Starbreaker: Volume 4, page 16
The planet that we are headed for.
Griswold 2 was a small world but one that had great promise for agriculture based on its natural weather, water content, and relatively smooth surface. There had been a few mountain ranges marked to be leveled for more field space the next time the appropriate ship came passing through the system, but the work had never come to fruition in the few years since it had been colonized. The report of an Aion discovery on the world had come only in the past month, but judging from what Sylvas had been able to pull from the communications record, whatever the find was had been sufficiently minor that the Empyrean hadn’t even scheduled a visit to investigate it yet.
That last and final pending note of ‘awaiting follow up’ had been the last report on the world, it caught in a state of temporary limbo until someone came to investigate it. Unfortunately it seemed that someone had, someone who clearly hadn’t had the planet’s best interests at heart. Now as Sylvas inspected the planet, he could see that the eastern hemisphere was not just missing a chunk of its landmass, but that a sizeable portion of it was now drifting in space as a natural deterrent to anyone who reached orbit. Even worse, the atmosphere that the reports had indicated was thick and stable, was barely even present anymore, slowly wisping away thanks to the uneven magnetic field that so much destruction had created. Something had happened to Griswold 2 and here it was now bleeding out and dying.
Hector stuck his head into the cockpit, and his mouth fell open. “Oh, that’s not right.”
Sylvas put them through evasive maneuvers to get them out of the asteroid stream. It seemed that the rocks that had been part of Griswold 2 were now being drawn in by the gravity of one of the gas giants farther out in the system, the big red orb fated to eventually swallow up the fragments of its sibling, when they finally arrived.
Kaya joined them with a whistle. “Someone really messed that one up.”
None of these insights were particularly helpful, but the sensory apparatus of the ship wasn’t providing much of use either. Something explosive had occurred down at the colony, something that had damaged the planet so badly it was now limping slowly towards death. Sylvas couldn’t sense the world soul at this distance, but he was willing to bet it had been injured just as grievously as the physical structure—a thought that was confirmed when Malachai breezed into the room, positively glowing with newfound death mana.
“The world is in decline,” he said as politely as he could while still gorging himself on all of the death pouring off it. “I would estimate it only has a few days left.”
“We need to get help, evacuate any survivors—” Sylvas began, but Hector cut him off.
“Then let’s get down there and find out what happened. If there are survivors, we’ll get them help, but we need to be down there first.”
Finding their way to the planet was easy. All Sylvas had to do was follow the long spiral of stone back to its source. In the deepest parts of the wound on the planetary surface, Sylvas could make out the dim glow of lava, as if an entire segment of continental plate had been sheared off amidst the other destruction.
The mapping they had of the planet had been sparse before, and the recent changes had stripped it of most of its significant landmarks, as well as changing the tilt of the planet and its rotation. It took Mira several moments of rapid-fire calculations to determine that the colony itself had been above that deepest hole and was entirely annihilated now.
“The colony was...right there.”
Hector nodded. “It’s gone.”
They continued their descent all the same. Even if there was nobody left to save, if they’d all been asleep in their beds when the calamity hit, there would still be answers down there. Answers that would help them bring whoever had killed this world to justice.
Breathe, Sylvas, Mira reminded him as they flew. This might look how it looks, but we don’t know anything for certain yet. This colony might have brought it upon themselves if they got impatient and tried to open the vault themselves. This might not even be connected.
But even despite her words, Sylvas couldn’t answer on the account of the rage building in his chest. This was what he had signed up to the Ardent to stop. This was the kind of horror and destruction he wanted to fight. And this time, there was no eidolon or impossible catastrophe to blame. Only people. He didn’t know how the Consortium had done this, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were responsible. He regretted pulling his punches back on the last planet. He regretted letting the ships that had tried to chase them remain in the sky. There had been a planet here, people here. A world that was alive was now dead. When they’d tried to kill him, he hadn’t taken it personally. He was a threat, he recognized that, and he could understand why it made sense to try and take him off the board, but these people were farmers.
Kaya’s hand on his arm felt like ice, but it startled him out of his rage. The red glow that had been suffusing his skin faded away. “Hey, stanzbuhr. Take it easy.”
He took a deep breath and crushed Strife’s presence back down into his core where it belonged. “Sorry. It’s… too much like home.”
“We’ll make them pay.” Her hand stayed there on his arm; the cool of her skin on his was comforting.
“We will,” Malachai affirmed.
They hit turbulence as they entered the atmosphere that Sylvas wasn’t prepared for, even after the storms of the last world. Understandable, given that the whole atmosphere was being dragged over and siphoned off. Still, it gave him something to concentrate on, so when Kaya let him go, the wolf inside him didn’t immediately start howling again.
Chapter 20
The vault is the most sought-after of all the remnants of the Aion civilization, not because it has any greater value than those things discovered outside of the vaults, but because of the degree of organization that went into their creation. With the foreknowledge of their own impending end, the Aions crafted the vaults as a beacon of light to throw into the future. A hope that others might use what they had learned to formulate a solution to the problems that they themselves could not solve. Each of these vaults contains a gift from a lost civilization. A potential future that they wished for us.
