Luke Chmilenko
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Starbreaker: Volume 2 - Chapter 27
🕑 Added 2024-12-30 17:00:03 +0000 UTC“Consider the Relic world of Castigation. From it, and the Eidolon of Knowledge that consumed it, we assume that there was a vast interconnected empire based on the planet, extending out to encompass the local star systems. An empire built exclusively on the trade of knowledge. Their currency was known as the Secret. Their university buildings occupied a solid 49% of their world’s surface. Think how much more they must have known than has been uncovered. The crafting of many key enchantments, unaffinitied spells of flight, mnemonic curses and many other elements of Aion previously unknown to academia were uncovered there in just a single dig.”
—Archaeoarcanum: Lost Magics, Kalisdrothan Raentolathan
“Quite.” Bael said brightly. “Shall we see if we can’t locate the Veilbohr Institute emplacement before the rest of the gathered Ardent recruits make short work of any and all alcoholic beverages on the station.”
They progressed further from the central room, and the temperature began to gradually drop. Sylvas probably wouldn’t have noticed it, but the mana in the air seemed to gradually thin out as they progressed too.
He voiced one of his ponderings as they went. “Did you know there was a station up here?”
“I believe there are several judging by my night-sky observations, though which are still in use, and which are empty husks is of course an entirely different matter.” Bael should have been the first person that Sylvas asked, really.
“Old as balls.” Was Kaya’s contribution.
“An astute observation from our delirious companion. The construction of this station certainly predates the emergence of the Empyrean at the very least. One can tell from the absence of many of the enchantments laid in the bulkhead and the use of a shard fragment power source, which haven’t been widely produced in…”
Someone in the white of Ardent uniform, but cut in a robe like Sylvas had never really seen stepped out from one of the side passages. A human, so far as they could tell. “Excuse me, we’re looking for the Veilbohr Institute?”
“The diggers?” The woman glanced at her slate. “They’re out by the bulkhead, head straight, then turn left before you hit space.”
Sylvas gave her his most genuine looking smile, then immediately kicked himself mentally for doing so. It was bad enough that he’d been leading poor Gharia along all this time without his over-politeness getting him into even more trouble. “Thank you.”
He turned back to Bael who was ready to launch back into the lecture. “As I was saying…”
“While I’m sure the history lesson on archaic magic is going to be fascinating, I would like to get our introductions made as quickly as possible.”
The elf seemed to wilt ever so slightly. “Oh I see. Perhaps your reputation as the hard drinking party animal of the Ardent were not exaggerated after all.”
“My boy…” Kaya groaned proudly.
“There has been a great deal of exaggeration in that regard,” Sylvas cut off her usual nonsense before it could start. “I believe that last night is probably the second time that I’ve been drunk in my life, and I can’t say that I’m particularly fond of the experience given how thoroughly it has already damaged one of my closest friendships.”
“With respect, I do suspect that the matter of the albino serpent’s affection was always going to present itself eventually, with your dear dwarf’s homemade liquor only exacerbating matters by removing some of her inhibitions. And some of your higher reasoning skills that might have allowed you to navigate the situation with more ease.”
Sylvas was overcome by an unexpected weariness. “What should I have done?”
“Gharia, it would seem.” Bael’s voice hung in the air for a moment before he realized that Sylvas had come to a complete stop and shut up.
“What? I can’t just…”
“Could have. Easy.” Kaya affirmed. “Stanzbuhr.”
Sylvas straightened up and scowled. “I do not believe that engaging in an illicit affair with a soldier I’ll be serving alongside would make Ardent command very happy with me.”
The elf and dwarf, rarely on the same page, let alone the same wavelength, looked at one another and then burst out laughing.”
“You think they care where you stick your…”
Sylvas barked, “Kaya!”
Bael tried for a more reasoned approach. “I believe that our inebriated friend is trying to say that interpersonal relationships among recruits are not typically the purview of our superiors within the military hierarchy.”
Still, he refused to believe it. “People can’t just be…”
Kaya had reached her own limit too. “Luna and Orson.”
“Hammerheart and Veltrian.” Bael added.
“Havran and Anak.” Kaya was counting on her fingers as she went.
Kaya curled up three fingers at once. “Ironeyes and… anything with a pulse so far as I have seen.”
