Chapter 13

“Speed is the distinction between combat magic and that practiced in everyday life. There is no effect that combat spells can enact that does not have parallel in the civilian experience, no fireball that is not used in industry, no lightning bolt that is not used to power electric lighting, but while there is all the time in the world in civilian life for a spell to be cast at the mage’s leisure, in combat each syllable spoken is another life lost. Each moment you spend casting is a moment that your life is shortened by. The techniques deployed to this effect are myriad and varied, but they are all ultimately achieved in the same manner. Preparation.”

—Squad Tactics, Fal’Vaelith

“So what exactly does breaking my mind entail?” Sylvas asked tentatively, “Because I’d prefer to avoid permanently damaging my ability to progress, and I’d greatly prefer to avoid a psych evaluation.”

“You’re you. A single instance. And you, as you, can cast one spell.” Vaelith led him through her thought process. “To cast more than one spell at once, you need there to be more than one instance.”

Sylvas brows drew down. “This… instancing, that isn’t how you cast multiple spells. I’ve seen you part-cast and hold them.”

“E12 Focus. You can’t handle that much information at once. You can’t maintain concentration on multiple spells. By C, you’ll be able to cast and hold two or three. By A, you’ll manage half of what I can do if you’re lucky.” She didn’t say it with any of the ego and flair that Fahred would have, it was a statement of fact, not a brag.

“Can’t I simply improve my focus?”

“Go on then.” She gestured to him. “In a week, improve your focus to the C ranks and I’ll teach you how to hold spells.”

Sylvas sighed, “Mind breaking?”

“Multi-instancing. Put an ego under enough strain, you can fracture it. Split the personality.”

This was far from being Sylvas area of expertise, but he’d read a little. “Wouldn’t it heal?”

“Pretty quickly. But if you build up some scar tissue between the fragments…”

There were many different names for it across many different cultures, all of them pulled up neatly to the fore of his brain by Lockmind. “Schizophrenia. Disassociated Identities. Headmates. Multiple personality disorder.”

“If they’re left to diverge.” Vaelith conceded.

Sylvas sometimes felt like he was back home having an circular argument with Mira. “You’re suggesting that I completely destroy my sense of self, and then in that state, somehow… manage the fragments.”

For the first time, Vaelith looked less than confident. The tips of her pointed ears twitched in irritation. “Did I say it was going to be easy?”

“How is this… achieved?”

“Usually that’s the hard part. Finding something traumatic enough to make the break.” She tapped him on the forehead. Strong enough that it staggered him back a step even though it was just one finger. “You came with it built in.”

“If I was going to break I already would have.” Sylvas took care not to get angry.

“You’re holding it together well. And I can respect that. But right now, I don’t need you together. I need you to let go.” She wound back her arm, very clearly showing him what was about to happen, then slapped him across the face. It was hard enough to make his jaw crack, but not hard enough to rip it off his face, which meant she was pulling her punches.

He hit the ground, and rolled back to his feet before she could close the distance. Lucky, since there had been a kick inbound.

“Come here.” She said through gritted teeth. It was a funny thing, realizing that she was going to beat him to the verge of death but take absolutely no pleasure in it. She would do it, and so much worse to him just because it was her duty. Sylvas almost missed Hammerheart’s more personal brand of belligerence.

Sylvas didn’t dare to call magic against her in case she felt it gave her permission to do the same back. They’d already established that she was far better at combat magic than him, and there was at least a chance he’d walk away from this beating. Of course, in the fraction of a second it took him to think all that, Vaelith darted across the distance between them and hammered a punch into his shoulder. Heat and pain blossomed out. Again, there was no dislocation, but it was very deliberately close. It sent him staggering back, kept him off balance so she could swing for him again. He managed to get an arm up, and their wrists collided with a crunch and more pain that he had to filter out.

“That’s it soldier,” She flashed him a grim smile. “Hands up for your ass-kicking.”

