Starbreaker: Volume 4 - Chapter 22

“Of the myriad and varied species that make up the Empyrean Alliance, none are more stalwart in their support of its ideals than the dwarves. While there have been isolationist factions among the elven people who would have happily seen the entire enterprise dissolved, the dwarvish have never even contemplated such a course, seeing the other members of the Alliance not only as friends to whom they owe a debt of gratitude for their assistance in times of need, but also as vital trading partners. The dwarven psyche is shaped around rapid expansion, exploitation of natural resources, and the manufacture of fine goods. As their power has increased, so too has their capability to exploit and manufacture at a greater pace and with greater thoroughness.”

—The Dwarves: A Contemporary History, Part One, Krain Festenlaide

Sylvas cooled his emotions in time to help with the cooking this time around, shucking the husks from the corn as Hector set up some sort of rune-fueled field grill on the table where they usually ate. The stove-top already had something rich, red, and spicy smelling bubbling away on top of it, and judging by the slices missing out of the side of pig hanging in the old armory, Sylvas would have guessed that they were having something salty with pork for dinner that evening.

“I think that we should contact the Hammerheart Shipping Consortium.”

Kaya choked on her own spittle. “The Hammerhearts? Are you out of your gourd?”

“They’ve been very supportive of me to the council, apparently, so even if I’ve made one of them angry, the rest have been trying to get on my good side.” He tore a husk off with a little more force than was really necessary as he remembered his last encounter with the dwarf in question. “And besides, they’ve been reporting on the Consortium’s dirty dealings for years. They’re probably desperate to take them down.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Malachai added in clipped tones.

Kaya looked more than a little exasperated. “Might be the only reason those culghs were trying to keep you alive was so they could murder you themselves. There’s no chance in the flaming gleshvakhrantha that they’re going to help you!”

Even Hector seemed taken aback by ‘gleshvakhrantha’, and he seemed to be fairly proficient in dwarvish.

“I’m open to suggestions. If anyone else has anyone they can call for information, I’d rather call on them.”

“You may be overlooking the fact that Sylvas Vail is supposed to be dead. That his being dead is, in effect, the only thing stopping half of the universe attempting to hunt him down,” Malachai was quick to add before the subject could be changed.

Kaya looked to Hector for answers and received absolutely nothing. He hadn’t even turned away from the stove-top. Sylvas shrugged. “There are ways around that. Proxies we could use to disguise who we are.”

“But then why would they help us?” Kaya grunted. “They won’t know us from a hole in the wall.”

“For the same reason the Saizen Brothers did,” Sylvas calmly explained. Perhaps a bit too calmly, for once he’d banished Strife to the depth of his core he had elected to fall into Clearmind to forcibly keep his temper in check. More than anything, he needed a break from it. “They want the Thesulan Consortium out of the picture.”

Malachai had been tasked with chopping some bright-colored vegetables, even though he was technically the least well-equipped to do so, but he had managed with the bare minimum of mess. Efficient in all things as was his forte. “I agree with Sylvas’ hypothesis that we require more information if we mean to track our prey, and none of my contacts would serve a purpose here. Nor would revealing my survival to them be a rewarding experience.”

Hector reached out a hand behind him, snapping his fingers, and Sylvas delivered the bowl of chopped vegetables from Malachai into it. He continued to take no part in the conversation.

“Our alternatives aren’t promising.” Sylvas sighed. “We can continue visiting worlds, either finding them destroyed or untouched, with neither telling us anything we don’t already know. Or we can attempt to visit some other black markets in the hope of finding one that the Consortium doesn’t control or hasn’t already warned about us, that is somehow still connected enough to the Consortium that we might get some useful information.”

“I’m not saying we’re in a good spot,” Kaya grumbled. “Just don’t reckon going poking old Hammerheart is the way to go.”

Finally, Hector turned around, grabbing the shucked corn and slathering it with something molten before dropping it onto the grill. The sizzling washed over them all, and for a blissful moment, all was silent and smelled good.

