Silver Stars (Book 8), Ch 1: Forbidden (Patreon)

Sam stood at the highest point of Silverguard, looking into the distance. 

A streak of blue light was heading toward him, carrying with it the reinforcements from the civilized half of the galaxy, the ones the Astral Guardian had summoned to help with the Vos’Rekan.

There were five of them, all at the Fifth Evolution. If he let them come any closer, they would run straight into the World Seal.

That would shatter the dimensional barrier defending Aster Fall and lead to a Breaking, which he couldn’t allow. 

If he had a few more days, he could finish healing the Astral Guardian and let him deal with them, but they’d come too soon, so he would have to do it himself.

As he studied their approach, he sent a command to Silverguard. 

“Activate the Stellar Wall.”

Acknowledged. Sealing dimensional space. The voice of Silverguard’s artifact spirit rang in Sam’s mind as it followed his command.

The fortress thundered as a torrent of essence poured through it. Massive silver runes lit up across its walls. Enchantments arced from one rune to the next, outlining the enormous size of what Sam had built. 

Silverguard floated in the Void, an island three miles wide. 

It was formed of a dark stone as its base, but the surface was flat and covered by a great silver fortress with high towers and thick walls, ones that now burned with power.

Runes flowed across the walls’ surface and then flared with a thousand points of silver flame, turning into rays of brilliant astral light that shot into the distance. 

The light spread like a wave and created an ethereal silver wall, one that sliced like a blade through the dark in both directions, creating a massive barrier that blocked the advance of the five beings. 

Gleaming points of starlight burned on the wall’s surface, like the depths of the Void had been frozen inside. 

Dimensional binding engaged, the artifact spirit announced. It sounded satisfied with itself. 

Sam studied the result and then nodded.

The silver wall was a massive ward, one infused with his abilities for Astral Binding and Dimensional Stabilization, which he had incorporated into Silverguard’s defenses. It locked down space and prevented anyone from moving closer to Aster Fall. 

At least from this direction.

The reinforcements were approaching on a straight line from the settled half of the galaxy, which was the same route he’d once taken to get there and back.

Silverguard’s wards were flexible, but one this massive was a difficult undertaking. He could create a barrier wherever he needed it, but the fortress wasn’t powerful enough to block an advance from every side at once. 

Yet.

If the reinforcements wanted to circle around his ward to approach from another direction, they could, but that was why he was here. 

He wasn’t going to give them that chance.

He took a step and reappeared in front of the silver wall. He towered into the Void, standing over 1200 feet high. Even at a distance, there was no doubt about the power he held. 

An ocean of silver stars burned around him in the dark, making the wall seem dim in comparison.

He studied the five beings as they came closer and then he raised his hand in a clear command to halt. 

***

Emissaries of the High Nine

Solis’erasti’nestim, one of the Cer’Aleth called the Crystal Gods or just Crystal Flame Elementals by the lesser races, frowned as he looked into the distance.

Translated into the common tongue, his name meant Bright Flame of the Mountain, but the four with him had taken to the usual habit of the younger races of shortening his name and just called him Solis.

Even at Level 565, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing in front of him.

Was that a person?

The figure was enormous, standing like a mountain in their path. Behind him, a wall that seemed like it was made of silver stars blocked their path.

He was standing there like a silver god with his hand held out to stop them.

There was still some distance until they reached him, so Solis studied him as they came closer, trying to figure out what was going on.

This was not what he’d expected to find.

They were approaching the end of the journey to Aster Fall, a nearly forgotten world in the depths of the Chaos Wild. Only his people and a few others who were members of the High Council of Races still remembered it.

Even he didn’t know much.

Before this trip, he’d only heard the world mentioned once and that was in a record so old it only survived because it was engraved in the memory crystals of his people, part of their Hall of Eternity, a library so vast and enduring that it put the rest of the galaxy to shame.

Researchers came from all across the thousands of worlds just for a chance to access its records.

He still didn’t know what the world was, only that it existed out here in the dark Chaos Wild. It was far from the settled lands of the council, in a region so deadly that almost no one who entered it ever returned.

This was the true dark half of the galaxy, so deep into the stars that time and life felt like illusions. His mind was unsettled just being here.

The Great Divide that separated the civilized and wild halves of the galaxy was a barrier that kept out most dangers and one that very few people willingly crossed unless they were forced to. 

