Episode 3 | The Everlight Protocol

Bone dice were hurled across the rustic limestone floor. A fight had broken out over a game of Kneyes, and a party of gamblers staggered to their feet, spitting slurred insults and slinging petty, incoherent threats. All swallowed by the deafening merriment of The Silver Chalice.

A quartet of bards entertained the crowd with jovial songs, nestled between a grand stone fireplace and a window that overlooked the Hund Sea. Antler chandeliers hung from beams supporting the vaulted ceiling, aglow with the low burn of fire opal stones. They gently swayed, as if enthralled by the music as much as the patrons below, who danced and clapped in between snug tables and cozy armchairs. Conversations melted, a ruckus of bets and threats, flirting and conspiracies, clinks of mugs and spilling of coins in between the ordering of food.

Food that was worth its weight in delicious spices and fats—and the only redeeming quality the planet had in Hael’s opinion. The aromas of Arborian delicacies permeated the cozy interior, wafting in tantalizing waves as the waiting staff served the lot to the ravenous masses: roasted wendril’en and atteroots, thistleberry cobbler and salkie custard, fried padderfish tail and wine-drunk melsk platters, and the odd basket of herbed bread accompanied by cups of guppie stew. Patrons feasted to no end, tearing flesh from bone, juices dripping down their chins and greasy fingers reaching for more.

The popular tavern had seen it all and wasn’t fazed by the passionate revelry of its patrons or the drunken tantrums of sore losers. No one paid the rowdy gamblers or their bone dice any attention. That is, until an unsteady dagger soared over Oryn’s head and impaled a barrel of perfectly brewed mead.

“The finest batch I have ever created, if I do say so myself!” Morin, the bartender and owner of The Silver Chalice had just boasted to Hael and Oryn. Everyone at their corner of the bar, really. His fermented experiment brought tears to his eyes. Tears. Now his prized, honeyed booze was oozing out of the barrel and dripping onto the dust-eaten floors.

“It’s a relief that man had terrible aim.” Oryn hugged his pint of barely sipped mead in one hand, the other touching his hair where the dagger had missed his head. His golden eyes shifted to the gloved hand that firmly gripped his left shoulder. A breathy laugh of relief escaped him.

“And that your reflexes are still quick as ever.”

Hael quickly released him and returned to his bitter wine, a faint trace of flux making a flutter of pins and needles in his hand. He gripped his glass tightly and threw back the bruised liquid.

“There was no aim at all. If not for your barrier, you might have been relieved of this life. How many times must I remind you to keep your guard up? Always protect yourself, regardless of who you are with or where you are at.”

It was an overreaction. When a flash of silver and sigils reflected off the glittering liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bar, Hael’s blood went cold. It was a slice of fear that propelled his hand to shove the boy forward, though he knew Oryn kept his barrier wrapped around him. Knew part of his friend never felt good enough, strong enough, safe enough to be without it. None of the Knight Scholars did. Arboros wasn’t kind to historians and the like. Even less so to a Knight Master heir, who was expected to uphold the virtues of the Cathedral of Knowing. Yet, a quarter of an inch. That’s the distance he was able to put between Oryn and the dagger. It was not enough. But it was not his responsibility, either.

“I don’t wish to live in a bubble.” Oryn shook severed hairs off the papers sprawled out in front of him on the bar table—physical photos and handwritten research notes from the latest expedition to Duskra. “Living in constant fear is far from ideal—”

Hael plugged a finger in his ear—the one closest to the seething bartender in front of him—and cast a glare over his shoulder at his Knight Guardian—unsurprisingly part of the brawl—out of the corner of his eye. Fucking Oberon.

“Out!” Morin rolled up his sleeves and yanked the dagger out of the barrel, a feral noise escaping him. He slammed the rag he’d been using to polish the same mug for an hour straight onto the bar, ruby eyes pinning the culprits where they stood. He brandished the rusty dagger at them, smoke snaking between his curled fingers, as he stalked towards the door.

“Oh no, you scoundrels! Leave the filthy money—yes, you idiotic dirg, leave it—and get the hell out of my tavern.”

He’ll light the bar on fire again, Erde warned.

It will all burn anyways.

Hael!

The drunken party was evicted from the establishment by Valiance, a Sivar bouncer with a pretty smile full of needle-thin poisonous teeth and thrice the strength of a dirg’s maw. She dragged two of the troublemakers out by their scruffs.

