Starbreaker

“There will be loss. There will be suffering. There is a price that must be paid. But whether you will it to be so or not, the price will still be paid. If you choose to go kicking and screaming like some worthless weeping babe into the dark of night or stride out with your head held high, that is the only decision that you have to make. Cowering from the reality of cost does not make the cost go away. If you learn nothing else. Learn this. Whatever your worst fear is, it will come to pass. The goal is not to stop it, it is to become strong enough to endure.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

Whatever spell hit him had no visual component that he could make out. Just a wall of force that slapped into him from below, sending him spiraling wildly across the sky. It was only when the ward protecting his hearing burnt out that he recognized the attack for what it was, some sort of sonic magic. A rare affinity, but not unheard of.

The blast launched him well clear of the battle that he’d been fighting, tumbling end over end as his spell of flight sought to regain control over his motion, sapping more and more mana as he fought back against the spin.

He came to a halt almost at the very edge of the raised town, just a street short of one of the few tall towers that had been raised on the periphery. Whoever had attacked him had launched him straight into the midst of the territory that the different recruits were contesting rather than the more established warzone that the officers had claimed to duke it out amongst themselves.

The only person he’d seen with a sonic affinity was Hammerheart’s pet fiend, so he had to assume that this was a deliberate move to get him in position for a more lethal attack. Yet as he hung there, throwing out all his senses in every direction, there was no sign of the next blow coming.

He delayed too long, down beneath him, he heard a cry, then spells began buzzing up towards him. Most of the mana behind them had no affinity, so he’d been cast back among the other second circle mages. Where the officers probably thought he belonged.

Letting the flying spell fail once more, he fell to earth, casting reinforcements on his legs like he’d used to survive on the tower-top back home rather than attempting to slow his fall. The impact jarred him, sending shocks and pain right up his back, but he fell from the sky so fast that not a single one of the spells lancing towards him came close to ruffling what was left of his hair. He chuckled to himself, pretending not to hear the manic edge to his own laughter. I got that haircut Kaya wanted me to get after all, just not the way she’d planned.

Biting back his laughter, he took in the sights. There were spell-scars on a few of the buildings, but nothing dramatic. He didn’t know the lay of the land here nearly so well. Or rather, he knew the blocks that made up the city, but not who populated it. He did not want to run into Kaya, not because he feared dealing with her affinity, though he didn’t have any immediate answers for it, but because no matter which way that fight went, it was going to be bad. Their relationship wouldn’t suffer, necessarily, but it would change, and he liked having something in his life that was a constant.

Given her propensity for throwing herself into danger, this meant that the moment he heard a massive brawl breaking out a little to the east, he should have turned tail, but the sad fact of the matter was, every time the others fought, it presented Sylvas with an opportunity to distinguish himself. He might not have had the raw power of the other recruits with their affinities, but he had his wits about him, and in the midst of a fight between people slinging bigger spells around, there was a chance for him to tip the scales.

Putting Kaya out of his mind, he ran.

The air grew thick as he approached the battle, dense mana erupting out in plumes. Everyone seemed to have had the same idea of rushing towards this chaos, he caught glimpses of a half dozen other recruits flitting between the buildings as they approached. He didn’t want to get caught in a deadlock, so back up onto the rooftops he went with another quick use of the flying spell, fed barely enough mana to keep him afloat as he leapt from one flat top to the next. His mana dwindled rapidly. No matter how necessary it might have been for him to fly, it was still causing all manner of problems that he could only hope his affinity would solve, if he ever unlocked it.

The battle raged up ahead, spells of all sorts deflecting from an all-too familiar spherical shield. The elf in Hammerheart’s thrall had used it to protect them from the fiend’s deafening spell before, and it worked now, turning back every spell cast at the pair of them. No magic could get through, but that did not mean that nothing could. Some of the braver recruits went charging in to face Hammerheart toe-to-toe. Clearly a mistake. The entire set-up was a trap to force them into melee range, and they were all falling for it, hoping they could overpower someone who had built their spell-book around close-range combat.

He hadn’t wanted to cross paths with Kaya, but there she was in the middle of the sphere, slugging it out with Hammerheart. His fists were alight and moved like comets, inevitable in their fall, faster than the eye could follow from up close. Kaya meanwhile wasn’t even attempting to block them. Her armor flowed out like quicksilver to meet every punch as it came. Thickening around the blow and thinning out again as he drew his fists back for the next awful swing. Every blow sounded like a ringing gong, audible even over the roar of flames and the chaos of spell-fire outside the barrier.

