Chapter 1

“Growth. Endless growth. That is the promise of the path of the mage. Each day we become wiser and stronger and better. Not because we have some unsurmountable obstacle ahead of us, but because the improvement of the self is the obstacle. No matter what we face in life, there is nothing greater. Because no matter what we face in life, it will eventually become trivial as the mastery of our self overwhelms it.”

—Fundamentals of Arcana, Albrecht Magnus

The shuttle had made its ascent to the stars in a relatively smooth arc, but as it fell back towards the planet, it was fighting through the friction of atmosphere, rattling around as the forces working against it fought the protective spells woven into it. Sylvas thought of the drop-pods that the Ardent had used to make their landing on his world. What it must have felt to be alone inside one, surrounded by a narrow shell of metal, flames lapping up the sides as you plunged down into the unknown. Sylvas and his team were locked against the walls of the flying tin-can, stuck staring at each other, but it was a simple matter to hook his eye-slate into the ship’s external scrying now that he’d seen how soulstone networks worked. He could look out as though there was a window.

Sylvas had managed to copy and memorize all of the borrowed library content that he’d spent so much of his wages on by the skin of his teeth before their departure from the station, and he’d have to spend hours working his way through it all so that he could start thinking about what Paradigm and Embodiment he wanted to pursue next. Until now, there had been a predetermined course that he knew he was going to follow, the new circles each reinforcing his weaknesses and advancing him towards new heights, but with this latest one he was finding the freedom of choice to be overwhelming.

The suns were setting over Strife, the blazing red of day giving way to the soft purples of night, but in that final light Sylvas realized just how little of this world he truly knew. There were landmarks arrayed beneath them that were entirely unfamiliar. There were two other campuses on the planet that he hadn’t even known existed. As they came down into the atmosphere and the flames licked away from the outside of the ship, he caught sight of them. Their own Blackhall was off to the far left, in the opposite direction to where the ship was going at present. Beneath their current position was what he assumed to be the Grayhall. While the Blackhall had been built into some ancient temple complex, the Grayhall was situated among the ruins of one of Strife’s vast cities. The toppled towers had been dragged around, rearranged into a defensive circle around a central courtyard, and retrofitted with the same stark white Ardent construction that grew on the Blackhall campus like a thriving colony of mushrooms. All around it, the wards buzzed and crackled as the meandering remains of the Eidolons that once overran the planet still persisted in attacking. At the Blackhall, the idea of an eidolon close enough to campus to reach the wards was considered contemptable, but the standards here were different. They’d have to be, there was no way to stop the eidolons moving through the buried and interconnected remains of the city before emerging.

They continued in their long slow loop over the campuses, approaching the Whitehall next. It was the only one of the three that was entirely freestanding of the ruins of Strife. Out on a broad open plain, surrounded by red dunes, the shining white material of Ardent construction shone in what was left of the day’s light. A layout not dissimilar to their own Blackhall could be made out. A central tower, a plain and blank cylinder, marked the middle of the campus, with outbuildings and a barracks arrayed around it, slung low to the ground. Much like the Blackhall, there was no sign of any eidolons in miles. This pleased Sylvas for reasons he couldn’t really understand.

Distantly, on the third compass point arrayed around their slow loop, Sylvas caught sight of their own home-base, buried in the cliff-faces overlooking the vast and ruined collapse of what he had to assume was another city from the one the Grayhall had been built in, unless the entire planet had been industrialized and settled. But with his familiarity to that place, he found his eyes turning instead to what was at the center of the three campuses, and the center of the ship’s slow turning gyre. At this distance, it looked like a sunken volcano of some sort, before some tickling memory from his reading reminded him that this planet wasn’t volcanically active. It was a crater then. He flicked his view of it out into an illusion that everyone could see. “Anyone know what I’m looking at?”

Kaya said something in dwarvish that he suspected had to do with his mother before trailing off. Then Bael gave an actual answer. “Starfall Caldera. It was the impact point where the Ardent believe that whichever Eidolon was summoned here first made landing on Strife. There isn’t much evidence to that effect, so its entirely possible that it is simply an unusual natural rock formation, or more likely the effect of contact with some sort of meteor or comet.”

“So why did they build around it?” Kaya was a bit grumpy after the space flight. Sylvas suspected that it made her nauseous, so she was taking it out on everyone else. “There’s a whole planet to choose from, why here?”

“A glance at the shape of it should immediately furnish your imagination with a variety of reasons but speaking as one of those students who has already passed through this cycle of the curriculum, I am obliged to tell you that it was chosen for its shape as a natural arena.” Bael fiddled with his fingernails.

“An arena?” Havran perked up a little. “Like, for sports?”

“For fighting rather than anything so lighthearted, I’m afraid.” Bael drooped a little as the excitement faded from Havran’s face. “In particular, for pitching each of us against each of the others.”

