Starbreaker

“Mana conservation is a vital skill until the fifth circle is achieved. Every mage is limited in the number and potency of spells that they can cast as a result of the mana that they have stored, in addition to their other natural limitations, both physical and mental.”

—Squad Tactics, Fal’Vaelith

 

He didn’t know if they had both been offended by his little joke of a comment, or if this was simply how they hazed new recruits, but what he did know was that someone was going to get badly injured at best when the oncoming train of an eidolons reached them.

Stepping around Bortan, he readied an arcane arrow and sent it flaring off through the night. It struck home, trailing sparks all along the length of the eidolon’s armored back, but it did nothing to stop the beast’s approach. In the time between it escaping the storm and reaching them, Sylvas had little context to judge how big the thing was, but now he could tell it stood as tall as a warhorse and trailed back so long that it had almost reached them by the time its tail emerged from the sand.

A second arcane arrow, then a third, were similarly hopeless. One dart of blue shot off through the night only to burst apart on contact with the armor in a shimmer of stars, fading only just fast enough that the next could chase those dwindling sparks back along the charging chitin.

My spells are useless. I had suspected as much. It wouldn’t have made sense to arm me with anything useful when my only purpose was to be a conduit for the summoning of eidolons.

Adjusting his aim, Sylvas dumped twice the power needed into his next arcane arrow and launched it into the open mouth of the eidolon.

The light vanished from sight into that internal darkness, with the eidolon charging on untroubled, then there was a stutter in its steps. The smoothness of its motion had been reliant on every limb moving in perfect harmony, and now it began to stumble, tripping over its own feet. It lost its footing, but not its momentum, even as it crashed to the ground, it came slithering on. That same momentum would have carried it, crashing into Sylvas and the others if it weren’t for Bortan.

The other human stepped forward, slammed a heel into the earth and cast. Ice seized the eidolon, stopping it dead in its tracks and crusting it with frost. Sylvas realized that it was in fact dead. His final arrow, the one he’d cast expecting it to do nothing at all, had been sufficient to end the eidolon’s life. “It worked?”

Gharia looked at him like he was an idiot. “Why wouldn’t it work?!”

He snapped his mouth shut before he could give away any more of his weaknesses and turned back to the oncoming storm. Perhaps it was the memory of the last time he’d faced eidolons, or perhaps it was just coincidence, but the scars on his arm began to itch.

From high up in the oncoming red cloud, another of the same centipede-like eidolons emerged. This one’s body was fully flattened out instead of curved into an arch, so what he had read as legs instead ran along the sides of its body, rippling like waves as they somehow carried it through the air. Remembering, a moment too late, that he had improved his arsenal of spells since the last time he’d encountered them, Sylvas scried it.

 

Name: Bellicose Drifter

Species: First Tier Eidolon

Health: 100%

Mana: 100%

Affinity: Unknown

Strength: E2

Resilience: E2

Speed: E2

Potency: F2

Focus: F2

Regeneration: F1

 

Turning his gaze down from that vast kite of a creature, his eyes, still glowing bright from the spell took in some of the others arrayed against them.

The majority of the eidolon’s ranks seemed to be made up of squat creatures no taller than him, little more than two overly muscled legs comprised of interlocking plates of chitin with an axe-head of a body above, made from the very same chitin as all the rest but one large single piece honed to a sharp line at its front.

 

Name: Parching Charger

Species: First Tier Eidolon

Health: 100%

Mana: 100%

Affinity: Unknown

Strength: E1

Resilience: E1

Speed: E4

Potency: F1

Focus: F1

Regeneration: F1

 

They rushed forwards towards the assembled mages, and without an opening in their shell, Sylvas probably would have struggled to work out where to hit them, but as it turned out, their strongest point was also their weakest. They had been made so top-heavy that even a glancing spell to the legs was enough to send them crashing to the ground.

As they rushed on, it had seemed to Sylvas at first that they were trailing dust from the cloud with them, but it was only as they fell and went on churning it out that he recognized them as the source of the red sand covering everything. It flowed out from the places where the chitinous plates met, clogging those joints up and making every step that the Chargers took into a cacophony of screeching scrapes.

There were other eidolons in amongst their ranks, but they were few and far between, and the scrying faded before Sylvas could focus in on one of them. If he came face to face with one himself, he could always scry again.

Bortan had turned his attention from the enemy at the appearance of the eye over Sylvas head, and he grunted out, “Conserve mana,” before launching a spray of elegant but deadly icicles out into the battle-lines of their enemy.

Everywhere they struck, eidolons fell. Everywhere they missed, ice spread out across the red sand, solidifying the surface, but making it too slippery for the Drifter’s tiny legs to find purchase. It slowed the advance to a crawl everywhere that he cast.

Meanwhile, Gharia had not been idle. She may not have had some elemental mastery under her belt to empower her spells, but she was certainly no slouch. While Sylvas arcane arrows were barbs of blue light, the missiles that she launched from her clawed fingertips were entirely different. Little more that barely shaped pebbles of glowing purple-pink that seemed to waft sluggishly towards their target. But because she cast them by the handful, and they had the opportunity to drift in the air, they proved lethally effective even without careful aim. Each eidolon that came charging into one faltered and died as the tiny pebble exploded out in a flash of white-hot power. There was a feral grin on her face. “Falling behind, new blood.”

