Chapter 43

“It may seem strange to speak of trust when discussing the battle against the eidolons, but trust is the fundamental building block of any fighting unit. Without trust that the man shielding you will hold his ground, or that the striker ahead of you will charge, then it is impossible for the eidolon to be fought, except alone.”

—Chaos in Action, Fal’Vaelith

As it turned out, travel to and from the planet did not need to be a rattling discomfort. Even as they passed through the atmosphere of Strife, the layered protective spells around the Institute shuttle protected them from all turbulence. It felt to Sylvas as though they weren’t moving at all, until he turned his attention to his gravity sense and the looming presence of the planetary body.

The site had been selected from the lich’s diary as the last holdout against the eidolons, defended to the last man by the natives of Strife, even when every other part of their world had fallen. This suggested that whatever had halted the destruction of the planet had occurred there, and so it was of the utmost importance to the archaeologists. They came down a short distance from the location of the site itself so that their landing had no possibility of crushing a valuable discovery, and disembarked with all the haste Sylvas would have associated with kids going on a field trip.

For everyone’s safety, and the obvious reasons associated with them, Sylvas’ detail insisted that they be the first off the ship to secure the area. A fact that everyone obliged without complaint as the white armored guards did their duty, stepping out of the ship weapons at the ready. As they did so, Sylvas took the opportunity to check his senses down that he was back on planet, realizing that he couldn’t sense any nearby eidolons. But even so, it was something he chose not to take for granted. At the moment his ability to feel their presence was new enough that he didn’t fully trust it yet, resolving to try and get as much practice as he could while he had the opportunity. 

“Everything’s all clear, you can all file out,” the reply came from one of Sylvas’ guards from the outside the shuttle, prompting everyone to immediately start moving, himself included. Of course no sooner did Sylvas manage to get outside and down the ramp did he Vaelith waiting for him, flanked on either side by his detail. He froze for a moment before simply nodding and offering the woman an uncertain smile. “It’s…it’s good to see you instructor.”

Ever since Wartback had hinted at who he might choose to help guard him on planet, Sylvas had been anxious to finally see Vaelith again. When they had last parted, they hadn’t done so on exactly positive terms, the situation having simply been too fresh. More than that, Vaelith hadn’t reached out either once Sylvas had regained full network access, leaving him in the dark as to what she thought about him. 

“You look healthy, rested even,” she stated simply as her eyes met his, her head cocking itself to the side ever so slightly. He could tell it was intended as a casual gesture, and would have been taken as so for anyone else who didn’t know her. Yet for as well as Sylvas did, he could tell that she was tense, unsettled even.

Yet all of that didn’t stop the woman from pretending anything but the opposite, the other half of her greeting filling the air in short order.

“Did you enjoy your vacation?”

“It…was something.” Sylvas admitted as he walked down the gangway and on a whim held out a hand to her in greeting. She looked at it, then back at him, an eyebrow cocked in question. “I don’t think we have the kind of relationship where we hug, so this is how normal people who know one another greet each other.”

It was enough to cause her face to go still and make Sylvas worry that he’d overextended somehow, but before the delay could become rude, Vaelith reached out and grabbed his forearm with a not insubstantial amount of strength. A warrior’s greeting. One strong enough that for a moment Sylvas feared that he might need to tear his own arm off in order to escape, but fortunately it ended before he needed to take drastic measures.

“You’ve gotten soft,” Vaelith stated simply as she let go. “That won’t do. Especially with all the trouble you’ve managed to get yourself into.”

“Right, about that,” Sylvas replied, doing his best to hide his wince at the discomfort of having his forearm bones practically crushed together. Even with his Runeweave embodiment, Vaelith was still at a baseline, stronger than him. “How in the loop are you…about…well, everything.”

“The general briefed me,” the woman replied in a cool tone as her eyes shifted towards the researchers still exiting the shuttle, then back to Sylvas. “I think you should have stayed in your room until this was all over.”

Sylvas nodded despite her words, quickly picking up where her eyes had wandered. “You don’t trust them.”

The woman paused for a moment as she looked him in the eye. “I don’t trust anyone. It’s safer that way. For everyone.”

Sylvas didn’t know what to say in reply to that, so decided to change tracks in hopes of moving the conversation along. 

“Are the others already here?”

“They’re on route.” Vaelith replied, gently jerking her head in the direction of the campus. “As acting head of your protection, I wanted to make sure I was here ahead of everyone else.”

“Ah, I understand,” Sylvas replied, slightly disappointed that his friends weren’t here just yet, but glad that they were still in fact coming. However before he could say anything to that effect, a voice called out from the shuttle ramp.

“Fal’Vaelith! What a pleasant surprise! I had no idea that we’d have such esteemed company on our little expedition.” Kalisdrothan emerged blinking into the starlight and caught sight of them. “Team, come on out, you must meet Fal’Vaelith. Now that I know she’s going to be here with us, I’d, very politely, say that the rest of our Ardent minders are entirely decorative. If there was ever a fighter who could face down a whole planet’s worth of eidolons alone, it would be her. Why, the stories that I could tell you about—”

Vaelith cut him off with her usual commanding bark. “Professor Kalisdrothan, if you’ll follow me, I can take you to the entrance to the underground complex, it already seems to have been exposed.”

