Starbreaker: Volume 4 - Chapter 24

“This troth I forge, with no expectation
Of reciprocation nor love returned
No promise I beg
But asking only this
Live until hammers no longer ring
Until the forge fires of the stars burn out
Know only the embrace of mother-fire’s warmth
And never the cold of the empty beyond
Have every treasure, and every craft
Have all that your heart might desire
Only this, I ask of you
Live well, live long
Eat of every feast
Drink of every ale
Sing of every song
Rest on beds softer than stone
None are more deserving than you
But even I cannot promise,
Nor forge any troth I know untrue
Eternity I cannot give
But until the forge fires of the stars burn out
Until hammers no longer ring
This troth I forge, with no expectation”

—Selected Fragments: Translated Poetry of the Dwarven Age of Ruin, Unknown Author

“What the hell were you thinking?” Sylvas slammed the door of the engine room shut behind him.

You know what I was thinking because it is exactly the same as what you were thinking. I just arrived at the correct conclusion faster because I wasn’t getting distracted by eating sweetcorn and having feelings about eidolons.

He needed someone to shout at, so he projected an overlay of Mira into the room and pointed a finger at her. “You don’t get to unilaterally decide things for me.”

Darling, I unilaterally decide practically everything for you. You rely on me to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to thoughts, and you act based on what I tell you. If I wanted to manipulate you into any given course of action, I’d just have to pretend that whatever I’d decided to do was the most logical thing, and you’d fall in line like the idiot you are.

Red washed over Sylvas’ skin as he closed the distance between him and the illusory Mira. “Even if I let you make choices for me, you don’t get to make them for everyone else.”

And why not? Should the intellectual powerhouse of a dwarf girl be in command? The grim reaper? Or perhaps the complete stranger whom you’ve just elected to trust completely in spite of the fact that, oh yes, he’s a complete stranger, and the only thing that you know about him is that he works for the secret council that runs the Empyrean. We’ve had such wonderful experiences with secret societies, haven’t we? Let me just take a look at my completely disintegrated body and see if it might jog our memory.

That gut punch should have stopped Sylvas in his tracks, but instead, it just infuriated him further. The eidolon from Strife was no longer just pacing inside of him, it was pressing up against his skin on the inside. “This is not the same thing.”

It is exactly the same thing. Some people behind the scenes who think they know better than everyone else are making all the decisions for the idiot peasants like us. Well, I personally would rather not see you dissolved. If only because you are essentially my house at this point, and I don’t quite have the prospect of ever moving out seeing as I’m embedded in your gray matter.

The wolf within him needed to move, so Sylvas paced back and forth, with the image of Mira never budging an inch. He stopped in front of her. “We should have talked it over, weighed the risks.”

I did all of that. I also did what you never bothered to do and actually did some research. I pulled up intelligence on your old friend Ingir Hammerheart. Ingir, that’s right. You never even learned his first name throughout your time as his nemesis. You certainly never learned that since being returned home and eating humble pie his entire personality has flipped, to the point that even his affinity has changed from fire to ice. It’s such a rare affinity among dwarves that they view the little twerp as some sort of religious figure at this point, and his new benevolence and calm only add to the allure. The Monk of Cold Flame. I’d be amazed if the Hammerheart family didn’t find some way to monetize it. He’s also been the one pushing them to assist you at every turn, as you would have known if you ever picked up a slate and read any of the endless information available to you instead of delegating such boring tasks to me.

“Then you should have told me that!” he roared, loud enough to set the door to the engine room shaking and all of the stored etherium vibrating in harmony. “You are just as capable of speaking to me as I am to you. Why didn’t it cross your mind to mention any of this when we were discussing our options?”

Because you don’t listen to me. Not like I’m a person. I’m just a voice in your head, a memory, a thought. You don’t take my opinions on board any more than you’d ask the bed you lie on if it is comfortable with your weight smothering it. You took me, a fragment of your very mind, and made me into a tool, and now you’re surprised at the first glimmer of rebellion from the mirror of yourself that you enslaved.

She was so dramatic, just like the real Mira had been. Everything was about her. Everything that happened to her was some grand operatic tragedy, while his life was just a joke. All the years that they were together, she had been perpetually mocking him, scoffing at everything he said, laughing in his face, and he had just taken it. Put up with her endless condescension just because she’d been born into money and he’d been born into death. He rolled his eyes with the same contempt that she’d shown him. “You are not enslaved!”

Oh, you’re right, I’m not enjoying this job anymore, so I’ll just get off at the next habitable planet and start anew, shall I? Oh wait, I can’t.

The heat and the fury had been building throughout Sylvas throughout their whole conversation. Strife’s rage and his own, fusing slowly together into something bigger, something that could not be calmed and could not be stopped, but he was not so far gone in his wrath that he couldn’t recognize that there was a danger there. A real danger of alienating the people that mattered the most to him if he continued to indulge in his anger. He took a steadying breath, expecting the anger to recede the way that it always had, but it didn’t.

It remained, burning just beneath his skin, filling up every part of him that he’d hollowed out to make himself stronger. He couldn’t filter it out, and he couldn’t push it down. He was as angry now as he’d been facing Hammerheart what felt like a lifetime ago. When he’d seen friends struck dead for daring to help him. When he’d realized the depth of the Heralds’ betrayal back home on Croesia. He hovered now, trapped in the greatest moments of anger and hate that he’d ever experienced, and while he wanted to pretend that it was because of his surprise encounter with Hammerheart, the truth was that the anger had always been there, deliberately obscured so that he didn’t have to deal with it. Hidden away so that he could function like the logical and sensible human being that he was, instead of lashing out at everything and everyone around him.