Ducking the next punch lined him up perfectly for another, it cracked into his jaw, mashing his teeth together and sending him tottering back all over again. He tried to reverse the tide of the fight, charging in at her, but he had as much chance of catching hold of her as he had of catching a sunbeam. She might have moved stiffly and sternly around on a normal day, but in battle she was lithe as a cat, flowing around his outstretched arms to jab her outstretched fingers into his armpit and some cluster of nerves there that hurt like hell.

Sylvas yelped involuntarily, then got it under control with Clearmind again.

“That’s it boy, use your paradigm. Hide all the hurt away.”

Perhaps he had been too hasty earlier when he decided to pack away all of his anger. Maybe it could come out and play a little. 

When she snapped another punch out, he didn’t even try to dodge, just used the grounded moment when she’d be in a fixed position during contact to deliver a blow of his own to her ribs. It was like punching a statue. She was solid as stone under her uniform. 

Meanwhile, her punch had not bounced off so harmlessly. His nose broke with a pop and a flood of hot red. Salt and iron on his lips.

When she got in close enough to deliver another punch, he spat blood at her face, though it fell short. “You can’t beat me into remembering.”

Darting back in, she feinted another punch to his head, and then stomped down on the inside of his knee, the leg gave out without breaking, but yet again, he suspected that was only because she had chosen not to break him. She flashed him another smile entirely devoid of any comfort or good humor. “Ever had a good beating before?”

The orphanage pressed against the barriers he’d raised in his mind. “Yes. I have.”

“This will make you remember it.” She said with no small amount of resignation. “And after that, everything else.”

“I can’t…” Whatever it was that Sylvas couldn’t do would never be heard, because before the words were out, her elbow shot up and caught him under the jaw, slamming his teeth up and through his tongue. More blood gushed out, spilling from between his lips in a slick tide. The pain was unreal until he sequestered it away outside his protective walls again, then it was just the impracticality of functioning without the tip of his tongue.

She was well out of reach by this point, dancing back beyond the length of his arms, and so when he spat out the little hunk of gore, it didn’t sully her uniform.

“There are mages out there who could just go dig in to your brain.” She said it conversationally, in between bone shaking blows. “Did you know that? They have spells to do what we are doing right now.”

“Torture?” He spat the word, hoping it would break through her solid steel composure, but thinking he might shake her was hopeless.

She replied without pause after a fierce kick to the gut that folded him in half. “Fragmenting.”

Her next kick came down like an axe, heel digging between his shoulder blades and slamming him into the dirt. He managed to roll over before she dropped down on top of him, but that just meant he had the pleasure of being face to face with her as she started hammering blows into his face. All hints of finesse or martial art had faded, this was just brutality. Blow after blow. More pain stacked on more pain, and all of it shunted aside as fast as it came. His cheekbone broke. Teeth snapped loose. The Crest on his chest was thrumming on the periphery of his awareness, ready to save him when he hit the point of death.

“Why didn’t we get one of them to help instead of…” She hit him again. Again. Fiercely now.

“Because we aren’t giving anyone the keys to your head. Even someone who is meant to be on our side.” She hit him open handed at the end of the latest flurry, knocking more teeth scattering across the dirt. “You’re going to be a soldier, not a weapon. No matter what Fahred thinks.”

Everything was starting to go dark, but Sylvas had made it. He had survived Vaelith’s beating. He was going to pass out in peace without his Paradigm ever breaking. One question still left him confused though, even in victory. “You don’t want the keys to my head?”

She pressed her forehead against his, eye to eye with him. “I want you able to make your own decisions.”

“I don’t want this.” Sylvas managed to blurt out, an appalling fear creeping into his words. “I don’t want to…”

“Nobody wants to die, kid.” She plucked the crest from his chest almost casually, then tossed it aside. “But it’s the only way to be born again. Now… break.”

Without the crest, fear finally came. Pain and torment, he could endure, because he always knew that afterwards he could recover, but there was no coming back from death. 

Her fist came down one final time, and the pain was the last drop of water to fall on the other side of the dam before it gave way. His paradigm, all that had been maintaining his sanity since the fall of Croesia, gave way.

And then he broke.