Sylvas blinked, trying to take all this in. “Hammerheart and Vel were a couple? I had no idea.”
Bael was quick with an answer then. “Well it doesn’t always make sense to project one’s close relationships with one’s enemies…”
Still, Sylvas couldn’t put it together. “But she’s been… fine.”
“I imagine that any tears she may have shed over his departure were already long dried before you encountered her next. The fiends are a passionate people, their emotions burn bright, but… brief. As to the matter of you having no idea as to the coupling of two people who you scarcely ever interacted with socially, that comes as little surprise since you were equally oblivious to being in a najash courting ritual since your first day on Strife.”
“Nobody explained how these things worked!” He could have looked it all up. He had access to every book on the Ardent ship, then dozens more once he arrived on Strife. It would have been so simple. But it had embarrassed him, both because he’d have been treated like a child by the books learning about such matters for the first time, and because despite his insistence on being perfectly comfortable with how things were in the Empyrean, he was still very attached to his old-fashioned view on certain matters.
“Well no,” Bael spoke softly as he could, “I can’t imagine that they would have, given that you were a full-blooded adult by the time that you joined us. Most assumed that you had been given the genitalia conversation at some point prior to…”
Sylvas cut him off. “I am aware of how… marriages…”
“Marriage?!” Kaya brayed with laughter. “Nobody’s getting married, Stanzbuhr. They’re just fu-”
Kaya was blessedly silenced by their arrival at the Veilbohr Institute’s designated door. Sylvas wasn’t sure that he could have coped with much more of her bluntness on matters of the heart and… other organs. He rapped sharply on the metal, also made in the same archway shape that he’d noticed repeated throughout all of the native Strife architecture, and it slid open to reveal a cornucopia of papers. Sylvas hadn’t seen so many books since he left Croesia and had feared that he never would again. Everything in the Empyrean was handled on their slates, information being passed around them magically through a vast interlocking enchantment, but here he saw that it wasn’t the case for the whole universe. Heaps of books, folders, files and papers seemed to blanket the entire chamber, and in the midst of it all there was an elf.
It occurred to Sylvas that everyone he had really known since leaving his homeworld had been a part of the Ardent. Their clothes, uniforms, their fashions shaped by the utility of their positions. In the elf lounging in a chair before them, he caught his first real glimpse of how people in the Empyrean at large chose to present themselves.
He looked like Bael. Not in the way that all members of a species bore resemblance to one another, but in the high cheekbones, pointed chin and absurdly long hair. While Bael’s was a brown so dark as to be almost black, this elf’s slicked back hair was a silvery grey. Sylvas had not yet encountered an elf so old that they bore any of the common signs of human aging, but it seemed that this one had persisted for so long through the ages that color had been gradually sapped from him. The aging did not seem to extend to his skin, there was no looseness, no wrinkles, he was as perfectly smooth as a man of twenty, with an old man’s hair oiled back behind his pointed ears. At the sight of them, he leapt to his feet with the same languid grace that Sylvas had only seen from Vaelith in battle before.
“At last my young protectors have arrived! I was given word of your approach to the station by that delightful Instructor Aurea, and it seems that all of my expectations have been entirely surpassed.” Extending a hand towards Sylvas in a very human greeting that he got the sense was a bit awkward for an elf to perform introductions were made, “I am Professor Kalisdrothan of the Veilbohr Institute. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Sylvas took the hand and shook it, unsure how tightly to squeeze given the disparity in the strength between him and this elf. He may have scored poorly in physical strength in comparison to the other recruits, but this elf looked positively waifish. A thumb brushed over his knuckles as their hands were withdrawn again. “I am Sylvas Vail, this is Kaya Runemaul and this is…”
“Baeldrothan Istar Raentolathan.” The professor finished Sylvas sentence with considerably more names than he had known Bael had. “Second cousin, I believe?”
Bael looked positively delighted, but maintained his decorum. “That would depend entirely upon whether you consider the matrilinear line is the deciding factor, I believe there are several points of conjunction in our respective family trees. Several, interlinking branches, so to speak.”
“Cousin Baeldrothan then, and we’ll worry not about the specifics.” The elf stepped around the desk and drew Bael into a loose hug that neither seemed terribly comfortable with.
