Chapter 15

“The reward for weakness is annihilation. Friends and enemies alike will turn on you the moment that you show a hint of it. The answer is not to hide your weakness but to seek it out, to study yourself as you would study an enemy. To find those worst parts of you where you can be most easily destroyed, and to purge yourself of that weakness. In every ten soldiers, there is one who the other nine are forced to carry. One who carries himself with swagger and charisma and shirks his duties. One who is a gossip and a liar and twists the others around to his whims. A bully or a brute who beats those who would stand up for themselves and the unit. Every one of the ten soldiers knows this man, and it is why at the end of training on our barracks worlds, we conduct a decimation. Those who have trained the soldiers have no part in it. Their opinions are not sought or offered. There would be no need for their opinions when the soldiers already know which of the ten men must die to make the unit functional and whole. To purge it of its weakness. Sometimes that tenth man will fight, connive, or lie to escape their inevitable fate, but those who die with pride are my most favorite. They die with a smile on their face, executed by their own unit for their weakness, knowing that through their death, they make that unit strong enough to face the threats of the real universe.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

“That the eidolons are coming back, unsummoned and unbidden. That their prison has degraded. It has already begun. The Aions banished them to another plane. They pieced together a makeshift barricade of spells and technology to keep them trapped there, but it was never going to last forever.” Bael’s words practically tumbled out of his mouth as he spoke them. As if he were trying to get them out before Sylvas changed his mind. “It is falling apart, even as we speak. That is why the Aions fled. Ascended from their mortal forms to escape the inevitable and left us behind to face the consequences of their actions. They were no more heroes than the Empyrean, but at least they had the courage to acknowledge that the problem existed instead of burying their heads in the sand.”

Taking hold of the front of his robes, Sylvas pulled him up until they were face to face. “Then that’s why these planets are appearing? They’re…phasing back to our plane?”

Bael’s eyes lit up. “Yes! They’re anchor worlds. They were spoken of in the vaults. If the Empyrean or any of the others would have listened to the information that the Aions had left behind and taken it seriously, then all of the chaos currently unfolding across the universe might have been avoided, but instead, they have chosen to pursue a policy of deliberate ignorance, focusing their attention upon petty squabbles and politicking when an existential threat to the existence of all intelligent life loomed over us.”

We can’t kill him, Mira stated the moment that the elf finished talking, quickly adding, not until we know more. Much, much, much more.

Unfortunately, Sylvas agreed—a sentiment that caused a bloody vision of Ironeyes to appear before him in his mind’s eye, along with a vague sense of disgust across his entire body.

“We are not friends, Bael,” Sylvas said slowly as he dropped him back onto the deck and rose back to his feet. “Not anymore. But I need to know what you know. All of it. Now.” 

For a moment, Bael looked genuinely surprised that he was getting the opportunity to speak, but then he launched into what was clearly a pre-prepared speech that he’d been turning over in his head since the beginning of their relationship. A sales pitch on the whole Seeker organization. “The eidolons shared this universe with us, but the more that the Aions used magic to aggrandize themselves, the more aggressive and agitated they became, until they went from passive creatures of myth and religious reverence to being what they have become. A plague besetting us.”

Reaching out, Sylvas slammed the doors of the bridge shut. The Ardent were going to arrive soon, and there was no chance that they were going to be as tolerant of Bael’s betrayal as he was forcing himself to be. With a twist of his wrist, he crumpled the metal, locking them in place until such time as the Ardent managed to work out a way to tear them off. Malachai gave him a firm glare, but he didn’t intervene.

Taking the opportunity, Bael slowly rose back to his feet. “The Aions recognized that they could not defeat the eidolons, so they banished them from this plane of existence into one from whence they could not so readily wreak havoc. Only managing to break through to our own dimension when they were deliberately invited, or there was some magical catastrophe tearing through to their jail.”

Sylvas stared at him blankly. This was all information he already had, more or less.