“This is why we need that rest,” Hector said as he flipped and twisted the corn cobs. “Sleeping on it is the best way to make a decision.”

I personally would have considered weighing all the potential outcomes and then selecting the course that would lead to my preferred outcome as the best way to make a decision, Mira chimed in. But I’m sure napping is also vital, for some people.

Kaya nodded her agreement. “Bit of food, bit of sleep, and the next thing you know, we’ll be climbing mountains.”

Malachai was less certain but seemed unwilling to argue since he had been one of the main supporters of taking a rest.

With the food cooked, Sylvas hoisted the grill off the table and onto the stovetop to be cleaned after they’d eaten, and they all settled down to a large bowl of corn cobs steaming with molten butter and a sharp blend of spices unlike anything he’d ever tasted in the Ardent or before. It was enough to shut him up, and when the conversation immediately leapt away from the subject of their work, he didn’t fight to bring it back.

Sylvas had been focused on the food, letting the others tell stories to their heart’s content and letting his eidetic memory record it all to quickly scan through later when he caught the tail end of Kaya’s story. “…and that’s when we brought the whole tower down, stanzbuhr and all!”

Malachai looked as amused as he ever got, Hector was grinning, and it only seemed to dawn on Kaya after the story was over who she was talking about. Who it was that had brought the tower down, with Sylvas atop it.

“What do you know about the Seekers?”

The jovial and calm atmosphere that they’d been working so hard to cultivate after seeing the horrors of the planet that they’d left behind evaporated. Hector sat back. “I told you, I don’t do work talk at the dinner table.”

Sylvas grimaced. “This isn’t work. It’s personal.”

That was sufficient to make Hector’s usual grin fade. “Listen, we’re all a bit tense right now. Why don’t we talk about this—”

“One of our best friends betrayed us for the Seekers.” Sylvas began gathering up the dirty dishes and carrying them over to the sink, deliberately not making eye contact with anyone. Deliberately not letting Strife pierce through Clearmind and set himself loose again. “I feel like I might understand why if I understand them.”

By the time he’d tapped his water mana to clean off the plates and the grill, the others had settled into an uneasy silence. Still in their positions around the table. Still saying nothing at all.

Hector sighed. “Alright. Uh… we didn’t really think they were anything to begin with. They weren’t organized the way they are now, and they didn’t have any resources or communications set up. They were just… people who were interested in the Aions. Really, really, interested. Their core belief is that they think the Aions knew what was going to happen and built vaults to give us the tools we’d need to deal with the problems that are going to arise.”

“That is the academic consensus on what the vaults are, is it not?” Malachai had edged his way as far as he could along the bench so that he was no longer pressed up against Kaya, but she was scooting along to maintain their body-line contact, presumably just to annoy him.

“Yes and no.” Hector agreed and disagreed. “They’re definitely time capsules, letting people now gain access to the knowledge that the Aions had, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they could see the future. There hasn’t been more than coincidence linking what we’ve learned from recent vaults and the crises going on.”

Sylvas repeated back what they already knew, again. “They’re seeking out vaults, and they’re using eidolons to unlock the ones they need to.”

“That’s right, the conditions to open each vault are different. Some need an eidolon of a specific type and power, and some of them have needed certain rare minerals or manufactured materials. I guess they didn’t want anyone opening them until they had a certain level of knowledge to build on?”

“I don’t get it. If everyone’s cracking vaults, what’s the Seekers’ problem?” Kaya had shuffled along until Malachai was dangling off the edge of the bench and was now leaning on him heavily. “Everything is coming out, right?”

“Well, you know the Empyrean doesn’t let people transport eidolons around. They’re too dangerous, too unstable.” Hector crossed his arms. “I guess the Seekers just think it’s worth the risks.”

“What about outside the Empyrean?” Kaya asked. “Doubt the Dominion are that fussy about moving eidolons around.”

Malachai rested a finger on his chin. “Which explains why they maintain a certain edge over us in technology and new magic.”

With one last shove, Kaya dislodged him, and he took one crab-shuffling step around to take his place on what had been Sylvas’ seat. Kaya pouted.

