CHAPTER 23 – THE WAY ABIDES

"Now is the time to see beyond the final garden, to unmake the veil of illusion, and to enlighten the self. Ascension is always here, eternally present; neither infinite darkness nor the blackest void can banish the sacred warmth of the Fire Eternal. Embrace the heavens, sing with the stars, love the universe, and become One with All."

– Hom Ultima Oortis, "The Last Paradise"

999 RE, Terra Para, on the other side of the teleport

The world turned back to normal.

Airo gasped, gulping gratefully the freezing air as he lay on smooth, polished stone. His whole body felt wracked and devoid of life. He managed to haul himself up on one elbow and saw Magus Dei kneeling beside him.

"Where are we?" Airo asked with raw voice.

"Ilsorin," Magus replied, his voice equally torn. The old Knight seemed to be holding, but his face was ashen and his eyes looked lifeless.

"The others... what happened?" Airo asked, confused. His mind was still distorted, struggling to comprehend its surroundings.

Magus shook his head sadly. "They are all gone."

The old Knight's words snapped Airo into focus. He willed himself to rise and looked around. They were on a wide terraced courtyard at Ilsorin. The rest of the Radiant Knights were sprawled around, trying to recover from the terrible conclusion of the battle at Kryoon City. Airo commanded Yeoman Cloud to take stock of their number. Not everyone had returned.

"They are all gone," Magus repeated and then gasped, clutching his chest.

Only now Airo fully realized what had happened. The horror hit him in the gut. He turned slowly, staring at the large courtyard and the ragged Radiant Knights. Scarcely moments ago the united people of Terra Para had been fighting a battle for their survival, while Airo had faced against Ferrtau. Then the Lightbringer had unleashed the true potential of his power, and what had followed was something Airo would never forget until the end of his life.

Great Cosmos...

Another groan made Airo return his attention to Magus.

"Are you all right, old man?" he asked, kneeling to help the old Knight get on his feet.

"I will manage," Magus spoke through clenched teeth. "I channeled too much energy in too short time... my broken body cannot keep up anymore..."

"How did you get us here, back at Ilsorin? I thought this place..."

"Quantum multi-instanced point-to-endpoint correspondence transmission. 'Mass teleport' in plain-speak... I contacted Mentoria and asked her to grant me access... the fractal sub-region had..."

"Airo?"

He lifted his gaze at the sound of his name. There, at the end of the courtyard, Veralla stood at the top of a low stone stairway, Kiana and Nightsong at her side. Kiana was wearing a shields belt to stave off the cold. Airo felt his heart racing. "Veralla!"

He made sure Magus was steady and sprinted toward her. He climbed the stairway in three swift leaps and threw his arms around Veralla. He hugged her tight, burying his face into her smooth, scaled hide. He held fast, seeking her comforting presence to banish the dreadful images that lingered in his mind. So many people had died... it reminded him of the war he fought so long ago, of the friends he had lost, and the merciless destruction that had been reality every day for years. Yet those bloody memories paled before the annihilation he had witnessed now, dwarfed into insignificant tragedy by the sheer magnitude and the vividness of it. The knowledge that millions had died in the span of mere moments, their very souls torn and disintegrated into nothingness, kept him on the edge of sanity. Airo clutched Veralla, glad that she was alive and well.

"Airo, are you all right?" Veralla murmured, as she embraced him in turn.

"Did we win?" Kiana asked tentatively, yet her tone sounded wan. "We... didn't win?..."

"No, we did not," Airo said, his voice hollow. He pulled away from Veralla. "We lost everything. We lost the war."

"But how??... What happened!?"

Airo's shoulders sagged. "Ferrtau tried to soul reave everyone on the planet."

Kiana gasped, her lavender eyes wide with terror. "Deus..."

Veralla grabbed Airo afresh in a tight hug of her own. "Thank you, Airo," she sobbed, "thank you for keeping your promise."

