Chapter 14

“In our pursuit of perfection, we mutilate. Healthy minds are broken with magic as surely as with trauma, and in their breaking we find cause for celebration, because we can squeeze out a more effective casting, because we can compartmentalize thoughts, because we can pretend that the damage done has made us stronger. Damage only ever worsens that being damaged. That is why it is damage.”

—Fringe Affinity: The Abuse of Psychology in Paradigmcraft, Remo Aurea

The weight of all the pain, all the suffering, all the death that he’d caused, washed over Sylvas. The guilt that he’d kept at bay with promises to the future that he’d avenge the fallen and stop any other world falling to the Eidolons bore down on him like a tidal wave.

Mira was dead because of him. Hotlips was dead because of him. Everyone he’d ever know was dead. His whole planet was a wither lump of rock. All because of him. “No.”

“Yes.” Vaelith’s voice cut through it all. Cold, calculating and calm as it ever had been.

If he hadn’t been so obsessed with his own progress, with being the greatest and most loved after all the years of neglect in the orphanage, then he might have stopped and thought for more than a moment about what he was doing. If he had looked twice at the ritual to summon the Crimson King, he would have realized how catastrophic the results of it could be. He had been so sure of himself. Using Clearmind then to empty himself of all doubt. The chosen one who would bring justice and equality to all.

They had turned to ash just standing in the presence of the creature he had brought to their world. Others had burrowed down into the heart of Croesia and devoured her soul. It would never recover. He would never recover. He might have hated his life there, but Croesia was his home, his heart, his soul, and the Eidolons had eaten the soul right out of him too. Mira… he’d loved her, as much as anyone so smug, arrogant and self-centered could love another human being, and she had died and whispered away into nothingness before his eyes.

This was the legacy that the chosen one had left behind. Not greatness, but oblivion. He’d left, fled, ran all the way across the universe to get away from the other survivors because he couldn’t stand the thought of having their eyes on him all day, every day, as they suffered in whatever refugee camp they ended up dumped in, never knowing that he was the one who had damned them to that terrible life.

He could have gone with them. He could have suffered alongside them in penance for what he’d done. It was more kindness than he deserved after all the acts of blasphemy against the natural order he had committed, but even after everything else, he was so convinced that he was special he had signed up to join the Ardent. Some intergalactic superheroes who fought against the very monsters who had destroyed his world. 

Except Sylvas was the monster that had destroyed his world. He was the one responsible, and all that he’d done since he arrived on Strife was grow stronger and more capable of destroying more. Even when he received an affinity that meant he could walk away from the fighting and still do important things with his life, he chose to remain. Even though he considered his word to the Ardent to have been extracted under duress and could have walked away without a single qualm, he had stayed.

Was it because he truly thought that there were no better opportunities for him out there? Was it because he truly wanted to beat bloody revenge into the corpses of the Eidolons? No. It was because here amongst these savages, he fit in perfectly. Every one of them desperately trying to prove themselves the strongest and more than willing to massacre one another for the title.

He’d killed his whole world to be the strongest. What did he care if he had to destroy Hammerheart, or burn Hotlips to death? What did he care if he had to step over the corpses of his friends to get to the top? He was Sylvas Vail, the chosen one.

He was nothing. He was an idiot. A dupe. The most worthless of all the nobodies that his backwater world had given birth to. He had no family that cared enough to pluck him from an orphanage where they’d been right to treat him like scum. His only use had been magic, and his only purpose had been to end all life. He had been chosen, chosen last for every game, chosen because he was the only one weak and gullible enough to become their beacon. A sacrificial goat offered up to burn bright and summon their god to kill everything. Disposable. Worthless. Kindling for arson on a global scale.

He was the monster who would destroy everything in his path so that he could feel like he mattered, he was the pathetic child sniveling and hiding under the bed completely certain that he didn’t matter at all. He was both of these things, and he was neither of these things.

“The young do everything in extremes.” That was what Vilmander had said, and he was right. Sylvas wasn’t all powerful, or completely powerless. He wasn’t the deliberate destroyer of his world or a completely hopeless dupe. He was only human. He made mistakes, and the price that had to be paid for those mistakes was terrible, but anyone who had lived his life would have made the same choices. 

The guilt was always going to be there. The shame at having been tricked into committing the worst of atrocities. But it wasn’t all that he was, and he was not so weak that he was going to let the burden of what he’d done stop him from doing what he meant to do. He could use it. He could let his mistakes shape him, guide him away from repeating them. He could be better.

Tears were streaming down his face when he slowly came back to awareness of what was going on around him. Vaelith had stayed with him. She was sitting with her legs crossed, and his head was resting on them. It felt uncomfortably intimate, looking up at her from this angle.

“You’re awake.” She said it softer than he’d have expected. The pain that he had been fully expecting to return to wasn’t there, but the tell-tale marks of healing magic were all over him. Vaelith had been healing him in his sleep.

“Did it work?”

“Yes.” She managed to force a tight-lipped smile. “Isolated each ego fragment and guided mana flow into the gaps between them so you can snap them off again with force of will. You’ll have continuity of self, outside the time of casting.”

