Chapter 52

“War is not considered to be one of the elements that makes up the universe. Yet we classify eidolons under that category. The personifications of combat and destruction. Never has there been a mage with such an affinity, yet we accept the existence of eidolons, because we accept in them there is the possibility of such evil.”

—Extinction Events: An Oral History of the Eidolon Incursions, Mackran Litchen

The stasis spell that had survived millennia could not bear the strains it had been under during the tug-of-war between the invaders and Sylvas. It had begun to unravel, and as fast as Sylvas tried to repair and remake what he remembered of it, he already knew that it wasn’t going to be enough. His heart broke at the thought that if Bael was here, if he had not betrayed them, that together they might have been able to figure it out in time.

“We need to go, now!” Kaya grabbed a hold of Sylvas side and tried to drag him away, only for him to pile on weight to keep himself fixed in place. “There’s no fixing it! That thing is breaking loose one way or another! And that we need to go, stanzbuhr!”

As time returned to the eidolon, the blood-hewn fur covering its body began to sway in the breeze, the eyes that had been frozen and unseeing sharpened with awareness once more.

Eyes that one by one flared with life as they gazed upon Sylvas.

Oh, oh no, Sylvas thought as his desperate attempt to fix the binding failed, the magic quite literally coming apart in his hands.

“Sylvas! We must away at haste!” Malachai had also closed the distance between them and taken hold of Sylvas’ shoulder opposite of Kayla. “We do not know this creature’s capabilities. Not enough to linger this close. We should—” 

The Prince’s words were cut off as the bindings holding the blood wolf began to break, flashes of magical sigils shattering into countless pieces erupting in the air around it. For each one that broke, the shape of the creature changed as more and more time returned to it, its body rippling, contracting, and expanding. It was enough to finally prompt Sylvas to move, he and the others rushing away just as it finished awakening.

Immediately a blood curdling howl filled the chamber, its volume so loud that Sylvas felt one of his ears rupture from its presence. Spinning back towards the creature, he then saw the Blood Wolf of Strife as it rose to its full glory, seemingly growing larger in the process. Its claws dug into the ground, carving through the stone as if were sand. Its maw snapped at the air, once, twice, three times, each of them sounding like a thunderclap. Its head turned to follow where Sylvas and the others had run to the beginnings of a growl starting to fill the air. But that was as far as the blood wolf got before its body froze in place once more, everything save its nose which twitched rapidly in the perfect mirror of its namesake.

And then it was gone, the colossal eidolon all but diving head first into the ground before it and phasing out of sight.

“Damn it! It went for the worldsoul!” Sylvas wasted no time blurting out, it not taking any formidable exercise in intellect to deduce such a fact. Even so, it certainly helped that his senses all but immediately confirmed his theory. 

“So what?” Kaya immediately replied as she tugged on his waist yet again. “The planet’s dead, we’re alive, let ‘em have it while we make our break.”

“Our break to where?” Sylvas countered as he pulled himself free of her grasp. “You heard Vaelith, the citadel was hit, damaged. And the campuses—”

Kaya snapped at him. “They can evacuate, assuming they aren’t already.”

“There won’t be enough time.” Malachai cut in, his voice hard and firm. “Not for them, and not for us. Even if we were to leave our wounded behind. The beast will devour the worldsoul and almost certainly gain enough power to ascend beyond this planet.”

“And then we will have a Starkiller on the loose,” Sylvas finished, his attention shifting over towards the glowing white form of Vaelith, remembering the promise he’d made to her.

“So then what do we do?” Kaya demanded, even if the quiver in her voice said she knew exactly what the reply would be.

“We stop it.” Sylvas replied as he stretched out with his senses towards the unmistakable presence of the eidolon, noting that it was now several hundred miles away. Far beyond his ability to grab hold of it and pull it back.

That means we need to go back to the core, Mira chimed in. Assuming the gate still works after the professor—

It will have to, Sylvas interrupted as he turned to look towards the aforementioned pillars, both whom were stained with ample blood. We don’t have any other options.

“I’m going to try and reopen the gate to the core,” he announced while starting to stride towards the ancient device. “Come with me, stay here, run, whatever you need to do. I’m not going to ask either of you to—”

“Shut it stanzbuhr.” Kaya grunted from behind him. “As if I’d ever let you go it alone.”

“And as if I would ever pass the opportunity to test myself against such a beast.” Malachai added a second later.

Sylvas turned to look at his friends and nodded, further words failing him. So instead, he turned his attention back towards the gate and fed yet another thread of gravity mana into it. As it had both times, the device hungrily sucked up the offering, practically tearing the mana from Sylvas’ grip. Yet instead of the cacophonous clap that had heralded the gate’s opening before, a ripping sound filled the air and a jagged, distorted tear started to form between the twin pillars.

