Starbreaker: Volume 4 - Chapter 29

“Some mana is inaccessible. While our affinities grant us access to a broad spread of the mana in the universe, some floes of it are untouched and untouchable. Beyond even our ability to sense. It is these that we often see the eidolon feasting upon. And it is these that make up the majority of what is channeled and contained in a world soul. Some call it dark mana. Invisible to us, unusable by us, but still obvious in its presence. But there is nothing dark about it. We just haven’t got the tools to use it yet. One day, we will.”

—Dark Mana, Gairfen Hosst

Sylvas didn’t cast a spell to teleport across the distance. Casting would take too long when his opponent was capable of doing it instantly. Instead, he flew, throwing himself over with such speed that the naked eye couldn’t follow him. The red claws glowing around his fingers slashed bloody lines through the air, but he couldn’t make contact.

Hector had danced back out of reach again, called on his own instant magic, and the jungle that Sylvas had laid waste to leapt up, not to form a barrier this time but to chain him. Vines whipped up around his legs, and trees grew up around him, embedding his arms in their trunks. Flowers blossomed all over this living cage as Sylvas struggled against it.

“Kid, I need you to calm down.” Hector was still in his line of sight, just a short distance away. His empty hands were held up towards Sylvas. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Sylvas flexed against the wood, found it unyielding, and then pushed out with gravity, driving everything away from him. Splintering the living trees into sappy paste. Uprooting the vines and flicking them away from him. “I’m going to hurt you, you mean?”

“Kid…” Hector started to back away, but Sylvas wouldn’t let him get away this time. He raked those new claws down his own chest, and blood poured forth like a fountain. He reached for Hector, and like before, every droplet of blood that escaped him became a red line, weighted with as much density as could be invested in it, each one of them a needle-thin spike that would tear through solid stone.

Hector teleported away. The only thing he could do to survive the onslaught. But to teleport was to pass through null-space, and by instinct, Sylvas knew his way through every inch of null-space as if he’d lived there all his life. There would be no giving chase, jumping around the world trying to catch up to him. With a leap forward and a push of raw mana and will, Sylvas tore open the hole into null-space, hooked his claws into Hector’s back before he could escape on the other side of the teleportation, and pulled him back through, throwing him to the ground.

Eyes wide with surprise and fear, Hector scrambled back. “Kid! We were just sparring. This isn’t a real fight.”

“Every fight is a real fight.” Sylvas growled, Vaelith’s words coming to the forefront of his mind. “Every one is a battle to survive.”

Every day that he’d been in Ardent training, he’d had to fight for his continued survival and acceptance. Every day that he’d been back on Croesia in the tower, he’d had to prove himself the best mage or risk assassination attempts and being deposed. His whole life had been an endless battle. No wonder Strife had chosen him.

I think that’s quite enough for now, darling. Consider my honor avenged.

He lowered his arms to his sides and drew in a ragged breath. He couldn’t stop shaking. He had a neurological system millennia ahead of what mankind had developed, and adrenaline shouldn’t have been able to flow through his enhanced body without his explicit permission, but still, he shook. “I… am sorry.”

“And I need a change of underwear.” Hector held up a hand, and carefully, with hands that were no longer claws, Sylvas took it and pulled him back to his feet. “I knew that the war eidolon was going to like fighting, but I had no idea it was going to do all that.”

A frown briefly furrowed his brow, then he held out a hand and tried to cast some sort of healing spell on Sylvas. It didn’t take. The magic was trying to reconstruct his wounded chest, only to discover that it wasn’t actually wounded, and spun around itself as if confused. From within, the eidolon moved, satisfied with the feast of war mana that had just flooded through Sylvas’ system. With a brush of wet fur across the inside of his skin, the wounds closed up.

“Huh.” Hector looked from his hand to the wound, then shrugged. “Well, as long as it is fixed.”

He turned and walked away, and Strife flared to life in Sylvas again. How dare he turn his back on them, after seeing what they could do. Mira and Sylvas had to work in harmony to crush that line of thinking.

He is showing that he trusts us, even though we’ve just proven to be untrustworthy. What an odd man he is.

With tentative steps, Sylvas headed after Hector. His body still didn’t feel like his own after the fight, and he wasn’t sure how long it would take before it did. Maybe it never would again. Maybe that was the price he had to pay for all this power.

“Looks like the two of you have made some real strides in bonding. I guess everyone making you angry all the time has really helped.” Hector threw Sylvas a smile, and after what they’d both just endured, it meant a lot more than the usual ones.

“Fighting really does seem to bring Strife out the most. I think I’ll need to work out how to start feeding it mana directly, like you said, and then maybe I can start trying to work out how to cast war affinity spells when they don’t exist.”

“A spell is just some words in Aion, right?” Hector slowed his somewhat panicked pace to fall into step beside Sylvas. “And your eidolon is made out of those words. Every word really… well, every word for war.”

“So you’re suggesting I should… study my eidolon?”

“Some of it will probably come to you by instinct since your minds are connected, but… yeah, maybe you could make it Mira’s job? Keep her occupied so she doesn’t keep hitting on me.” He chuckled, and Mira pouted in Sylvas’ brain once more.

Sylvas smirked. “I imagine that she will quite enjoy that.”

