“Yet in the Eidolon we find nothing unique. It is a creature, arcane where others are biological. It requires sustenance, arcane where others require chemical. There is little to distinguish it from the product of any known planet’s evolution. Barring one thing. The capability that all Eidolons share, and that all other creatures lack. The reason that they are feared and reviled above all else. Any mage can reign down destruction. Any mage can tear a planetary body into pieces and scatter them through the cosmos, but only one thing can truly end a world. For all the necrophobe’s outcry about secondary apocalypse triggers, there has never been an overrun world that could not be cleansed and salvaged given time and resources. The eidolon is feared because it is capable of making that which is infinite, finite.”

  —The Forever War: Eidolon Incursions and Defense, Fal’Vaelith

  “Wake up, stanzbuhr.” Kaya voice demanded sharply, its arrival accompanied by the pain of a hard slap across his face.

  A demand that against all of his fleeting expectations, actually worked as his mind began its journey back up and into wakefulness, leaving him coughing and spluttering. “W-what…happened?”

  “We’re in the kragh is what happened.” She grumbled.

  He blinked a few times until his vision cleared. He felt oddly chilled despite the temperature in the room being pretty much standard. “Why are we… what?”

  “You blew it up.” She squatted down so she was level with his face.

  “I blew…” Memories began creeping back to him. “The shard?”

  “Aye, you blew it up!” Kaya really needed to bring her volume down, Sylvas felt like if she shouted again his eyes might pop out of his head.

  Taking a steadying breath, he let his paradigms begin playing back his memories, trying to work everything out. “That was the mission?”

  “Aye that was the mission they gave us, because they knew that nobody could ever blow it up.” She slugged him in the shoulder. “Then you blew it up.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what…”

  Looming over him, she bellowed in his face. “You blew up the thing nobody is meant to be able to blow up and now some bigwig in a uniform keeps coming down to see if you’re awake and everyone else is back on shore leave while they wait for us to get out the infirmary, except we’re not in the infirmary, we’re in the brig. Because you blew up the thing that nobody is meant to be able to blow up!”

  “Why are you yelling at me?!” He shouted back.

  “Because you blew it up!” She screamed.

  “But they told me to blow it up!”

  “You can’t blow it up! Nobody can blow it up.” She had dropped into a crouch over him now, had him by the front of his vest and was shaking him up and down. “That’s the whole point of a world soul!”

  Eye to eye, Sylvas could see that she wasn’t angry, she was terrified. “Then how did I blow it up?!”

  “That’s what they want to know!” She screeched each word directly into Sylvas face, then gracefully dismounted him.

  “Can you stop yelling?” He asked, after a moment’s respite to get his thoughts back together. “My head hurts.”

  She crept up very quietly then shouted in his ear. “Of course your head hurts, because you blew everything up!”

  He covered his eyes, just to make sure they weren’t actually bulging out. “I’m getting tired of this.”

  “Oh no you don’t.” She pried his hands off his eyes. “You don’t get to go back to beddy-bye land until general whatshisname comes stomping back in and you give him some answers. He’s looking less and less impressed with me every time.”

  He started pushing himself up to a seated position, since there wasn’t currently a medic yelling at him not to. “I’ll talk to… wait, a general?”

  “Commander Wartback, from the Ardent Tribunal.” Vaelith had come into the room beyond the barrier that was keeping them trapped in the brig at some point during the conversation. Sylvas hadn’t even known she was on Onslaught. Though to be fair, he didn’t even make the connection that he was on Onslaught until the moment he saw her.

  “He’s going to decide—”

  “Your punishment.” She said with her mouth drawn into a sour line.

  Kaya couldn’t seem to help herself. “Was that a plural ‘your’ before punishment, or is all that punishment just for our boy Sigil here?”

  “That remains to be seen.” Vaelith gave no hint of amusement at Kaya’s usual antics. It didn’t bode well for how serious things had gotten.

  As if conjured by magic, the door to the brig opened at that very moment, and a procession of unexpected visitors arrived. Kalisdrothan arrived, looking harried, along with Bael, and a dwarf that Sylvas had to assume from all the medals was Commander Wartback.

  He scrambled to his feet and attempted a salute. Wartback looked from him to Vaelith then back. “You teach him that?”

  Vaelith gave no sign of amusement, even now. “No sir.”

  “Just does that stuff on his own?” The dwarf chuckled. “Funny little guy.”

  As the funny little guy in question, Sylvas felt like he should say something, but he was also vaguely aware that he was on trial and that anything he said might be used against him so he remained silent.

  Wartback drew himself up to his full height, which was about the same as Kaya’s and walked over to the barrier. “Alright kid. How did you do it?”

