“Eidolon on deck!”

The words passed right through him. Feet moved on autopilot, and when he blinked, he was seated somewhere, in a different part of the ship, and it was moving.

“Gabriel.”

The name sounded familiar, but he had to hear it again before the haze between his ears faded enough to realize it was his own, “…Huh?”

“You can’t be daydreaming on the way to a major meeting like this.” Xanarken said stiffly, and took a seat opposite him, “Have you looked at any of the materials I sent you yet?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked hard, “…I was looking at it overnight.”

“Instead of sleeping.”

“When you put it like that, it’s as though you forgot that it’s going to be a while before we get to Oceanside.” He countered and shrugged, only to sag in his seat a little, “Unlike you, I have to physically go to places. I’ll just catch a catnap on the way.”

Xanarken made a weird face, and pulled one ankle to rest over the opposite knee, “Have you considered the Eidolon System?”

That was sobering, but Gabriel shook his head, “Not in the way that I think you just insinuated.”

The cabin was empty except for them, and Xanarken laced his fingers together over that upturned leg, “It would make your job a lot easier.”

“In Sargon, maybe, but in Kitez, even you have to hoof-it the old-fashioned way.”

The Fourth just looked on quietly for a moment, then cast his gaze down, “If you get what you want, the border barrier won’t exist around Kitez anymore.” He noted, “And you wouldn’t even have to use it full-time if you didn’t want. I’m sure there’s something Arbelos can do to make it so you just clock into it for a work-day or something and let you leave at will.”

“You’ve never even shown me the Eidolon System. I have no concept of what you’re trying to describe.”

Xanarken set his foot back down on the floor and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, “I’ve told you about the room we’re in. The only thing I haven’t told you is how we go from pods to out here. The Eidolon System itself is a neural-body interface that looks something like a crown, and acts like the nodes you have at the back of your head. The kicker is how there’s an additional implant that sits around the cranial fossa, deep within the neck, that not-only catches thought-commands, but prevents the somatic nervous system from sending signals to the body. In layman’s terms, it paralyzes you from the neck down so you don’t act-out the movements you’re making with your mantle, while diverting those signals into your mantle so you can move around.”

“…That’s unnerving.”

“There’s a toggle. This is very old technology, and we’ve had a long time to refine it.”

Gabriel still seemed hesitant, “I’m not sure I would want to…”

“Why not? Wouldn’t your life be easier if you could just pop-up wherever you needed to be instead of going there?”

Eyes narrowed suspiciously, “You’ve been pushing really hard lately on the idea of having a back-up Eidolon. If I didn’t have reason to believe otherwise, I’d think you were actively planning to have me take over completely.”

Xanarken looked a bit surprised, but leaned back in his seat again, “My pride as the Eidolon of the Fourth gives me a certain sense of responsibility for the function of my Wing. I have full faith in your capability, but you lack the mobility that is – by definition – a hallmark characteristic of this caste. ‘Eidolon’ is another word for ‘ghost,’ and is named thus because of the proverbial way the System allows us to walk through walls and appear from thin air. If you want to be as effective as you can be, you’ll have to consider the use of every tool.”

Gabriel was quiet for a little while, looking out the window contemplatively. He could see the border mountains starting to rise below, but no matter how hard he focused, he couldn’t shake the queasy feeling he got for being so high up, and he looked away again, eyes closed to regain his bearings.

The thought of those last few seconds with Ren were all-encompassing and – to his detriment – extremely distracting.

“What would that process even look like?” Gabriel dared to wonder, forcing himself to think of the present moment.

“We would first summon Arbelos, to do a full-body scan of you so as to create your perfect likeness in mantle form.” Xanarken began, feeling a sense of optimism for the curiosity, “Once fully compiled and rendered, you’d be able to change how you look in any way you like. Skin tone, hair color, height, weight…you could do anything, even-“

“…Turn into a cat?” The younger man chuckled quietly.

