Chapter 24

“The study of alchemy, the extraction of arcane power from the combination of naturally occurring ingredients and their derivatives. It is rarely taught in modern curriculums, looked on as quaint and archaic. But in some places the art is still alive. Often in the most unexpected of places.”

—Potionometry: The Lost Art of Alchemy, Kyuben Lanceswan

Once again, Sylvas did exactly as he was told only to be confronted with a sending spell the moment he left the warded confines of the infirmary.

“Report to Outbuilding 7.”

He couldn’t place the voice, exactly, but it had the curtness he’d come to associate with his Instructors, so he went without question.

As it turned out, he was there to meet with not only Instructor Vilmander, but the vast majority of the other recruits. Not just the naval track ones that Sylvas was increasingly thinking of as his peers, but all of them, lined up neatly. Stepping up, one by one, to Vilmander and some secretary at a desk beside the locked door of Outbuilding 7.

Gharia was at the back of the line, so when Sylvas fell into place behind her, it took less than a moment for her to bare her teeth in what he hoped was a friendly greeting. “Have a nice nap?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. “Slept like a headless baby.”

For a moment, her tail continued its usual amused swishing, then her whole body froze. “Headless?”

He tried to be glib, but it didn’t come out right. “Its hell week, and none of your instructors even decapitated you?”

“I was going to complain I hadn’t seen an instructor all week,” Gharia’s tail went back to lashing again in the pattern Sylvas believed could be best translated as barely constrained fury. “But if that’s how they treat us, I’d rather not.”

He shrugged, trying to diffuse the situation. “Did you really think that focused training meant just for me was ever going to mean anything other than me getting my ass kicked all over campus?”

She leaned in closer to him, close enough that when her tongue flicked out to taste the air it almost touched his face. “Tell me which one did it, and they’ll never wake up again.”

“Much as I appreciate the offer.” He leaned back. “It was… consensual? I suppose.”

She cocked her head to the side in confusion. “You consented to getting your head cut off?”

“I…”  Explaining the journey he’d been on in the past week would have taken more time than they had before reaching the end of the line, and he didn’t much feel like airing all of his sordid history in earshot of the whole campus. “Committed to the exercise.”

“Some of them,” She cast a narrowed eye across the other recruits around them. “They say you’re crazy. A death seeker. For how you strive.”

Sylvas had known that the Instructors, the medic and Aurea had a close eye on him, but not the other recruits. “What do you say?”

“To them I say, shut up.”

Sylvas chuckled. “And what would you say to me?”

She stilled again. “If you led the charge into the black abyss without an air mask, I would follow. I trust in your judgement.”

In spite of everything, he still had the trust of the people that mattered. Softly he said, “Thank you.”

She leaned in close, and he braced himself for more sentimentality. “Please do not lead me into the black abyss without an air mask.” 

The rest of the line turned to glower at them when Sylvas unintentionally burst into laughter.

For all her complaints about the regimen of training that she’d been dragged through, Gharia had unlocked her affinity, for air and managed to filter her mana with ease, rising up to the same circle as Sylvas again. Air was a common enough affinity outside of the Ardent, but not one used to great effect in combat, generally, which had left her feeling a little bit disconnected from the other recruits. Their futures were all but certain, the front lines of the fight against the Eidolon menace, but for Gharia things were more difficult. Air affinity was only truly effective on worlds with atmospheric conditions that were breathable or close. It would function in artificial air, but it would never have its full strength, with the ambient mana limited. In turn, that would limit her deployment opportunities immensely. She was still committed to the Ardent, she made sure to repeat that several times, but she just wasn’t sure how they’d use her.

Sylvas felt like someone who could conjure air out of mana would come in particularly useful in space, but he supposed that there were already enchantments in place to do the same work.

The queue continued to move along at a brisk pace, with every recruit receiving a brief scrying and then a recording being made of the results, but those who’d already been through the process were still milling around afterwards. Kaya was at the nucleus of some social cell with a surprising mix of naval track recruits and all the rest, bridging the gap between the different branches of the Ardent, as only she could, with lewd stories revolving around a mushroom she once grew that it was gradually becoming apparent was a metaphorical mushroom. But in spite of his alternating amusement and discomfort overhearing that, Sylvas remained perplexed. There had never been a time where the recruits didn’t have something to do or somewhere to go, so why they were all lingering after scrying was confusing him. Irking him. His bracer, the cheat-caster as Chul had called it, had been damaged in the fight, and he wanted to try and find some free time to repair it before getting thrown back into the usual grind, but if they were all forced to wait here until the very last recruit had been scryed, he’d have lost a fair chunk of a day that he’d already half slept through.