  “Do what, sir?”

  “The shard. You smashed it. Destroyed a piece of world soul. A very rare and unusual piece of world soul attuned to death mana. A necrotic core, as they say in the business. I want to know how.”

  “I cast a Gravity Spike, sir. It increases gravity at the target location to—”

  Wartback turned to the elves at his side. “You got any papers on the interaction of gravity magic and world-souls?”

  Kalisdrothan startled, not expecting to be asked anything. “Nothing that immediately springs to mind.”

  “So the kid’s story might be right on. Maybe gravity affinity is so rare, we’ve never had anyone try this before. I doubt it. But maybe.” He turned back to Sylvas. “But the thing is, rare as that gravity affinity is, stable world-soul fragments, they’re rarer. Black market purchases from uncontacted planets or shattered relic worlds sort of rare. Practically priceless kind of rare.”

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  “I apologize for any inconvenience I’ve caused to the Ardent, sir. I was simply following the directives I was given to the best of my ability.”

  The dwarf’s face lowered into something between a pout and a scowl. “Best of his ability, he says, it’s like listening to somebody quoting the regulation book.”

  “I believe that Recruit Vail has that particular book memorized, Commander.” Vaelith also looked as though she was trying not to laugh. Though in a very subtle manner that probably wouldn’t have been recognizable to people who hadn’t spent a great deal of time in her company.

  “That right?” He snorted. “You know I wrote it?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “And despite that, he still tried to salute me. We sure he isn’t crazy, Vaelith?”

  Vaelith maintained a straight face at that question, even if her eyes drifted over towards Sylvas as she answered. “No more than any of us, sir.”

  “So half a step shy of unhinged then.” He flashed Sylvas a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Well then, the rules are pretty straightforward here. Disciplinary action, demotion, wages garnished—”

  “Sylvas Vail completed the task that he was assigned, and you want to punish him for it?” Vaelith surprised them all by speaking up. Sylvas had assumed she was there to serve as his executioner if anything.

  “He destroyed the Mournhold. The whole thing is out of action until we can find a necrotic core. You know how unlikely that might be?”

  Kalisdrothan leaned in to speak to the Commander of the Ardent. “Perhaps considerably less, given that we now believe that the Ardent have an asset capable of damaging, and therefore, fragmenting a world soul.”

  “Eh?” There was a note of surprise in the man’s voice. “What’s your stake in this Kalis? This is just some kid who was assigned to watch you on the dig that never seems to happen. Why do you care if we shoot him into the sun?”

  “The Institute considers Mr Vail to be a friend, Commander. Thanks to his considerable contributions in the field of archaeology.”

  Wartback looked at Sylvas again as if bracing himself to unleash something. “Really?”

  “Really.” Kalis nodded enthusiastically. “Thanks to the documentation he retrieved, we have fixed a location for our dig and expect to have a substantive answer to the Strife question within the year.”

  “And thanks to him, the Whitehall student leading the defensive team is expected live too.” Vaelith added. “Vail ensured that he suffered no backlash when his connection to the core was severed.”

  “And that would have caused all too many problems on its own, wouldn’t it have?” Wartback commented with a sigh as he closed his eyes for several seconds as if contemplating something. When he finally reopened them, they looked different to Sylvas as they fixated upon his. “Alright. Alright. No punishment. No wages garnished. No shooting you in the sun. But you owe me a favor, kid. Unofficially. You got that?”

  Vaelith surprised them all again by stepping up to glower down at what was presumably her commanding officer. “He owes you a favor for obeying orders to the letter and then being surprised that the intelligence we provided was incomplete?”

  Whatever formality still lingered in the air abruptly ended as the dwarf shifted to glance at the woman. “Why you got to be like that Fal? I’m going to get him to help crack a world-soul if he can do it. Replace what he broke. Maybe even help us better understand what he did in the first place. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Yes.” She answered immediately, but Sylvas piped up.

  “I’d be more than happy to assist, sir.”

  Wartback stared at him for a moment before glancing back to Vaelith. “Do you think we were ever that young?”

  She tapped her lip for a moment. “I cannot remember ever seeing you without grey hair.”

  Grumbling incomprehensibly, Wartback cast a spell in the direction of the cell door, and the barrier dissipated. “I think we’ve done enough here. You’re all released. Go drink or smile, or whatever it is kids do nowadays.”

  “Do neither of those things,” Vaelith corrected as Wartback then turned to leave. “You’re shipping directly back to campus. Orders will be coming shortly.”

  She then gave the group, Sylvas in particular, the most approving nod any of them had ever seen from her, then set off after the dwarf who had resumed grumbling to himself.