Bael’s joy had been somewhat depleted by the physical contact, but he tried not to let it show in his voice. “A delight to see you again cousin, it has been far too long.”
Kalis went through the usual motions and platitudes that were all too familiar to Sylvas ears after his time living among nobility. “As it always is to stand in such fine company, dear one.”
Kaya interrupted their delicate waltz like a mining pick to the foot. “You’ve met then?”
Peering down at the dwarf with a bemused expression, the professor said, “Our paths have crossed many times at various functions over the years, though for obvious reasons my work scarcely allowed me much time for family matters.”
“And it was with good reason that he was so preoccupied.” Bael immediately leapt in to pour on the flattery. “Professor Kalisdrothan is one of the foremost minds in the Empyrean and beyond in the field of archaeology.”
“Well I would hardly call myself the foremost anything.” The other elf demurred, even though he clearly could have spent all day hearing about how wonderful he was. “Given my recent publication history.”
Bael let out a gasp of dismay. “Professor, your papers have been formative in understanding the histories of literally hundreds of extinct cultures. Without your work, the Empyrean would be unanchored, with no chain linking it back to its roots in history.”
“You flatter me with a courtier’s expert tongue young man but let us turn for a moment from the matters of the past to the pressing matters of the future.”
Sylvas finally found an opportunity to get a word in edgewise. “You’re planning a dig on Strife.”
“Just so.” He gestured to the charts and maps strung about the walls of the otherwise unremarkable office space. “I have been here for close on nine months now, surveying what little of the subsurface of the Relic world I have been given information about. The Ardent are a little reluctant to part with information regarding their prized training bases, as though I am about to run off to Valtoris Blackstar with every detail and facilitate invasion.”
Bael seemed quite overwrought at the idea of Kalis being denied anything at all, let alone something so trivial as detailed maps of a secret military installation. “Cousin, I have little influence within the Ardent as of yet, but rest assured that I shall take all steps to make every attempt to pry open the oyster shell of their protections over this world that you might glimpse the pearl at its heart.”
“A very generous offer, dear one, but what the full influence of the Institute has not been able to apply leverage against, I very much doubt any one member of the Ardent, no matter how upstanding, will have much luck in changing.”
“I shall try nonetheless.” Bael puffed out his chest as much as it was possible for someone so slender.
With a wave of his hands, the maps on the walls were copied into illusions in the air between Kalis and the Ardent recruits. Various sections lighting up in red. “With what I have been able to ascertain there are a great many large constructions housed beneath the hemato-sillica sediment, but given the limited time that we are to be granted on the surface to excavate and explore, it has been difficult to gauge which will prove to be the most fruitful. We have narrowed it down to a dozen or so sites, but as of yet the decision has not been made.”
Sylvas frowned. “Then why have we been sent to you to make arrangements for your arrival?”
“I suspect that would be because the Ardent would like me to depart post-haste. Having already established that I may only conduct my work under the watchful eye of their best recruits, allegedly for my team’s safety in eidolon infested ruins, they are now providing me with a firm deadline during which said recruits will be available to me.” The Professor sighed. “In essence, they wish for me to take my chances with a guess as to where the decisive find of Strife will be so that I am no longer occupying valuable space upon this station. Uncomfortable as they are with my proximity to the planet.”
Shuffling his feet, Sylvas looked down. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news then.”
“Nothing of the sort, dear one. This is simply the way of things when one is dealing with militant powers. I can assure you that the Ardent have been markedly more indulgent of my interests than many of the other organizations in the Empyrean and beyond. Everyone is delighted when there is news of some fabulous new breakthrough in archaeology, but nobody wants their own gardens being excavated for it.”
Kaya piped up, apparently having surfaced from whatever queasy wasteland she’d been roaming until now. “Can’t see the Ardent being precious about you messing up their mushroom beds.”
“Since their inception, the Ardent have proven to be entirely reliant upon the information that archaeology provides to them regarding their enemies, while entirely opposed to the exploration of relic worlds that might turn up that information, out of some mis-placed fear that our investigations might re-awaken the long dormant creatures that laid waste to such places.” Professor Kalisdrothan wiped his illusions away with an irritated flick of the wrist. “I must admit to finding it infuriating at times, but at least in this particular instance the presence of their own activities on the world provides them with some reason to be reticent. Usually when I am confronted with a stonewall of bureaucracy and reluctance, there is no more sign of the Ardent upon the world than there are living Eidolons.”
