Starbreaker

“It is the humble opinion of this journalist that affinity testing is an arbitrary and cruel system that is designed to create an unequal society due to circumstances entirely outside of the mage’s control. None of us have any say in what affinity we will develop, no matter what the ivory tower theorists say. We get what we are given, and discriminating against others because they have an ‘inferior’ affinity is tantamount to bigotry.”

—My Affinity is Poop, Anonymous

 

Sleep came easily. The stone floor of this cell was markedly more comfortable than the mattresses in the orphanage in Telas Norn, with none of the prickling straw or biting mites that had come with that supposed kindness. Exhaustion helped a lot too. Despite his complaints about being trapped in a cell, the truth was that Sylvas was getting some much-needed recovery time, he didn’t stir until there was a pointed cough from outside the cell, at which point he sprang upright so quickly that Kaya jumped.

“There’s my boy! The man! The legend! The bad boy of the Ardent!” Sylvas had forgotten how loud she was.

He blinked the sleep from his eyes and filtered out the mana that flooded his vision. “Good morning, Kaya.”

She threw his slate at him. Perhaps if he’d been a little more awake, he might have caught it instead of just yelping in pain when it clipped off his forehead. “Enjoying your beauty sleep while the rest of us work?”

He rubbed at the bruise with one hand and scrabbled to retrieve his slate with the other. “Doing my best to keep up.”

“Not much fun since they locked you up. Classes mostly. Boring as sin. Some fighting with Vaelith’s glowing dummies, but not much.” She grumbled. “That krahg officer I got stuck with for the fight with the Eidolons keeps butting in. Telling me how much better off I’d be with him. I told him you’re kin, but he isn’t listening.”

“Hammerheart.” Sylvas sighed. “I suspect he’s going to be a problem. He already tried to give me a beating for showing him up on the field.”

“That’s how he got the broke nose?” Sylvas nodded as a grin split Kaga’s face. “Want me to take his knees off for him?”

“I think I made my point just fine.” Sylvas smiled. “He won’t be trying it again.”

“Naw, he’s just going around telling everyone how much you suck instead.” She grumbled.

Sylvas shouldn’t have expected any less from the man really. It was clear that he was willing to do anything that he could to put himself above the rest of them, regardless of the lies he had to tell. “He’s probably helping people to have a balanced viewpoint, given that you’re going around telling everyone I’m a god made flesh.”

Kaya was unabashed. “Don’t want folks to know you’re awesome, stop being awesome.”

Sylvas couldn’t help but chuckle, trying to keep Kaya’s praise under control might have been a losing battle.

She glanced around for any signs of scrying then asked, “Was it you pulled the eidolons out the sky?”

There was no point in denying it. “Yes. That’s why I’m in here.”

“Instructors wouldn’t say anything, but I figure none of them other culgh could have pulled it off.”

“Well, I’ve since been informed that using non-standard spells is an offense that results in imprisonment in the brig by the Ardent, so I’d suggest you don’t try to replicate the effect.” Sylvas gave her a weary smile.

“Stupid bloody rules.”

That brief lull in the conversation was all the prompting that Sylvas needed. “You wouldn’t happen to recall what was being discussed in the lessons would you? I really don’t want to fall behind.”

She looked at him as though he’d grown a second head. “How did I end up with a stanzbuhr like you as kin?”

Sylvas was amazed at just how much affection could be squeezed into an insult. “I believe it was something to do with this ‘stanzbuhr’ saving your life?”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t remember anything interesting, but the lessons should all have dumped on your slate.”

“Thank you for bringing it to me.”

She shrugged, glancing at the door. Her classes for the day would likely be beginning soon. “Any excuse to come visit.”

“Your company is very much appreciated. The only other people I’ve seen since being put in here are the food elf and Fahred.”

“Come to twist the knife, did he?” Her brows drew down.

Sylvas managed to contain a smile. “Something like that.”

She leaned in close to the ward-line and spoke in a stage whisper. “His kneecaps will be harder to get to, but I can give it a go?”

Sylvas couldn’t contain the smile this time, nor the laugh that came with it. “I appreciate the thought, but I think I’ve got that situation under control too.”

Kaya began edging towards the door. Despite all her protestations of rebellion, he really didn’t want to be the cause of her being late. “Right, I’d better get to it. Try and be sad about being bad and naughty, or whatever they want you to do so you get out sooner. It’s boring out there without you.”