One that despite appearing less than perfect clearly led down to the center of the world once more.

Sylvas let out the breath he’d been holding as the damaged portal stabilized, “I can’t pretend this won’t be hard…but—”

“Just get on with it stanzbuhr, before I change my mind.” Kaya shouldered past him and took off running for the portal.

You’ll have approximately a minute and a half, based on its current speed, to get to the worldsoul. Mira told him. I suggest you make the most of it.

Launching into flight, he flew through the portal and took off for the planet’s core, with Malachai and Kaya sprinting all-out through the oppressive pressure, trying to keep pace. Even now he could feel the eidolon coming long before there were any hints of it in the vast chamber. In his arm. In his head. In that place where his power echoed back to him.

The red sand that filled the heart of the worldsoul chamber had begun to drift up into the air, forming a vast spiral up to the point in the ceiling where it was clear where it would come through. He rose up into the air amid the whirling sand, putting himself between the worldsoul and the eidolon, casting spells into broken off fragments of his mind. Readying everything that he had to face the doom that was bearing down on them. Arriving just in time, Kaya bristled with steel, Malachai was cloaked in death, all three of them were as ready as they were ever liable to be to face down an enemy of this magnitude.

The eidolon came through as a single droplet of blood, falling down to meet Sylvas’s gravity shear, then it descended in a tidal wave of red. A raw wild torrent of blood crushing down against his shield as he tried to hold it away from the planet’s soul. 

Blades of death and steel were flung up into it, slicing lines through the stream, but never doing anything to slow the tide. It pounded down on Sylvas with all the weight and momentum that it had gained since breaking free of its prison.

But even so, he held.

As it splashed down around him, the red sand from around the room was drawn in. As it touched the liquid form of the eidolon, it became blood once more. The whole world had been drowned in its blood, once upon a time, and now it was drawing it back into its form. No wonder it had grown since its reawakening. It had been torn asunder by all the armies of Strife in ages past.

His shield held against the turbulent downpour, but it made no difference. The wolf was making its way by him all the same. All around the worldsoul in a broad circle, the blood had poured down, splashing across the ground briefly before rising up to join the swirling dust around them. He caught glimpses of burning eyes in the blood as it rose. The outline of jagged jaws. The shape of a beast beyond measure. 

A glimpse of the future appeared in Sylvas’ vision, and he immediately released his hold on the shield. As he did, a wolf’s head formed out from the blood and lunged towards him, teeth lethally solid by the time they closed on the place where he’d been but a moment before. But by then, Sylvas had already flung himself into what would have been a wall of blood just an instant before. Before the wolf had pulled itself back together into a single terrifying beast.

Still, those teeth closed far closer than Sylvas would have liked. The flicker of premonition had told him what would happened if he hadn’t moved, but it gave no warning of how the future would be changed if he listened to it. 

Something to consider if I survive, he noted while scrambling to regain control.

Now that it was solid, the wolf instantly became a target for the others. The blades that Kaya conjured and flung stuck into it now, impacting the blood as if it were flesh. Yet on the other hand, the scythe blades of pure death launched by Malachai were of a completely different class, the interaction between them, the blood, or the eidolon’s war affinity resulting in something else entirely. They physically dug in deeper and wider into the creature, but seemed to do little else, as if neither elements knew exactly how to react to the other.

Regardless, neither of their efforts did anything to slow the blood wolf down.

Sylvas could move as fast as he could think, and he thought so fast that it left Mira struggling to keep up. He flung himself clear of snapping jaws, struck back with a focused Gravity Shear, narrowed down to the width of a blade. The wolf’s teeth snapped shut on it as if it were a real blade, wrenching at it, even as the blood that made up its mouth was being warped away.

He pushed against the eidolon with all the strength his body had to offer, and yet was still driven back across the room. The worldsoul, what they’d all assumed would be the eidolon’s target was left ignored as it fought back at them. It might have seemed as though it was overpowering them so thoroughly that they couldn’t scratch it, but it sensed some sort of threat in them all the same. 

It’s because it isn’t a being of destruction like the Crimson King was, Mira’s explanation came to Sylvas as he fought. It can’t wipe you all away with its presence alone, that isn’t what it is. It’s a being of war, of battle and conflict. It wants to fight, needs to fight in order to exist. So if you give it that option, its very nature will force it to take it.

It was an trait that made perfect sense to Sylvas, and one he fervently wished he could find a way to take more advantage of as he was forced to abandon his shear blade and leap back from the creature. Yet no sooner did he do so did the wolf follow, teeth snapping after him. It didn’t give him a moment to think as it chased him, a moment to prepare or cast, or do anything but survive. 