—On Aion Remnants, Glain Jasperbrook
The destruction was majestic.
It shouldn’t have brought awe, only horror, but the grand scale of it was just so vast that it left both Sylvas and Mira at a loss for words. They had touched down a decent distance away from the scar across the planetary surface amidst fields of now-dead crops and traversed the remaining distance under the power of Sylvas’ flight spell, buoyed along by the howling winds. Now they could see where the packed dirt road ended abruptly and gave way to destruction.
“What did this?” Sylvas asked, even though they were all in the midst of their own scrying spells, trying to work that out for themselves. “Was there an eidolon? Did someone detonate the world soul while trying to fragment it?”
Hector was staring down into the hole, the smile finally wiped off his face after he had grinned his way through everything up until now. Malachai was lost in the spells surrounding him, the spirits of the dead that he was conjuring out of the scar to answer his questions.
Kaya was actually the first one to work it out. “Scoop miner.”
“Really?” Hector had squatted down to lay his hand on the ground, rubbing the dirt between his fingers and seeing how it clumped.
“You take a scoop, sling it around the star to give it legs and hide it, then…boom. Come in once things settle and lift everything you want. I mean, if you don’t care about destroying the whole planet.” Kaya was casting illusions, measuring the width of the scoop, her slate scrolling with mining information for cross-comparison. “We’ve done similar to big meteors when we needed them broken up.”
“She’s right.” Malachai’s voice was strained. Ghosts were being dragged up from the ruined wasteland now being overrun with lava, and he shuddered as each of them rushed into him to be consumed for their knowledge. “They say… they say… she’s right.”
Hector spat, and it sizzled where it hit the scorched earth. “So they ram-raid the planet, make off with everything in one go. The colony?”
“It’s meant for breaking up ore. The colony… nobody would live through it. Wouldn’t live through getting spaced after they were lifted even if they had.”
The ghosts swirled around Malachai now, but they were no longer dipping into him; he was in full control of the situation once more. “And then with no resistance, they can sift through their ill-gotten gains in orbit and leave the unwanted remnants to burn up on re-entry.”
“If there was a vault here, they wouldn’t need to unlock it; they could just take the whole thing.” Hector rose back to his feet. “No evidence. No trace. Smart move… if you’re a psychopath.”
He cast his gaze around the ruined world; all the fields of crops withered as the atmosphere made its final exit. All the potential, squandered. “Alright, kids, you two head back to the ship. I want a quick game of catch with Mr. Vail here.”
“Catch?” Sylvas was perplexed.
Malachai forced the dead away from him and began the long hike back towards the ship with Kaya reluctantly following after him after a meaningful stare at Sylvas. Hector gave her a pat on the shoulder as she went by. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring him back in one piece. We’ll catch up with you. Just need to do some Covenant stuff.”
She grumbled under her breath in a stream of unbroken and untranslated dwarvish, but she went, leaving them standing on the flattened cornfield looking out across the death of a world.
He waited for a long while, just giving the other two some time to get out of earshot, and then he finally turned to Sylvas. “Looked like your passenger was trying to come out and say hello while we were landing.”
Sylvas flushed again, this time with embarrassment rather than a blood wolf trying to burst out of his skin. “I’m sorry, I’ll get it under control. It won’t happen again.”
“No.” Hector spoke softly enough that Sylvas probably wouldn’t have heard it over the whipping wind if he weren’t enhanced. “It will happen again. It should.”
Sylvas tore his eyes away from the other man to look across the plains. Not at the death of the world, but at what it had been in life. A whole planet devoted to growing things. To life and peace. “It was… dangerous.”
“Everything’s dangerous when magic is involved.” Hector countered. “Your necromancer friend over there could wipe out a whole planet without breaking a sweat. It doesn’t matter if it’s dangerous, you need to start embracing it.”
Some of Sylvas’ revulsion must have shown on his face at the prospect of embracing the eidolon inside him because Hector caught on fast.
“You didn’t fight before, because when you fight, you and the eidolon both want the same thing. When your interests align, the covenant grows deeper. You connect.” He didn’t ask it as a question. He had already deciphered Sylvas’ intentions without needing a single question.
Sylvas gave up on trying to hide his emotions. All the anger that he felt about having this nightmare foisted on him bubbled up to the surface. “I don’t want to connect to an eidolon. I don’t want an eidolon inside me. They’re monsters.”
“They’re living things, just like you and me.” Hector’s shining eyes seemed like they were trying to lure Sylvas, like he was some stupid fish to be drawn in and hooked. “The fact that they destroy planets to survive on this plane is just bad luck.”
Sylvas could hear the blood rushing in his ears. He could feel the monster coiling and writhing in the core of him. “The thing I have inside me wants to kill, it wants to destroy, it wants war. Endless war. You can’t tell me that an animal feels that way. You can’t pretend there is anything innocent about that.”
“Innocent? None of us is innocent. You didn’t choose to have this thing inside you?” Hector brought his good-natured face into the closest he could to a sneer. “Well, I did. I saw the potential for power, and I took it. Do you know why? Because if I could see that potential, someone else would, too, and if I didn’t take it, there would be nobody to stand up to whoever else did. Power doesn’t care if you’re good or bad; it only cares about being used. I have used the power I got to make a real difference. You can, too.”