"If things had been bad, why didn't you retreat earlier?" Nightsong hrrr–ed in confusion, whose youth made her unable to grasp the full impact of events.

"I am more interested in how you survived the Lightbringer's most potent assault," another voice said. Airo looked up, and saw Mentoria coming into view. Like Magus, she was completely unprotected against the harsh weather, barefoot and half-naked as always, yet the cold didn't bother her visibly in the least. "Was it you, dear Magus, or did the Dragonslayer use the starblade?"

"We can discuss all of this inside," Airo cut in, regaining some of his composure. "Right now, we have to take stock of the situation." He cast another look at the courtyard. "Cloud, dispatch emergency units to assist the survivors and carry the critically wounded to the medical level."

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"At once, Commander," the SAI responded and the Viirt lit up with activity.

"The rest of you," Airo spoke over an open commlink, "follow me."

***

"Did Ilsorin's guardian survive Ferrtau's planet-wide attack?" Airo asked.

He hadn't bothered to go to the command room. The survivors had gathered at the first larger hall that could fit them all, dragons coiling next to huge support pillars while humans slumped upon silvery stairways or against gleaming walls. Projected screens hovered at the center of the chamber, forming a wide circle of datastreams enclosing the nebulous avatar of Yeoman Cloud. Airo and the rest of his command echelon were standing around the circle.

"Barely," Mentoria replied coldly. Her 'sensual enchantress' act had vanished completely. "The Lightbringer's vile assault injured it heavily, yet I was able to keep it alive. For now, the location of this fortress continues to be obscured, as much good that would do us."

Airo nodded at her words. He took stock of the survivors. Alongside the Radiant Knights, Magus' teleportation had saved a handful of soldiers from the Consortium and the Union, all of them people Airo personally knew. From tens of thousands, a pitiful number of about four hundred had survived the battle at Kryoon City, and a quarter of those were Knights. Another quarter had been taken to the medical level, which left only three hundred able-bodied warriors from what only half an hour ago was an army. Airo turned to Lylana Darkovitz.

"What will happen once the Reality Vortex goes out of control?" he asked.

"The whole paraworld will be no more" she replied, her tone subdued. "On a normal planet, there'd be merely some kind of a short-lived singularity, or a catastrophic explosion of the core. But on a world like Terra Para... it'll be pure entropy. Even local SUHN-space could be wiped out."

"And that is the optimistic scenario, no doubt," Magus coughed, standing next to Lylana. The old Knight had refused medical aid, despite his weakened condition. Airo wondered distantly what had made the ancient Æthereal so vulnerable to wielding his own power. But there were more urgent matters to deal with now.

"It is as we told you before, Commander," Glawlrhain said. The small training master had gone into battle with great reluctance, and now his amber gaze was haunted by some re-awakened sorrow. "The Lightbringer may have triumphed over us, but in the end the demise of everyone, including his, is guaranteed to happen here. If the Shield still holds the Shard in its protective field, then our death will be tragic still, but not in vain."

Airo gazed at the people around him. Glawlrhain, Lylana, Stamat, even Magus were all shaken and defeated. He understood what was going on inside their heads – he himself hadn't fully overcome the horror that resulted from facing Ferrtau. He felt dispirited and beaten, ready to give up entirely. Yet deep down he had the soul of a warrior, and it allowed him to carry on even when things seemed hopeless.

Given the circumstances, there was only one course of action left to pursue.

"We still have two dreadnoughts at our disposal," Airo said. "Round up the refugees in the stronghold and send them through the psi-gate. Terra Para may be doomed, yet that does not mean we should die along with it too."

"But Ouroboros' FTL drive is destroyed!" Stamat exclaimed. "We can't leave the system!"

"Can't we use only the H'raal starship to escape?" Captain Riley asked, his appearance disheveled and haggard. He and and Major Trahaearn were among the lucky few who had been saved and teleported away, and both of them now stood with the command echelon, stoically following the proceedings. "It's going to be helluva cramped, I'd imagine, but we merely need to reach the nearest colony."

