Starbreaker

“The definition of victory is simple. There is nobody left to contest you. If that requires death, then deal death. If it requires compassion, then use compassion. The goal is to eliminate all competition, not to make enemies of all their allies. The path of least resistance is always the most beneficial, as it allows you to retain more resources to be used in later conflicts. Make friends of enemies, and your ranks swell.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

Sylvas closed his eyes and breathed deep. The mana flowed through him in gentle circuits as it was meant to, containing in his core the raw potential of all his untapped mana. He had a hand on Ironeye’s shoulder, and the other, more tentatively place in the square of Hot Lips’ back. All three of them were already enchanted with every spell that the whole group could pull together to give them more speed as they ran together across the deserted no-man-lands. There was nothing left to do, but to begin. The other recruits, devoid of any bright ideas of their own, had filtered over to stand on the periphery of the spearhead that Sylvas was at the tip of. They’d take off running when they saw everyone else go, Sylvas was sure of it. That was good.

“Whenever you’re ready.” He spoke softly to the fiend. Always tentative when he spoke to her.

She flashed him a devilish smile. “Oh darling, I’m always ready.”

She cast her Wildfire. It washed out across the battlefield, effusive and vast, spreading out in every direction. It wouldn’t hit the enemy lines, but it wasn’t meant to. It was just meant to blind them to what was happening behind it. As it began to die down, Ironeye unleashed his Thunderchain, right down the middle of their path. It erupted out in every direction, washing over the enemy entrenchment.

Dimly, as if through a veil, Sylvas could see the mana that formed the spells. The agitation of the mana that the fire spell had caused, blurring everyone else’s second sight. The sudden jagged fractals that formed as the lightning passed through, turning any perception of what was happening beyond it into a kaleidoscope contortion. Then the fiend cast again.

Taking turns, sprinting with their whole class behind them and Sylvas hands driving them forwards, they cast. Flame then lightning, flame then lightning, over and over, keeping the enemy blind. If they had any courage in them, some might have broken from their cover and recognized that neither one of the spells had the power to do them harm, but not a one of them did. This was what Vaelith had wanted, all the recruits in one big blind charge towards the officers, like they were mindless eidolons, but for all that they were mindless, eidolons weren’t harmless. If they could have advanced behind a screen like this, then they would have too. He was teaching a better lesson than Vaelith could have ever hoped, and next he was going to teach them a lesson in humility.

The Wildfire was widespread, gushing out from the fiend’s outstretched hands to burst across the field in every direction, forcing smoke out ahead of it to further obscure their path. The Thunderchain was less broad. It was only firing down the central line of their charge, crackling out from there to spread across the fronts of the fortifications, but doing less to obscure sight. Sylvas was making do with the tools that he had available.

On either end of the enemy line, mages started ducking out and launching a counter-attack. They were still reluctant to fully emerge out of fear of the harmless wildfire searing away their eyebrows, but during each casting of Thunderchain, Sylvas began to see them, launching a barrage at the flanks of the charge he was leading.

That was why having the rest of the class charging with them was good. They had occupied the periphery of the spearhead. They had formed the expendable flanks. They were the ones getting picked off by the sharpshooters on either end of the enemy entrenchment.

Sylvas knew who his allies were. He wasn’t going to shed any tears for the rest, who believed the lies that Hammerheart spread about him but still tried to cling to his coat-tails to carry them to victory. If my side has to have losses, let it be them.

He pushed the mana out of his core, through his channels and on into the other two. Their own mana supplies would not have been sufficient to keep up the cover all the way across the whole battlefield. Even with Sylvas own supply they wouldn’t have made it, but he was cheating the system. Each of them had an affinity, they could only draw one type of mana from him, while he stored all of them. Each of them could fully drain every part of the mana in his core of the affinity that they could use while leaving all the myriad other types of mana in place. Once he’d unlocked his own affinity and sealed it with his third circle, this would have been impossible, but in this moment, his weakness was his strength.

