Chapter 28

“The primary reason that the Seekers operate in secret is not that their goals are in direct opposition to those of the Empyrean, but because they are willing to make use of methods of which the Empyrean do not approve in their pursuit of those goals. Attempts have been made to bring the Seekers into the fold, offerings of amnesty and assistance in the pursuit of their research into the aions have been publicly presented, but with no discernible command structure and very deliberate obfuscation of its membership, there is no negotiator who can accept those offers. It also seems increasingly apparent that the Seekers would be unwilling to curb those more dangerous methods that they make use of that are considered a threat to public safety, or abandon their connections with foreign powers by openly siding with us. Without compromise on both sides, there can be no peace.”

—Antagonizing Forces in Interstellar Stability: A Primer, Part Two, Elenya Starweaver

Inside him, the eidolons struggled and fought for dominance, jockeying to seize control of his body, but to no avail. There were already eidolons in attendance who had made peace with Sylvas, and while the draconic beasts may have been terrifying in the domain of the battlefield, inside of Sylvas, they were considerably less impressive. They had no access to mana, except through him, and without it, they would wither and die. They were not on the battlefield. They were not in space. They were not in a dimension that had been carefully selected by the people who banished them as a safe place for them to survive and thrive. They were in Sylvas. He was their world now, and compliance was the only way for them to survive. He could understand why that might make them a little unhappy, but he didn’t have time for them to adjust to the idea naturally, so he gave them a squeeze. The black hole in the center of his being was still there, even when he wasn’t actively using it to suck in eidolons or mana, and just a little bit of extra pressure seemed to immediately alert the new arrivals to the fact that life could, in fact, get considerably more uncomfortable for them.

Launching himself up, he shattered through the stone dome he’d made to contain his battle with the dragons. All across the planet, people were dying. Good people and bad people both, but the eidolons that the Dominion had brought here and dumped here were thriving. They had free rein to slaughter. Even without two black holes filling up the sky, this place would have been nightmarish.

After a few perilous moments flitting through the sky being chased by tracing shots, Sylvas intercepted the rest of his squad as they fought the first enemy soldiers that Sylvas had seen up close. 

Most magical battles were fought at a range, and with the addition of the extra power that came from covenants, which seemed to be even more exaggerated. You didn’t even need good aim when every spell you cast could wipe out a whole city block by accident on raw power alone. During his brief flight, he’d made use of a quick repair spell that Mira had been kind enough to dig out of his old memories to put his clothes back together. The regeneration that the blood wolf granted him didn’t extend beyond his body, and he didn’t like the idea of flying around fighting monsters with certain parts of his anatomy dangling bare in the wind.

He was particularly glad to be covered again as he caught one of the enemy mages trying to escape into the air at the same time he was descending. He caught him by the throat and snapped his neck with raw physical strength that he hadn’t even realized that he had. It would have seemed even more disrespectful killing a man like that without pants on.

Landing in the midst of everyone, there was a heavy silence. There were at least three fewer people in their midst since the last time Sylvas had seen them. He’d known that they might suffer casualties if he wasn’t there, but he didn’t expect it to be so quick.

Two of the delightful Hector’s soldiers, one of the knights—not the uncle, sadly.

Kaya broke the awkward moment up. “What took you so long?”

“Well, there were six of them.” Sylvas fell into their usual rhythm comfortably.

“You really must be tired out if it took all this time. Back in training, you’d have had them done in six seconds. A second a pop.” Kaya made her way through the crowd to elbow him in the ribs. He wished she wouldn’t as they were still raw from regrowing.

He wheezed a little. “To be fair, those were much smaller eidolons.”

She scoffed. “You’re really trying to tell a dwarf that size matters?”

He was mid-chuckle when his senses screamed. He threw up a gravity shear on instinct as a lightning bolt arced over the battlefield and tried to strike them. He’d always been surprised at how easy lightning was to deflect with gravity. It felt like it should have been like heat, something a shear couldn’t stop, but it was easier to stop than most magic. “We’d better get moving.”