Morin stood in the doorway, shouting as if his dignity depended on it. “Banished, the lot of you. Come again and I’ll pin you to the ceiling by your balls. Ha! Not that you have much, you mead murdering morons!” The barrel was hauled off by Morin and Twigga, his faithful Gorgghulen chef, with all the enthusiasm of a funeral procession, and the patrons carried on as if nothing had happened.

It was the unspoken rule of the establishment: see nothing, hear nothing. Pay in blood if you do either. Loyal silence was currency, and loyal patrons were too drunk, too loud, too indulgent, and too wise to pay attention to more than they had to. Every drink in The Silver Chalice was named after those who broke this rule. No one ever saw any of them again. For this reason, it was the perfect place to meet with Steeltalon without prying eyes and ears. But the old man was running behind. Hael scanned the room discreetly, a knot forming in his gut. It wasn’t unusual for Rudvark Steeltalon to run on his own sense of time, but the wait…

Steeltalon is en route, Erde soothed, though it did little to calm the dance of nerves at the edge of his mind and the apprehension crawling beneath his skin like a death march of ants.

There is little margin for error. We cannot miss this chance. Not when the Dread Knights had already infiltrated the eager crowds at the Asterim Palace. Not when the codes to the Orbital Mirror Terminal were tucked away in his pocket.

Morin returned to wipe down the bar, casting a withering gaze at Oberon, who left all common sense at the bottom of a pint and stubbornly lingered. With the swagger of an inebriated duck, he stumbled to the bar and wrapped his arms around Oryn and Hael’s shoulders. His breath stank of cheese and Eldenholly wine.

“You are flirting with death, my friend,” Silas warned, but he wasn’t concerned. He swallowed a row of shots, one after the other, slamming each glass down. His cat-like eyes were pinned with feverish delight, a devilish grin flashing the hint of an incisor. Daring his friend, more like.

“Give it a rest, Oberon.” Hael shrugged off the Knight Guardian’s arm, but the man clung to him like some demented urchin. He could crack the man in the ribs…

Our Knight Marshall is so violent tonight.

I could take a feather out of your book and bite him…Divines within, the idea was tempting, albeit uncivilized. But how else to deal with a mongrel than to respond as one?

“Come on, Modin. The dagger, it wasn’t me. It was that loser over there”—Oberon waved behind himself at an empty chair— “look at him. Bastard of a cheater, that one. Even stole my wine!” He waved an empty mug at Morin, hiccupping. “The asshole stole all the bloody wine.”

Spittle sprayed from the force of his words and Oryn threw his arms out over his research to protect it, gathering it closer to his side of the bar. Yes, biting him sounded better by the second.

“You drank all the wine, you stinking pish,” Morin hissed, leaning in. “I ought to have banned you with the rest of them for ruining what was, perhaps, the best mead I’ve brewed in my entire life.” 

Cracks formed in the bar where Morin gripped the wood, and his fingers gouged the pulp. Flames crept from the trenches, spreading through the fissures and heating the mug Oberon had been fool enough to set down in front of the bartender in silent demand. It shattered, raining the bar in shards of ceramic matter. Morin made to slap the Knight Guardian with his rag, but Hael stood between them, hands raised to diffuse the situation.

“Selling yourself short, don’t you think?” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a fist full of brass coins, the last loose Arborian currency he had on his person. Good riddance. “Was it truly the best you ever brewed? If the mead could be destroyed by a little rusted dagger, how good of could it have been?”

“Are you suggesting that the mead was lacking?”

“If it wasn’t, why throw it out? What’s a little rusted metal to the untrained tongue?” Hael cocked his head thoughtfully, pushing the coins across the table. “No, you found it lacking. You know the difference it’ll make in taste. Is this not a worthy challenge to make the mead incorruptible by metal?”

“You’re full of shit, Astraeus, but you have a point…” Morin pocketed the coins, cheerful mood snapping back into place as if it never truly left.  He offered a new mug of mead—the shittiest he had on hand—and slid it to Oberon. Then pointed to a chair between Silas and Hael. “Sit your ass down, lucky pish. We’ll consider it a well-intended, ill-executed favor. But if you pull this again in my tavern, well…we’ll consider you warned, won’t we?”

