Chapter 18

“Retirement is not an option that many of the Ardent seek. To live one’s life with purpose and to spend one’s life in the pursuit of a goal can lead to just as much contentment over a shorter span than one might find spread out through those cold and lonely years at the end of one’s life. The life of any fighting person of the Ardent is typically short by the standards of their species. Statistically, it skews considerably as a result of the first year of service claiming so many, but even then, the rate of deaths each year continues steadily. Some find a future through promotion or excel to such a degree that they are placed in positions where they can train future generations in their craft, and their lifespans stretch on to almost the same length as a normal member of their species. The rest do not. If they do not fall in their first year, their survival chances increase drastically for the second year, and by their third year, there is another increase in their odds, remaining consistent through their fourth and fifth. In the sixth year, there is another spike in deaths. Some attribute this to an excess of comfort. The fighting edge is lost, or the fear has faded to a degree that there is no longer sufficient care being taken.”

—Sapient Resource Resilience, Remo Aurea, Part One

Stepping out onto Strife used to feel like walking on an alien planet for the first time. Because it was. It was a place so different from home that back then, he couldn’t even conceive of the idea that both worlds were essentially the same, but now Sylvas could feel the weight of all his worries lifting as he came out of the hyperway gate and set foot in the rusty sand. This place was never meant to be home, but in his itinerant life, it had lasted longer than most.

The Ardent were arrayed in a defensive formation around the gate with shields prepared and a counterattack bristling. Beyond them were more Ardent, taken by surprise by the sudden activation of the gate and equally bristled. Sylvas rolled his eyes and went looking for his friends. Kerbo, Kaya, Rania, and Malachai had all found each other, with the necromancer trying to remain at a sufficient distance that it wasn’t obvious how deeply invested he was in the conversation.

Kaya swept her metal-clad arms back and forth, trying to clear some room, bellowing, “I’m fine, you culghs! Stop your fussing!”

The fact that metal was still coating her limbs, and tendrils of it were dangling like vines between her limbs and body, trying to amalgamate her into one single lump of metal suggested that she was not, in fact, fine, but Sylvas knew better than to try and argue with her. The fact that she was swearing again meant that she was lucid and alive, and he couldn’t have hoped for much better than that. “Kaya, you’re alright!”

“Don’t know about that, stanzbuhr”—she shoved him away when he tried to hug her—“but I’m startin to put myself back together.”

Rania looked askance between the two Covenant mages. “Now that nobody is actively trying to kill us, do you think someone might tell me what the hell happened to you back there?”

Kaya opened her mouth to speak, only for it to snap shut again without her making a sound as she realized that not everyone around them was privy to the secret of their power. Sylvas provided an explanation. “Blow to the head. Must have been a heavy one, since it is Kaya, and you could crack nuts on her skull without her noticing.”

“Nah, Stanzbuhr. You’re getting it crossed.” She turned around and wiggled her hips. “You can crack nuts on my ass. You can crack rocks on my skull.”

Sylvas looked confused and started miming measuring her height. “I thought you cracked people in the nuts with your skull?”

“Yes, you’re both hilarious,” Rania said without the slightest hint of amusement. “But could someone please tell me what is going on?”

With a shimmer in the air, a form emerged right by Sylvas’ side. “I wouldn’t mind hearing a little bit about what exactly is happening either?”

Instinct would have had him strike first and look after. Actually, with his new instincts, borne of the blending with the eidolon, his instinct had actually started screaming to collapse the singularity before it could form, trapping whoever was porting in back in null space. He was glad he hadn’t succumbed to instinct. “Instructor Fahred?!”

The man swept an arm around his former student’s shoulders with a wry smile. “I think we might be past the point of honorifics at this stage in our relationship, Sylvas.”

Kaya gawked at him. “What are you doing down here?”

“No. You see, if a planet suddenly suffers an eidolon incursion and it already has established and dug-in defenses against eidolon incursions, it is entirely logical for them to be used. Popping out of an ancient network of inter-systemic portals along with a whole contingent of Ardent… well, that is somewhat more unexpected.” Sylvas had forgotten the almost hypnotic back and forth of the instructor’s relentless monologuing. “What are you doing down here?”

“Is everyone else here, too?” Kaya was trying to see past them and the crowd. “The other instructors—”

“If they survived the sudden appearance of an overwhelming stampede of eidolons, then they can be found somewhere down here in the ancient fortifications.” He held up a hand to cut off their next round of questions. “Can you please answer the very simple question of why you’re here, and then possibly the auxiliary question of what precisely is going on?”

Kaya had managed to hoist herself to her feet in the confusion, and she took the lead on answering him. “One, Sylvas only knows like… three gates he could take us to when we accidentally invaded and trashed the Seeker flagship, and two, eidolons have invaded the whole universe, and everything has gone to culgh. We’re trying to stop it. Same as usual.”

“And as a tertiary concern, did it occur to either of you at any point in the past few months that it might be considered polite to drop a little message into the waiting mailbox of your favorite instructor, just to let him know that contrary to all reports, you are not in fact dead.”

“We didn’t have the option,” Malachai interjected, which just led to Fahred’s watery gaze turning on Sylvas instead.

“We were recruited into Empyrean Intelligence. Faking our death was necessary for us to—”

“Aw, just… spy stuff? That is disappointingly more mundane than anything that I was imagining. I’d concocted some vision of you both alive and well, young Sylvas being dissected for the rest of his life in a lab to try and understand his powers and young Kaya throwing a hissy fit outside. Spy stuff is positively tame by comparison.”