“They knew that their prison could not hold. They knew that the destruction of the universe was an inevitability, so they sidestepped their responsibility. They ascended from their mortal forms, leaving behind all other sapient species to face the catastrophe when it arrived. They abandoned us to face the consequences of their actions.” Bael took an unsteady step towards one of the consoles and then cast an image from it up onto what Sylvas had taken for a window but turned out to be a vast screen. An Aion vault, just like the one that Rania had been searching for on Cantobus. Just like all the ones that Sylvas had read about frantically since discovering his own connection to them. “But in their guilt, they saw fit to leave behind the vaults. Messages from a bygone golden age when the study of magic was at its height. Shaped by their attempts at precognition and prophecy, the Aions left behind their most powerful weapons to face the eidolons. Knowledge. It is that knowledge that we seek. An opportunity to hold back the encroaching end, hidden in the cryptic writings of these ancients.”

From the door to the bridge there came a great shrieking of metal. The Ardent had arrived and were working on gaining access, trying brute force first before resorting to more dangerous magical means.

“To prevent those who would misuse the knowledge from gaining access to it, these vaults were protected. Sealed so that they could only be opened by exposure to specific magical resonances. Some were produced by individuals who had not yet been born, and some were produced by the eidolons that they had banished from reality, so that when their encroachment resumed, they might become the key to unlocking the information that could be used to defeat them. The Seekers of Truth, the Seekers of the Vaults, it is to this purpose that we have done the unthinkable, summoning and binding eidolons so that they could be used to open the vaults. It was why the eidolon of Strife was so vital, for among the myriad vaults we have encountered a singular thread of hope, connecting all parts of the Aion plan.”

Sylvas’ eyes never left the door, but he acknowledged what Bael was saying. “The Starbreaker.”

Careful. Don’t give away too much, Mira quickly chided before falling silent.

“It seems that you have been active in your studies during my absence. The Starbreaker, indeed. The one creature or device that is prophesied to be capable of turning back the eidolon tide. A vault that we had encountered, a vault that we had been led to by information in others, that we believe to contain information pertinent to this Starbreaker and where it might be found, or how it might be created. That was the reason we sought out the eidolon Strife. Why I was implanted in the Ardent. Why my cousin was willing to sacrifice his position and tenure. For the good of all.”

It was infuriating. If Bael had spoken to him, explained what the Seekers were actually about, explained why they needed to keep some eidolons alive long enough to serve a higher purpose, then there was no doubt in Sylvas’ mind that he would have been open to the idea. Sure, it might have taken some convincing to get him on board with the idea of an impending eidolon apocalypse, but there was sufficient evidence from the vaults, and his own brief encounters with remnants of the Aions, that he would have been convinced. He was not the sole possessor of logic in the entire universe. There were so many sensible and intelligent people who could have been convinced with the very same evidence. It didn’t need to be like this. “If you had spoken to the Empyrean, if you’d explained—”

If Sylvas didn’t know him so well, he would have said Bael was entirely unemotional about their entire exchange, but there was a minute shift in the angle of Bael’s shoulders. A hint of disappointment. “Their policy is extermination. Zero tolerance for eidolons. Zero tolerance for anyone who transports them. For the Seeker’s mission to succeed, we cannot abide by the laws of the Empyrean, or any of the other powers and dominions of the known galaxy. Our goal is too important for us to allow ourselves to be fettered.”

Sylvas had been so focused on the door, on what Bael was saying, that he hadn’t even noticed Malachai’s approach, but the man spoke up now. “Laws can be changed.”

Bael glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Not with the required alacrity, given how swiftly the impending end was approaching. We did not have the time to be patient and understanding, nor was it logical to risk exposing ourselves and losing the positions of power that we had acquired within the structures of the Empyrean to campaign for such change.”

Sylvas managed a dry laugh. “Easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask permission.”

