Chapter 31

“The Seekers of Truth are now considered to be a terrorist organization, wanted for the illegal transportation of contraband, the dissemination of false, inflammatory, and dangerous information, and the transportation of eidolons across interstellar distances in clear violation of the Empyrean Accords. Their status has been upgraded primarily in response to the recent discovery that their agents had surreptitiously implanted themselves in many of the key organizations that keep the Empyrean operational, and the intention was to use the key players in those positions to cripple any attempt by the Empyrean to defend itself against them. We have also received confirmation from Empyrean Intelligence that what had previously only been accusations regarding their transportation of eidolons has now been confirmed as fact. While we are a free society, founded on the ready exchange of ideas, there are certain matters on which we cannot be moved. First and foremost among them is the existential threat that the eidolons pose to the continued survival of all sapient species. The willingness of the Seekers to expose you to an increased risk of widespread incursions by transporting eidolons through space is unconscionable and unforgivable.”

—Threat Assessment Bulletin, Durgan Ironfist

If you had asked Sylvas whether a troop of Seekers could walk into the midst of a troop of Ardent, have an argument, and then walk out again unscathed, he would have laughed at the absurdity of it, but that was exactly what happened. 

Bael had not openly conceded to his demands, but he had taken his toy soldiers and slunk off with his tail between his legs. Kerbo hadn’t been happy about letting the opportunity to take some of the enemy players off the field slip through their fingers, but he was less intense about his unhappiness than he would have otherwise expected. He had stopped Sylvas as they emerged from the submerged chamber and told him clearly, “I think that was a mistake, letting all of them live, but I’m not fighting you about it. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

“That’s about all I can ask for.” Sylvas had slumped a little once the confrontation was over, and he really didn’t feel like relitigating it all over again. Particularly when he was already dealing with the glares of disappointment from Rania for destroying such a rare, historical relic.

Back at the ship, they were met on the boarding ramp by Vaelith, standing with her arms crossed. “The Seeker flagship left orbit a few moments ago.”

“They got nothing,” Sylvas replied, answering the question that the woman had really asked. “And they know exactly where they stand now.”

There was a glance from the elf that clearly indicated where she wanted them standing, but she didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she dropped a new bombshell on him.

“Destroying the platforms restored comms access with the central network. At least what’s left of it,” Vaelith stated. “Apparently, the council wants to talk with you now.”

Sylvas almost tripped over his own feet at the news. After all this time alone in the dark, they would finally have some guidance again. He wouldn’t have to argue about every decision. There would be orders from on high that he could point to and make everyone else shut up. 

Finally.

“Then let’s go talk to them!” He was grinning widely as he boarded the ship, and it didn’t even falter when Vaelith fell into step beside him. At least until he paused to look in her direction, discovering that she looked anything but joyous at the news.

“Problem?” he whispered, his earlier exuberance dying as instantly as it had sprung to life.

“Might be time to make a choice.”

The words cut deep into Sylvas, leaving him speechless for the few seconds they needed to reach the bridge. Kaya met him with a distracted hug around the midsection, then turned back to the screens. Projected across the breadth of the bridge were the High Council of the Empyrean.

“Agent Vail. Nice of you to join us once more.” Eleyna Starweaver was positioned towards the center of the screen, whether by design or coincidence, Sylvas could not have guessed. To either side of her were Theron Greenmantle and Durgan Ironfist. Farther out was Karth Veilbohr and a static-filled empty space where someone had apparently been disconnected. They had all survived the fall of Alvarhaim. He probably shouldn’t have been surprised, given that they were covenant mages with decades of experience, if not centuries, but it still took a little of the weight off his shoulders.

Sylvas stepped forward. “Apologies for the delay in getting back here. We were dealing with—”

“Fal’Vaelith has apprised us of your movements.” Greenmantle cut him off. There was a roughness to his voice that hadn’t been there before. Living through the apocalypse had apparently shaken a little of his stoic calm.

“The information that you have gathered can be disseminated to other agents to pick up where you have left off. Your particular talents are required back in the galactic core.” Eleyna picked up the conversation swiftly. “There have been further incursions since the initial breakthrough, and if we intend to keep the Empyrean intact, then we need more direct power to bring to bear. Your clearance of Strife suggests that you are the best person for this.”