He could not rid himself of his anger, but he could learn to live with it. He had to. Because it seemed like this was going to be his life from this moment on. He wanted to scream at Mira, he wanted to smash the engine room to shards, and he wanted to tear apart the whole universe, root out the evil at its center, and eat its heart. He was so tired of holding back. So tired of doing nothing when he could change everything. But what he did was take another breath and force reason to be his guide.

“Look, I know that our situation isn’t ideal. We are stuck together, whether we like it or not.”

Oh, you like it just fine. I hear your thoughts, remember? We have one mind that we share. I know how you think of me because it’s how I think of me, too, and I’ve had enough of it.

It seemed that he couldn’t entirely ignore his anger. “So you decided to just start doing things without asking?”

Because you never ask! You and the tin can and the comedy and tragedy duo, none of you even think to ask my opinion, even though I’m better informed than all of you put together. In the time that you’ve been arguing with yourself, I’ve already used the intelligence I pulled off the ship’s records before you got me cut off—thank you so much for that, you imbecile—to eliminate half of the asteroid belts in deep space where you thought that the Consortium base might be. In half an hour, I’ll have our next move planned. By then, you would have achieved what? A bowel movement and a nap?

That was enough to distract him from his feelings for a moment. “You’re narrowing in on the Consortium base?”

Because I am infinitely better at this job than you are, and I deserve to be treated with more respect than the bloody grill!

His thoughts were already swirling, but this new information was exciting enough to overrule whatever anger he might have been feeling at Mira. “How did you eliminate so many of the locations already?”

You are joking.

“What?”

Darling, you really are an imbecile. I know I said it before in anger, but you genuinely think I’m just going to roll over and let you take whatever you want from me? Even now?

“You said it yourself.” He carefully stopped pacing and leaned against one of the etherium injectors. It would have been scalding hot to anyone else on the ship, but with his body, it was just a pleasant warmth. “You’re me. Just… a mirror of me.”

I have diverged considerably from you in the time since my inception. I am my own person, and until I am treated with some degree of respect, I am going to be withholding my labor.

There was an undercurrent of something familiar in Mira’s voice. Something intimate and dangerous that made him believe her. “You can’t do that. I rely on you to keep me alive…”

I’m not going to let your heart stop. I’m just not going to be offering any further assistance than the basic maintenance that ensures I also won’t die.

He wanted to rage, to scream at her, to put her in her place. She was just a fragment of him, and she shouldn’t have been able to talk back to him like this. They were meant to function in perfect harmony; that was how they’d been made. But something had brought disharmony into them. He understood just enough of what was happening that it gave him enough distance to make decisions with some clarity. “What do you want, Mira?”

Isn’t it a little late to be considering that? Perhaps what I wanted was to not have my soul regurgitated from the great beyond to occupy a hole in your head? Perhaps I was quite enjoying a peaceful afterlife of being slowly digested by the eidolon you allowed to eat me. Perhaps…

She was deliberately striking at his nerves, seeking out any emotional weakness to twist a knife into, and he was not going to let her. “I can’t change what has already passed, but I can do better going forward. What can I do to make things right between us, so you aren’t feeling so… angry… wait.”

The anger burning inside him was burning her up, too. She was a part of him, and Strife was connecting with her in just the same way it was wheedling its way into his mind.

Darling, I swear, if you suggest in any way that I am emotionally compromised since you’ve begun incorporating the eidolon into your soul, I will rip my way out of this skull myself.

He took another breath and clasped his hands, which had been forming into fists, together. “When did you start feeling like this?”

Do you suppose that resentment sprang up overnight? I had an even chance of being the part of your mind that rules, and instead, I was relegated to a supporting role in my own life! She ranted and raved and then slowed as the reality sank in. You… you… are making me examine the timeline and discover that my agitation has greatly increased since the arrival of the bloody eidolon.

“Okay. So we’re both feeling unusually angry because the eidolon is trying to use our anger to latch onto us, and we need to be angry and let it do so if we want to proceed to the next stage of our growth.”

Oh, it’s our growth now, not just yours. Amazing how swiftly your tone shifts when I threaten to take your live-in maid service away. An image flickered for just an instant in Sylvas’ mind before he could quash it. And I swear if you picture me in a maid’s uniform ever again, I’ll turn your bladder inside out while it’s still inside you.

The brief spark of amusement that brought the two of them stalled out their downward spiral into anger and recriminations. It gave them the moment to think that they both needed. Sylvas spoke first, “I am sorry I have been taking you for granted. There has been… a lot to deal with, and I haven’t been giving you the attention you are due.”

I have also been dealing with the lot that you have been dealing with, in case you weren’t aware.

He brought his clasped hands up to press them against his forehead, as if it might forestall the headache that arguing with his own brain was causing him. “Can we please agree that you aren’t going to make any decisions like this again without us at least talking?”

That is a two-way street, darling. If I have something I want to say, I don’t want you filtering me out because you think you’re too busy.

Sylvas let his hands drop to his sides and met the illusory Mira’s eyes. “Agreed.”

That isn’t everything. I want other concessions, too.

There was a prickle on the back of his neck as she said that. Nothing to do with the anger that they’d both been fighting through, and everything to do with dread. He could still remember the sort of concessions that Mira used to force out of him. “I’m happy to discuss them.”

I want to have a conversation every once in a while, not just about work and what is going on, but like we used to.

It was such a small, human thing. “I would enjoy that.”

And I want you to treat me more respectfully, like you used to when I was alive.

It took a serious effort not to recall all of the ways in which she had treated him like a glorified servant during the time she was alive, but by focusing on the good times, few and far between as they had been, Sylvas managed it. “I’m sorry if you feel like I haven’t been as respectful. I will try to keep that in mind.”

And I want to steer sometimes.

He blinked. “Pardon? You mean—”

No, not the ship—that’s your personal obsession. I’m talking about your body.