Oberon clung to the back of Oryn’s chair for balance, hiccupping as he snatched the free mead and guzzled it down. His belch earned him cheers from nearby tables, and he cheered back, spitting words over the Knight Scholar’s head and using stray field notes like napkins to wipe it off.

“Come on, Thalas. Clean yourself up—” Oberon snatched a printed photo from the pile of research notes hastily tried to gather. It was an image of unearthed sunstone carvings from Duskra. Oberon gaped at the Knight Scholar, waving it around in the air.

“Fuck me, Thalas, it’s a spider. The mother of all hideous spiders. Decorative fucking spiders. What the hell—” He shook Oryn, the motion making himself sway precariously. “Didn’t the Knight Master cut funding for this? They were terrorists, kid. Terrorists! Song-obsessed demons of the sand dunes that killed thousands! Their own people! What the hell is there to gain with this kind of research?”

“Knight Masters maintain the Imperial Archives, which include the Esin Loria and the Historia Nexus. All of this research…” Oryn deftly pried the image from Oberon’s beefy hand and hide it among his notes for safekeeping. “…it’s part of that responsibility. Knowledge of the past—”

“We have no need of it, Thalas. Leave the past in the hands of the Oracles of Aisil, who have studied it far longer and more thoroughly than you. It is theirs to divine, not yours.” Oberon patted the Knight Scholar’s shoulder, heaving a sigh and rubbing his bald head. “It is commendable of you to try to understand those monsters. Hell, the fact that you can stomach it is a testament to your passions. But that’s all this is: a passion, a hobby. A means of passing time and rebelling against the old man, isn’t it?”

“Oberon…” Hael bit a quiet warning.

“The citizens of Cystirin care for nothing else, but loyal, dedicated leadership. That’s all the Emperor and the Starward Legion care about. Someone to lead us forward, not backwards. It is a position anyone would gladly kill to have, and you squander it for scholarly passions? For spiders?”

“That is enough.” Hael slammed his hand on the table and shoved to his feet, turning to get in Oberon’s face. Say another word, I dare you. He took enough steps to put at least three feet between the the Knight Guardian and Oryn. “Leave the kid alone and go home. Sleep this invasive obstinance off and the whole matter will be forgotten.”

“He needs to hear it, Astraeus. He needs to understand what’s at stake—”

“Not now. Not from you. Go home.”

 “I know the scent of war in the air. It is a damp, rotting mildew that festers, and our worlds stink of it. He should be prepared for it.” The Knight Guardian backed away, hands in the air as he retreated towards the door.

“Never knows when to shut his mouth,” Morin muttered under his breath. He collected the empty glasses from the bar, shaking his head. “Perhaps I should have slapped him senseless.”

“You would have to mop his blood from the floor.” Hael approached the bar again, running a hand through his hair and exhaling. “Expensive floors that you are unreasonably fond of.”

Paper crinkled as Oryn pored over an ancient tome—the one he’d filched from the Cathedral of Knowing—stylus guiding his reading line-by-line. He briefly paused briefly, scratching the side of his head with the butt of the stylus, brows furrowed in confusion. Then he checked his notes for a reference. “He isn’t the only one with an unreasonable fondness.”

“True…” Hael tugged on The Ballads of Ahmya, ignoring a near startled mug and the gasp of protest. The pages of the tome were delicate and smelled of wet soil. No doubt stored in an ill-fated place where it would have rotted away. Yet here it was, rescued by the Knight Scholar. Oryn reached for it, but Hael shut it with a snap and held it high.

“Did you lose your mind along with your funding on Duskra?”

Oryn laughed softly—nervously—as he latched onto the spine. “It’s kind of you to notice, sir.”

“It’s dangerous to steal from the Oracles of Aisil.”

Another tug on the spine, this time with two hands. It wrenched free, and Oryn stumbled into his chair, clutching it to his chest. “My father revoked the funding and dragged me back here, but my research status is still active for now. It’s only theft if I don’t return it.”

Clever. Slippery. Naïve as the day he was born. Hael glowered at the Knight Scholar, but the boy was now surprisingly good at sidestepping his chastisements.

“Return it before they notice it is gone.” Do not give them a reason to punish you further, but Hael couldn’t say that part out loud. To utter it would betray his thoughts and feelings on the matter, and those did not mix well with his mission. The nightmare early that afternoon was proof of this.

“I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

Soon, closer, incoming, Erde chirped.

“Hmm?” Hael scanned the room.