Still, he could bite back his irritation long enough to get through the line and get his results. It had been a long and arduous week, taxing him both mentally and physically in a way that he’d never expected, but it would all be worth it if it had paid off and there were some discernible improvements.

When he finally hit the end of the line, he politely tried to ignore Gharia’s scrying results, even though Lockmind ensured they’d be committed to memory forever, and then stepped up. Vilmander may have had a personal investment in his improvement, but he seemed as dispassionate and disinterested as with every other recruit when Sylvas stepped up.

• Name: Sylvas Vail
• Species: Human
• Health: 68%
• Mana: 100%
• 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: F4 – A4
• Resilience: F4 – A4
• Speed: F3
• Potency: E7 
• Focus: D1
• Regeneration: D8

He couldn’t hold back a grin as he read the results. The improvements to his body had been hard won, and he’d continue slogging away at making his body the pinnacle of fitness that he needed it to be to maximize the effectiveness of Tidal Shift, but the improvements to Focus and Regeneration were leaps and bounds ahead of what he’d have expected. He had always known that he’d be primarily a caster, thanks to Arterium Arcanum, but this was the first time that he’d seen how good that future might be. Potency was the only spellcasting statistic that hadn’t budged, and he’d been doing no small amount of investigation into how it was improved. As it turned out, it was typically the slowest to grow across every category that they were judged on. With only a few real outliers of people born with a substantially greater ability to cast. Allegedly, his own potency was relatively high for someone born outside the Empyrean, likely inflated by his embodiments, but that didn’t mean he still wouldn’t have enjoyed a bit of a jump up.

For obvious reasons Sylvas had arrived a little later than everyone else, so he had scant socializing time before the last of the queue was dealt with, strolling over to join Gharia at Kaya’s wide circle and receiving a surprisingly widespread welcome. Kaya was grinning furiously from the moment she saw him, in a way that made him more than a little uncomfortable. “Hey stanzbuhr. Stanzbuhr!”

He gave her his undivided attention. She brayed, “Hope you didn’t overdo it in training and lose your head!”

Chuckles rippled around the circle, and Sylvas was forced to present a smile, as if his partial decapitation hadn’t been the latest in a long line of traumas that he’d suffered. “I was trying to lose weight, and you always said I had a fat head.”

Kaya threw back her head and cackled at that. There was no malevolence in her, just the same awful drive to make puns that afflicted so many people. She was readying her next salvo of jokes, soon to be lobbed with all the grace of a child flinging rocks at a bird, when an abrupt silence fell over all of them. Instructor Aurea had emerged from the outbuilding, ducking to get out through the door without hitting her head.

“It is my great pleasure to announce that personal improvement week is now at its end.” There was a round of whooping and applauding from among the recruits, which the elf smiled through. “But it is important for all of you to remember that what comes next is perhaps one of the most perilous parts of being a part of the Ardent…” All fell silent once more, as she glanced around. “Shore leave.”

A few, a very few, of the recruits managed to recognize that she’d made a joke, and chuckled along, but Sylvas and all the other newer recruits had been bracing themselves for the worst and were now confronted with nothing but empty air. “Shore leave?” Sylvas asked Gharia.

“Time off. Rest and relaxation. Holidays.” She replied, as blandly as she could, while her tail swished with ferocity.

“I don’t understand.” He was so perplexed by the sudden change of direction that his face set Kaya off cackling again.

Aurea amplified her voice to be heard over the chattering that had broken out all around them. “Shuttles will be prepared for you to board at start of business tomorrow. If you have any matters to attend to on Strife, now is the time. Please remember; even though the staff of this facility will not be there to watch over you, you will be observed, and your behavior will reflect on this campus, for good or ill. Try to refrain from tarnishing our reputation too badly.”

Kaya shouted back. “I’m making no promises!”