Sylvas dragged his eyes away from Hector’s hypnotic stare. “You don’t understand. My world died because of me, because I summoned an eidolon. And now you’re telling me I just need to accept this thing is a part of me? No. I…I can’t do that.”
Yes, you can Sylvas, Mira whispered in his ear, her voice suddenly urgent. Listen to him. He’s trying—
A flash of anger cut Mira’s voice off, and Sylvas closed his eyes as the beast inside stirred.
“I read your file. I know that you’d never have picked this.” Hector continued. “But it got picked for you, and you either accept it and grow into what you’re meant to be or you reject it and squander everything you could become. Hell, I was nothing before my covenant. Some life affinity mage who couldn’t even heal people properly. Now, I get to heal the universe.”
Sylvas reopened his eyes to see that Hector’s characteristic grin had faded at some point, or rather had shifted into something so pained as to be a scowl. “You were already so powerful, and now you’ve got the chance to be something... something big.”
“I’d rather squander my potential than be party to—”
There was something of the eidolon in Hector’s voice now, the same as it was in his eyes. It was like the sound of a sand dune shifting. The inexorable weight in tiny parts, flowing like water to surround Sylvas. “When your friends are screaming and dying because you weren’t strong enough to save them, are you going to feel the same way? When there’s another world like this one, and you could have had the strength to stand between what was coming and innocent people, are you just going to shrug your shoulders and say, ‘at least I don’t have to feel uncomfortable’?”
“You read my file!” Sylvas snapped back. “You know what kind of person I am.”
Hector’s eyes were no longer just shining gold. They were a molten whirlpool of it, forcing Sylvas not to run. Forcing him to stand his ground and face this. “I know who the Ardent think you are. I know who you think you are. I’m asking you who you’re going to be.”
With all of his strength, Sylvas pulled against the draw of Hector’s eyes, but he couldn’t resist it, not without the strength of his own eidolon, and for some reason, Strife wasn’t on his side this time around. “I don’t want to have hate and anger inside me. I don’t want blood to be exciting. I don’t want to want the things that Strife wants. I don’t want this.”
As abruptly as it had seized him, Hector’s stare let Sylvas loose. He stumbled, breath coming in ragged, the rage at having been caged like an animal in his own body connecting him to the eidolon within him. Its claws pressed against the inside of his fingertips. But when he brought his snarl about to face Hector once more, the man wasn’t ready to fight or to run. He was steady and calm as he asked, “Who are you going to be, kid?”
For an awful moment, Sylvas didn’t know. He didn’t know if he was still Sylvas Vail, orphan destroyer of a world. Sylvas Vail, promising Ardent recruit and gravity mage, Mira, the memory of a dead girl he’d dragged back into the world of the living as a perpetual servant stuck in his skull or if beneath all of that, he was this beast of anger and hate. He didn’t know who he was, and that terrified him more than any eidolon he’d ever faced. But then he pressed his eyes shut and saw all of his past stretched out behind him, and he knew exactly who he was, and what his choice was going to be. The rage was snuffed out.
Sylvas opened his eyes. “What do I need to do?”
Hector strode over and wrapped Sylvas in a hug. It wasn’t the most comfortable of experiences, both because whatever enhancements Hector had made to his body allowed him to squeeze so tight coal would have become diamonds in his grasp, but mostly because Sylvas had never really experienced a lot of hugging in his life, especially not from people who were essentially strangers. Hector’s voice was muffled. “I knew I was right about you.”
They separated, and Sylvas tried to busy himself, straightening out his clothes even though they hadn’t been rumpled in the least.
“You’re in the first stage now. The eidolon, Strife, as you called it, is in you, and you’re coming into alignment. Once you’re aligned, all of its power becomes yours. You become two halves of a perpetual motion machine. You feed it mana, it makes mana, and you go on, infinitely. A perfect mage.”
He cast a spell then, the first that Sylvas had seen him cast in all their time together, now that he thought back on it. It was a simple enough life spell, the sort of thing a second circle mage could have mustered right after discovering their affinity. It made the plants grow. The cornrows stood back up and fruited before Sylvas’ eyes. But while that spell might have revived a single plant with the power available back then, with the power that Hector had at his disposal now, the whole field sprang back up, and then the fields beyond it. As far as the eye could see, Hector brought the dead world back to life.
Taking a look at Sylvas’ stunned expression, he grinned. “Not bad for an old-timer, huh?”
“The second stage is where things get interesting. That’s when you are stable enough for your eidolon to come out again.” With a sound like thunder, Hector’s eidolon emerged. While the eidolons of the council had been huge and impressive, his was somewhat more subdued, while still absolutely dwarfing both Hector and Sylvas. It was stretched out longer than any three people lying head to toe, but with a blunted snout filled with crooked teeth, it looked distinctly reptilian with all its shining scales of gold, but no reptile had six legs running along each side, and no animal Sylvas had ever heard of had a tail like a morning star, with a starburst of glowing golden spikes protruding from it.
