Chapter 2
“The most valuable resource on any battlefield is time. Time for you to cast. Time for you to assume a favorable position. If you can steal time from an opponent without cost, you should always do so. Delay is its own reward. Delay buys you the time you need to plan. Delay the inevitable until more options become available. The right tactical overview and approach can bring the chaos of war into order.”
—Squad Tactics, Fal’Vaelith
A coiling bolt of lightning battered off the wall, showering Sylvas with sparks and sending him running for fresh cover. He was amazed at just how quickly everything had gone wrong.
More lightning bolts struck down, dogging his trail, summoned down from a clear and empty sky. He ran now, not because he lacked the mana for his flight spell, but because to be an inch higher than he needed to be would put him in the direct line of fire of one of the other teams. Not to mention making him taller than his surroundings and a more viable target for the raining lightning. Ironeyes was behind this particular storm, by his estimation. Unless someone else among the recruits had unlocked a new affinity when he wasn’t looking.
There was a clearing between this block of raised rubble and the next, a solid second’s worth of open space where he’d be a sitting duck for anyone with decent elevation. If someone didn’t snipe him while he was crossing that gap, it would be a miracle. Lucky for him, they were still on Strife.
It wouldn’t be the first time that he’d tried one of his new spells, but it was the first time he’d try this particular use for it. Speaking each word carefully as he ran, shaping the magic in his hands, he felt it tighten around his fingers as he reached out ahead. With a twist of his wrist, he cast Invert.
Gravity magic was at its best when it was spread over a wide area. There were very few options for direct application of gravity mana like his old Arcane Arrow, but things that encompassed a space as large as this square were a dime a dozen. Invert was one of those wide spells. It flipped the gravity within its field of effect for as long as Sylvas poured mana in to maintain it, at a hefty cost to his resources. So he didn’t maintain it for much longer than the first instant. One moment of inverted gravity was all it took for the dense layer of red sand that filled the square to be launched up into the sky. A sudden plume, like a concussive strike had been launched against this area. Almost beneath notice to the other recruits. The perfect cover for him to sprint across.
The iron taste of the red dust in his mouth was gagging, but he spat out what looked like a mouthful of clotted blood and kept going. A hand held to the level of his eyes had kept them from the worst of it. If he’d seen himself then, he would have laughed. It was as though he’d painted his stark white uniform with red dust on purpose to serve as camouflage. Not that he’d be hard to find to the other more arcane senses at the other recruits’ disposal.
Options. He needed options. He was alone against every other team that the Ardent had fielded with little to no guarantee that they’d turned on each other after the rest of his squad had been eliminated in the initial bloodbath. Five other students had been assigned to him at random, and all five of them were down within the first few seconds of the exercise. They’d put up a valiant fight, as much as anyone could when they were so badly outnumbered. They’d gotten a few shots off before dropping into their Crest induced comas. None of the major players had been taken out, so far as Sylvas had seen, but in the chaos, he couldn’t be sure.
He had a target on his back. It had been pasted there artificially by Hammerheart before the dwarf up and quit, but now he’d earned it. Top of the class. Third circle in an affinity so rare and powerful he was still getting marriage proposals over it. If there was anyone that needed to be taken out of the fight first, it was him. If he’d just thought for a second, he would have realized that. Instead he’d trotted out onto the field with his squad still basking in relief that the cull was over and smugness that he’d won it, and he’d paid the price. Everyone around him had paid the price.
The shield spell that he’d tried to fling between him and the incoming barrage had worked. Every shot aimed at him had curved around to miss him as it struck the gravity shear. It was just a shame that it hadn’t extended out a little further so that those same shots weren’t redirected into his teammates. He hadn’t known most of them very well, so the guilt was minimal, though Anak had been one of the ones to catch a ball of magical pain to the face, for which Sylvas definitely felt a little twang of sorrow. He really needed to harden his heart. It wasn’t as though they were all going to survive out in the field when it came time to fight the Eidolons. At least here the Crests would protect them from serious harm. If not the pain.
