Chapter 12
“So she continued her career for almost a century before she was forced to take a sabbatical from her political career to manage various crises that relied upon her arcane expertise. Through that sabbatical, many feel that she changed from being a mere politician to becoming the embodiment of Empyrean values that serves on the council today.
Throughout her time working on the front lines, solving problems that nobody else could, her network of friends extended beyond planetary governors and academics to encompass people in all walks of life. On her return to politics, she was immediately placed as a junior member of the high council, a position from which she began an even more intensive campaign to improve the quality of life of people across the Empyrean, not just the core worlds.”
—Green Goddess: The Rise of Elenya Starweaver, Part Two, Baldaeth Whisperwillow
Each of the council’s ships had already been the focus of the Dominion’s assault, each one of them a lynchpin in the Empyrean fleet’s defenses.
The complex web that had been spread out to cover the fleet by Greenmantle ignited now in a blaze of magnetic force, distorting every spell cast at the retreating ships off its planned course with each thrumming pulse. The web held the Technocratic Union’s ship in place, unable to flee while maintaining this protection, like a fly trapped by a spider. It took only moments before it became the focal point of the enemy’s fire. When it was destroyed, the metal frame of the ship seemed to crumple up, like someone crushing a can, as all the atmosphere inside was vented abruptly.
Elenya Starweaver dared not risk another all-encompassing shield of peace, but brief ones flourished into life to intercept the particularly lethal spells that the enemy were unleashing. Her ship was not a sitting duck like Theron Greenmantle’s had been. It was chased relentlessly by tracing fire as it zigged and zagged back and forth between the two fleets, until one of the vast dragons that had been summoned seized it in claws the size of the Folly and began rending it apart by brute force. And still, the others fought on.
Sylvas could see now that it had been a trap from the beginning. A needlessly prolonged battle with an inferior force to tempt the main body of the Empyrean fleet to intervene and help. Banking on the Empyrean’s desire to do something heroic so that they could unleash their new pets and gut any future resistance. If Sylvas hadn’t intervened and broken the spell blocking travel before, they’d have had to manufacture a reason to drop it.
Nice to know you were helping, even if you were helping the wrong side.
Kaya brought everyone up to speed on the obvious. “Our spells can’t get through the shields.”
Rania was examining the projection of the battle, overlayed with the sphere of influence where opening the way to null-space was impossible. “If we get back behind their line and keep going, they won’t chase us. They couldn’t without letting the Empyrean fleet get away.”
Saizen nodded his agreement. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”
“We aren’t running. We aren’t leaving them to fend for themselves,” Sylvas replied without even having to think about it. “We take out the Shadow, and then the rest of the fleet can escape.”
“Very noble sentiments,” Hector agreed. “But as Ms. Runemaul said, nothing’s getting through.”
The Shadow unleashed a blast of coiling flame at them, and Sylvas knocked everyone off their feet with the force of his frantic evasion. Where the flames licked across the surface of the gravity shear, they seemed to find purchase. There was nothing solid there to burn, just a twist of gravity, but somehow, the flames began to lap along it, burning in deeper and deeper until Sylvas had to dispel their protection or risk the fire carrying on down into the ship itself.
Blackstar had a twin affinity, Sylvas remembered that, reading about it as if it were some disability that the man had overcome in his progress to power. Shadow and flame. It might have appeared as though his magic was made up of fire when it came flying towards them, but it combined the two affinities, just as Sylvas’ own mana gravity had blended with war. The insubstantial nature of shadows, able to appear, vanish, and cling where nothing else could, combined with the burning of the flames, made for a dangerous combination.
Before Sylvas could raise another gravity shear, the fighters that had until now been serving as living shields swept out towards them in a rush, unleashing a barrage of magic. Sylvas was hard pressed to avoid it, and even with his talents as a pilot, there were still glancing blows to the Folly’s hull that Kaya rushed to flood with molten metal and patch.
“I just got her back in one piece!” Hector complained.
Malachai turned from his station after unleashing another barrage and met Sylvas’ eye. He didn’t say that they weren’t having an effect. He didn’t complain that he didn’t have a plan. He trusted in Sylvas to do what was necessary for them to come out victorious.
Darling, you may recall that I asked you not to come up with stupid ideas earlier. I fear that the fact that your prior stupid ideas somehow failed to kill you has resulted in your mistaken impression that they were not stupid ideas, leading us to the latest iteration of your stupid ideas.
Sylvas slammed on the acceleration once more, raising a haphazard shield, not of gravity but of unified mana. When the next blast hit them from the Shadow, he wasn’t trying to be clever, deflecting it aside. Instead, he pushed directly back against it, trusting in the new and perfect magic that Mira had invented to hold up, even in the face of the emperor who could make his own spells dance to whatever tune he so desired.
To his and everyone else’s surprise, it did. A solid white circle appeared between them and the Shadow, perfect and fading towards crystalline at its outer edges. It should have presented the shadow-flame with endless opportunities to get its footing, but while there were rough edges and a physicality to this new shield, the flames just couldn’t seem to find anything to burn.
No leaking mana to ignite. My spells are perfect.
So they covered the last distance, from behind the enemy shield wall to the Eagle’s Shadow, in what must have been record time, with Sylvas’ will driving them forward as surely as the screaming engines at the vehicle’s rear. They passed through the shield surrounding the Shadow, their own shield punching right into the insubstantial haze that surrounded it, pushing it aside.
Now, Sylvas unleashed the full breadth of his power. The lancing white ray to cut through anything, the etherium seeking projectiles and all of the rest, the full battery of them triggered, interspersed with fresh bolts of raw death cast by Malachai to pepper across the ship.
Some of it, Blackstar managed to avoid by making the ship incorporeal in patches so that the spells slipped through without making contact, by contorting its position through his manipulation of shadows, but mostly through outright clashing with some of the spells with directed attacks of his own that set off startling bursts of flame everywhere they intercepted one of Sylvas’.
With all said and done, the crossed-crescent form of the Shadow was no worse off after Sylvas had unleashed hell on it than it had been beforehand. He would have cursed, but he didn’t have the time to waste.
I really do wish you’d rethink this.
Pushing the engines beyond their maximum and hearing alarms ring all over the ship, Sylvas lined them up with the bridge and let nature take its course. He called out to the rest of the crew, catching them all with his will and personal gravity to hold them safe and still through what was to come. “Brace yourselves. We’re ramming them.”
He’d expected some objections, but by this point, every member of the crew was huddled together in a bubble at the center of the room, and Kaya was already layering steel around them. Hector cast one last despairing look at his beloved ship and then gave Sylvas a curt nod. “Just make it quick.”
With one final push of all the power and will he had left, Sylvas flung the Folly into the Shadow.
There should have been screeching metal, explosions, and concussions as vacuum and pressurized air collided, ripping and tearing and above all, an impact, but it never came. The Folly and the Shadow never quite seemed to collide. They came together, they occupied the same space, but they never hit. Instead, through whatever magic Blackstar had mastered, they intermeshed without touching, until the final moment, when the walls of both ships abruptly came into solidity, and they were meshed.
Back on Strife, there had been a mage named Harvan, another recruit, who could become immaterial and pass through solid objects. Sylvas wished now that instead of being allies, they’d been enemies. So that he could have worked out a counter to all of this back then.
The front of the Folly was torn away.
Arrayed around them on the expansive bridge of the enemy flagship, there were a dozen covenant mages standing ready, with shields interlocked and spells at the ready. Sitting on what could only be termed a throne amidst them all was their leader.
Emperor Valtoris Blackstar.