Affinities were the reason that the technique for sharing mana wasn’t taught, even though it was simple enough. Much simpler if you have the Arterium Arcanum of course.

Once the mana hit their bodies, what they could use was filtered through and the rest washed back up Sylvas’ channels, contra-flowing back into his core to provide more weight to the next wave that he pushed out. With every spell, he thrust mana down one arm or the other. His steps became sluggish and stumbling. His grip on Ironeye and Hot Lips became less about pushing them on, and more about staying upright through the wild gyrations of the mana inside of him. He ran with his eyes shut, as blinded by the chaos of mana swirling all around them as the enemy would have been. He just had to trust that they were still going the right way.

Beyond the roar of flame and thunder, he heard screams. The outer flanks of their spearhead being shot down. Whittling it down until only Sylvas and his team were left as the final outburst of flame washed over the raised fortifications just a few feet away. Everyone knew what to do from here, they leapt into action.

Ironeye and Hot Lips had a quarter supply of mana each to keep them going, not enough to win going head-to-head with other mages on their level, but more than enough for them to support the lower circle mages while they did their work. As for Sylvas, he felt as though he was coming apart at the seams. They should have tried this in an environment where victory wasn’t on the line first. If they had done some sensible experimentation, he would have known that distorting the supply of mana inside him was going to ruin his equilibrium, both his physical balance, and the floes of mana within him. For the first time, the core of mana at his center felt in danger of becoming unstable, all the natural balance created by the opposing affinities neutralizing one another was gone, beneath one sleeve he could feel frost on his skin where all the fire mana had been stripped away, beneath the other a dull ache as though his bones had turned to stone inside his arm.

So much of his focus had to be turned internally, that he probably wouldn’t have seen doom coming for him if it weren’t for Clearmind.

Kaya and the others had set off to do what they’d trained for, circumventing the fortifications where they could, cutting clean through them where they couldn’t. The officers hadn’t been able to get a clear look at them throughout their entire advance and popped out of hiding now expecting to start picking off stragglers only to face a furious mob on their doorstep. The fighting was close-range and brutal, but despite all that their forces had been depleted, the majority of the recruits had made it, and that meant that the officers were badly outnumbered. They fought back in a kind of daze, as they saw their clean and perfect victory snatched away from them and were dragged down into the mud with the enlisted mages who they considered so inferior.

A great deal of frustration was being let out across the battlefield. All the long months of training while the recruits had to endure being talked down to and looked down on were now blossoming out into a bloodbath. But from amidst that bloodbath, Sylvas caught sight of the real problem coming his way. Hammerheart was incensed. He’d definitely have been one of the arrogant fools who had thought this victory was in the bag, and now that had been taken from him, he was out for revenge.

An aura of blazing flame surrounded him, some ward or another that kept any of the mages relying on physical attacks from getting too close, but it seemed to blaze blue-hot when he caught sight of Sylvas standing out in front of the fortifications, all alone. With a leap, the dwarf cleared the distance between them. All of the fighting was going on at the other side of the barricades, none of Sylvas allies had held back to protect him as he tried to bring his mana circulation back into balance, because they couldn’t have spared a single fighter. If this was how he was going to be taken out of the exercise, he’d accept it as his due. He’d already achieved more than anyone else had considered possible.

All that he could hope to do now was delay the dwarf as long as possible. The longer that Hammerheart took to finish him off, the longer his fury would be kept away from the other mages. To that end, he needed the other man to be as clumsy as possible, otherwise this fight would be over in moments. “What’s the matter, stanzbuhr? Isn’t like this is the first time I’ve kicked your culgh.”

He felt sure that his pronunciation was terrible despite repeating Kaya’s words perfectly, but apparently, they had the desired effect. All magic forgotten, Hammerheart charged at Sylvas, roaring out a stream of expletives that would have been untranslatable even if they weren’t all mashed together.