"The H'raal are without faster-than-light travel too," Airo said, lowering his head. "Several of their sphereships were damaged during the orbital battle against the draconic Revenant. The one that was left alongside Ouroboros was among those damaged vessels. It will take months to be repaired without an orbital shipyard or groundside docking facilities."

"What's the point in going aboard then?" Stamat asked. "We're dead without a way to traverse SUHN-space!"

"Let us tackle problems one step at a time," Airo said. "For now, we need to survive the Reality Vortex. We can then think about what comes next."

"Getting off-world won't save us," Glawlrhain hrrr–ed. "The consequences of Ferrtau's actions will reach us even in deep space."

"What does that mean?" Airo demanded.

"Elder Glawlrhain means that the energy potential of the spacetime anomaly dubbed 'the Reality Vortex' is too great, Commander," Yeoman Cloud chimed in. "According to the data I've accumulated and analyzed over the past six months, the anomaly has a cosmic profile several orders of magnitude more powerful than that of a N1 black hole. Coming into contact with the inherently volatile spacetime continuum of Terra Para has triggered a sort of potent catalyst, able to spark various processes on a galactic and even universal scale." The SAI pointed a shapeless limb toward a set of datastreams on one of the screens. "If this catalyst isn't harnessed toward a specific purpose, its default state progresses into series of cascading quantum zero-point decays, until the active components disintegrate into mutually-fueled annihilation. Such an event would spiral the entire star system into what the Ancients had once termed 'domino effect'.

"To put it simply, you'd be dead no matter where you are located within the Ascendancy System, Commander."

Yeoman Cloud's report was met with deafening silence. What little hope the gathered survivors had remaining perished in the wake of realization that there was no escape. Terra Para was doomed – as well as its remaining inhabitants and protectors.

This was truly the end.

"Take the refugees off-world anyway," Airo ordered. "Tell them nothing, to avoid panic. Maintain appearance that we are making planned evacuation. Cloud, contact the H'raal and inform them of the... situation. Tell them to spare no effort in making repairs. We will find a way out of this," he finished, yet his own voice sounded disheartened.

The Radiant Knights and the soldiers murmured, asking questions and seeking clarifications even knowing the ultimate answer.

"You are all forgetting a pertinent facet to this drama," Mentoria suddenly cut in, her voice ringing with authority and anger. Everybody quieted down and looked at her. "Your precious Lightbringer has consumed the souls of an entire planet. Granted, a paltry-populated one, yet even the scarce few millions he has reaped could prove enough for him to break down the Shield." Mentoria's face twisted in a scowl and she balled her hands into fists. "So do not congratulate yourselves upon a pyrrhic victory. Ferrtau may yet succeed, and all of your foolish idealism may have been for naught."

"That may be true," Magus replied amid the silent crowd, "yet I myself do not believe it. If Ferrtau still had power over both the Shield and the Vortex, then he would have ended everything by now. However, we still stand." The old Knight drew himself to his full height and looked around the large hall, his regal crimson robe a reminder to everyone he had been once the leader of a great organization. "Ferrtau will not erase existence, thanks to our efforts. Terra Para will be destroyed, and its destruction will put a scar on the whole galaxy, yet the stars shall continue to shine for many ages to come. We have achieved that much at least." Magus fixed Mentoria with a stare. "Ours may be a tragic destiny, yet it is also one of the most noble sacrifices any of us could have made."

"My times as a martyr are long over," Mentoria snapped. "I have no intention this forsaken fractal piece of rock to become my grave." She turned and stormed off, her star-night garments trailing like a mantle of ribbons.

The emergency post-war meeting continued for a little while longer. There wasn't anything more to be said and done, yet nobody in the hall, regardless of their bravery, wanted to face the inevitable fate that waited within the very near future. At last, reluctantly, the Radiant Knights and the surviving Consortium and Union soldiers started to disperse, each going to complete their final duties, and then contemplate the last days of their life in solitude or with what precious little company had remained present.