She must have been out for revenge. For Sylvas sake, since as far as he could guess, Hammerheart had no issue with her personally, though he might after this, given that for every blow she tanked she was able to land one of her own, and he had no armor to keep him safe. His body had been reinforced with mana, but there was no magic stopping her steel-clad fists from bruising him up, even if his bones remained stalwartly unbreakable under her attack.

Staying back and just watching how this played out would have been the rational course but no matter how logical Sylvas might have thought himself, he couldn’t stomach letting his friends fight his battles for him. He unleashed a quick Arcane Arrow, in the vague hope it might make it through the shield, and when that failed to find purchase, sliding around the sphere in a blue smear, he did the only thing that he could to circumvent its protection. He leapt for the shield, passed through it without delay and cast again.

An Arcane Arrow shot from his fingertips, not aimed at Hammerheart as would have been expected, but at the elf holding up the shield. As sure of himself as he might have been, he knew going one-on-one with Hammerheart’s full attention on him wasn’t going to end well. The only way to win this was to change the lay of the battlefield.

The elf looked suitably surprised, and passed out neatly as the arrow struck his chest. Folding in on himself like a collapsing tent. Hammerheart, for his part, was too busy casting to notice that his shield was down until the torrent of spells started raining down on him. He had been tanking through Kaya’s punching with spite alone, but spells were a different matter. He had to leap aside as the rainbow blend of bolts, balls and miscellaneous missiles rained in on where he’d been, and Kaya followed after without hesitation, eyes on her goal throughout the entire fight. Sylvas had to throw up a shield to protect him from the incoming barrage, so there was little he could do to help her. The impact of spells rained down on top of his shield, hammering him down towards the waiting earth and the inevitable splash damage of all the spells that weren’t hitting him just now thanks to his shield.

His mana reserves had ticked back up thanks to his brief period of meditation earlier, but now had dwindled to about a quarter thanks to the pounding that the shield was taking. If he couldn’t get out from under this bombardment, then he was done for.

Meanwhile, vaguely visible through the kaleidoscope raining down around them, Sylvas could see Kaya losing. She was keeping up her valiant assault, and her armor spell had done well protecting her from his counterstrikes up until now, but while they fought, he had been casting, and now the spell finally went off. Sylvas had expected something explosive, something to knock Kaya away so that Hammerheart had time to regroup. What he had not expected was for the dwarf to lurch forward inside her guard and grapple her. Kaya seemed just as confused and dismayed. Wasting breath that should have been spent on casting on cussing. The armor that coated her had flowed to protect her from Hammerheart’s crushing grip, but now it began to bubble and glow red as his spell superheated it. She tried to pull away from his grip, but no matter how many blows she delivered to his bloodied face, he could not be shaken.

With a half a moment to cast, Sylvas could have ended it, sent an Arcane Arrow right into the bastard’s skull and knocked him out. But he did not get that moment’s reprieve. He was forced to watch from beneath his faltering shield as Hammerheart melted through Kaya’s armor, and his scorching hands made contact with flesh. At once smoke began to rise, and the smell of roasting meat began to spread. It should have turned Sylvas stomach, but at this point it had been so long since he’d had real food that it actually made him hungry.

She let out a scream as the fires ate into her, then thankfully passed out and collapsed before Hammerheart could do any more damage. Her crest springing to life to stop the flames consuming any more of her. Hammerheart’s eyes met Sylvas, even through all the chaos, and there was murderous rage radiating off him. This wasn’t the worst possible scenario, but it was close. The last time they’d met, Sylvas had almost died, he couldn’t imagine that this time around was going to be any less terrible.

With a slash of his arm, Hammerheart sent a red beam sweeping across the periphery of their battleground. Screams sounded as it sliced into the other recruits. Those who hadn’t been hit had the good sense to take cover or run like hell after so many of them were so casually cut down. Leaving just the two of them, all alone. Finally the barrage of spells against Sylvas had stopped, and now he wished it was back.

The dwarf stepped over Kaya where she lay smoldering and advanced. Sylvas flung out an Arcane Arrow, but with his enhanced body, Hammerheart sidestepped it with contemptuous ease. Sylvas racked his brain for something, anything that might save him, but there was nothing. If it wasn’t for his Paradigms keeping his mind in equilibrium he might have lost his courage and fled.

If he ran, Hammerheart would chase him, and he would fall. If he tried to cast his spell of flying, Hammerheart would close the distance between them before it was complete, and he would fall. If he tried to cast a shield, Hammerheart could pummel right through it. There was nothing in his arsenal of spells that could save him from what was about to happen.