“Feigning ignorance is unbecoming.” Oryn paused, hands betraying his anxieties in their hesitations. Hael tracked them, brows raising. “Speaking up for me, showing me preference, chastising others for harboring negative opinions of me. Shielding me. If you continue, everyone will only ridicule you for it, and if I make a mistake or disappoint them further, I…I don’t want them blaming you, too.”

“You want me to let them target you?” But is that not what I am already doing by leaving him to the wolves. Guilty burned in the back of Hael’s mind, cold as ice. “Pick you apart?”

“No.” Oryn exhaled, resting the book on the table. He finally looked at Hael, eyes clear and bright as amber. “I want you to stop treating me like a child. I know I don’t know everything, but I do know that I don’t want others to suffer for the choices I make. You taught me this when we first met, remember? The citizens have every right to pick me apart. No one is spared criticism. I am the son of the Knight Master, and I am a Knight Scholar, roles that ultimately undermine each other and the empire. I can’t deny their accusations; my research is radical. It questions everything, and I imagine that’s terrifying.”

“Does it…?” Hael tapped a finger on the edge of the old tome. “Terrify you, I mean? Do the answers ever frighten you into wishing for ignorance?”

 “No, what frightens me is how easy it is to forget. Our memories define us, and yet, they are unspared by the erosion of time. History repeats, for better or worse. But we chose to bury it, forget about until we can’t remember it even if we want to. As for the answers, I….” The Knight Scholar parted the pages of the tome, face softening slightly.  “I mostly enjoy them. It’s comforting to unravel them, to find more difficult and interesting questions inside them.”

“What kind of questions?”

“The kind that have shunned, exiled, and killed Knight Scholars.” Oryn pushed a different photo between them—this one captured the exo-skeletal remains of a Sathnaed spider. He pointed to the remnants of its once beautifully designed metal body. Under the bright Duskran suns, the spiders would have glittered like jewels in the desert. “Yet, I can’t help but wonder…if the Esin were as alien, cruel, and oppressive as the Oracles of Aisil believe, why are there images of them appealing to humans and making the efforts to assimilate? Why does the Iskre Tribe of Xandu still worship Ahmya and the Sathnaed spiders with reverence? I’ve put these questions in my reports. Do you know what my father did?”

“Scolded you? Cut more of your funding?”

“He burned them all. Threw them into the firepit, then cancelled my return trip to Duskra.” Oryn neatly gathered the rest of the notes and photos, tucking them into his messenger bag. He held onto it, as if letting go would see the bag instantly incinerated. “This research is all that remains of my findings on the Sathnaed spiders. No records were taken to the Imperial Archives, and my assistants were dismissed. He…gave me a choice, sir. He made it very clear.”

Hael went still as stone.  “Made what clear, exactly?”

“If I refuse to relinquish my position as Knight Scholar by tomorrow morning, then he’ll charge me with neglect of duty and have me stripped of my heirancy.”

“That—” Hael started, voice wavering. His hand flexed on the table, mind racing.

It was the threat of a death sentence. Knight Master Thalas knew this. To be charged with neglect of duty was the same as committing treason against Emperor Vulcraith. It was akin to abandoning the empire and, by extension, putting the lives of its people at risk. They would find Oryn guilty, and it wouldn’t take much for the evidence against him to stack. He was a radical, and they would kill him for it.

Too soft. Too vulnerable. An easy mark. Those thoughts resurfaced, bitter and blackened.

When Hael arrived on Arboros, his mission was to seek out Oryn, the coddled son of the current Knight Master. It was the easiest way for Hael to gain access to the Imperial Archives. The Archives housed the Esin Loria—an underground network of tunnels with vaults that housed confiscated relics and ancient, digitized texts. But it also contained the Historia Nexus, a detailed and multi-planetary account of the homo cosmiens’ encounters with the Eldritch Navigators—an early name for the Esin—over the course of thousands of years. There was only one relic Hael needed for Phase II of their plans, but the Historia Nexus…that was all Steeltalon’s idea. The Dread Knights weren’t above stealing whatever might be useful which, in the Rim, was everything.

What Hael did not expect, however, was to feel a sort of kinship with Oryn. The two of them could not be more different, but there was a shared loneliness. A fondness. An understanding. They could neither completely be their true selves, nor completely pretend to be otherwise. They both had to hide and dodge and dig up the truth. They had to lie to protect what mattered to them. That was how Oryn came to matter to Hael. It was a connection Hael hadn’t felt since his life before—before the wars, before the plots of revenge, before he made promises that exchanged lives for other lives. Kin in a deeper sense of the word. Hael’s people did not believe that blood defined a bond.