“Wonderful news.” He exclaimed, hustling over to offer her his hand to shake, just as Sylvas had. “I didn’t much like the prospect of digging, despite the whole event being referred to as a dig.”

Vaelith’s face was like stone as she stared back at the man, reluctantly taking his hand as if it were something dirty. “Don’t like getting your hands dirty?”

“I do not like to disturb historical sites of immense significance if I can avoid it.” He plucked his limp hand from her grip. “Though who is to say what horrors the elements have inflicted upon it if it is already accessible. Hurry along team, leave the equipment for our friends from the Ardent to carry. No point in having all those overdeveloped muscles if they never get used.”

Vaelith and Sylvas took point on their journey across the dunes. Each of them moving out from the huddled group of academics to get the optimal field of view of the landscape without danger of their spells cutting across each other. One of them, the architectural expert, trailed behind a little before calling out, “shouldn’t we leave someone to keep an eye on our supplies?”

“Whatever for?” Kalis replied, looking genuinely perplexed at the question. “There’s nobody on the planet except us and the eidolons, and they aren’t known for larceny.”

Begrudgingly the tall elf jogged to catch up with everyone else and they headed off for what from a distance appeared to be an equally plain dune of the red sand that covered the whole world. As they closed, Sylvas’ gravity sense began informing him just how incorrect that assessment was long before anything became visible. There were expansive tunnels underfoot. Vast empty chambers hidden beneath the sand, and the entrance to it all was a vertical shaft, just on the far side of the next ridge. He let his own gravity increase, pumping up his mass, to give a clear view of what lay beneath and ensure that nobody went slipping through the loose sand down any other shafts, but it seemed all other points of entry were far lower into the structure, which he could now sense was a sort of stepped pyramid. They’d be entering through the very top. To the naked eye, it was nothing more than a hole in the sand, one that no small amount of sand seemed to be slowly sifting down into. 

At least we’ll have a soft landing when we drop down, Sylvas thought with a mental shrug. He was just preparing to drop in alongside his detail in hopes of having an opportunity to clear out any Eidolons found below when Mira alerted him to the inbound shuttle. He stopped just by the hole, turning around when Vaelith hand touched his shoulder. “We stay together, and let the detail go first. That’s what they’re here for.”

“Ah…right,” Sylvas replied, his hopes of getting a bit of exercise fading away just as quickly as they’d appeared.

Vaelith opened her mouth to say something else, but the sound of the approaching shuttle droned her out. The pilot must have spotted where the Institute had parked, because the shuttle did a slow swerve past them towards that landing site. The gathered academics let out a collective breath of relief when they realized that it wasn’t just going to land on top of their find.

By the time they made it over to the landing site, the Ardent recruits were disembarking. The honor of this field exercise had been granted to the winners of the year’s cull from the Blackhall campus; apparently Aurea had links to the Institute, so it was exclusively Sylvas’ closest friends and allies coming bounding and tumbling out of the boxy white shuttle. Kaya, Bael, Orson, Luna, Gharia and Ironeyes were the first out, with Havran and the only unexpected guest following at the rear. Malachai. He must have pulled some strings to be allowed to come along, that or the Institute had realized how useful a necromancer might be when studying a long dead civilization.

Given all that had happened, Sylvas wasn’t sure what to expect from his friends. Granted, he was used to leaving them after dramatic events and going missing for several days, this time was a touch more different and notably more serious. As such, he didn’t know how any of them would react. 

But then again, given the friends he had, Sylvas shouldn’t have worried.

“There you are, Stanzbuhr!” Kaya announced the moment that they saw one another, her eyes all but lightning up. “Figures that it would take us all going to the arse end of this planet to find ya again!”

 Nor was she the only voice that called out from the shuttle as everyone promptly disembarked at once, all of them rushing down the ramp to physically mob Sylvas. So literally in fact that for a second his detail looked like they were about to step in to save him, until a quick signal from Vaelith stopped them in place. With his protection then held at bay, Sylvas was then subjected to a veritable avalanche of shoulder pats, hugs, and random slaps across his arms and chest as everyone enthusiastically greeted him. Greetings which also included Malachai, who pushed through the others as though they weren’t there and strode up to grab Sylvas by the hand. 

“Our battle was magnificent!” He announced at what was easily a shouting volume, his face in a broad smile. “It was everything I could have hoped for. You showed me where my weaknesses lay, where my hubris blinded me, and I will stop at nothing to remedy it. Rest assured, the next time we battle, I will destroy you utterly.”

It was so thoroughly in character for him that it made Sylvas snort with laughter.