In an instant, Sylvas realized what Vaelith had meant.

“You want us to join the defense of the core worlds?” Sylvas repeated back, letting a hint of incredulity into his voice.

“We understand why it wasn’t your first move, lad. Nobody’s judging you.” Durgan Ironfist spoke in his usual fatherly tone. “Thought you could be proactive instead of reactive. Usually the right call. But there aren’t enough Ardent alive to hold the line here. We’re calling in everyone who’s left standing.”

Sylvas let out a heavy breath and raised a finger to subtly mute the call. 

“What are you thinking?” Vaelith asked from beside him, her voice barely a whisper.

“That I don’t want to make a decision that affects them without talking it through first.” Sylvas looked over to Malachai and Kaya, neither of whom flinched away. They both nodded to him the moment that they understood what he was asking with his gaze. It was only Rania who didn’t immediately catch onto what was going on, and she was quickly looking back and forth between the three of them, before it too dawned on her. Eyes wide, she glanced back towards Sylvas and nodded eagerly.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Sylvas said as his gaze returned to Vaelith, her expression unreadable.

“It better be,” the woman replied, before they all turned their attention back towards the screen.

“Coordinates for the rendezvous with our forces are being transmitted now.” Karth Veilbohr said, having decided to press ahead with nobody else speaking. “How long will it take you all to arrive?”

Sylvas took a breath to brace himself and spoke. “I’m sorry, Councilor, but my team and I will not be arriving.”

“I beg your pardon?” To her credit, Eleyna did seem to be genuinely confused rather than offended at having her orders ignored.

“I’m afraid that I can’t accept your order.”

“Yes, you can.” Ironfist said at the same moment Greenmantle announced, “You do not have that luxury.”

Sylvas didn’t try to argue with them, or to interrupt the mounting furor from the Ardent around the bridge. “Putting an end to this incursion is too important. Even…even to defend the core worlds. I’m sorry to put it that way. But it’s the truth.”

“I suspect that you are unaware of the current death toll.” Eleyna spoke softly, but her voice cut through all the rumbling arguments.

Malachai answered her. “It will continue to grow exponentially until there is no sentient creature left alive, unless that incursion is stopped.”

“We need to take the fight to the eidolons.” Kaya’s hands were shaking as she stood up to the rulers of the Empyrean.

“You do not have the liberty to ignore our orders and do as you see fit,” Greenmantle snapped. “The core worlds—”

“Are the best protected of any in the Empyrean.” Malachai then asked, “How do you suppose all the outliers are holding up in comparison?”

Eleyna looked genuinely stricken with grief, but she didn’t back down. “We must preserve what we can so that the Empyrean can rebuild.”

“No.” Sylvas shook his head. “We need to stop the incursion. We need to stop this from ever happening again.”

“We deal in realities here, Mr. Vail,” Greenmantle answered. “Not in fairy tales, nor hopes and dreams.”

“The Ardent that we have onboard will take this ship and meet your defensive forces after dropping us off,” Sylvas said, as if the argument was already over. “We will proceed alone to complete our mission.”

“You cannot do this!” Greenmantle snapped once more. “You cannot abandon your duties. That is treason.”

Sylvas’ shoulders slumped. He had never wanted it to come to this. They were all trying to save as many lives as they could. He had never wanted to go against the council, Vaelith, or anyone else. He looked up to the screens, met the gaze of the most powerful mages in the Empyrean, and asked the question that all of them feared. 

“Who can stop me?”

Darling, you have never been sexier than in this exact moment.

Greenmantle ignored that, too, snapping out orders. “Fal’Vaelith, take command. Travel to the coordinates, and we will deal with the court-martial of Agent Vail when—”

“I will not be doing that,” Vaelith stated calmly.

“I am giving you a direct order, Fal’Vaelith.” Greenmantle crossed his mechanical arms across his chest. “Or do you mean to commit insurrection, too?”

“We deal in realities.” Vaelith repeated Greenmantle’s words back to him. “I can’t take this ship by force. The fact that he’s giving you back the ship and the Ardent on board is a kindness. It is my suggestion that the council views it that way.”