“Yeah, even turn into a cat.” Xanarken confirmed. He could see that dubious air around his heir though, and tried to make light of the moment, “Back when the five of us were still figuring things out…”

“Five?”

“Arianna Tyris, the original would’ve-been Eidolon of the Sixth.” He clarified, “She was the first to use the System full-time back at the beginning, helping Arbelos and Caeros fine-tune it, and conducted the first major scouting missions beyond the safe-zones we’d made around the crash-site. It was instrumental in helping us find some of the other ships, since it wasn’t limited by fuel-capacity. Arianna could go very far afield, safely, and relay back to us whatever it was that she found. Because of her, we were able to connect with the entire northern and eastern sections of the continent. We…had to put the west and south on hold for a very long time, after Caeros turned on us.”

Gabriel’s ears perked up, “…Turned on you? That’s not the story I’ve been told up till now.”

Xanarken gave a solemn nod, and looked at his interwoven fingers contemplatively, “The truth of that terrible day has only ever been spoken-of in hushed tones between the Eidolon alone. The sentiment against the afflicted had already been deeply entrenched in the crash survivors, and we didn’t want to add to it by revealing how Caeros had gone from accidentally ruining us, to deliberately trying to murder us, with that same power.” He started; the pained look on his face was evident, “Caeros was…a deeply troubled young man back then. The weight of the world was heaped onto his shoulders from the day he could understand what it even meant. His aptitude for the use of his affliction – the fact that he had his entire life to master it – and ultimately, the responsibility of using it to safely bring the fleet to Tau…maybe it broke him. He had gone to the Centauri system a number of times before, taking our technology with him to gather data and help us plan…there was no doubt he could get there. It took a while to understand why it all went so wrong at the 11th hour. Maybe it was too much to ask of his power… Taking a single vessel with a satellite or rover aboard was child’s play. Taking a few passengers was a breakthrough. Taking two or three ships…if he was struggling, he didn’t show it. At most, he said he needed a way to anchor the ships together more effectively, and it was…somewhat serendipity that one of his early passengers was afflicted. The fact of it accidentally told him that his affliction could connect to others with the same ability, as if they were tethered together. We probably never would have found that out if he hadn’t insisted on bringing his closest friends along on some of those later missions.”

Gabriel tilted his head slightly against the pillow behind his neck, “The idea of Caeros having friends is such a weird thing. He’s always been this…monolithic figure – a proverbial legend – that was always separate from everyone else in the story.”

“The Academy back on Earth was very similar to the College we have in Agartha.” Xanarken explained, “Almost a carbon copy, to tell it true. Afflicted teens would be gathered there to learn how to control their abilities and become productive with them, where able, and to find comradery with those who suffered the same. Caeros had a little gang back there, spent years together, and got into all kinds of trouble.” He shook his head and huffed a quiet laugh to himself, “Him and his first recruit – this silly kid named Tallus, who had this really annoying affliction that made him obnoxiously charming – convinced the Headmaster to change their test scores on some important exam that they’d both bombed.”

“You speak of that ability like it was used against you on occasion.”

Xanarken nodded emphatically, “It was, and it was incredibly annoying, too!” He threw his hands up in pseudo-frustration, as if hadn’t been all that long since it happened the last time, “Thankfully they were just little brats back then, and the worst Tallus ever charmed me into doing was letting them into the staff lounge at the school, where they could get all the good snacks.”

Gabriel huffed a laugh, “Trouble for a noble cause, to be certain.”

“In any case…” Xanarken shook his head to get off that track and back on point, “Tallus was aboard one of the mission’s sister-ships at one point, and when Caeros zapped them to Tau, he realized how much easier it was to keep the group together because of how he felt linked to Tallus. That’s where the concept of the Warp Magi came from.”

“I see.”