Sylvas was not going to be distracted. “You said that they weren’t organized. They didn’t have resources. They definitely had both when we were facing them.”

“They also had conviction,” Malachai added. “They were willing to kill or die for their cause. That is considerably more than curiosity and fringe scientific beliefs can explain.”

“Organization we can blame on time. Conviction we can put down to their beliefs calcifying into something more religious. It doesn’t take much of a jump from believing in fate to believing in the rest.” Hector drummed his fingers on his biceps. “Resources though… that’s harder to explain.”

“There was clearly some degree of parasitism going on within the Veilbohr Institute. Misappropriation of funds and so on,” Malachai suggested while eying Kaya wearily. She continued her slow shuffle along the bench until she was poised to drop off herself.

“Not enough to get them a ship, a hyperway gate, and a gravity mage.” Kaya seemed to be readying herself to jump. “That’s big money.”

“The Thesulan Consortium seem to have that kind of money.” Sylvas frowned.

Mira was connected directly to his internal slate, and his slate was slaved to the ship so that he had access to all of the records on board. There would be a delay as command was transferred, but hypothetically, he would be able to operate the majority of the ship’s functions, other than actual engines, remotely. As Kaya launched herself from the bench at the seat where Malachai was now positioned, Sylvas turned off the gravity plate beneath her. Suddenly, subject to no gravity, her wild leap to land on the necromancer and knock him out of the chair turned into a slow drift up to land on the bulkhead overhead.

Malachai stared at the dwarf on the roof. “They also seem to have a propensity for scavenging Aion artefacts and transporting eidolons.”

“You think the Consortium are funding the Seekers?” Hector weighed the thought, acting as if Kaya wasn’t currently upside down. “Could be, I guess. Though I feel like if they had a gravity mage, we’d all know about it.”

“Could be a rental,” Kaya said, kicking off the ceiling just before Sylvas re-established gravity. She came down, not on Malachai, but on Sylvas’ foot. Landing with all of her considerable weight on her heel, and her heel on his toes. He looked down at his foot, back up at her, and then smiled. Sylvas was not inclined to smile, even at the best of times, and something in the look that he gave her seemed to set off some sort of fight or flight response, leading her to leap off his foot again. Gravity was turned back on, so she landed as normal.

“Or a loan,” Malachai added as if none of the shenanigans were occurring around him. “It isn’t impossible that one of the other factions in the universe, in possession of their own gravity mage, might have assisted the Consortium in exchange for some portion of the prize they meant to claim. After all, the Consortium does trade everywhere. Perhaps even they found an artifact capable of emulating gravity magic?”

Sylvas frowned. “We’re just speculating. We have no evidence one way or the other.”

Except that isn’t entirely true, is it, darling? Mira whispered to him. You and I know it is possible that the Aions had the ability to predict the future because we’re developing that same ability as we speak. Which means that it is entirely possible that this little cult of Seekers is entirely correct in their assessment of the situation.

“It doesn’t matter if the Seekers are right or wrong about the Aions preparing their vaults as some sort of grand plan to save the universe. What matters is that they’re willing to betray and kill people to do it.” Sylvas realized that he was answering Mira aloud just a moment too late to stop.

Hector was watching him curiously, while the other two had become accustomed to these little tonal jumps in conversation with him by now. The older man uncrossed his arms at last and stretched. “I’ve requested all the information that Veilbohr has managed to extract from his own backstabbers, and I’ve got some poor council aide collating all the records we have of the Seekers stretching back to their founding—whenever that was. Maybe once that arrives, we’ll have some better insights.”

“I hope the Consortium are responsible.” Kaya edged slowly closer to Sylvas, like he was a snarling dog she still wanted to pet. “That’ll make smacking them so much more satisfying.”

A sound chimed throughout the ship. Not an alarm, as such, but a throbbing pulse. Hector looked startled. “How is someone hailing us when nobody knows that this ship even exists?”

All four of them looked at one another in alarm. Then Mira piped up.

Actually, that would be my doing.