But this feeling—sharp as claws splitting his lungs open, making it impossible to breathe—went beyond reason.  

Hael swallowed hard, feeling the weight of his words before they even left his lips. “Oryn, you have to think beyond this moment. If you accept your father’s offer, there is still hope for your research. But if you refuse your father and are charged with neglect of duty, everything you have fought for—whatever it is that you want to protect—will end with you.”

He hated how hollow his own voice sounded, how it twisted the truth into something palatable. The truth wasn’t palatable at all—it was ugly and brutal, but necessary. Hael had learned this in every step of his path, every choice that had led him to this moment. He glanced down at Oryn, who was still clutching the tome to his chest, the boy’s eyes filled with a fierce sense of duty to the past.

 A past that Hael himself was fighting from the shadows to resurrect.

To tell Oryn to accept his father’s terms felt like betrayal. The Knight Scholar deserved more than that—a future not bound by the whims of a man so loyal to the emperor he’d sacrifice his own kin without a second thought. But going against that loyalty meant death. Arboros wasn’t barbaric, but it was not forgiving. Not for someone like Oryn.

Hael knew the cost of rebellion, of revenge and defiance. He’d seen enough lives cut short because of it. The lives he ended today were a necessary means to an end. But he refused to allow Oryn to be counted among them.

Disappointment burned sharp in Oryn’s eyes. A heartbeat of silence passed between them. Then two. Then four. When the Knight Scholar spoke, his voice came out in a whisper, verging on disbelief. “You want me to become the Knight Master? Bow to Oracles, bury the past, and pretend none of this exists?”

Hael’s throat tightened, but he forced himself to speak. “I want you to survive.”

Oryn flinched as if struck, his grip tightening around the book. “I want to live. Not within the prison of someone else’s shadow, pretending their truth is my own. Not burning the past to the ground as if it’s something shameful—”

“But it is shameful, Oryn,” Hael snapped, grabbing the boy’s shoulders. “It is a cruel and wretched thing filled with so much shame that people had to force themselves to forget it. Knight Scholars have been murdered to keep it buried. There isn’t much left for you to dig up, is there? That’s why you stole those tomes. You know exactly what this research will cost you.”

Oryn’s eyes burned with sharp disappointment. Then he suddenly leaned forward, peering up into the Knight Marshall’s face with a frown. “Ah, there it is again. The mouth says one thing, the eyes say differently. Have you forgotten already, sir? I don’t wish to live in a bubble out of fear. I thought you, of all people, would understand.”

Hael stiffened, the weight of Oryn’s words settling over him like a deathly shroud. He did understand. The pull of duty, the inevitable sides that must be drawn, the impossible choices between what one owed others and what one owed oneself, and the ceaseless fates of the worlds hanging on by mere threads.  But Hael had made his choice long ago. His duty to his kin, to the Dread Knights, to all of R-39—whether they lived on Arboros or not, deserved it or not—came before anything else. Every sword raised against others was a wound to himself, but he would bleed for them. That bond of duty was unbreakable, even if it meant leaving behind people he cared about.

Even if it meant betraying that small, human part of himself.

“I—” Hael started when a figure brushed past them, bumping into them. The clink of metal heeled boots and the electric static in the air—it was Steeltalon. His indigo gaze lingered on the two of them for just a second too long before he moved on, his heavy steps blending into the tavern’s hum as he headed for the cellar. Duty. Always duty. Above all else.

Hael stood, straightening his cloak and flexing his hand as if to rid himself of the guilt gnawing at him. He looked at Oryn one last time, his expression betraying nothing of the storm inside him. “I have business to attend to. Don’t wait up.”

I’m leaving him behind now. The thought came cold and sharp. Hael knew the consequences of that choice—knew the pain that Oryn would face, and the danger he would likely walk into. But Hael also knew the cost of turning away from his mission. The galaxy was too fragile, too close to collapse for Hael to choose one person, no matter how much that person meant to him.

He’ll understand one day why you’re doing all this, Erde reassured. He’ll forgive you anything.

But as Hael descended the cellar steps to meet Steeltalon, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something important had just slipped through his fingers, and he would live to regret it.