Darling, you know I’d do anything for you, but I am not a dog-sitter.

They made it back to the ship with an hour to spare from the time Hector had allotted for them to have a brawl or a breakthrough, or whatever it was that had just happened out there. The others had ransacked the ship pretty thoroughly for anything that they thought might come in useful and were in the process of trying to cram everything else back into the various cabinets and storage bays. Sylvas was surprised at just how much stuff had been crammed into every nook and cranny of the ship, but he supposed that he shouldn’t have been given Hector’s habits. He was definitely the kind of man who would throw something in an underfloor smuggling space rather than throw it out.

Amongst the supplies that had been secreted around the Folly, very few of them were going to be of any use to Sylvas, but Kaya had uncovered four sets of ablative armor—enchanted plates stowed in a lightweight harness that would, hypothetically, absorb a spell before going dead. Sylvas wasn’t sure if they’d even be worthwhile using, but Hector grabbed one the moment he saw them, delighted that they were still on board. “No matter how good you are, sometimes somebody gets a lucky shot in.”

With that said, Sylvas would have felt stupid not strapping into one, and he had to admit, some small part of him did like having something resembling a uniform again. All of them matched, which would probably help him not accidentally kill one of them when it came time for the fighting. Assuming the eidolon inside him didn’t get its way.

With all of them similarly equipped, and some adjustments made so that Kaya’s protective vest was less of a dress, Sylvas plotted the course to that particular part of the emptiness of deep space that they were headed for and launched them. Returning to orbit was easy compared to every other time he’d done it, thanks to the almost eerie calm of the dead jungle’s weather, and lining up their route and dropping them into null-space came so easily to him at this point that he didn’t even need Mira feeding him the calculations. He knew where they were going, he knew where they were leaving from, and he’d cast these spells so often that the adjustments could all be made on instinct, trusting in his senses and his own self-assuredness.

Turning back around, he found the rest of the crew assembled and Hector standing with his arms crossed. “Alright, I’ve told you that we aren’t soldiers, I’m not your boss, and I’m not going to give you any orders, but I do have some… suggestions.”

Malachai looked amused as Hector fought every instinct in his body to try to buddy up to them instead of giving them direction. “When we arrive, there’s every chance we’re going to be fighting. In space, I think Malachai and I handle the fighting, Kaya handles repairs, and the kid steers.”

“Aye, obviously.” Kaya was looking at him with the distinct undercurrent that he was an idiot.

“That’ll change once we find their base. I’m guessing some sort of space station, bigger than a ship of the line, smaller than a moon. We close distance with it, we get on board, and then we switch. Me and the kid take point, and you guys cover the rear.”

“No,” Malachai replied calmly.

Hector had been expecting pushback from Kaya, but Malachai’s quiet reply seemed to startle him. “No?”

“Kaya excels at close range. She should take point, supported by the three of us at a distance.”

“You haven’t seen what the kid can do now.”

“Then have them lead us in, and we provide fire support. There is no point in Kaya and I being here if we do not contribute. While I’m aware that you and Sylvas are possessed of a power beyond our current limitations, we are far from as helpless as you presume.”

“I’m not saying you guys are helpless, I just—”

“Malachai is right.” Sylvas had been giving it some consideration, but Mira’s last whispers in his hindbrain had been enough to tip him over. “This is what we trained for.”

Darling, I know you want to keep them safe, but this is keeping them safe. It’s protecting them from themselves. They’re going to feel like useless tagalongs without this. They’re going to be miserable if they don’t contribute something other than mild comic relief. Let them fight. You’ve got a covenant mage healer along for the ride, and they’re covered in all the armor that they can carry. It doesn’t get much safer.

Hector’s brow furrowed, but he nodded his agreement. “If that’s how you want to play it.”

Kaya was grinning so widely that Sylvas was worried she was going to strain something. “Been way too long since we’ve had a good scrap.”

“I don’t suppose you consider the bar room brawl that you dragged us into to have been sufficiently good?” Malachai sighed.

“Oi!” Kaya snapped. “That was him.”

Malachai cocked his head to the side in mock confusion. “Do you think I didn’t see you making faces at the locals behind Sylvas’ back?”

Sylvas turned slowly to look at Kaya, who was very interested in her boots for some reason.

“Anyway.” Hector clapped his hands. “Who wants some lunch before we rip the guts out of the Consortium’s smuggling operation?”

Kaya was quick to latch onto a change in subject. “I could eat.”

“Has there ever been a moment when you could not?” Malachai conceded the point. “I suppose that we likely will not have an opportunity until much later.”

The experience of the four of them, all armored up, huddled around the table and eating sandwiches, felt a little surreal to Sylvas. Something that was not lessened when he had to swap places with Mira so that she could have a bite.

“Quite delicious,” she said before returning to the rear half of his brain.

Time seemed to slow as they sat there, waiting for their arrival. But when the mental timer ticking down in Sylvas’ head neared its final stop, they moved with a new purpose to their stations, in preparation for the battle to come.

Alone in the cockpit, Sylvas took a long moment to breathe it all in. The boundless nothingness of null-space. The blessed silence of all his senses while he was there. Then he finished the spell that had brought them here, and they burst back out into reality.