It came after him with the relentlessness of inevitability and he had nothing but the speed of his thoughts and the brief glimpses of the future to work with. Here at the center of the planet where the damaged worldsoul had magnified gravity several fold should have made his power unstoppable, but it was still nothing compared to this creature. More and more sand was being drawn into it as they fought and a result it grew bigger and bigger. Worst too, it did not grow any slower as its bulk, and by extension strength, grew, rather it did the opposite and became faster and faster.

Kaya passed through the periphery of his vision, slashing at the wolf with her bladed arms, but even as the blood trailed away behind her, it was sucked right back into the eidolon. Conversely the new curses that Malachai switched to casting finally seemed to effect the beast, dulling the bright red of its body where they struck, making it more solid, somehow solidifying it until the beast seemed to have a body once more.

A body that  Sylvas took the opportunity to kick out at as he flung his way out of another bite. 

The impact of the blow, empowered with all the weight he could throw into it was enough to give him some distance. He rebounded away from the wolf as it was launched away from him. Fractions of a second were bought and sold. He unleashed a gravity spike right down the eidolon’s throat.

“Break, damn you, break!” He cried out, as it snapped after him again. Never still. Never slowing. 

Deep inside its body, the gravity spike contorted it and drew it in, crushing it from the inside out. But where a living creature had organs, the beast was blood through and through. He could condense it, make it more solid, even slow its motion with his power, but there was nothing there to crush, no veins to burst, no organs to rupture.

Yet as the gravity hooked in it though, it bought Sylvas more time. He increased his weight and sent himself dropping to the floor. Two more seconds earned. Another gravity spike caught the wolf by its tail as it tried to drop down on him. Pinning it in the air, keeping him out of reach.

Throwing up another gravity spike, then another, Sylvas changed tactics and tried to tear parts of the eidolon’s body away. It worked decently enough. Spirals of blood surrounded the tiny black holes and then flung it away. It went from blood back into dust as it cleared the reach of the creature’s power.

The wolf fell, letting the parts of it trapped in his gravity be ripped away so it could pursue its chosen prey. Sylvas threw up his hands and cast a ball of fire in the face of the wolf. Emptying his fire gem of the last of its mana. Switching, he brought out a bolt of lightning next and did the very same. Next, a sonic pulse that rocked it back and stripped more blood away. Every spell that had ever been thrown at him, he threw at the wolf. Every blow he’d ever suffered, he returned.

The eyes burned brighter the more that he fought it. It seemed to grow stronger the more that he tore into it. Even as it dwindled in size as they tore away parts of it, what remained became stronger. The more that they fought it, the stronger it became. The brighter it burned to his second sight.

He met those burning eyes, and something like recognition glinted there. It understood, as he understood. The same moment he recognized that fighting it was making it stronger, it recognized that he now understood it. At that moment something in its nature changed and for the first time in the battle it broke away, charging straight towards the worldsoul.

But Sylvas wasn’t done. The revelation had told him all that he needed to know. He raised his hand, reached out for the creature with his power and caught it. He caught it the same way as when he’d pulled it from the grasp of Bael and the other invaders. In the same way that he’d seen in the vision that had sent him down this path. 

And he pulled it back towards him as it tried to flee. 

Malachai threw up a shield of death in front of the creature as it ran, all while Kaya rushed to put herself between the monster and the pillar of glowing light beyond it. But despite their efforts, Sylvas knew that the eidolon was going to tear through them if it reached them. The beast had learned that it was going to lose without the power that eating the worldsoul would give it, a realization that had forcibly changed its tactics. It didn’t want to fight to the death for the simple sake of doing so, rather it wanted to, it had to, prolong the act of battle for as long as possible.

However it couldn’t do that without more power, the beast’s legs digging deep into the ground as it tried to force itself away from Sylvas.

It’s slipping away, Sylvas thought as he wrestled with the creature’s spirit, feeling as if it was escaping through his fingers. I…I…need more. More…power…more…strength.

And as she had far too many times already, Mira came to his rescue, her voice whispering into his mind.

Then we forge your fifth circle right here and now.

Her work on the paradigm was far from finished so far as he knew, if they codified it now, there was a chance that it would never work the way that was intended. He might never have the crystal-clear foresight that he needed. But nor would he have it if he died, if he didn’t have the strength he needed to survive.

Do it. 

He felt her begin immediately as his vision shifted, the filter that she had placed his on temporal senses being torn away. In an instant he saw himself fail a thousand times, the blood wolf escaping his grip and plunging into the worldsoul, devouring both Kaya and Malachai in a single bite along the way. But even as the visions plagued him, he redoubled his focus, redoubled his efforts on pulling mana out from the blood wolf. Not only were his channels thinned from the battle so far, but he needed them to be full for the other half of his circle, his embodiment. 