Sylvas picked up the pace, doing exactly as he had been ordered. Blasting away.

While his companion’s eyes seemed locked on ground level, the eidolons above were making good progress across the sky towards what Sylvas was still reluctant to call home. He could not allow that. One by one, his arcane arrows were loosed, splashing off the underside of one armored eidolon or the next. Magic was at work within them, because nothing so vast and heavy should have been able to fly at all, let alone drift by them with such ease.  Worse yet, the storm of red dust was rapidly approaching, and with its arrival all visibility of the fliers would be gone.

The only other distinguishing feature of the night sky, apart from the entirely unfamiliar stars, were eyes. Green eyes of scrying spells manifesting all along their battle-lines so that Vaelith and the other instructors could spy on them as they fought.

He needed something more than the spells at his disposal, he needed to bring those flying eidolons down before it was too late. The itching in his arm had now grown to a steady burn everywhere that he was scarred. His fingers began to curl in on themselves as the tendons within contracted. He didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know if it was fear robbing him of his faculties despite his Clearmind paradigm, or if there was some injury within him that the Empyrean doctors had not been able to find. Regardless, he could not give it any mind right now. Not even when it was giving every spell he cast the odd sensation of an echo, both in his scars and in his head. Like there was something there that he couldn’t see, but that the magic was reverberating off.

Kinesis. He could move things with his mind with that spell, and what were the eidolons but large and distant objects. The fact that they lived meant nothing, the elf’s attack on him earlier had proven that. The fact that they were vast and monstrous and terrifying meant nothing either, thanks to his paradigm. All that mattered was that he had the spell on his lips that could bring the monsters down and leave their weak openings vulnerable to the spells of the other recruits.

The spell as it was written was too small, too granular, but he’d spent long enough in study of other small and granular spells to understand how it might be expanded out from its humble beginnings. The only problem would be the mana-cost, it would escalate just as rapidly as the scope of the spell.

He felt inside himself, touching the reserve within his circle and was startled to realise that it was full, not only full, but full to the very limit of what he could manage. He hadn’t a clue where that mana had come from, but now was not the time to look a gift-horse in the mouth. He reached up with his scarred hand, spoke the words of his modified spell, and he pulled.

His arm shook. It wasn’t as though he was trying to physically pull the eidolons from the sky, but the strain of so much mana pouring through him made it feel like he was. It was the first time that he had channeled so much power since Croesia, and if it weren’t for his Clearmind, he probably would have had some very confusing feelings about that.

The raw mana he’d exerted flooded out through Sylvas’ channels, blazing through even the scar tissue that had formed around them. As he cast, the sleeve of his uniform jacket burst apart as the force of power escaping through his now glowing scars exploded out. Both Gharia and Bortan froze in surprise, but neither one of them was half as surprised as Sylvas himself.

Still, there was no time to think twice about his destroyed jacket when the spell was still at work. Its tail was hooked in his core, draining mana as he exerted the pull, draining out all the mana that he had stockpiled there. He shook, blazing bright with the power he was wielding for one long moment, teetering on the edge between success and the inevitable backlash if the spell failed. Then like a rubber band snapping, the spell took hold.

As one, the eidolons drifting so gracefully across the sky were hauled down.

The sudden release of tension dropped Sylvas to his knees, he had forgotten to breathe while he was casting, too intent on the work and the strain, so now he gasped in great mouthfuls of iron-tainted air. He teetered on the brink of unconsciousness before mana flowed back into his core. Where it was coming from when he had not a moment for meditation, he couldn’t have guessed.

There was no time for introspection or confusion now. Not with a rain of eidolon’s fast approaching, plucked from the air by his power and flung to the earth by gravity now that their flight had been interrupted. The Drifters tried to right themselves, to resume the steady ripple of the cilia-legs along their sides that had carried them out from the storm, but now that they were so low, they became easy prey for the gathered Ardent recruits. If Sylvas simple arcane arrow could slay one, the destructive potential of the higher circle mages’ elemental blasts were enough to shatter their chitin from the inside.

Gharia hooked an arm around him and hauled him to his feet while still casting her own blasts of magic at the oncoming Chargers. “Come on, Sigil. Back to work.”

He didn’t give the misnaming a second thought. She was right, there was far too much to do. His core remained almost entirely depleted, but there was still a slow trickle of mana making its way in from somewhere. Enough to stay in the fight, if not to pull any more clever tricks. The warm glow in his arm was already beginning to fade, leaving the exposed skin feeling cold in the night air.

Taking a step away from the najash, he found his balance, and began casting once more. One arcane arrow after another darting out into the night sky. Less powerful than his first killing blow, much more tempered by his limited reserves, but enough to down the Drifters if his aim was true.

Time had been against them with the approaching storm-front, but in those last few seconds before the stars vanished into a whorl of red, Sylvas saw the last of the flying eidolons die. If nothing else, they no longer had to worry about any of them sneaking by and costing them their victory. All they had to deal with now was the rush of eidolons on the ground, charging forward to slaughter them. Barely even a worry at all. Sylvas managed to cough out a laugh before the clouds swept over them.