Despite the aches and pains still clinging to him, he forced himself to sit up so he wasn’t resting on her thighs any more. He rubbed at the back of his neck to try and remove the soft sensation that he absolutely had not expected to be there. “Thank you doesn’t seem quite appropriate.”

She shrugged. “Neither does sorry.”

“It needed to happen.” Sylvas told himself as much as her.

She nodded. “Before you killed yourself.”

He would have liked to have thought himself above such a course of action, but the truth was that even he hadn’t known how much had been stowed away behind the walls of his Paradigm before that wall had broken down. Eventually his concentration would have given out. Eventually something would have broken through, and if it had been at the wrong moment, he wouldn’t have even needed to kill himself. Not when there was a whole hostile universe just waiting for him to slip up. Not to mention the dangerous trend that the medic had noticed. He had no idea how much was filtering through subconsciously to alter his actions and thoughts. He had no idea, because to know, he would have had to look beyond the limits of what he’d considered safe to view.

The wall was gone now, an aching void remained where it had been. All the effort that he had been putting into keeping his mind clear, all the work that he’d been doing to keep any thought of home, of Mira, of any of the awful things that had happened to him, out of his awareness, it was all at a loose end now. He could think more clearly, he could recall information with barely a flicker of his Lockmind. He must have been devoting more of his strength to keeping his memories contained than he had to anything else, and now that the weights had been removed, he felt as though he could move freely for the first time in… ever.

“Who am I now?”

“Same person as before.” Vaelith assured him, awkwardly. “Ego fragmentation doesn’t change that.”

He was sore and exhausted in a way that all of Chul’s exercises would never be able to make him, but he felt good too. As if the awful burden that he’d been carrying all this time without knowing it was finally lifted. “I wasn’t talking about that… but… how many fragments did I…”

“Thirty-four.”

He blinked. “Wow.”

“Might be a new record.” Vaelith’s face gave away no pleasure at this fact, but he suspected that she was just as excited about the possibilities as him.

It seemed almost comical too. “So I could cast thirty-four spells at the same time?”

She rose to her feet, leaving him sitting in the dirt. “If you had thirty-four mouths and sixty-eight hands.”

“Wait, then what was the point of all this?” He’d never read about any of this, and he had no basis for comparison, just what Vaelith was telling him.

“Part-cast multiple spells, each instance maintains theirs by feeding it mana, then you finish the spell to cast it, and the instance reintegrates. Don’t be tempted to keep any divergent instance around too long, they’ll go insane after an hour holding a spell. Then you’ve got that to deal with when it becomes part of you again.”

It had been painful enough just integrating his own memories without there being a deranged personality attached. “Noted.”

“It isn’t pretty.” She offered him a hand up, and despite all the pain and the bone deep exhaustion, he took it and let her hoist him up to his feet.

If every instance needed a constant flow of mana to maintain their spell in suspension, then double casting was going to be even more expensive. It might give him the ability to deal with being outnumbered by other casters in an explosive burst, but beyond those bursts he’d end up drained quicker than ever before.

They began the slow trudge back to the Blackhall, Vaelith being casual about it, but staying in reach in case he collapsed. “So, if this was lesson one, what is next?”

She shrugged. “Vilmander tomorrow, or… today. Need to check the time.”

“So… we’re done? You don’t have anything else you want to teach me?”

“You’ve memorized every word I’ve ever written. You little freak.” She gave him a playful punch in the back of the head that sent him staggering. “What more do you want?”

“I sort of assumed that you’d…”

She rolled her eyes, though it was hard to tell through the green glow that enveloped them. “Teach you everything I know in a week? That’s what every other lesson here is for.”

“I thought you’d try to talk me into… I don’t know. Following in your footsteps. Being a soldier.”

She looked at him sideways, then shook her head. “You’ll choose what you choose. You’ve got the keys to your head now, so I figure you’ll do the right thing. But if you don’t, I wouldn’t want you here anyway.”

At the entrance to the Blackhall she stopped and looked at him properly. “One last thing.”

Without a word of warning, she cast the more complex scrying spell on him.

• Name: Sylvas Vail
• Species: Human
• Health: 31%
• Mana: 87%
• First Circle Embodiment: Arterium Arcanum
• First Circle Paradigm: Clearmind
• Second Circle Embodiment: Arcane Bulwark
• Second Circle Paradigm: Lockmind
• Third Circle Embodiment: Tidal Shift
• Third Circle Paradigm: Waveform
• Affinity: Gravity
• Strength: F2 – A1
• Resilience: F2 – A1
• Speed: F2
• Potency: E7 
• Focus: D1
• Regeneration: E14

Now there was a definite hint of a smile on her face, almost lost amidst the scars. “F to D. Not bad for a day’s work. Let’s see Fahred beat that.”

“Thank you.” It didn’t feel sufficient. “For everything.”

“Don’t get soft on me kid,” Vaelith bared her teeth in what could have been a smile if it wasn’t so predatory. “I was just starting to like you.”