Throughout all his introspection, Sylvas had been casting out his senses. Sight, sound, even scent could be tricked by some of the illusions that other mages cast, but there were things that they didn’t try to shield against because they were just too uncommon, and the new sense that he’d developed with his latest Paradigm was one of them. The presence of any object produced the tiniest trace of gravity, and he was able to feel it. When there was movement, it was like a gentle brush of a feather against his skin. Anyone that came inside of his sphere of influence would give themselves away, just by moving. Or at least that was the theory, so far he was still working on refining it to the point of being functional rather than a massive staticky mess of sensory input. Still, when a sudden lance of mana came at him, his second sight was quick to show him the disruption it caused to the floes of mana around him, even if his grav-sense didn’t.
He’d been expecting an attack from the rear as he retreated, not a blast of water from the side. Dropping to his knees, he skidded through the sand beneath the solid line of liquid, so pressurized it would have stripped skin from bone. He hadn’t noticed the fiend Abbas amongst his ambushers at the start of the exercise, so it made sense that their team would be out here somewhere, scattered from the focal point of conflict so that they could come back in afterwards and clean up any survivors.
The beam of water dipped towards him as he slipped by, but it was not quick enough to catch him, and it was not strong enough to punch through the solid stone that had been raised to serve as obstacles for them to navigate. He went on running, hoping that his pursuers might fall into the same ambush, and that Abbas wouldn’t follow.
Whether Abbas meant to give chase or not, one of that team had launched themselves into the air. Sylvas felt spells of flight with his gravity sense whether he meant to or not. Every time he or someone else twisted the natural state of gravity, it was like an elastic being strummed in his brain. It had to be Gharia.
He didn’t need the brief glimpse of white flitting between the rooftops to confirm his suspicions. The two of them were the only ones who could reliably cast any kind of flight spell, with everyone else reliant on their embodiments for mobility.
As she passed overhead she was casting down at him, not targeting him specifically, but raining down rainbow colored bubbles as she went into every valley or alley. It would have been quite whimsical if each of those slowly descending bubbles wasn’t going to explode with enough destructive force to rip him apart. He couldn’t let the bubbles come down on him, any more than he could let her spot him and call for assistance. Reaching up with his scarred hand, he cast Invert again the next time she flitted over.
In an instant the forces being exerted by Gharia’s spell reversed. Instead of repelling her from the ground, she was flung down towards it, towards him. Typically this would have ended in him receiving a face full of furious lizard-woman, but the bubbles she’d cast had escaped gravity’s pull in the same moment, shooting back up to meet her. Sylvas turned away so he didn’t have to see the damage he’d just done to his friend, but the rain of blood that came spattering down as soon as he released his spell told enough of a story about how effective the move had been.
There would be a moment before she hit the ground, a moment before the Crest would wrap her in its safe cocoon and protect her from the lethal impact, but Sylvas did not have the time to delay and watch to make sure her landing was less brutal than her defeat.
Explosions began to sound everywhere else around Sylvas, the other bubbles touching down and destroying all they touched. Gharia was nothing if not effective. She’d been taking no chances of Sylvas getting away from her unscathed. Of course, she hadn’t seen what he was capable of now he’d finally gotten his hands on gravity affinity magic. He cast his new shield, Gravity Shear, as he went, and the explosions and shrapnel being thrown up in his path curved gracefully around him in a brief orbit before impacting something else. Instead of trapping him in place, Gharia had inadvertently given him moving cover. He would have to thank her later. Actually she might bite me, probably better to leave certain things unsaid.
As plumes of debris blasted up all around him, Sylvas moved through it like a shark through water, parting the destruction just enough to make it by. As that round of cataclysmic destruction ended, new booms echoed out from behind. Abbas and the ambushers were taking a chance at his pursuers.
If they were distracted for long enough, he might get out of range of their senses, hunker down somewhere and try to wait out the worst of the fighting. It wasn’t glorious and he wouldn’t distinguish himself all that much, but if they couldn’t find him, they’d have no choice but to fight among themselves, and if he somehow made it to the end of the exercise, he might only have to try and take out one whole squad instead of all of them.