  Relieved to escape whatever trouble that had been hanging over them, the group practically collapsed with relief all at once, the desire to simply fall to ground quickly being replaced by the desire to get out of the place. Yet before they could, they all realized that Kalisdrothan had remained with them for just a moment.

  “I was not exaggerating when I said that your contributions to the work of the Institute are incredibly valuable.” He said without any preamble, his attention focused on Sylvas as he spoke. “Thanks to the decisions you made we have primary source documents from a society that is extinct, and as I already said, decisions have been made regarding the exploration of Strife on the strength of the information provided within them. You have advanced my project by several years in a single bound, and I shall most assuredly not forget this.”

  He attempted to repeat the same sort of approving nod that Vaelith had shared, but he lacked the necessary gravity or reputation manage it without a bit of awkwardness. All the same however, it was all that the man wanted to say before turning to leave, giving the chance for all of them to escape their prison.

  Moving with purpose only shared by the recently incarcerated, Sylvas and his friends were back on the main deck of the station before they knew it. Along the way, Sylvas learned that his belongings had already been packed up to be shipped back down to Strife, so he had no opportunity to spend his time fixing up what Malachai had broken. So instead they passed the time by meandering their way up and through the scattered remnants of the recruits still drinking and eating on the top deck until they drew up short in front of an elvish café.

  Finding none other than Malachai waiting inside.

  Eyes widening the moment he saw him, the man all but launched himself out of his seat and sprinted towards them quickly flinging himself bodily at Sylvas who had only a fraction of a second to realize that he was receiving a hug and not an attack.

  “You were fantastic! Everything I dreamed of and more.” The man exclaimed as he attempted to crush Sylvas. “Pulling out a fire spell when you have gravity affinity, beautiful! And nobody has ever…I mean nobody has ever, tried throwing my own trap back at me! It was…it was…fantastic! We will be discussing the events of Mournhold for some time to come. But I understand that we’ll all be returning to the surface today, so it shall have to be through letters. But consider me a convert. Your most enthusiastic fan. I truly hope we can continue to learn from one another.”

  For a moment Sylvas was stunned by the tidal wave of emotion and excitement coming from the man, but when he finally had time to understand what he had said and Sylvas’ own enthusiasm for magic asserted himself he couldn’t stop from doing the same.

  “I can’t believe you thought of using the wraith as a shield!” He words practically fell out from his mouth. “And then there was not only siphoning magic off the mages to empower the constructs so that they not only could use magic, but also switching which side the constructs were on to optimize your team’s casting structure. It was brilliant!”

  Malachai laughed as he reached to clasped Sylvas’ arm in delight, practically taking to air as his excitement reached even higher levels. “I knew it! You too are true a lover of the arcane arts too!”

  “Of course I am!” Sylvas was flabbergasted at the statement for second. “Why else would I be a mage?!”

  “Oh stars, you wouldn’t believe the reasons people decide to… no never mind that nonsense—we must talk about the battle,” Malachai continued as he mimed holding something. “When you using the staff to pivot when switching gravity!”

  “The ambush when we first arrived, with your concussive mage!” Sylvas shot back.

  Malachai’s face split into an even wider smile and for the first time he seemed fully human. “I really thought it might catch you out!”

  “It was a close thing!” Sylvas laughed back.

  Bael and Kaya looked at each other and the elf sighed. “Wonderful, now there are two of him.”

  The back and forth banter carried them all the way down to the shuttle bays, at which point Malachai looked utterly bereft. “I shall write to you as soon as I land.”

  Sylvas grinned. “I can’t wait.”

  The two men stood smiling at each other for a moment, then Malachai’s shoulders slumped a little. “You know, it really is a shame that you declined my sister’s proposal. You would have made quite an acceptable member of the family.”

  Sylvas blinked. “Sorry, what?”

  “Farewell to you all.” Malachai seemed to finally remember that the other two were present, just before he stepped back out into the corridor and they were left behind.

  Sylvas was still confused as they piled into the shuttle back to Strife and strapped in. “His sister?”

  “Ah, you mean you don’t remember? She is the Marquess Dusont,” Bael replied, as if there was any possibility that Sylvas knew who that might be. “She is the ruler of a rather pleasant star cluster. You had me write a very polite rejection of her marriage proposal about a month ago or thereabouts. A shame I suppose in hindsight seeing as how well you hit it off with her brother, who I suppose technically is still a prince.”

  Instantly Sylvas recalled a stack of papers that had been left in a drawer in his room back on campus, courtesy of the elf. A stack that Sylvas had never intended to prioritize in reading.

  “His sister?” Sylvas simply repeated numbly, before catching onto the other piece of information that Bael had dropped. “Wait, what do you mean he’s a prince?”

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