Again, there wasn’t exactly a smile on the elf’s face, but there was just enough of a shift around the mouth that Sylvas could pick it out. “Our assumption was that preventing the annihilation of all sentient life may have procured us some goodwill in that regard.”

Malachai was less amused. “You killed people. Our friends. The people we trained with.”

“How many lives would you trade for the continuation of everyone else in the universe? I did not like the decisions that were thrust upon me by circumstance, but I am willing to bear the burden of guilt.”

The necromancer’s eyes narrowed. “The ends justify the means.”

“Indeed.” Bael had spent all of this time trying to convince Sylvas as if he were the only one in the room that mattered, and only now did he seem to have come to the conclusion that there were actually two lethally dangerous opponents that he had to win over. “Would you have reached a different conclusion?”

All of the anger that Malachai had been carrying had now found a new focus. “I cannot say. I was never given the opportunity to decide. I was ambushed by your minions. Fought to protect the Empyrean that I swore my oaths to. Oaths that apparently meant nothing to you.”

Bael didn’t roll his eyes, he’d never be so uncouth, but that did not mean he was not being dismissive. “Honor means nothing if you and everyone else are dead.”

“Honor is the only thing that matters if you are dead.” Ghosts began to gather around Malachai now, coming unbidden as his emotions built up and were repressed. The room dropped several degrees in temperature. “The only thing that persists beyond the end.”

The door to the bridge exploded inward in a blaze of flame, and the Ardent came pouring through, spells flying before the plume of smoke that had washed over the room had even cleared. Shrapnel of the exploded door flew in every direction, and without thought, Sylvas moved, intercepting a jagged spike of it that was coming straight for Bael. It impaled his forearm where he’d thrown it out. The first injury he could remember taking in a long time. It didn’t hurt like it should have. There was superheated, jagged metal protruding from his arm, just below the elbow, and all he felt was annoyance.

Both Bael and Malachai were staring at him in surprise, but they couldn’t have been any more surprised than Sylvas himself.

He tore the metal free, casting it down onto the deck without a second look, and his newfound powers of regeneration set to work, stitching the hole in his flesh shut once more. He cast one of his prepared gravity shears, throwing a shield around their position so that the chaos and violence couldn’t consume them.

He stepped in closer to Bael. “I need the location of that vault. The one that the Strife Eidolon opened.”

Despite all the careful schooling of his expression, Sylvas saw the elf’s eyes light up with excitement. “You still have the eidolon? It was not destroyed?”

Malachai snapped, “You don’t need to know that.”

The elf reached out to the console once more, flinging a star chart up onto the big screen.

“There, the vault.” Bael actually smiled, just a little. “Do with it as you will. It is my gift to you.”

Mira recorded all the information in an instant. Sylvas turned away to look at the elf and the chaos unfolding behind him. “This doesn’t even begin to settle things between us.”

The Ardent had pressed into the room, and the Seeker mages who had been holding back on account of Bael’s orders had no such compunctions about fighting back when their lives were endangered. There was a battle raging throughout the bridge. Spells were flying back and forth and being deflected. Those with the right embodiments flung themselves into hand-to-hand combat. The only ones not fighting were Kaya and Rania, who were taking shelter behind some of the ruined door. Or at least Rania was. Kaya didn’t seem to be aware of anything going on around her at the moment. The shock of the eidolon’s possession had left her completely blank.

Sylvas was startled at the sudden touch of the elf’s porcelain hand on his, or rather, he was startled by the image that accompanied it. “Yet I have faith as I always have, that you are my friend and that—”

The ship rocking on its axis from an impact cut Bael off, sending all the brawling mages of the Ardent and Seekers sliding across the length of the bridge. The blaring boarding alarms were, for a brief moment, the only sound. Then a fresh concussion rocked the ship, this time knocking it into a violent spin. All for a reason that Sylvas had foreseen in an instant.

For none of the usual shields that would protect a ship from bombardment had been raised, all because those responsible for raising them were in the midst of a brawl.