The chaos of the conflict behind him would draw attention that he couldn’t afford, so he risked the flight spell, not using it to soar up with all the speed it could give him, but loosening the planet’s pull on him enough that he could flit between the raised blocks faster than his unenhanced body could ever manage to move him. Distance and time.
With each moment he wasn’t under attack, he had more time to plan. There was a tower of stone ahead and to the left, high ground that he could get up and snipe from. The others would be able to ascend it without much difficulty with their embodiments under normal circumstances, but they weren’t up against normal circumstances, they were up against a gravity mage, which meant that if he could get that high ground, he could keep them from getting a clear shot at him. All of them barring Ironeyes, with his lightning storm.
Which made Ironeyes the target to hit. Once he was in flight, Sylvas knew that they wouldn’t be able to catch him, not with the maneuverability he’d unlocked with his new affinity. He could move around in the air easier than walking on the ground now, like he had spent his whole life waiting to sprout wings. But if Ironeyes was still in the fight, then they’d be able to bring him down, no matter how high he got or what cover he found.
They were hunters, he was prey, which meant he would run and they would pursue, it was the simplest relationship in nature, an expectation hardwired into their minds. Sylvas stopped dead at the foot of the tower and turned back. A few blocks into the smooth stone city, he twisted, shooting off to the side, then with a little distance from the route they’d all be following once they broke free of Abbas and found Gharia, he shot back, perpendicular to them. Nobody would expect him to turn around and charge back into danger. Not now, when he was this badly outnumbered. Surprise gave him an opportunity.
He almost ran headlong into the fiend with the sonic affinity and her squad. Bael had called her Vel, which was almost certainly an abbreviation for something, and she had not weathered Hammerheart’s downfall or her own defeat at the cull with much grace. Where before she’d been coiffed and perfect, her hair hung ragged around her face now, her horns were lost in the tangle. “You.”
“Me.” Sylvas managed to bark out before flinging himself aside. There were only two other mages with her, both infantry track, quick to fire off their spells, but not quick enough to catch him. He let the flying spell dissipate and started casting again.
“Get out here and face me.” She screamed. It was not enhanced with a spell, but some part of her embodiment empowered it all the same, and Sylvas was nearly floored by the force of her words bounding and rebounding around him. He clapped his hands to his ears, his own spell cut short. Without neutral mana at his disposal, the simple cantrip he’d cast to protect his hearing was as sluggish to cast as if he’d been completing something potent. There was no time to waste on it, not with Vel screaming loud enough to bring the whole planet down on them. There was no time.
Draining away his own weight with his embodiment, Sylvas leapt, kicking off the wall. Untouched by gravity, he soared over the block that had been keeping him out of sight, drifting for just a moment over the heads of all three of his attackers before he released and let his full weight return.
He fell. There was nothing more clever or cunning than that. His full weight, propelled by gravity from the height he was at. The martial arts that some of the other students had pursued in making their embodiments had never been taught to Sylvas. He braced his legs for impact as best he could and hoped.
Vel caught sight of him at the last moment, head jerking up just in time for his boot to make contact with her face instead of the top of her head. One heel planted neatly between her horns. She had some physical reinforcement in one of her embodiments, so the impact didn’t snap her neck, but the impact was more than hard enough for the Crest to activate and save her from worse than the concussion that had knocked her out.
With her mastery of the sonic affinity, Vel may have been an amazing mage, but she made a terrible cushion. The ground greeted Sylvas like an old enemy, the jolt of impact lancing to his hips, then right up his back. The bones of his legs didn’t snap like twigs, which was nice, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t broken anything. He couldn’t imagine that those bones were particularly strong at the moment, given that they’d just been glued back together from fragments, and that same pain he’d felt after beating Hammerheart was creeping up them now. He stumbled off the fallen fiend, still unsteady and ungrounded.