“You do tend to attract attention,” Malachai said, in what might have been a joke.

It took Sylvas a moment to realize that in his moment of reaction to the attack, he’d become surrounded by a nimbus of flame that he now had to very deliberately will back under his skin.

The ridge that they had been following had run out, and now there was a barren expanse between them and the next one that might provide any decent cover. They had circled around the Nexus far enough that the enemy weapons emplacements all seemed to have been left behind, but there were other manned fortifications that the covenant mages of the Dominion had been happy to occupy. Sylvas and the squad had definitely gotten closer to the Nexus, far closer than either of the other two forces had managed, but that was probably because while they were waging asymmetrical war against an overpowered army, all of the Empyrean’s dwindling covenant mages helped Sylvas. 

It would have felt unfair, except for the fact that the only part of this mission that mattered at all was getting Sylvas into the Nexus.

Packs of eidolons swept across the barrens, hunting. If they were allowed to follow their natures, Sylvas knew that they’d all be bearing down on him, but Blackstar’s will still kept them leashed. The mechanism by which that worked was still completely beyond his understanding. Eidolons lacked any sort of will or intelligence of their own, acting purely on instinct—usually hunger—and that was why it was possible for covenants to form. The mage’s will provided direction and purpose, the eidolon provided raw power, and a symbiosis could be achieved. What Blackstar was doing went beyond that. Being able to command eidolons, even eidolons that were already bonded to other people, should not have been possible. Willpower alone should not have been able to achieve any of that.

Maybe if he had grown up to be a scholar instead of a fighter, Sylvas might have been paralyzed by that lack of understanding, but he had learned to accept things as they were instead of denying reality until it made sense. Blackstar had enough will to command eidolons, to make them subservient or puppeteer them. That was the enemy that they were facing, so he would face it.

Faced with the wide expanse before the next ridge, none of the gathered soldiers of the Empyrean looked particularly enthusiastic. Even with Sylvas tossing up gravity shears every time some of the artillery fire tracked their position, the idea that he’d be able to protect all of them across so much open ground seemed unreasonable. 

Sylvas didn’t try to argue that it wasn’t. He didn’t know that he would be able to keep everyone alive. Which was why he was making a slightly risky proposal. “I can port us to the next ridge.”

Hector’s eyebrows always seemed to be on the move, but one was raised as high as his hairline now. “What happened to it being for short distances only?”

“It is still safer than running for it,” Sylvas said. A fireball as wide as a sailboat came leaping over the horizon at them, and he turned it back with a gravity spike that launched it up to disintegrate into smoke in the upper atmosphere.

Malachai and Kaya, and by extension her parents, were all on board to attempt a jump through Cold Storage, and the rest of the troops did what good soldiers everywhere did, and they fell in line. Sylvas cast the spell to open the portal and hit a snag. It felt like the edge of the portal was literally snagging on something when he attempted to open it out wider than an inch. He let the spell dissipate and the portal collapse back in on itself, then he tried again. The same thing happened. “They’ve blocked me.”

“What?” Hector’s other eyebrow joined the first.

“Blackstar, or one of his mages, has worked out the resonance of my spell, and they’ve made an interdiction.” He tried not to sound too impressed with the skill of their enemy. “I can’t teleport anymore.”

It cut down on quite a few of the defensive measures he’d been using, too. It was really pure luck that the interdiction hadn’t kicked in a few minutes earlier while he was fighting eidolons. The portal not opening on demand then would have been a death sentence.

“Okay, backup plan,” Sylvas said, turning back to the gathered troops. He paused for just a moment too long, and Hector groaned.

“You don’t have another plan?”

Sylvas drew himself up to his full height, then nearly doubled over as the eidolons inside him waged a private war with his innards. “I’m open to suggestions.”

A new, yet all too familiar, voice suddenly spoke out at that moment. “Then it seems I arrived at precisely the right moment.”