Chapter 46

“There are many words for those that the eidolons have taken. Some call them The Lost, or The Unheard. Others call them relic species, or endlings. In my own estimation the title best applied to them is this; losers. They encountered the test that all civilizations must, and they failed it. Everything in their history led them to this point, to the eidolon incursion that is inevitable in the growth of any world, and when the time came for them to rise to the occasion, they faltered, they failed, and they paid the price of failure.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

By day, the Eidolons came at them. 

At first Sylvas’ sleep was only disturbed by the odd scuffle, the distant sound of a spell being discharged, but overtime it became a persistent percussion. All the upper levels held Eidolons that hadn’t blocked their path on the way in were finally coming out, very clearly sensing their presence. They’d been asleep deep within the sands that filled the long lost rooms of the pyramid, buried and forgotten. But at the tantalizing scent of magic that the expedition was using within the hallowed place, they had started to awaken them, prompting them to come and investigate the supposed meals waiting for them.

One that as it happened, had plenty of teeth to offer, wiping them out by the score nigh effortlessly.

In any other circumstance, it would have been a tiring, wearing thing to need to experience for everyone, but given the magic that Sylvas and the other planned to unleash in the near future, thinning out the local compliment of monsters was seen by everyone as a pragmatic, smart thing. After all, the last thing anyone wanted to was to deal with an actual eidolon horde, let alone do so in the close quarters of ruins itself. But more important than keeping the eidolons at bay was keeping the Hyperway Gate safe. As such a steady rotation of guards had been placed on both the device and chamber that it contained, lest any unseen ambient magic draw the creatures to it and end their archeological dreams before they could truly start.

Unfortunately for Sylvas, Vaelith, and his guards had not let him join the defensive rotation. Or rather, had insisted he was not formally scheduled for it. In the eyes of the Empyrean Alliance, his safety was more important than the ruin and everyone in it. As such his guards had insisted on him maintaining the most amount of freedom possible, because if things went bad, their objective would be to get him, and only him, out of the place. Everyone else was unceremoniously told that they would need to fend for themselves.

Not that his friends particularly cared about that, Malachai in particular simply shrugging at Vaelith when she’d politely, but also bluntly informed the group of their priorities.

“I doubt that there is anything this planet can throw at me that I cannot handle personally,” he stated in his typical, arrogant fashion before inclining his head politely towards the others. “With the others at my side, I daresay we could handle quite literally anything the universe dares to conjure.”

As one would expect, it was a sentiment that went over rather well, given how sparing the prince was in acknowledging other people, let alone complimenting their prowess.

But that wasn’t the only place where Sylvas had been excluded from taking on any active duties, for he was also forbidden from signing up to guard the camp the majority of them were sleeping in. It was an odd tradeoff to have, for he could absolutely blast a group of eidolons that happened to be in his way, or that he purposefully chose to walk towards to salve his boredom, but he couldn’t do so in a way that made him feel connected to the others as a whole.

That’s because you aren’t anymore, Mira told him when his mental sulking finally hit a breaking point. They can still be your friends, but you aren’t Ardent. Not anymore. You are what the Ardent protects. You are Important now. More than them. More than anything. Feel bad about it all you want, but it’s never going to change.

He simply grunted back at her before pulling his attention away from his thoughts and instead looked out over the chamber. It had a tall, vaulted roof made in essentially the same shape and angles as all the arches that they’d encountered on Strife, albeit larger. It meant that no matter how many lights were summoned around camp, there was always an oppressive darkness hanging over their heads. Sylvas himself struggled to worry too much about it, since his other senses told him how empty the air was, but that didn’t help everyone else, who seemed extremely on edge at the prospect of an ambush.

Fortunately, and as far as he could see so far, nobody had been hurt during the day’s attacks, nor was there any hint of damage to either the camp or the ruin itself. Even so however, Sylvas couldn’t help that there was a degree of tension in the other Ardent, Vaelith and his guards included, that he wasn’t accustomed to in seeing. A seriousness with which they moved through the passages and chambers, never quite letting their guards down. After so long, it was strange to see all of them acting as he had from the start, taking on every challenge as though it were life and death. He wondered yet at how his own past had colored his day to day perspective and if he could ever find a way to be rid of it.

But then again, do I really want to be rid of it? He asked himself as he watched the others. It’s kept me alive this long. Maybe it’s the others that need a better perspective. It’s not like they watched their world die right in front them. Now they can see firsthand what they’re fighting for.

“Heavy thoughts?” Vaelith’s words interrupted his train of thought cold, the woman having practically snuck up on him. Not of course, that she was very far away at any point in time, having become pretty much his second shadow.

“No heavier than usual,” he replied with a shrug and turned towards her, once again noticing her rather out of character tone and stance. Ever since he’d met her, she had been curt and overwhelming in his presence, to the point where she had been literally an unstoppable force of nature bent on hammering him into a useful shape. 

But all of that had changed since the day in the arena.