Tactically speaking, he should have hit one of the other two mages, since they were positioned further back and he was now in their direct line of sight. Luckily, everything else that he’d achieved in the past fraction of a second had been done without the need for him to cast a spell. So the one he’d been in the process of speaking before soaring over was still ready on his lips. He twisted his hand around by his side, and Inversion took hold.
Both mages were launched into the air in a plume of red sand, whatever spells they had been trying to cast lost in the maelstrom as they tumbled end over end up into the sky.
In a weird way, the red sand of Strife which had done its even best to kill him every time he set foot on it was now his best ally. It choked the mages, blinded them, kept them from saving themselves when he let the Inversion fall away and they came plummeting back to earth with none of the grace Sylvas could have mustered. One clipped a stone block on the way down with a wet crunch before the soft thrum of the Crest’s golden light surrounded him. The other hit the ground, head down. He had hit so hard, he was buried up to the neck, with the rest of him flailing and dangling in the air above. Whatever embodiment that guy had must have made him as solid as steel to remain conscious enough to flail after that fall.
In a split second, Sylvas made his decision. Turning on his heel and running again. He could have hung around to try and finish the downed mage off, but gravity affinity magic mostly relied on flinging things around with brute force and if that fall hadn’t killed the other grunt, he wasn’t sure how hard he’d need to hit the guy to put him out for the count. Working that out was time he didn’t have to waste.
The plume of red sand back there might have drawn the attention of his pursuers, so he put on a fresh turn of speed with the flight spell. His mana reserves dipped under a quarter full and he did his best to set any regrets about that aside. He was being as economical as he could, but there just wasn’t enough mana for all the enemies he had to tackle. That was why outlasting long enough for them to turn on each other was his only option. If he could have worked out where all of the extra mana he’d been accruing during the Cull had come from and tap it now, it would have made his life so much easier, but as it stood, he had to work with what he was carrying with him.
Flitting between the risen stones, he caught a glimpse of white. Ardent uniform. It could have been a straggler from some other squad on their own, or it could have been a forward scout for the massed group of his pursuers. Time would tell.
There was no outcry, no sudden surge of magic or bodies coming his way, so Sylvas kept on flying until he caught another glimpse of white, then another. The massed group of his pursuers, still charging blindly forward towards that last pillar of sand he’d flung into the air, completely blind to the fact that he had flanked them.
Another split-second decision had to be made. They didn’t seem to have spotted him yet, and if he went as fast as he could, there was a chance they never would spot him. He could clear the range of their senses, head back towards where he’d first been ambushed and then wait out their slow methodical search of the whole arena of battle. The longer he kept them waiting, the more frustrated they’d get. That could go two ways. Either it would galvanize their conviction to take him out, or it would spill over into infighting between the different squads.
Or, he could follow his initial plan, a fly-by strike to take out Ironeyes, then a tactical retreat to the tower where he could hold them off. He didn’t know the temperament of the other naval track recruits well enough to judge how they would react to a slow search for him, but he knew enough about people in general to know how the original plan would play out. They’d be drawn by him to the tower, into close quarters. There would be massive amounts of pressure on everyone involved combined with the possibility of any lucky shot taking him out. At that point their cohesion would almost certainly start breaking down. Every one of them convinced it was their last chance to get in the first strike before the inevitable dissolution of their alliance.
It was the better plan, but Sylvas didn’t really want to admit that to himself because it was also the plan that involved flinging himself face-first into danger. He was all too familiar with danger by this point in his life, and didn’t have much objection to flinging himself face-first into it most of the time. Better than being flung into it backwards so he couldn’t see what was going on. But given that this was purely an exercise, and this was a decision that was liable to end in him losing said exercise, it weighed on him heavier than if he’d actually been putting his life on the line. Probably because nobody else had their life on the line. When he was facing Hammerheart or the Eidolons, every risk he took felt justified because even if he died, he would have been protecting someone else from them. Now that feeling was gone. This was all a grand game, and he was souring on playing it as if it were real.
Emotion was one of the many things his first paradigm allowed him to remove from his mind, so he did so. This was the more viable tactic, so he was committing to it. Pouring more mana into his flight spell, he shot forward into the breach.