Eleyna looked down at Sylvas with sadness. “It does not have to be this way, Sylvas. We just need your help in—”

“I wish that were true, Councilor, but we know the need for my help would never end,” Sylvas said while raising a hand. “I will report back in once we’ve found a solution to the incursion. Until then…I wish you all luck.”

He let his hand fall and cut the call. 

Turning slowly to face the people gathered on the bridge, Sylvas tried to meet as many eyes as he could. “If all of that wasn’t clear, I want to make it clear that I relinquish command of this ship to Fal’Vaelith and the Ardent. All that I ask is that you drop us off on your way to the front.”

“Which will be where exactly?” Farhed’s voice chimed in from across the room. “I trust you already have one picked out, no doubt.”

Sylvas did, in fact, have one in mind and couldn’t help but slump as he gave it voice. “The worst place in the universe.”

Things noticeably became tense with the Ardent after that, for even while they might have understood exactly what it was that Sylvas and the others were chasing, the price of doing so was clear in everyone’s head. It was perhaps only because of Vaelith’s not-so-subtle suggestion that they get off the bridge that things remained smooth with all of them quickly reconvening inside the palatial captain’s cabin, which was quite extravagant, even by Dusont standards.

“So you just quit?” Rania asked once they were properly settled.

Sylvas nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“You quit… the Empyrean?”

“I can’t do what they want me to do,” he tried to explain. “It’s the wrong thing to do. All we’d be doing is buying time. Not solving the problem.”

“I just didn’t know you could quit an empire…” Rania sank down onto the sofa.

Kaya piped up from over by the minibar that she’d ‘discovered’ almost as soon as they entered the room. “Oi, Stanzbuhr, where have you got them taking us?”

“You aren’t going to like the answer,” he quipped back.

Malachai looked considerably less shaken than the rest of them, but Sylvas supposed that he had more experience turning his back on the vast interstellar power that had laid claim to him than the rest of the party. “Wherever it is, one must hope that there will be a ship available to take us from there.”

Kaya groaned. “It isn’t some stupid Hammerheart planet, is it? I don’t want to owe that culgh any more favors.”

“Not that we could fly a Hammerheart Consortium vessel into Obsidian Dominion space without being shot down anyway,” Malachai opined, while peering at the concoction that Kaya was mixing from a safe distance.

“Last time we needed a ship, we turned to Malachai, because he has friends in high places.” Sylvas started trying to explain his reasoning. “This time… I’ve got some friends in low places.”

Understanding slowly seemed to be dawning on Kaya. “Oh no.”

Sylvas sighed. “I’m afraid so.”

Rania looked between the two of them with her mounting confusion finally turning to frustration. “Where are we going?!”

Sylvas grimaced as he broke the news. “We’re going back to Glamrock.”

As if on cue, a knock sounded from the door of the chamber, prompting Rania to call over the comm, “Come in?”

There was an array of Ardent beyond it. Vaelith, Fahred, and Kerbo. All of whom wasted no time in entering the room.

“Well, my dear students, I have never seen anyone screw up a perfectly good career in the Empyrean quite as thoroughly as the three of you,” Fahred loudly announced before heading over to see what Kaya was making. 

Kerbo made for the sofa, thumping down next to Rania and giving her a sharp-toothed grin. Only Vaelith seemed to show any sign of discomfort for the situation, and it quickly became clear as to why. “This planet you have us heading for. It’s a death world. No atmosphere to speak of. No starport. It’s a dump. Why am I taking you there?”

“If I tell you, you can be ordered to repeat it,” Sylvas replied carefully, knowing that while they were moving on with their journey, Vaelith and the others wouldn’t be so lucky. “Will being in the blind help you at all?”

The woman thought about it and then nodded. “Probably, yes.”

With those words, she pushed past Sylvas and headed for the bar, too. Kaya, who had always been a little intimidated by Vaelith, even if she’d never been willing to admit it, slowed her frantic sloshing of bottles into the cocktail mixer to stare nervously. 

“One for me, too,” was all she said in response.

Eventually, a glass of odious-smelling liquor was in the hands of each of them, and Vaelith raised hers to make a toast. “If I never see any of you again, it will be too soon. Hope you survive. Even if you are all technically traitors now.”

Fahred tacked on, “To the three most spectacularly imploded supernovas of recent Ardent history.”

“Idiots,” Kerbo added, before taking a drink.