Luna was so far along the wall that she had to shout to be heard. “Why would they do that?”

“Our little field trip to the Mournhold and our conflict in the Cull both served to show our capabilities in terms of team-based combat, while the focus of the Crucible is to test our individual strengths and weaknesses.” 

Luna scoffed, “The Ardent never fight alone.”

Except when we do. Sylvas thought dryly.

Images of Croesia no longer haunted his dreams, not since he integrated all of his thoughts back together, but that didn’t mean that his memory was devoid of them. He could still remember standing alone against the planetary annihilator with the meagre powers at his disposal. He wondered how he would fare now. 

With all my advancement and training, could I have saved my world?

“I believe it is less about practice and more about testing our capabilities against one another.” Bael continued explaining. “Not to mention attempting to leverage our inherently competitive natures against us to drive our training and advancement forward.”

Ironeyes sneered. “Aye, nothing the instructors like more than making us kick kragh out each other.”

“I am dubious as to whether it brings them much in the way of enjoyment so much as the most useful tools available to them being those that were placed in their hands to work upon.” Bael said mostly to himself, now that the usual grumbles and complains had kicked off among the others.

Kaya was staring at Sylvas from across the way, rumbling something in dwarvish that didn’t translate. He cocked his head to the side, and she frowned, trying to turn it into something in a common language. “You use a hard thing to sharpen a hard thing?”

To which Bael gave a grateful nod and Sylvas simply smiled. They were all hard things now after their time in the Ardent’s care. All the soft parts carved away. His body had been slim before, but now it was all planes of lean muscle, the long hair that had marked him as on the same social class as aristocracy back home was trimmed short enough that in a fight it would be hard to grab at. None of that concerned him nearly as much as what they had done to his mind. He looked around a room now and saw points of entry, cover, potential threats, potential advantages if a fight were to break out. He had been rewired from a scholar to a soldier, and he wasn’t sure that he liked the change.

Pinching the bridge of his nose at this latest disruption to the class schedule he’d been looking forward to resuming, Sylvas asked, “Are there any more events on the calendar that you want to warn us about in advance? The Crucible, the Cull, Hell Week, any more surprises coming?”

Bael paused and stroked his bald chin as if it actually required any sort of deep thought to recall what had happened the year before. “Typically after the Crucible, there is a survival training expedition into the empty areas of Strife, though I suspect this year ours shall be replaced with the archaeological dig with my cousin, and then we cycle back around to preparation for the Cull once more.”

Sylvas eyes narrowed. It wouldn’t surprise him if the last year’s recruits had orders not to share any of the upcoming torments they were going to be thrown into, but Bael’s face gave nothing away, as ever. “Nothing else?”

“Nothing that immediately jumps to mind. The odd eidolon incursion, but they’re rather sporadic, as I’m sure you’re aware.” Bael shrugged his shoulders artfully, “Not exactly part of our regularly scheduled routine.”

“So… wait does that mean we’ve been here nearly a year?” Kaya’s brows had furrowed as if she were doing some complex memory work herself.

“Well strictly speaking you arrived towards the end of the year, just in time for the crushing train of scheduled events, and of course, Strife doesn’t have years in exactly the same manner as other planets due to being in a binary system. There is no singular clear orbit that the planet takes producing…”

Kaya cut Bael off before he could launch into a full lecture. “A year of Empyrean Standard Time, you stanzbuhr.”

“Perhaps half of one?” He shrugged. “It is difficult to recall the date of your arrival, we weren’t exactly acquainted. Nor did you arrive with the usual recruitment drive ship.”

Clapping her hands, Kaya grinned at them. “Still, first semester on Strife is nearly done? That’s worth celebrating.”

“Kaya, if you produce a bottle of Vlashgahr from somewhere, I am going to throw you out of the airlock.” It was best for Sylvas to cut this off now rather than waiting for things to get out of hand.

Despite the heavy straps keeping her in place, Kaya still managed to cross her arms and growl, “Stanzbuhr, if you don’t loosen up a little, you’re going to pop like you got thrown out the airlock.”

“I am precisely as loose as I want to be.” It was already out of Sylvas’ mouth before he could stop it, but just hearing himself say it made him cringe.

“Not as loose as we want you though!” Gharia crowed from the far end of the shuttle, bringing a blush to Sylvas cheeks, and some chuckles.

“Could we have just one night without debauchery?” Sylvas pleaded, “So I can get a full night’s sleep?”

“Oh you’ll sleep well tonight, stanzbuhr.” Kaya cackled. “You can bet on that!”

The shuttle set down more or less exactly where it had picked them up from when they’d departed from Strife less than a week before. It was strange, that it felt like so much longer. 