The dwarf’s face had split into a terrifying grin as he advanced on Sylvas as though he had all the time in the world. He was still chanting, still holding that awful spell of burning hands that he’d used on poor Kaya, but it wasn’t just maintenance. He was stoking the flames. His hands burned brighter and brighter as he closed the distance, the cuffs of his jacket bursting into flames from their proximity to the blue-hot glow.

When he’d touched Kaya for a moment, he’d scalded her down to the bone. What would the spell do now? Would there be anything left of Sylvas when he was done? Could the Ardent resurrect him from cinders?

The first time they’d gotten into a brawl, Sylvas had pounced on Hammerheart. Ridden him to the ground, hit him as fast and as hard as he could, and it was as if this spell had been developed as a counter to that tactic. Had Hammerheart added it to his spell book just for me?

It was a fleeting thought. Sylvas was going to fight to the last breath, because he didn’t know what else to do, but he knew already that nothing at his disposal was going to save him. He started to slowcast an arcane arrow, in the vague hope that he might be able to get it off at an opportune moment while being cooked alive, but before he’d completed it, Hammerheart was on him.

His newly replaced jacket burst into flames before the dwarf’s blazing hands could even touch it, and it was only by throwing himself fully back and onto the ground that Sylvas managed to escape that initial grab. He was doomed. There was no position he could get to from prone that could win him even a moment more time. Hammerheart was still chanting, still heating his hands up brighter and brighter, through blue hot and on to white, and now the flames around him became invisible, too hot for the human eye to see. He took one more step towards Sylvas where he lay hopeless on the ground and…

He fell.

The fiend they called Hot Lips had him. She’d crossed the distance without casting in a wild sprint and launched herself like a spear into the dwarf. She’d seen Sylvas in trouble, and exercise or not, she had acted on instinct to save him.

It was the last mistake she would ever make. She was spitting curses at the dwarf in the fiend tongue, guttural and deep. “Think you can use fire on a fiend!? I was born in flames!”

She cast as she wrestled him, her spell infiltrating his, stoking the flames still hotter, twisting it back against him. It was exactly the kind of spell modification that would have had Sylvas kicked out of the Ardent in an instant, and in her rage she was doing it in plain sight of everyone. The dwarf’s skin began to bubble where the flames washed back over him. Blackening and cracking. Oozing and sloughing off.

Screaming in pain, Hammerheart caught hold of her by the horns, trying to break her grip around his thick trunk, but it seemed that he had forgotten about the spell already flowing through him.

Where his hands touched Hotlips, she turned to ash, her horns seared clean off and the flames spread down from there. Her beautiful face was contorted in agony before the flames melted the flesh away, and then a blackened skull was all that was left staring back at Sylvas as he scrambled to his feet. Even the skull gave way beneath the impossible heat of Hammerheart’s spell. Crumbling in on itself, all its contents already melted away.

Her crest should have saved her the moment the flames seared her, but it couldn’t. They only activated against hostile magic, or they would have prevented every spell of enhancement. And whatever she had done to Hammerheart’s spell, it had made it hers as much as his.

Hammerheart looked down on the death he’d caused, the fire in his hands dying, and he cursed. Not himself, but her. “That stupid culgh. She ruined everything.”

Sylvas twisted Arcane Arrow just as he had the kinesis spell. It was his most familiar magic, and almost easier to warp than it was to cast the neutered version he’d been using until now. This one would eat up what was left in his core and leave nothing behind of Hammerheart. It wouldn’t leave a half-charred corpse still burning down to the waist. There wouldn’t even be dust left of the dwarf when he was done.

He raised a hand to cast and for an instant, he was blinded. Green flames washed over him as Vaelith teleported in between them. Her enhanced voice booming out, “This exercise is cancelled. Back to your bunks. Now.”

Her voice died down as she dropped into a crouch beside what remained of the fiend that had been Sylvas friend. “Hammerheart. Brig. One week.”

“He killed her.” Sylvas hated saying it. Hated making it real by admitting it. His eyes had drifted away from both the dwarf and the Instructor. All that was left in the world was her. He didn’t even know her name.

Vaelith cut off Hammerheart before he could say a word. “Accidents happen.”

“This was not an accident.” His paradigms were the only think keeping Sylvas sane enough to speak. “He was trying to kill me.”

Vaelith shrugged her shoulders. “Get used to it, recruit. You’re a soldier now.”

Then, with the same flash of green flame, she, Hammerheart and what remained of the fiend were gone. Sylvas was alone with the unconscious Kaya, amidst the flame-streaked ruins of what was meant to be a training exercise.

One week until Hammerheart was out. One week to prepare.