Still, he couldn’t help himself from asking, “Before you go…”

“Aye?” She sounded suspicious.

He had to ask. “What is a stanzbuhr?”

“You are, you bloody stanzbuhr.” Her laughter echoed back to him as she strolled out of sight.

Attempts to look up translations of the word on his slate proved fruitless, he would have to approach an actual dwarf for assistance, since he suspected Kaya was not going to be forthcoming with information.

The lessons that he had missed were fundamentals of magical combat, eidolon classification and a training exercise revolving around mobility in the field. He only had to glance through the written lessons to commit all the details provided to memory, though he’d probably have to seek out more details on how eidolons were classified at a later time, because while the Tier list and the required response orders all made sense to a degree, he had no idea why certain Eidolons were considered so much more dangerous than similar ones.

There was a temptation to dive into the library of spells once he’d caught up on all that he’d missed, but he knew that it would ultimately prove to be a waste of time, given that his whole spell-book would change once he had an affinity, so instead he focused on magical theory that first morning. Trying his best to understand the fundamentals that informed the scrying spell and how affinities worked in general. There seemed to be as many affinities as there were embodiments and paradigms, ranging in rarity from the simple elements that they had been taught about in the orphanage all the way up to concepts so obscure that Sylvas was unsure how they could even translate into the basis for spells. He silently hoped for something simple and straightforward for his own affinity. Being able to launch himself around with pillars of stone like he had seen Fargus do would resolve the need for physical enhancements, as would armor of wrought rock. Being able to unleash torrents of flame like Kerbo would make him into a living artillery piece, capable of downing Eidolons from across the field of battle. He did not let himself fixate too much on these idle fancies. He would have whatever affinity he had, and wishing for another would just make him miserable, but he was so close that he could already taste the possibility in so many of the elemental affinities.

Eventually he settled in to read dry theory for the remainder of the day, more to stow it away in his mind for later reference than for anything else. His reading speed was essentially as fast as he could flick his fingers at this point, thanks to Lockmind, so he probably had a very small library committed to memory before the elf from the mess hall finally showed up with some more indescribably bad slop for him to eat. A quick glance at the Strife facility guide confirmed what he already suspected while he was forcing himself to eat. The officers in their own little ivory tower also had their own chef, who appeared to prepare them food that was actually food as opposed to whatever this gruel happened to have once been. Another reason to loathe Hammerheart. He got to eat meat instead of… Sylvas really couldn’t even venture a guess what that was on the tray.

The third day passed much the same as the second, albeit without a visit from Kaya to brighten his mood. As much as he might have relished the idea of being left alone to catch up on his reading, this was taking it to an extreme that he did not enjoy. Even with the full breadth of the Ardent’s training library at his disposal, he just couldn’t find the energy to keep pressing on, and eventually fell into a fitful sleep sometime after his vile meal.

“Affinity testing.” The rough voice stirred Sylvas from his dreams of home. Chittering red claws raking the cold flagstones of the orphanage, melting it all away into the damnable red dust of Strife.

It was one of the instructors, one that he hadn’t come across so far, a human but built to the same gargantuan proportions as some of the fiends had been. Given his very limited time on the planet it hardly came as a surprise that Sylvas didn’t know the staff yet.

The ward that had been keeping him contained was gone. The blinding swirls of mana that blinded him the moment he opened his eyes faded into a dim overlay of the physical world once more. He blinked again, then rose with his body creaking. He shouldn’t have skipped calisthenics, even if his whole body was still aching. He couldn’t afford for his muscles to tighten up and leave him useless.

“Outbuilding uh… four?” Sylvas felt like his mind was still spinning up to speed.

The Instructor was already on the way out. “Ten minutes, start running.”

Sylvas came to regret skipping calisthenics even more. He was out of breath before he’d even navigated his way up from the brig, past the levels of the subterranean complex where the recruits were usually stowed away when they weren’t in use and made it back to ground level.