Sylvas pulled. 

He focused upon the task harder than anything he ever had in his life before. He pulled and pulled until it was all that he could think of, tearing every iota of mana he could muster from the beast.

Until all at once a torrent of etherium blossomed within him, filling his channels up, flooding into all of the open spaces, and renewing his core in an instant.

That’s enough! Now brace yourself!

The new embodiment and paradigm snapped together. His body and his mind became one as his fifth circle formed. His core had expanded each time that he added another circle, each of them being gradual and incremental expansions that doubled his capacity to store mana. 

This time it was not the same. This time it was completely new. 

His core doubled and redoubled, a vast emptiness inside of him that all the mana in the galaxy would not be able to fill. The black hole at his heart grew deeper than it had ever been before. It wanted power. It wanted everything. 

Then, as the circle truly snapped shut, the blood wolf let out a howl unlike anything Sylvas had heard. It wasn’t the battle-cry of some monstrous thing bearing down on its prey, it was fear.

And Sylvas knew why it was afraid.

When he reopened his eyes after his ascent, he somehow knew that they had turned black as night. Black as the emptiness at the heart of him. Just as the fifth circle had given Fahred a halo of water for his affinity, Sylvas’ ascent gave him this. He pulled now with all the newfound strength he had, all the newfound hunger, dragging it back from Kaya, dragging it back from Malachai, dragging it back from the worldsoul.

The howling became strangled as the blood wolf started to twist and shred itself in an attempt to get away. Blood spattered all around as Sylvas deepened his grip, tightening in on the core of its being, pulling not only with the force of gravity, but with his hunger too. His channels were solid crystal etherium now, a perfect channel to draw in mana, and an eidolon was, at its heart, nothing but mana.

He pulled now not like a man desperately trying to keep a monster from the throats of his friends, but like a fisherman reeling in his catch. It bled and it rent itself, and it pulled and flailed, but ultimately there was no escaping the inevitable. When it came close enough for his hand to touch fur, the blood of the eidolon flowed up his arm, slipping into his scars.

The scars burned at the touch of the blood, but he gave it no second thought. There could be no hesitation now. The only way he won was to drain the power of the eidolon away. So Sylvas pulled and pulled, and his vast empty core filled up with blood. He drew on the eidolon as it wailed and begged, but he did not stop.

On his arm, the scars had begun to twist and reshape, and now they spread. As he drew more mana in from the eidolon, he was changed. His scars crept up his arm, up his chest. The spells that he had used to call on the eidolon that had doomed his world became something new and terrible. He was calling an eidolon again, but it was not to some helpless place where a world would be doomed. 

He was calling it to him, and this time he was ready for it.

Inch by inch, the blood soaked into him, carrying all the wrath of the eidolon of war inside. He ignored it, blocked it out, and drank it down.

All of the world faded away except for Sylvas and the eidolon. He had faced a demon god when he was little more than a child, powerless as a child too, but now it was the monster that feared him. The monster that tried to flee as he consumed it. The power of a planetary annihilator ran through him, flooding him with strength. Strength enough that once he had his hooks into it, there wasn’t a hope of it ever escaping. The more he had fought it, the stronger it had become, but now the roles were reversed. The stronger he became, the weaker it was, and the easier it became to keep swallowing it down.

“Stanzbuhr.”

The power flooding through Sylvas now was more than he’d ever handled before, but his capacity had grown so much that he couldn’t even bring himself to worry. Anything in excess of what his core could handle would disperse through his etherium channels, but thus far, there was no sign of him getting even close to it being full.

“Sigil!”

He had the power now, all of the power that he needed to be safe, to defeat any enemy, he had made himself everything that he had been fighting to be since the very beginning.

“Sylvas!”

His black eyes snapped open to see Kaya standing between him and the worldsoul he was reaching for. The eidolon was gone.

“It’s done! It’s over.” Kaya reached up to him and he let himself drop down into her grasp. “We’ve won. It’s over.”

She held onto him. Eased him down onto the ground. But there was a panic in her eyes that Sylvas had never seen. “Stanzbuhr, what did you do?”

“I killed it.” Sylvas whispered as his body let out a shudder.

“No, you did not.” Malachai stood over him, a strange look upon his face. “There was no release. No death. It is simply… gone.”

Beneath his skin, Sylvas felt something shift. The vast hollow emptiness in his core felt less empty. He tasted iron in his mouth. The same iron he’d been tasting since the day he first landed on Strife. Horror filled his mind. 

“No.” He whispered as placed a hand over his heart, a vision of crimson fur and jagged teeth appearing to him. “N-no…it can’t be.”

But as much as Sylvas wanted to deny reality, there was no way he could.

The Blood Wolf of Strife was now inside him.