The woman was still there of course, there was no mistaking that, from when she knocked on the door to the latrines they’d set up, telling him he was out of sight for too long. Or when she sat down on her bedroll, barely six feet away from his at the end the of the day. But rather who she was while she was in fact present was nothing like the instructor that had literally kicked him from one end of the campus to the other before almost literally slicing his head from his body.

And that’s because she’s afraid of you, Mira told him as he and Vaelith shared a long and silent glance, one that only served to accentuate everything that stood out wrong about his former instructor. From how she stood at an off angle to him, to how tightly her one hand clenched itself, rendering her knuckles white, to the ever so subtle glassy look in her eyes that bespoke to her having pre-emptively splintered her mind for casting. 

No, rather she’s terrified of you, Mira corrected in an all too gleeful tone. She doesn’t think she can beat you anymore if she has to. If she’s forced to. And that…that is eating her alive.

Sylvas mentally shook his head at his other half’s intrusive thoughts, who simply laughed in response before fleeing away into the darkness of his mind, allowing him to focus wholly on Vaelith and the silence that had now stretched too long between them. “Is there something that you needed?”

The woman blinked at the question, another sign that she wasn’t her usual self, and her eyes regained their sharpness. “Yes…it’s time. They’re ready to try opening the gate.”

That was all that Sylvas needed to hear to not only understand a good reason for Vaelith’s demeanor, but to also dismiss it in favor of his own excitement. It had a been a long day and a half in waiting for the professor and the rest of his team to come up with a plan that satisfied everyone, but if they finally had, then he didn’t want to be the one delaying it.

Falling in beside Vaelith as she motioned for him to follow, it didn’t take long for the two of them to arrive at their destination, greeted by all of the others who had assembled ahead of time. 

“Bout time ya dragged your lazy arse this way,” Kaya announced in her typical tone the moment that he came into view, prompting everyone’s head to shift in kind. “Was about to go hunting for you and drag you here myself for making us all wait.”

“Now, now, there’s no need for that,” Kalis immediately cut in, his tone a particular pitch that could only be described as ‘extremely nervous’ to anyone that had known him even a short time. “We all know the considerations we are under when it comes to Mr. Vail’s assistance here…and truthfully, the time that we had for preparations was well needed.”

There was a look in the direction of Vaelith and Sylvas’s security detail as the professor spoke, signaling perhaps concerns or friction as to what had been planned. However whatever they might have been, Sylvas wasn’t made privy to them as the aged elf beckoned him over.

“Come, come, this way, this way,” he said in same nervous tone, Vaelith quickly falling into step beside him as he moved. A fact that the man steadily ignored as he continued speaking, “now you will stand right here as you activate the gate, it should keep you at a good distance should anything go wrong, while also keeping you reasonably out of range of the portal should everything go right.”

“That sounds…great,” Sylvas said, somewhat at a loss for words as he parsed the new sources of stress that he was seeing, going to stand exactly where Kalis had indicated. It had him positioned front and center in front of the device, with Vaelith beside him on his left, no doubt ready to haul him out of the way if things went awry. 

Or to try and kill you if the portal ends up opening to fate knows where and you look at risk of being kidnapped by something, Mira’s unhelpful voice added as she returned from her all too brief slumber.

Come on, enough of that, Sylvas growled back at her, earning himself another snicker in the process.

As he argued with Mira, the rest of the team arrayed themselves around the Gate, some preparing shielding spells to hold during the whole process, others ready to jump into action should there be any sign of danger. Kaya seemed to be the only one out of formation as everyone finished getting ready, her focus on the pillars of the gate. 

“Looks to be clean and precise with no sand, dust, or rubble in any of the carvings,” she announced as she finished her inspection, eventually glancing back at Sylvas. “Can’t see anything that’ll interfere with the mana flow once you start.”

“Good to know.” He replied back, realizing that he wouldn’t have thought to check that particular detail and was suddenly glad at Vaelith’s and his detail’s attention to detail.

“We’re ready when you are,” the professor announced eagerly from behind Ironeyes. “Feel free to begin whenever you’re ready.”

Which is exactly what Sylvas did after pausing for a moment to take a deep breath.

From what the researchers had told him, and he and Mira both theorized on their own, just a gentle touch of gravity mana should have been enough to activate the device and connect it to its other side. From there, all he needed to do was then supply a steady amount of the mana until a portal stabilized. Once it did, then the device was supposed to keep everything running on its own by drawing ambient mana from its surroundings, allowing Sylvas to detach himself from it. However despite knowing that process in theory, what none of them could comfortably pin down was the amount of mana to start with, at least not beyond ‘small’. So with that particular decision left solely in Sylvas’ hands, he chose an arbitrarily small amount of mana, barely enough to even form a gravity spike one could feel, and directed it into the device.

The response was all but instant as the ancient device practically tore it from Sylvas’ mental grasp with such force that a concussion rocked the room, prompting a chorus of shouting as everyone staggered. 

But before anyone could do more that shout, a flash of light erupted out from the centermost part of the device as the connection was made and then, in the very same perfectly arched shape as all of the Strife architecture, a paper-thin opening to another gate had opened. It was just like looking through a door into another room, without any strange sensations of distance or movement that otherwise accompanied long distance travel. 