Stepping out into the night air of Strife should have been a massive relief after his time locked inside, but without his uniform jacket it was genuinely chill, and the sweat already beading on him felt icy. Still, he couldn’t let that stop him. He ran full pelt across the red desert of the compound towards Outbuilding Four, what had probably been a chapel at some point before the coming of the Ardent and their blocky reinforcement to its crumbling façade. It was one of the least intact looking of the original buildings from the planet, and the door was not the simple wood that Sylvas had become accustomed to, but some enchanted construct that he had to press a hand to for it to open. He had fully expected Instructor Fahred to be inside, waiting to see which way his training would be headed, but it seemed that the man had more important business to attend to. Instead Sylvas was confronted by a stern looking male dwarf in simple white garb, cleanly shaven in direct contradiction to every other dwarf he’d ever encountered. “Recruit Vail, cutting it fine.”

He had to pause for a moment to catch his breath before he could reply. “Sorry sir, I was only just informed of my appointment.”

“Not my problem.” The dwarf had turned his attention back to the slate in his hands. “You know the procedure?”

“No.” There was no point in feigning otherwise.

Still the dwarf huffed as if doing his job was an imposition. “Enter the chamber, approach the elemental sources, see how the mana responds to you.”

“It’s that simple?”

“Everything’s simple if you know what you’re doing, now move.” He gave Sylvas a shove, not with his broad fingered hands, but with a spell, something like Kinesis, but barely articulated. “You’re going to hold up the rest of the line.”

Sylvas glanced around the empty room for any signs of this line, but didn’t argue, heading for the interior door of the sterile white room, palming it open and heading inside.

He didn’t really know what to expect, but the chamber lacked any of the ceremony he would have expected. There were waist high pillars arrayed around the room, spaced evenly and contained within weak ward circles and topped with various items. Some were immediately obvious in their purpose, for the earth affinity, there was a crystal that looked something like a desert quartz, crusted with solid fragments of grey rock. As for fire affinity, there was a little oil lantern burning away. For some of the more esoteric affinities, Sylvas struggled to identify the objects. There was a flower in a vase that he had first taken for some sort of plant or life affinity object but which he gradually came to suspect was something to do with air, given that it swayed as though in a breeze. The bottled lightning was both obvious and somewhat awe inspiring, but the obsidian bowl full of what appeared to be blood sparked further concerns. It was only when he opened up his second sight fully to observe the mana that things became clear to him.

Normal mana was a chaotic blend of all the different affinities, but within these warded circles the balance was shifted. There were still elements of the other mana affinities, because to fully remove them would have been a complex process, but the shift in balance was enough for Sylvas to truly recognize each distinct strain of mana for the first time in his life. It would have been easier if he had simply seen mana with a fire affinity as red and water as blue, but mana was not so straightforward, if anything it was the unique movements of the mana that gave it away more than anything else, the jerking motions of lightning mana, the waves present in the water mana. From what he had read, forming the third circle was as much about creating a filter on the mana being drawn into his core as it was about creating a system of containment for that mana. The old mana within him would be diluted over time until only the elemental mana remained, and then every spell that he cast would be shaped by his affinity.

All that I have to do is work out what affinity I have.

Reaching out across the ward line into the swirling hot mana of the fire affinity podium, he tried to draw it in. It came, just like any other mana would, and it left a stinging sensation behind it along his channels. Technically he could draw any mana right now, regardless of affinity, which meant that being able to pull on this fire mana meant nothing. It didn’t feel any different than normal. Or if it did it was only because the composition felt slightly off. Whatever revelation was meant to come when he touched mana that shared his natural affinity just wasn’t there.

It seemed that fire was not for him. Sighing, he moved across to the slow grinding drift of earth affinity mana in its pillar and tried again. It was sluggish to be drawn in, but it came, and he felt nothing at all, except the vague sensation of grit being left behind in its wake.

Slowly and methodically he worked his way around all of the pillars, drawing in mana. Starting with the most obvious affinities, the most common, and then moving on. A broken hilt of a sword radiated war affinity and gave him nothing. A serpent’s fang leaking venom provoked no feelings of sudden peace with the universe. A curious empty black fold of cloth was flooding its containment with shadow affinity and he drew it in only to learn that he had no special connection to it. It was infuriating. Like the early days of trying to draw mana, except worse. That same desperation clawed at him. I need this. He needed to find his affinity to progress. To learn new spells and stay in the Ardent. He couldn’t afford to fall behind.

The knock on the door of the testing chamber came like a pealing bell of doom. He was still no closer to unlocking his affinity. His time was up. He had failed.