Starbreaker

“Live combat drills are one of the most effective ways to train Ardent troops for conflict with the Enemy. While Eidolons will not behave like humanoid casters, the variety of spells and embodiments on display in the typical training group does represent the diversity of foes that will be faced with some degree of accuracy. The rivalries that develop as a result of these combat drills also provide many recruits with the drive they need to succeed.”

—Internal Memo, Administrator Mengrammon

As it turned out, their next lesson was not actually going to take place in the outbuilding. That was just where they were all meeting up before heading out into the field beyond the wards. Sylvas felt a little prickle of anxiety as they passed beyond the protective barrier of the spells, but it was shortlived. Instructor Vaeleth was an elvish woman of indeterminate years, scarred all across her exposed face and arms from what must have been decades if not centuries of minor injuries. Unlike the flowing hair that species seemed to cultivate normally, her hair was clipped short, so close that the intricate vines tattooed on her head were visible through the fuzz, and there was a determined set to her jaw that changed her from just another delicate featured elf into something more imposing. It also turned out that the wolves that Fahred had joked about were literal, rather than figurative. There were two of them dogging her heels everywhere that she walked. Grey furred in places, but thinning to a green mist as they moved, like they were fading in and out of being. At first, Sylvas thought that they were just another visual illusion but then he caught sight of the footprints they were leaving behind in the dust. Whatever they were, they were physically there, at least to some extent. Maybe he had it backwards, and they were actual wolves that Vaeleth had cast some sort of enchantment on rather than something she’d conjured into being, but his gut told him that the Ardent probably weren’t allowed to keep pets.

The open space between the edge of the wards and the chasm was even bigger than Sylvas had originally thought. The whole class worth of students had to jog to keep up with the pace that Vaeleth set, but they could have gone on jogging for another ten minutes without actually reaching the ravine.

In spite of the sunset and the relative darkness outside, Sylvas wasn’t cold. Warmth still radiated up from beneath the dust, and judging by the fact that nobody else had thrown on an extra layer, he supposed that it would continue to stay comfortable. It was strange, moving around under the starlight as if it was midday, but the stars here shone that much brighter that if he didn’t look up Sylvas could almost convince himself it wasn’t night. If it was this warm at night, then he could only imagine that Strife became unbearable when the sun was high, which probably explained the flipped schedule.

He almost walked into the back of Kaya when the procession suddenly stopped. Vaeleth turned to face them, her dogs snarling silently by her sides. “I see new faces, so it is our job to show these tourists what life on Strife is all about. “

Groaning started all around, cut short only when Vaeleth raised a hand for silence. “That is correct children, we are doing live combat testing today.”

She clapped her hands together, not for silence, but to begin her casting. Beneath their feet the dust began to boil. Already, the other students were taking off running in different directions, some little cliques sticking together, but most sprinting all out whichever way didn’t seem to contain another student. Sylvas cast a worried glance in Kaya’s direction. “What’s happening?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Your guess is good as mine.”

From beneath the sand, stone began to rise. Not the fallen buildings of the distant side of the ravine, but massive rectangular blocks all the same, rising up all around them in what looked like a random pattern. Blocking direct line of sight between the different students and spreading out across the plain to make a sort of blank façade of what a city might look like if stripped back to nothing but abstract shapes. By the time Vaeleth was done, Sylvas and Kaya were the only ones still nearby. She clapped her hands again. “Run along, kids. Time to fight everyone else in your class.”

“What?” Sylvas couldn’t help but blurt it out, even after the many lessons he’d learned about asking stupid questions already.

Vaeleth was smiling, but there was no happiness in it. Only cruelty. “Live combat training. Don’t hit each other with anything lethal. Don’t pull punches either. They won’t be going easy on you.”

Sylvas cast his gaze around the false cityscape, it had been an oddity before, but now it was hostile, every shadow potentially hiding an enemy. “Do we have specific opponents, or…”

“Everyone is a target.” She barked back, cutting him off. Her wolves snarls briefly phased in to be audible. “If it isn’t wearing an Ardent uniform, it is a threat. That’s your first lesson of the day.”

She threw something at Sylvas and Kaya. The dwarf’s mechanical hand snapped out to catch it, while it hit Sylvas himself square in the chest and he had to fumble.

It was something like a broach or cloak-clip. A small silver shield. Something Sylvas had seen the other students wearing and assumed was simply a part of the uniform. But touching it, he could feel the mana bound up inside it. It was a construct of magic as much as any physical craftsmanship. A potent one.

“The crest keeps you alive. Absorbs the worst of the hits, knocks you out when you’ve taken enough damage to kill you.” Vaelith’s attention had already turned back to the field. “Wear it at all times. Or don’t. Saves me from grading you if you’re dead.”

Kaya had caught up to the conversation, grumbling mostly to herself. “Aren’t some of that lot second circle mages already?”

“Most of them,” Vaeleth conceded readily. “A few are up to their third.”

“Doesn’t seem fair.” The dwarf crossed her arms across her chest.

A harmless blast of green fire washed over them both, sparking both crests briefly to life and sending Kaya staggering back. Vaeleth’s patience had reached its end. “You think the Eidolons will play fair? Line up in order of power so that we can match up with them safely? Get out there and get bloody.”

Kaya opened and shut her mouth, fury bubbling beneath the surface, then grabbed Sylvas by the sleeve and dragged him off with her. “Cheeky culgh, thinks she can talk to me like I’m krahg just because we’re…”

“Kaya, you’re getting untranslatable again.” Sylvas spoke as gently as he dared.

“I get it, alright?” Kaya snapped back at him. “I get why they’re doing all this, trying to keep us on our toes. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”

“I suppose they are trying to make us adaptable.” Sylvas wasn’t exactly delighted with the situation himself. He was letting Kaya drag him along mostly so that he didn’t have to watch where he was going and could instead keep his senses sharp in case they came under attack. With a quick press, the crest assumed its position on his chest. This was hardly his first time being the new kid in a new situation, and he was well aware of the pack mentality that would probably lead the existing students to gang up on them.

In the distance, spells sounded, their strange echoes bouncing back and forth through the valleys of the city streets Vaeleth had raised.

“And what’s this krahg about fighting the other recruits?” Kaya went on grumbling without pause. “Do they think that we’re just going to…”

Whatever Kaya thought that the Ardent thought, Sylvas would never find out. Because the solid stone block beside them parted like a curtain, and one of the other recruits, a hulking human who Sylvas was pretty sure had been snoring during the lecture, came barreling out at them.

Both of them had their own sets of instincts. Sylvas cast a shield against incoming spells that the incoming recruit ran right through without even noticing. Kaya’s response was to dive straight into the charging human’s midsection, slamming her shoulder into his gut and doubling him over, before straightening up and dumping him onto the ground behind her. With a twist of the hips and a brutal crunch, she brought her heel down onto his face before he could recover.

Just like that, they’d taken down their first classmate.

“Blessed kragh.” Kaya let out a huff of breath before squatting to check that their attacker was out for the count.

Sylvas let his useless shield drop. “Remind me never to annoy you.”

“I will. Daily.” She chuckled, rising to her feet again. “What do we do?”

An explosion detonated somewhere out of sight, the wave of displaced air and heat washing over the two of them, rocking them where they stood.

“Kill them all, I suppose,” He looked from her bloody steel heel to the suddenly sinister stone risen all around them. It was perfectly smooth, spell-wrought, and it had given nothing away about the incoming attack until the very last moment. “Or knock them out at least.”

She rolled her eyes. “Aye, but, how?”