“The bigger the group became, the more afflicted we needed to string them together. The Warp Engines helped contain the Limitless anchor into one concentrated spot…they became the core – the heart – of each ship, and its tentacles coursed through the fleet like veins, holding it all together in a sticky web of abyssal energy.” Xanarken continued, “Before the final trip though, when we had the colony fleet all loaded-up with passengers and cargo, Caeros warped it all to Tau empty, with only the Warp Magi aboard to ensure the success of it. Everything went according to plan, and he came back a few hours later, no issues whatsoever. It was all so perfect… I guess it was too perfect.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Gabriel knew where the story was going after that, but with all the new details, he didn’t dare assume the truth or completeness of it.

“It took a few days to load everything and everyone up,” Xanarken continued, the taint of regret in his voice, “Caeros did what he always did, and the fleet warped away. Immediately on arrival, we knew something was wrong. The planet was wrong. The star system was wrong. All Hell broke loose as Caeros was lambasted with accusations of deliberate malfeasance, because he didn’t seem all that bothered or surprised by where we’d gone. It was a trifling thing to him…or maybe he just feigned that it was all according to plan, to avoid looking like he’d fucked up. Then the rifts started to open… The rest is as you know it.”

“…I see…”

“What we never said afterwards was how apathetic Caeros was to the situation.” Xanarken said quietly, and gently pressed his fingers to his eyes, as if his mantle could leak tears that he wanted to hide, “He secluded himself, spoke seldomly…in fact, other than his little friend-group, Caeros only ever really talked with Arbelos. I tried – God knows I tried – to reach him, but he was convinced the fleet leadership had turned against him, and that every one of us blamed him viciously for what had happened. I forget how long after that it took for Arbelos to tell me, but Caeros admitted to him at some point that it was an accident. Something about the number of afflicted people aboard the ships that no one knew about – people who refused to disclose their conditions, and corrupted the safety-net – had thrown him off. It was chaos…it broke his concentration, and threw him far off-course. He didn’t know where we were, he couldn’t figure out how to find home…we were stranded. This foreign world that hadn’t been prepared in any way for our arrival was a tepid jungle of secrets and unknowns… The SSCF Chiron’Thule had the capability to terraform, and we did everything we could as rapidly as was possible, and the Agartha was capable of changing the atmosphere, so we at least had that going for us… But, the adaptation was so devastating to this planet’s original state that our arrival caused a cataclysmic extinction-event.”

Gabriel’s brow furrowed, “…So…there’s nothing really left of what this place originally was.”

“The oceans were largely spared, but the surface was devastated.” Xanarken confirmed, “We were lucky that the water here on Hadira was largely the same as our own, so the reconstitution of the atmosphere to reduce the CO2 levels didn’t bother it much. To make it possible for us to breathe without passing out after a while, we poisoned this world with oxygen, and reseeded it with our own flora and fauna. It would be a whole 50-season drama to explain what happened in those early years, so I’ll cut to the season-finale of that first arc. The Eidolon System… On Earth, it was nothing more than a method of manufacturing simple tools and images – cups, shirt-logos that could change color, decorations and the like; things that didn’t have to bear weight or stress – and we brought it here so as to save space on material cargo that could otherwise be used for crop-seed and building supplies. Necessity is the father of invention though, and we turned it into a scouting program. Cups became drones, and Arianna used it to go beyond the horizon.”

“And then Caeros turned on you…?” Gabriel wondered, “After all that?”

“Yeah.” Xanarken nodded, “The last thing he ever said to me was that he was starting to hear whispers. That he’d been hearing whispers since the fleet crashed. We thought he was schizophrenic or something, and medicated him for it, but the whispers never ceased. He kept that from us until those last moments, when he lured myself and Rylen into the System’s central control-building. Etienne was on-site to help us, having come all the way from her own ship – the SSCF Mayrain – and was caught-up in the whole thing. Arbelos was working nearby, in another room. One of Caeros’ friends was a waif of a girl named Kourin – she was probably only part of their gang because her affliction was useful; she could become perfectly invisible - and with her, they laid in wait for us. …We were told Arianna had found another ship, and we excitedly led ourselves to the would-be slaughter. Caeros attacked Rylen first.”

“He went after his own father?”