“I’m not entirely clear on whether I’m being insulted,” Malachai thought aloud.

Sylvas chuckled. “I think this is as close as they can get to showing affection. I’d just take it.”

Fahred pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Don’t let them know we are capable of feeling genuine emotion or they’ll start rationing it.”

Even Vaelith’s lips twisted into something like a smile at that.

“So… what… this is goodbye?” Kaya finally asked.

Fahred sank down onto the sofa beside Kerbo. “Well, unfortunately, by deserting his post in the midst of a massive crisis, Mr. Vail here has unfortunately painted you all with rather large targets on your back, labelling you as traitors to the Empyrean, cowards who went absent without leave, all of the usual lovely things that governments say about the people who are no longer willing to kill on command.”

“But the three of you are fine with that?” Rania seemed a little quicker on the uptake when it came to matters of the heart than the rest of them. Presumably, emotional intelligence was not considered to be a vital and trainable skill by the Ardent.

“Everyone wants to tell Command to shove it sometimes.” Kerbo knocked back his whole drink despite it smelling strong enough to strip paint. “Most of us don’t get the chance.”

“While we may be parted on grounds of political affiliation, I do not believe that we are going separate ways in terms of our ethics,” Fahred began explaining, indulgently. “Your company will be pursuing the loftiest goal of the Ardent, the utter annihilation of all eidolons. A goal that it galls all of us to not be allowed to pursue ourselves, I can assure you.”

“Wish I could be there to see it,” was Kerbo’s rather limited contribution to the conversation. But still more than the nothing that Vaelith was saying while she stared into her drink.

Sylvas raised his own glass in the silence. “It was a pleasure serving with you.”

Vaelith drank to that, even if she didn’t have anything to say, and when the drinking was done and they were heading to the door, she stopped to shake the hands of each of them. All except for Sylvas. She stopped dead in front of him as she was heading out the door and just stood there for a time, staring at him, committing him to memory, perhaps. Whatever words she was searching for continued to elude her. She gave him a pat on the cheek and walked out the door.

After that, they only had around six more hours to fill before they arrived at their next destination, and they had very little to do, other than catch up on their sleep. They had just begun working out who was bunking on what flat surface when there was another knock at the door.

Sylvas was the closest, so he was the one who got to wade out of the argument and answer it.

Aida stood outside. They hadn’t seen each other since the surgery; she and the few other surviving auxiliary staff of Strife had stayed with the ship—or stayed out of the way for the most part. “What the hell have you done this time?”

Sylvas chuckled. “I’m leaving.”

“You already died. Wasn’t that leaving enough?”

“Apparently not.”

“You won’t have me to patch you up anymore. Don’t do anything stupid.” She gave him the hug that Vaelith had clearly wanted to, even though she stiffened up and pulled back a moment after initiating it. “What am I talking about? That is like asking a fish not to swim.”

It was hard to be offended, given how many times she’d probably saved his life by this point. She backed out into the hallway and turned to leave on that note. But Sylvas wasn’t done. He called after her, “Take care of yourself.”

Aida let out a surprised laugh. “Me?”

He could still hear her laughing all the way down the corridor until the door snapped shut.

The room was more luxurious than most of the places they had ever stayed in their life, with the exception of Malachai, so there was no trouble in finding somewhere comfortable to settle down and sleep. After the initial attempts at fairness, Rania and Sylvas were shoved into the master bedroom by Kaya, who still seemed extremely intent on making sure that they made it as a couple. If she could have locked them in there, Sylvas was pretty sure she would have.

Finally, the two of them were alone, and all of the crushing weight of the decisions Sylvas had made hovered above him, just waiting to come crashing down. Before he could even open his mouth, Rania snapped, “Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for destroying that vault.”

Sylvas sighed. “I… didn’t have any better options at the time.”

“I’m angry about it,” she told him. “I’m angry at you.”

He nodded. He had expected as much and didn’t really have much that he could say to justify his actions. She had been there. She had seen the same things as him.

“You’re going to have to apologize,” she continued.

That he could manage at least. “I am truly sorry.”

“And you’re going to have to make it up to me.”

Finally, he looked up and realized that she was smiling at him coyly.

“Oh.” It seemed like he would be able to put off dealing with the consequences of his decisions for a little bit longer.