Now all that he had to do was deal with a titanically strong dwarf trying to punch him to death. Much easier.

As the dwarf swung the first punch at him, Sylvas managed to fire off an arcane arrow. It hurt as he cast, with all his channels inflamed by the unbalanced mana, and when it came bursting forth, it looked wrong. The blue light that usually made it up was distorted and dirty. It hit Hammerheart’s fist as it swung, knocking the blow back in the direction it came, but also encasing the dwarf’s arm up to the elbow in ice and grit.

The officer staggered back, confused, and if Sylvas’ senses hadn’t all been too busy screaming about the agony he was putting himself through by casting with unbalanced mana, then it would have been the ideal opportunity for a follow up attack. As it was, Sylvas only victory was managing to remain standing. Hammerheart was thinking, he couldn’t have that.

Sylvas felt punch drunk despite having taken no blows and his words came out slurred, “Is that all you’ve got?”

Hammerheart charged in again, ducking where Sylvas next arcane arrow probably would have gone if he’d managed to cast it, and drove a fist into his gut. Nothing was held back this time. Inside him, something ruptured, and Sylvas felt knuckles grazing his spine before the impact lifted him off his feet and threw him out into the red desert beyond. Here and there, red shards of what looked like glass had formed where the wildfire had been burning hot enough, but Sylvas was flung beyond that. If it had been solid ground, he’d have been dead on impact, as it was, he was buried.

The force of the blow and the force of the fall rammed him down through the blood red dust and for one beautiful moment it cushioned and held him before the pain caught up. He tried to cough up blood, but the moment his mouth opened, that iron tainted ash poured in, filling his mouth, clogging it. Stopping any hope he had of casting.

He had to lay there, hoping that Hammerheart would come after him or he’d suffocate. He knew that the healing abilities of the Empyrean bordered on the miraculous, but how long could he go without air before he died? The crest would preserve him once he’d suffocated for long enough, but it didn’t supply air. Even if the Empyrean’s medicine could bring him back somehow, what good would it do if he was too brain damaged to string a spell together.

He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t cast, but he could dig, so that was what he did. Hand over hand, as if he could swim up through the red sands of Strife back to safety. His lungs burned, whatever had been destroyed inside of him by Hammerheart’s awful blow screamed with every motion and the mana inside of him leapt around as though he were being electrocuted with every tiny motion.

I cheated, tried to outwit the rules of magic that we are being taught, and this is the payment I got for it. Pain. Pain like I hadn’t felt since my world died. I still had mana inside me, enough to easily free me from this prison of ash. Enough to rise triumphant like a phoenix from these ashes, but without the ability to speak any spells, I was going to die. Weakness bled into him from the wounds, from the asphyxiation, from all of it. It wasn’t fair. I came so far, I won us the day, and now I was going to die for it. As ignoble a death as you could imagine, drowning in dust.

He reached up as high as he could, desperately hoping that he might break the surface, that someone, anyone, might see his hand extended in desperation. But he knew it was in vain. All eyes would be on the fight. Even the scrying eyes of the instructors hovering in the sky above. It didn’t matter anyway. His hand didn’t reach the air. It didn’t touch anything but more of the accursed dust.

His mouth was full of the taste of blood. His vision would have been turning black even if he wasn’t buried. He couldn’t move a muscle, but inside of him the mana still flowed, still churned, and beyond it there was still that echo, something that he only felt when he was so close to the edge. He had the mana and no spell to cast, but he was nothing if not resourceful in the face of inevitable death.

Forcing the fingers of his upturned palm to spread, he forced his mana out. Everything that he could control, everything that he could push, he sent out through the channels in his upturned arm. He couldn’t see the results even with his second sight, everything was too confusing and painful for that, but he poured every last drop of power remaining to him out and up, hoping against desperate hope that someone, anyone, might see that beacon and come save him.

Mira.

Then the darkness encroaching on him from all sides slammed shut, and Sylvas knew nothing at all.