“Adopted.”

“…Oh. Well, still.”

“That’s another story, for another day.” Xanarken dismissed the derailment, “Caeros blamed Rylen for all his woes – shouted that the whispers had told him so. Arianna’s throat had been slit before we arrived, but apparently not deep enough to kill her outright; just enough to bloody and surprise her. It’s amazing how deep the jugular actually is. At any rate…she came barreling out of the control-pod, bashed Caeros over the head with a pipe or something…and the rifts opened again.”

“Again!?”

Xanarken held a hand out to keep the man from speaking further, “Caeros went down, but not completely. Arianna was too weak from blood-loss to knock him out, but the strain was enough to finish the job that Tallus had started with the knife. She bled-out on the floor as those void gates opened all around us. Caeros writhed against the pain and disorientation…and he did something that caused a chain-reaction. Syraph had seen us go into the building and ran in after us, just in time to get hit by the first twisted arc of abyssal lightning. She collapsed in her footprints, literally crystalizing in front of us. Everyone was panicking. The rifts just kept reacting – growing, shrinking, reaching out at us like fingers of flame – and then it all just went white. I was told later that there was an explosion. Caeros, Tallus, and Kourin were gone; but so was his skiff, the Wanderer, so we all assumed he had fled. We never found bodies. The third member of Caeros’ gang – I don’t remember his name; an inconsequential man who was only notable for being the only nonafflicted member of the group – was the Wanderer’s pilot, and he was gone, too…so…we assumed the plan was to assassinate us and then escape, leaving us all to die, and the colony to rot.”

“…Damn…”

Xanarken gave a heavy nod and sigh, “I mentioned Arbelos and Etienne being nearby but not immediately present at the start; Rylen had called Etienne in to help Arianna right before Caeros went at him. She came in soon after Syraph, while Arbelos hid in another room; they both got caught-up in the explosion anyway. Syraph was lost to us that day; Rylen was bereft and inconsolable, and refused to accept that she was gone. Thinking that if we just spared her for now, we could eventually figure out how to reverse whatever crystallization had taken-hold of her, so we put her into one of the hyper-sleep pods. We never saw or heard from Caeros ever again. The Wanderer couldn’t be traced. It’s like it just…never existed at all. And so, we picked up the pieces, grieved for Arianna, and did what we could to carry on. Thirty years later, people were starting to comment on the fact that the four of us survivors hadn’t aged a day since the betrayal. Thirty years became seventy…our health never failed, our youth – such as it was at the time – never advanced. It’s as if we were stuck in that moment. Frozen in time.”

“That’s how you realized you were immortal.”

“That’s right.” The Eidolon nodded again, “Not wanting to let that go to waste, we carried on, leading our little colonies and bringing in each one that we found after, until that scouting system became the Eidolon System, and nanotech became a central focus of our growing civilization. Better yet – or worse still, depending on who you ask – Arbelos discovered that Syraph’s crystalized state was radiating with energy…the same kind that had permeated the Warp Cores, subsequent to how Caeros linked to them. If we weren’t going to bury her, Arblos suggested we use her; Syraph’s legacy could continue into the future and aid us where the woman’s own efforts had been cut short. If I had to wager…a full half of why Arbelos doesn’t show himself is because of how much Rylen hates him. Like, not just hates him, loathes him, and what we’ve all become because of that one proposition. The Eidolon System is what it is today because Syraph became its heart…and not just for us, but for the World Cloud that followed, too.”

Gabriel looked aside, “…But he agreed to it, right? That’s why it exists at all today.”

“Rylen was cut out of the process.” Xanarken answered, “Now he’s stuck, using this technology despite what he knows it really is. He tells himself that he tolerates it because he feels as if a part of Syraph is watching over him – over us all – but in truth, I know he’d rather gut every SkyFortress in our fleet, and use those Warp Cores to replace her in the Seraphim Engine if he could. The sad truth though is that those Cores are nothing compared to what Syraph has become. They are 1% of the power her body produces. We don’t even know if it would be enough to sustain the World Cloud if we swapped them. That…infusion of Limitless energy – from Caeros, from the warp rifts…from Syraph’s transfigured corpse – borders on magical for what it’s done for the World Cloud. We don’t even fully understand how it works, to this day. Arbelos isn’t afflicted, so if there’s something he could understand otherwise, he can’t see it.”