He wasn’t sure why anyone would settle on a world out here. He also didn’t know how it could be so important.

Until this mission and the fragments of information he’d been given, he hadn’t even known that Aster Fall was a world with life on it. He’d thought it was some type of elemental locus, a gathering place for natural energy in the galaxy. 

There were a lot of those, and the name suggested it.

He’d thought it was perhaps a cascade of elemental energy, like a waterfall, which was where the name had come from. 

He’d been as surprised as anyone to find out it was much more than that.

He was one of the few of his people who had a taste for adventure and he’d been near the High Council’s central world, Ninehaven, so when the summons that a great threat had been detected came into the council, one with the highest level of danger that could damage the stability of the galaxy, he’d been appointed to lead the mission to deal with it.

The ruler of his people, Kiran’Telai’Nerathi, one of the few Sixth Evolution Divinities in existence, had grabbed Solis from his comfortable inn on the capital world and teleported him into the meeting hall without a single pleasant word.

“A Vos’Rekan has been detected near Aster Fall,” the older Cer’Aleth declared, his body burning with crystal flames like brilliant sapphires, ones that made Solis’s own flames seem pale by comparison. 

“If it isn’t dealt with, then the civilized galaxy will suffer. Go and help your elder kill it. He has been guarding that world for ages and this is the first time in my memory that he’s ever requested assistance. You will recognize him when you see him. He’s one of our people at the verge of the Sixth Evolution. 

“After you do that, you can come back. If you’re successful, I’ll see what I can do to help you reach the Sixth Evolution one day.”

The force of his words shook the hall, but there was a strain in the lord’s voice that Solis had never heard before. He’d seen the lord a few times before and it was unheard of for him.

Lord Kiran, the Eternal Flame of the Cer’Aleth, was not someone who needed to worry about most things, but that day, he was troubled.

“Take these four with you.” The lord pointed to four other people standing in the room, ones Solis wasn’t familiar with.

He only had time to glance at them before an information crystal was shoved into his hands. 

Then a force swept them out of the hall and hurled them onto a dimensional platform, one marked with a nine-pointed silver star.

That declared it was a traveling platform of the High Nine, but he’d never seen anything like it before. In fact, he hadn’t heard of anyone using platforms like this to travel...ever. 

Most people used dimensional gates or ships.

They had barely had time to grab a few things to take along. The council had sent a few supplies, but they were mostly limited to what was already on them.

That was the beginning of a long and immensely boring journey, one marked only by the passing of stars outside the dimensional barrier around the platform.

In the forty years since, he’d gone over the information in that crystal many times, which had filled him in on some of the basic details of Vos’Rekan, Aster Fall, and the Nexus, as well as his people’s ancient duty to guard it.

It also held a record of the Astral Titans, the long-lost First Race and the founders of the galaxy. 

That was even more interesting than the information about Aster Fall.

He knew something of the Titans, since they were the first of elder races that made up the High Nine, but he’d never met one in person. 

Very few people had.

No one had seen a Titan in at least a million years and most people thought they were dead.

Even that rumor was probably fake.

In most people's memories, they were a myth from the early formation of the High Nine and the settlement of the galaxy.

Most things attributed to them were wrong. Any real evidence was hard to find.

All he knew for sure was that they had once helped his people rise to power, along with the rest of the High Nine. They had given them the Class system, created dimensional gates to travel the galaxy between the major worlds, and taught them how to Evolve.

That was the true origin of the High Council and the races that made it up.

The council liked to call all the other races young, but to the Titans, everyone else was young.

Then they disappeared one day, so long ago that almost no one remembered them. The truth of the Titans had long faded from the paths of the galaxy.

That was why he had a hard time believing what the crystal said. 

The information was so vague that it was the worst type of myth. It described events that had taken place 25 to 40 million years ago, a period so distant that even he, a Crystal God with a lifespan that was as long as stone, had trouble wrapping his mind around it. 

Perhaps if he’d been one of the elders of his people, he would have known more, but he was only twenty thousand years old, and that time scale was hard for him to imagine.

For most Cer’Aleth, 20,000 years was just the beginning, even if they did start at the Third Evolution. He was unique in that he’d taken to adventure and leveling more quickly than most of his race.

Like the other four with him, he was sometimes called a genius, a prodigy with the potential to reach the Sixth Evolution one day, but he didn’t let it go to his head. 