Whatever other reservations might have still lingered before that truly gave away then. Kaya all but flung her arms around Sylvas’ mid-section and attempted to crush him,  while Bael, enthusiastically patted Sylvas on the shoulder in a way that could only be called awkward. Though to be fair for the elf, it was probably the closest Sylvas had ever seen him come to expressing affection. From there the display quickly evolved into having him fielding questions about his stay off planet, a good majority of which he’d been told to say nothing about. Even so, he still had plenty that hadn’t been classified to satisfy them with.

Eventually, they all seemed to remember where they were and what they were meant to be doing shortly afterwards, when Kalisdrothan very deliberately stepped in to place a hand on Sylvas shoulder. “I do not wish to interrupt, but we are losing time.”

Sylvas nodded as everyone else took that signal to disengage, their chance to greet him having run its course. “Right. We’ve got a lot of equipment to carry from the Institute shuttle to the site, then we’ll be lowering it down a vertical shaft. I figure that…”

He was surprised to see how rapt the attention he was getting was. He supposed that they were used to following his orders, even if they were a little taken aback by the latest developments. Ironeyes, Orson and Kaya had already broken away and started heading towards the Institute shuttle. Havran and Gharia were moving off towards the shaft to work out how to transport everything down with the minimum amount of effort and everyone who was still standing still only seemed to be doing so because they were too polite. “You guys know what you’re doing. If there’s any questions about the equipment, the Professor should be able to answer your questions.”

Taking a step away from the elf, he jogged a little to catch up with Gharia. Bael, with no obvious task to complete set off after him, only to startle when he realized he’d fallen into step with Vaelith. “Instructor! I wasn’t aware that we were going to have your supervision.”

“Orders,” was all she replied in her typical curt fashion.

The academics were still milling around the entrance, and as Bael began politely introducing himself to everyone Sylvas followed his detail as they all leapt into the hole ahead of him.

Not so long ago, a vertical drop of that height would have required him to shed weight or risk shattering his shins, but no flying spell was required. It wouldn’t have been necessary even without the cushion of the heaped sand. He looked up to the distant stars, calculated the distance back up and had Mira ping it to Gharia’s slate. She’d know what to do with the information. The chamber or room, if you could call it either, was thick with the red sands, layered on so heavily that the details were mostly buried. He cast a gravity spike to one side of the room, and held it until everything had been swept aside. The architecture matched up with the temple complex where he’d once bunked absolutely perfectly. Almost as if they were both part of the same structure, or at the very least built at the same time, by the same people. 

While the Blackhall had been exposed to the elements, this place had been mostly hidden under the sand, so much more of the original carving remained intact. Sylvas could see the sharp lines where blocks interconnected, before they’d been smoothed out by the long passage of time. There were inscriptions in the stone that Mira set to work cross-referencing with what was known of the native language, but judging by the shape of them, a lot of it seemed more decorative in intent rather than actually trying to communicate something. Or so he thought. Unfortunately Sylvas didn’t really know enough about how the language was written to be certain in either direction.

The gravity spike he’d used to clear the way also served a second purpose, illuminating the surrounding area to his gravity sense. The chamber itself had four hidden doors leading into the connected passages, but most of those passages led to dead ends or in one case, a rockfall. Of those remaining, there was only one that he felt confident wasn’t some sort of trap, and it had been blocked pretty solidly by the mechanism of the door suffering a heavy blow at some point in its history. With exaggerated care, and letting his guards know what he was doing, he locked onto it with kinesis, and pushed it along into the empty space where its long rusted out mechanism had once lain. 

So far, so good. He thought as he let the magic go, signaling to those watching him that he was done. If the structure had been closed this whole time then they were a lot less likely to encounter wild eidolons that had wandered in, which hopefully cut their potential number down drastically.

As they continued onwards from there, Sylvas soon discovered that there was even more sand to detail with. So much in fact, that it muffled much of his ability to map out empty chambers ahead of them. Solid rooms seemed fuzzy in places, empty spaces felt as though they may be occupied, and there was little way to tell the one from the other where the sand was at its thickest. Mira went to work calculating exactly how to decipher the sensory data into something more useful, which Sylvas vaguely recalled was the whole point of creating the Paradigm to begin with.

Please. You made me because you missed my company. She said to him the instant the thought crossed his mind.

But as they press inwards, other sensory data began flooding through, the kind that had nothing to do with gravity. His arm began to tingle around his scars. But now that he knew what that meant, he intended on using it to its full ability. Focusing on that itch, he tried to work out which direction he was sensing the Eidolons from, but it was only with Mira’s intervention, calculating which part of the scarring on his arms was developing the most crystallization, that he was able to piece it together.

What did you ever do without me?

Vaelith appeared by his side as if by magic, having finally made her way down to them. “Report.”

“We have guests nearby.” Sylvas explained simply before motioning with his sigil covered arm. “Still working on exactly where and how many, but they’re here.”

“Are they now?” Vaelith replied, her hand coming up to snap out a quick sending, almost certainly to Sylvas’ detail. When she was done, she turned her attention back towards him and for the first time saw some glow of life reach her face.

“Well, then I suppose we better ask them to leave.”