“Is that why Rylen’s putting Seth on it?” Gabriel wondered carefully, “Seth’s fascination with the Limitless and the rifts…”

“It’s likely, yeah.”

“But Seth isn’t afflicted either.”

“The Myrmidon are though.” Xanarken reminded, and looked across the open space to his heir’s perplexed face, “They would be a proxy for whatever Seth directs them to look at. I imagine Rylen wants to crack the code, and figure out some alternative to Syraph, so he can stop seeing her face anytime he checks on his real body. He wants to put her to rest.”

“I see… So, the Eidolon System’s pod-room includes the Seraphim Engine.”

“The pods surround it, yeah. Symbolically allowing Syraph to watch over us, and humbling us, since we can all see her face.”

“And you would have me go there, too.”

Xanarken shook his head, “The door to that place was sealed a long time ago. We could open it, but it would probably be easier to just make a pod available somewhere else, and let you come and go from it as you please.”

Gabriel held his tongue for a moment, and crossed his arms over his chest. One hand lifted though, a finger brushing against his lips, subtly reminding him of that brief feeling from an hour before, “…The mantles you use prevent you from being able to feel anything like a normal person though.”

“There is rudimentary sensation, but…yeah, it feels different. You get used to it. I’d probably think the touch of flesh on mine to be terrifyingly intense after such a long time without knowing it.” The Eidolon confirmed, “It’s just something to think about. A mantle is a tool…it doesn’t have to be a lifestyle. Not unless you want it to be, anyway.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“We will be crossing into Kitezan airspace in 30 seconds.” An announcer’s voice spoke overhead.

Xanarken stood up from his seat, “Good timing. My mantle will fall apart as we pass through the membrane of the border barrier.”

“I’ll call you back when we get there.”

“Good lad.”

And with that, almost in tandem, Gabriel’s uniform-jacket and Xanarken’s mantle burst apart, like a hand slapping-down into loose flour on a breadboard, and vanished entirely. Gabriel drew in a long breath and leaned forward, reaching down and to the wall where a storage-space housed a small nanotech cannister. He clicked a button on the top of the cylindrical container, and a second later, a line of text saying ‘New network available’ manifested on a temporary overlay on Gabriel’s eyes. He connected to it, and began the same download of personal data from his implants as Ren had once done with the supply given to her by Seth. A moment later, he flicked his hand, and his Eidolonic mantle-like jacket reformed over him exactly as it had looked before.

A finger settled against his lip again, and Gabriel’s distracted mind hurtled back towards the source. Though Xanarken’s tale had left a strange feeling in his gut, it was a mere drop compared to what Ren had created. His brow furrowed, Was…that just a goodbye kiss? His anxious mind wondered, Am I reading too much into it…? Maybe it was just transactional… She said she’s slept with Furion before, but I’ve never seen them act openly affectionate towards one another… Even though she says he means a lot to her, she’s stopped-short of saying she’s in love with him. Could that just be creature-comforts for the duration of deployments…? He blinked hard and shook his head, and rubbed that hand across his chest, My heart has been racing since she did it… One part elation and two parts despair and guilt… I don’t know how to take it, and yet, I feel gutted, like I had her and lost her. His brow wrinkled even more as the stabbing pain settled in, and he pinched his fingers between his eyes, Shit… I fell for her, didn’t I…? Today is really going to suck.

.

A few hundred miles north, moving silently through the early-morning mists that covered a mountain forest, the horrifying – and free – visage of Scyrexianori glided on wide, leathery wings. Its progress was slow – flying only as fast as organic limbs could take it – but it was steady…and it knew exactly where it was going.