He was a Cer’Aleth, not one of the flighty younger races who flashed and disappeared like floating wisps in the caverns, barely lasting for the span of a night.

The other four with him were part of the High Nine races as well, but much younger than he was, which was why he’d been appointed as the head of the delegation.

He glanced over at them, but they were all staring at the massive figure in front of them, the same as he was. For him to look so large at this distance, when he should have been practically invisible...how tall was he?

And the flames around him shone like a star.

Astral Titan?

The thought came unbidden to Solis’s mind, stirred up by everything he’d read in the crystal. The size of the figure and the power around him seemed to fit, but he shook it away as a figment of his imagination.

That could only be an idle thought. 

If a Titan was here, what were they needed for? 

His elder would not have needed to call for reinforcements.

Whoever that being was, right now, he was blocking the path, and with the severity of their mission, that wasn’t something Solis could allow.

He opened his mouth to order the team to keep going, but then he closed it before he could speak, as he realized again that he had no control over the traveling platform they were on.

A faint flush of embarrassment colored his sapphire body, turning his limbs a bit pink. He quickly pushed it away.

As they continued, he reviewed what he’d learned from the crystal. 

There was a lot of information in the crystal about the world of Aster Fall, records of threats to it, actions by the High Council, and various edicts and decrees that dealt with protecting it, as well as records of an ancient war that had been fought here, one that threatened to destroy the galaxy.

The Astral Titans featured prominently in those records, but it read like a fairy tale, like one of the legends about how the Astral Titans had supposedly forged the galaxy from stardust and raw chaos, turning it into what it was today.

He’d heard many of those tales over his life. They were one of the most common creation stories for how the galaxy had formed.

The idea that you could forge the galaxy...that was one of the reasons the Astral Titans were thought of as myths. It was also why some people didn’t even think they existed. 

There were a lot of creation stories out there and they were all different.

Some people didn’t even think the Astral Titans were real, since they hadn’t been seen in so long. They saw them as just one more echo in the vastness of the galaxy.

Personally, he was old enough to know that the Astral Titans had definitely existed. He’d seen some of their works and read about them in the records of the Eternal Library, but he didn’t know where they’d gone.

They’d disappeared one day, a long time ago, and left behind miraculous creations, things like this traveling platform. Its construction was different from anything else he’d seen, an artifact nearly invulnerable to time and damage. 

The Titans must have created it.

They were the only race he’d ever heard with the confidence to send something like this into the Chaos Wild. No one else would have dared. 

The dark half of the galaxy was too dangerous.

But according to the legends, the Titans liked it out here. One of those legends even said they’d been born from it, long before the other races appeared.

He shook his head as he focused on the figure in front of them and then recalled what else he’d learned from the crystal, as well as their mission.

The war mentioned in the crystal had apparently never reached the civilized galaxy, so there wasn’t much recorded about it, just that it had been dire.

Besides that, all he had was some basic information about Aster Fall, a warning that the dimensional vortex called the Nexus was immensely dangerous, and that a barrier called the World Seal prevented it from opening.

Apparently, it had broken open before and the forces of the High Nine had to come out here to suppress it, but it had been a very long time since the last occurrence...over two million years.

Even for his people, it was difficult to imagine that length of time.

The only one who had overseen things out here since then was the elder he’d been sent to assist, a Cer’Aleth who had been here since that last battle. 

With the time compression, about ten thousand years had passed for him, which was tolerable for their race, but the rest of the galaxy had long moved on.

The Sixth Evolution rulers of the High Nine undoubtedly knew what was going on or they wouldn’t have shoved him onto this platform so quickly, but they hadn’t explained much.

Vos’Rekans were legendary beasts and never seen in the settled half of the galaxy. Even to him, it was like hearing that an ancient god had awoken and was threatening the edge of the universe.

But there were stories about them, ones that said their appearance was a dire omen, a promise of coming destruction. 

They had been seen infrequently in the borderlands near the Great Divide, but it was enough to prove that point.

Whenever a Vos’Rekan appeared, it was followed by worlds ending, suns being devoured, and cataclysms that ruined civilizations. They were a force of nature, consuming everything in front of them.

If one was here, then it meant that Aster Fall was already doomed. They just had to do their best to keep the damage from spreading.

As for killing it, he had been warned that it was nearly impossible. At best, they could maybe drive it away.