It’s like they managed to collapse two openings in null-space right on top of one another. Sylvas theorized, his curiosity unable to help itself as it inspected the magic despite everyone else’s worry. If he could learn how to produce, and sustain, planes of direct connection like this, his gravity magic would go from devastating to truly unbeatable. Inside his mind he could feel Mira frantically devouring all of the information that his senses were gathering, trying to comprehend the spell-forms that had allowed for this to happen. He was so distracted with how it had been done, that he barely noticed what had been done.

“There’s red sand!” Kaya’s voice broke through the common, the dwarf already peering through the portal. It was a statement that despite everything, wasn’t lost on the assembled group, the professor letting out an audible gasp as his hopes gained some solidity. 

Red sand meant that the portal was elsewhere on Strife, somewhere that had potentially escaped the effects of its downfall the same way their current ruin had.

Unfortunately where exactly that was however, was a mystery at the moment. The shielding spells that had been raised had yet to vanish, and were currently causing some degree of distortion and discoloration to Sylvas view as a byproduct of their presence in front of the portal. That said, it was a simple enough thing for Mira to filter those changes out of his vision once he asked her to, his vision shimmering a moment as she adjusted. 

Once it cleared, Sylvas saw that beyond the gate lay a passage not dissimilar to the one that they had been walking around in since yesterday. Yet, there had been no hint of another one of these Gates anywhere else in the pyramid. Or in any of the other native structures that they’d so far discovered on Strife. Tentatively, Sylvas’s next move was to extended his senses out towards the fine plane through which the other place could be seen, shivering at the touch of the mirror-smooth expanse between the pillars. 

He pushed against that surface, expecting to be rebuffed, but there was nothing there at all, his senses moved through the opening and then things got strange. For to his senses, he was now in two places at once. The place beyond the portal, which was by his best estimate about six thousand miles beneath their feet and also here, in the pyramid, where he’d been standing before. 

The incongruity rapidly became difficult to process and Mira quickly offered a filter on his senses to stave off the strange sense of dizziness and vertigo before it overtook him.  But even so, he held her off. He could use this. This sensation. He could already track someone as they teleported, following the weight of them through null-space to their destination, but this sensation could let him track where they were moving to without the need for delving null-space himself. It had potential, even if it did make him feel like he was being turned upside down and inside out. He had endured far worse for far less of a potential payoff.

Masochist. She whispered to him, despite setting herself to work on his theory.

“It seems to be safe enough.” Bael announced as he stepped out from the shield wall and glanced through to the portal’s other side. “At least the immediate area beyond the portal. We should send someone through, see if they can get a fix on the other gate’s position.”

“I’ve already got one.” Sylvas said before anyone could move forward. “Roughly six thousand miles down, I’m thinking pretty close to the planetary core.”

There was a moment of silence, then from the behind the shield wall where the academics were clustered and ready to run for their lives at the first sign of trouble, he heard someone cry out, “I knew it!”

So did, Kalisdrothan and Bael apparently as they turned to one another, excitement writ across their faces. Both talking over the other with one voice eventually reaching Sylvas’ ears. “They had direct access to the worldsoul!”

The two elves, talking so rapidly, sounded almost exactly like one another, and it was difficult to differentiate who was speaking at any given moment. “—knew that they had to access it somehow with the fragments, but weren’t aware that they—”

“—no wonder they devoted themselves so thoroughly to the defense of the gate if it led directly to the target of the eidolons—” It didn’t help that they seemed to be intent on finishing each other’s sentences either.

“—perhaps we’re looking at a deliberate measure introduced earlier in the process. Researcher Kaeth hypothesized that—”

“—that eidolons ability to damage a worldsoul was necessary to create soul shards and that many of the relic civilizations had made attempts at domesticating the—”

“But then they faced—”

Sylvas had to shout to be heard over them. “The Ardent should go through first to secure the other side and make sure there aren’t any traps or eidolons hidden away near the soul.”

“Well I hardly think that is likely, given that the worldsoul is intact, clearly whatever measures the natives had in place have continued to—” Kalisdrothan launched into an argument before realizing that it was Sylvas, not Vaelith who’d suggested the more conservative course of action, at which point he slowed to a halt and conceded the point at once. “Very well. But please endeavor not to disturb the site in any way. It is of the utmost importance that we record everything in its natural state before doing anything that risks disturbing it.”

“Of course.” Sylvas assured him before casting a glance over towards Vaelith in silent query.

“You’ll be in the middle beside me,” she stated, both his security detail and the his friends lowering their shields and readying themselves to enter the portal. “Same rules of engagement as before.”

“I understand,” Sylvas replied with a nod, his excitement and curiosity at what lay behind the portal simply too high for any of the otherwise stifling security procedures to get him down. Nor was he the only one he discovered either as his eye landed on Malachai, the man’s eyes practically glowing with eagerness.

They smiled as their gazes met and Sylvas motioned towards the portal.

“Shall we?”