Sylvas didn’t like the way that the Professor kept looking at him, even when talking to the others. Like he was transfixed, so he moved to get out of the room. “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, even if our work together may not prove fruitful.”
Kalis pressed a hand to his chest. “Oh have no fear, dear one, there will be fruit of the tree of knowledge to be found buried beneath the red sands, it is just a matter of how much we can harvest before our time is done.”
Sylvas managed a smile for the man. “I can’t promise it will be the same for all of my people, but I’ve got an amateur’s interest in finding out what happened to Strife, so you can rest assured I’ll be doing all I can to help.”
“Mr. Vail, that is more than I ever could have hoped to hear.” Sylvas began to turn away and head back outside, only for the next thing the professor said to stop him in his tracks. “And I do hope that when you part ways with the Ardent, you might consider the Institute as a potential home.”
For a moment, he genuinely thought that he’d misheard. Or more likely, that the other man had misspoken by accident. “Excuse me?”
“You’re Sylvas Vail, the mage with the gravity affinity, if I am not much mistaken. I am certain that you are in receipt of many hundreds of offers every day proposing vast wealth in exchange for your services. The Veilbohr Institute, formidable as its donors may be, have no hope of matching such offers, but the very fact that you are still among the Ardent suggest to my mind that you are not so interested in material wealth as in other matters, and if you want answers, there is nobody in the Empyrean better equipped to answer them than our humble Institute.”
Sylvas cast a glance over at Bael, wondering just how much he was writing in his letters home, and how much information was disseminating from there to distant cousins. “And why would you think that I’d be leaving the Ardent?”
“Come now Sylvas,” Bael said, catching the edge in his voice. “There’s no need for us to quarrel.”
“Because you have questions.” The professor pressed on, heedless of any warning he might have picked up on himself. “You have an amateur’s interest in what we do. Both suggest that you are inquisitive and bright, two qualities one does not associate with soldiery.”
Bael tried to intervene. “Cousin…”
“Oh take no slight from it, Baeldrothan, I’d hardly call you a dullard to your face, would I?” The older elf chuckled. “The work that the Ardent do is absolutely vital to the survival of all sentient life in the universe, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for those who devote themselves to it. My own kin included. But just because something is vital, that does not mean that everyone is suited to it.”
Sylvas forced a neutral expression onto his face. “I am suited well to the Ardent, Professor Kalisdrothan, and it to me.”
“Well, should that ever change, please do give us some consideration before marrying some minor interstellar royalty or cashing in with one of the big shipping companies. They might find some use for you, but we would cherish you.” He held up a hand in some theatrical grasp, then let it fall. “And now, having said that, and done all my due diligence in begging you to sign on, I suppose that I must leave you to your shore leave. We shall remain in contact through the slate-network, assuming that you can receive mail?”
“We can, and I’d be happy to talk more.” Sylvas couldn’t deny that the opportunities that the Veilbohr Institute had on offer were more exciting to him than any amount of money paid into his account monthly. “You are an interesting man, professor.”
The elf held out his hand once more for Sylvas to shake, but when he tried to draw away, he found the elf’s grasp tighter than he could have anticipated. “Dear one, flattery will get you everywhere with me. If you do not take care in how kindly you speak of me, you’ll find me utterly devoted.”
Bael loudly cleared his throat, and Sylvas hand was allowed to drop. “If it is alright with everyone, I think I’d like to stay a while with my cousin. Catch up on news from back home.”
“I should like nothing better after nine fruitless months of staring at these drab walls to gossip with you relentlessly, dear cousin.” The professor showed genuine signs of excitement, for perhaps the first time since meeting them.
“Of course, Bael.” Sylvas bowed his head as they left. “We’ll see you later.”
They were a few feet down the corridor, when Kaya finally spoke up. “Stanzbuhr?”
“Yes?”
“I take it back. Everything I ever said about you being a stanzbuhr. Every time I called you a stanzbuhr.” Sylvas stared down at her in surprise, until the punchline arrived. “That was a real stanzbuhr.”
Sighing, he started walking away, ahead of her. “I still haven’t got any idea what that word means.”
“It means him.” She trotted up beside him and grinned.
“So helpful.”