Lord Kiran had given him one other piece of advice before he left.

“Breakings are inevitable,” he said. “Harden your heart. You might have to fight near the world, which will damage the World Seal and possibly shatter Aster Fall. It won’t be the first time. The people there aren’t ones you can save. Now that a Vos’Rekan has appeared, we have no choice. In the end, it is only one world among millions and it will have to be sacrificed to protect the rest of the galaxy.

“Do what is necessary and do not hold back. We will be there to put the world back together again. Eventually. Just make sure that the Vos’Rekan doesn’t damage the World Core. After that, get away from the World Seal quickly and try to minimize the impact. Your elder there will know what to do. Follow his instructions.”

The other four with him had been given the same advice, each from their own ruler, but not all were as restrained as Lord Kiran.

“The best thing to do is to break the World Seal quickly,” Tenal declared, baring the sharp white fangs of his race. His features were pale and elegant, like he’d been cast from marble, but a powerful sense of vitality emanated from him. “That will let us use our abilities without restraint.”

“That’s only if the Vos’Rekan is still here,” Jesra snapped back at him. Her features were even more elegant than Tenal’s, holding an ethereal beauty. A shimmering circlet of Ice decorated her golden hair, marking out her position among her people.

“Until then, we have to be careful. There’s no reason to break something that we have to put back together again later.”

“Jesra is right,” Berim agreed. He was the most scholarly among them, which was a trait of his people. Small flames flickered around his body, making his angular features look shadowy, including the short violet horns on his head. There was a journal tucked under his arm, one that he carried with him everywhere.

He had the most enthusiasm for this mission, as well as a curiosity to find out everything he could about Aster Fall. 

 “Let’s be cautious. Aster Fall is a legend that deserves consideration. It would be better to study it than to destroy it. Just think about how long it has been here and what the Nexus really is. There’s nothing in the settled galaxy that’s like it. If the Astral Titans built it, it must be miraculous!”

“Destruction is inevitable in a fight for our lives,” Rohne said, shaking his head. Golden scales shimmered above his skin, half present like an illusion, but they radiated condensed power, suggesting that his form might change at any moment. 

He was the last of their group and the quietest, but in this he sided with Tenal. 

“If we cannot prevent it from Breaking, it’s best to be quick and precise, to ensure that the battle falls in our favor and not our enemy’s. We should clear the field before we begin.”

Solis just shook his head, but he didn’t correct them. 

Half of them had already written off Aster Fall and were planning to help put it back together later. He couldn’t say they were wrong.

Given what he knew, he didn’t believe Aster Fall would survive this fight either. 

Ahead of them, the figure in their path was swiftly growing larger, making it clear just how huge he really was, as well as how vast the silver barrier was blocked the way to Aster Fall.

There was a huge fortress floating in the distance. Its walls shone with silver runes, apparently the source of the barrier.

It looked like a palace in the Void and its power was undeniable. He hadn't seen anything like that outside of the central worlds, and the power radiating from this one put most of those to shame.

Only the core defenses of the council worlds had that much mana running through them.

The traveling platform slowed on its own, under no command from Solis, and they swiftly arrived in front of the figure. They kept enough distance that it didn’t feel like he was towering too high, but Solis still had to crane his neck to look upward.

Solis tried to Analyze him, but all he got back was a dull echo as the skill failed.

He wasn't sure what race this being was, but it was powerful and one that he'd never seen before. His horns curved into the dark, framing the stars, and his body glowed like he was made of golden light.

The whisper of Astral Titan ran through Solis's mind again, but he pushed it away as impossible. If there were a Titan out here, he would have known.

A being from the Chaos Wild maybe?

“Who are you?” he asked, sending his voice into the distance. He did his best to stay polite, since he couldn’t tell what they were dealing with, but his tone was full of confidence. 

If they had to fight, his side had five Fifth Evolution warriors and this being didn’t feel like he was at the Sixth Evolution, but there was an aura of radiant power around him, one that made Solis uneasy. It felt like he was towering into the Void with even the stars orbiting him.

He knew it was the effect of some Charisma-based aura, so he tried to force it away as he focused on why they had come.

The answer came with a force that felt like stars were burning in Solis’s mind, filling his awareness with a sense of endless silver flames.

“I am the Lord of Silver Stars and Guardian of Aster Fall. By my decree, you shall not pass.”