Harvan usually shrank to the background when conversation was going on, but his excitement briefly propelled him into the midst of it. “We’re getting off this rock?”

“I’m going to drink a whole brewery.” Kaya announced to the world at large.

“You can have the booze, just show me some women!” Ironeyes declared, receiving no shortage of angry stares from the women around him.

Sylvas leaned in to clarify, “You are aware that there are female recruits all around you?”

“Aye, and every one of them would murder me if I so much as flirt their way.” Luna and Gharia both conceded that point with a nod. “I’m not daft.”

Kaya had broken into the middle of the gathered circle and had her hands raised, practically vibrating with excitement. “Guys… guys… you’re finally going to see the devil-drinker in action!”

“Kaya…” Sylvas began to groan before she shouted over him.

“Just you wait, every time you think he’s done, he ain’t done.”

He tried to untangle himself from the crowd and shut her up, but found Gharia’s tail was now coiled around his leg and Ironeyes was leaning hard into his other side, chortling away. “Kaya, I do not intend to…”

Bortan snorted, “Who knows, maybe he’ll get so drunk he might actually relax for a minute?”

“Let’s not get carried away, now.” Luna quipped back.

Kaya pointed at the other woman. “Things the devil-drinker won’t be saying once he’s got his hands on some vlashgahr.”

Sylvas had managed to drag one hand free to pinch at the bridge of his nose where he felt a headache already coming on. “I am extremely hopeful that is some sort of liquor and not another untranslatable body part.”

“Hah!” Gharia’s bark of laughter in his ear almost made all the unwanted attention worthwhile.

Instructor Aurea’s voice boomed out over them once more. “Your back pay for time served has been deposited into your accounts, do your best not to spend it all in one place.”

Cheers rose up from all around them, the whole campus roaring with delight as if they were already drunk and foolish.

Kaya clapped her hands together. “Well lads, there goes the only thing holding us back from being drunk every single minute we’re off Strife.”

Sylvas tried to slow her down, “I am fairly certain that the Ardent don’t intend for us to…”

“What else are we going to spend it on?” Ironeyes cut him off with a grumble. “Settling down? Buying a house? We’re soldiers.”

Bael opined, “It is my intention to make some worthwhile, low risk and long term investments with my own pay so as to prevent any potential retirement from the service from being directly into abject poverty.”

Kaya caught him by the front of his jacket. “And I intend to get you so drunk you forget how to say most of those words and spend every penny on strippers.”

The elf drew himself up to his full height and seemed to weigh the options before reaching down to shake Kaya’s hand. “It shall be a classic battle of wills and philosophies. To the victor the spoils.”

Kaya jerked a thumb back at Sylvas. “I suppose ol’ Stanzbuhr will want to spend his whole leave in the library, swelling his brain up.”

Sylvas was about to say something to that, but he found Gharia’s hand clamped over his mouth. The delicate and soft scales of her palm tickling across his lips. “It’s my personal mission to make sure he has as much fun as that soft skinned body can handle.”

That drew some more cheers from the surrounding soldiers, along with more than a little bit of noisy speculation about how much a human body could handle in comparison to those of the reptilian Najash. Particular emphasis was being put on their respective levels of stamina, for reasons that Sylvas couldn’t really parse.

“You are all dismissed.” Aurea’s voice was turned-up so loud now that it rustled Sylvas’s hair with every word. “Not that any of you are paying the blindest bit of attention.”

As they moved, Sylvas tried to draw away from the others, but found arms locked through his, even as he tried to break away for the temple complex and the opportunity to repair his bracer, the inescapable draw of all his friends in one place, unwilling to part from his company was too much for his heart. I can fix it later. Some things are more important.

Vlashgahr, as it turned out, was an extremely alcoholic beverage that dwarves brewed with almost miraculous levels of competence, constructing distillation systems of quiet complexity that could be stowed away in every disused corner of the campus. Some even buried under the red sands of Strife themselves. What exactly it was made out of, Sylvas had no idea. It tasted predominantly like burning, and the aroma was best described as “chemical.” He was later informed that it had originally been meant as fuel for interstellar travel, prior to the dwarves’ ascendance to magic, and he had to admit that made a degree of terrible sense. He certainly felt like he was flying.