The pair exchanged a brief glance. Kaya conceded, “Well, there was a little bit of that, too…”

Sylvas finished. “But they soon came around to the idea that we were more of an asset in the field.”

“The two of you are profoundly concerning—ah, what—” A hand was suddenly on the side of the instructor’s face before he was shoved aside. On arriving, Fahred had teleported himself into the mass of Ardent, relying on some degree of stealth and audacity to carry him. Vaelith had not been so subtle. She had charged right through the front line of Arden guarding the beachhead they’d established on this side of the gate, and given the expression on her face screamed that somebody was about to die, the Ardent, many of whom had trained under her, had the good sense to fling themselves bodily out of the way.

Vaelith stopped directly in front of Sylvas, looking him up and down with a quick flick of the eyes, then stepped inside where his guard would have been if he’d had the sense to raise one. He braced himself for the blow, for the blade, for her vengeance on him for leaving her behind in the heart of the Empyrean bureaucracy. It would have been well deserved. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and crushed her against her rock-solid body until he let out a little involuntary whimper of confusion. The war-elf stepped back and drew a steadying breath. “You’re alive.”

“So are you,” he replied carefully, still unsure how much of what had happened that Vaelith remembered. The last time he had seen her, she’d left with Theron Greenmantle for treatment of the curse that had ravaged the better part of her body. Clearly, the council member had been able to hold up his promise in curing her, but Sylvas still wasn’t sure if she had chosen to retain her memories at the end of it. So he probed the most subtle way that he could think of in the moment. “You look…better than the last time we saw you.”

The woman’s eyes flashed up to meet his, then shifted towards Kaya and Malachai. “They were able to break the curse. I’m…glad that you all took care of one another in the meantime.”

Sylvas felt his pulse quicken at the statement, fully well remembering that Vaelith’s last words to them had been to take care of each other.

She remembers, Mira commented from within the depths of his mind. That…could be helpful. Or so I hope.

Sylvas silently agreed, their brief moment coming to an end as Vaelith pointed away from the secluded chamber they’d arrived in. “We’ve secured the perimeter using the same point of ingress as last time. Collapsed the passage behind us. There are supplies for a siege of a few weeks before we break out.”

Kaya looked surprisingly happy, given the circumstances. “And you’re in charge of the defenses?”

“I am. Aurea bought it in the first attack. It was me or Fahred, and we wanted solutions.”

Fahred opened his mouth to object, finally just grumbling, “Rude,” before walking away from them.

The news hit Sylvas a little harder. “Instructor Aurea is—”

“We’ll get a full list of the dead for you to browse if you want it.” Vaelith dismissed anything he might have been feeling and took hold of his head by the jawbone. “Right now, I need you to focus. Is this gate a way off Strife?”

Sylvas had to shake his head in her iron grip. “The only other connections I can make are to the Seeker flagship, which they’ve probably locked down now if they haven’t fallen into the star I sent them into or to the deeper cavern below. If it comes to a crisis, we can always retreat there. But there’s no way off-world.”

She let his head fall from her hands and groaned. “What is happening out there? What caused the incursion?”

Sylvas tried to work out how to explain it all. The Aions. The seekers. The vaults. The prophecies. “That’s… Those are two very big questions—”

Vaelith cut him off. “Ten words or less to explain both.”

“She’s feeling generous.” Kaya snorted.

“Massive incursions everywhere. Initiated their side. Aion’s planar banishment failing.” Malachai counted the words off on his fingers as he spoke.

“So… the worst-case scenario.”

That, Sylvas could answer. “Yes.”

“You ready to play with the big kids?” Vaelith cracked her neck.

Sylvas managed a smile for her. “I don’t have a choice.”

Vaelith shrugged one shoulder and then turned away. “I’ll go rally what passes for leadership, and then we’ll make plans.”

After she had stalked off, with Fahred trailing behind her begrudgingly, the palpable tension in the air started to die down. Kaya blew out a long-held breath, and even Malachai seemed to relax a little. The only one who hadn’t met Vaelith before was Rania, and her eyes were flitting back and forth between Sylvas and the statuesque elf as she stalked away. She leaned in close to Malachai. “Ex-girlfriend?”

Sylvas was too mortified to speak. Kaya started immediately gasping for air as she tried to control her own outburst. Malachai was left with the onerous task of trying to explain. “I believe she was his mentor rather than his lover. Though it would not require a great deal of reflection to acknowledge that there was a sort of submissive and dominant aspect to that relationship that one could—”

“She was just my instructor!” Sylvas blurted out as fast as he could manage.

“Yeah!” Kaya finally managed to wheeze out, in support of him. “You only watched her shower that one time!”

Rania was staring at him quizzically, and Sylvas found himself entirely unable to string a sentence together. “That wasn’t… I didn’t… listen…”

She forced a smile and looked down at the red sand coating the cavern floor. “I knew you dated other people before meeting me, Sylvas. It’s okay.”

“We really didn’t date… honestly… this is just a misunderstanding…” He fumbled his way through the words.

Rania pressed on as though he hadn’t said anything, still not meeting his eye. “It’s just strange meeting them. It’s weird that you’re interested in me when you’ve clearly got a type, and I don’t fit.”

That was enough to give Sylvas pause. “Type?”

“You obviously like having women boss you around, and I just… that’s not really my thing.” Rania shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “So, I don’t understand why you’re pursuing me if…”

Mira let out a joyous cackle as the other woman trailed off. Oh, I love her so much.