation of his affinity magic instantly through his eidolons to reinforce his hold on the spell, and it still wasn’t enough. It crept forward with inevitability. 

His will, his magic… nothing he was throwing out was enough to slow its advance.