As predicted, the holiday spirit had not yet left the other recruits, and they seemed intent on forcing Sylvas to carry along with them into another long night of drinking, jokes and terrible singing when he really just wanted to curl up in bed and catch up on reading through all the material he’d absorbed from the myriad libraries that the Citadel had granted him access to.

Bodily dragging him around, Kaya and Ironeyes kept a tight grip on his arms as they returned to the Blackhall, and more importantly to the storage cupboard where they kept their illicit still producing that most monstrous of all liquors; Vlashgahr.  The last time Sylvas had come here, before they left the planet, the air had been thick and greasy with the smell of it. A mild ozone tang overlaying the sharpness of the distillery stink, but now as they shoved him through the closet door he was assailed instead with nothing but dust. “Guys, I don’t think…”

Both dwarves had frozen like statues as they entered the room, but now they darted forward, dodging around the sagging shelves and cleaning supplies to reach the hollow behind it all where they had been producing their moonshine. In place of the apparatus that they’d put together, they instead saw something far more ominous. A white shield hung in the air. A sending spell, addressed to whosoever touched it first. Kaya shied back from the dim light. “Hit it, stanzbuhr.”

“Why me?”

“Because nobody would think the most boring man on the planet was responsible for brewing vlashgahr, and the instructors are all climbed halfway up your kragh anyway.” Kaya didn’t seem to notice that every word made Sylvas less inclined to sacrifice himself for her.

Ironeyes tried to clarify what she was saying into something less offensive. “You’ll not get in trouble. They’d expect it from a dwarf.”

Rolling his eyes, Sylvas reached out and touched the sending spell. Instructor Aurea’s voice echoed in the closet. “This contraband was seized during a routine sweep while the campus was empty. If you would like your equipment returned to you, please visit my office with your resignation from the Ardent, and I’d be delighted to hand it back.”

The dwarves groaned. But not, as Sylvas had initially thought, about the idea that they were both in danger of expulsion from the training program. Kaya moaned, “It’s going to be a pain in the kragh to put together a new still.”

Ironeyes seemed to share the sentiment. “Bugger all in the way of glassware around here.”

“Blowing our own is too much work,” Kaya cocked her head, “Maybe piping?”

“Aye, could do piping.” Ironeyes agreed. “But what about…”

“Them clear bowls in the mess.” She suggested, without letting him finish.

Ironeyes scratched at his beard. “Bit big.”

“So we make bigger batches.” Kaya replied.

Sylvas just couldn’t take it anymore. “Really? Neither one of you is concerned that your illegal alcohol manufactory has been discovered and you’re being threatened with expulsion? You’re just jumping right back into making a new one?”

Kaya snorted. “You think they don’t know who made the last one? A few scrying spells and you’ve got my name, his inseam, and my cup size. If they wanted us gone, we’d be gone. This is just…”

“It’s the game.” Ironeyes finished for her. “Whoever’s in charge says ‘no vlashgahr, it keeps blinding the miners’ and we say ‘yeah, no vlashgahr boss’ then we go on making it, and so long as we aren’t doing it right in front of them, they don’t care.”

That may have been the most consecutive words that Ironeyes had said to Sylvas in their entire friendship. The stunned silence that followed must have been taken as agreement, because they fell right back into a technical argument about the best way to build a new still, where they were going to put it to avoid the cursory checks that the Ardent were doing, and whether or not they’d have to make anything custom in the workshop to get the whole thing back in action. During the debate, Sylvas backed away slowly and slipped out of the door. The rest of their social group was still lingering in the main hall, not yet trusted with the dwarves secret stash location, and fully expecting a boozy night. Sylvas had absolutely no intention of being the one to break the bad news to them, so he did the sensible and mature thing. Teleporting himself up to his chamber before anyone could notice.

He had learned to blink as he teleported, so that his eyes weren’t exposed to the vacuum for even a fraction of a second, so one moment he was in the hall, the next in his room, perilously close to the bed. Another foot of drift in that direction, and he would have lost a foot to the bedframe. It was a good reminder why he didn’t teleport for frivolous reasons like this, or in combat, when everything was in motion and he was liable to bisect some solid object.

Home. As much as he’d ever had a home. This little cell in a tower. A quick glance showed no signs that the chamber had been searched for contraband, but even if it had, it wasn’t as though he had any embarrassing secrets stowed away. The others might have had mementos of home, or ill-gotten gains from their lives before, but Sylvas had nothing. He had started over completely fresh with the Ardent. This place, this organization, his friends, they were his whole world. Everything that made him, was a part of them. Everything but his scars, and his nightmares.

Bael and Kaya had to be his two closest friends in the world. Kaya had essentially adopted him into her clan, and Bael was a fond reminder of the world he’d left behind. If Mira had still been around, she would have loathed them both, but that was because if he were to take her and split her down the middle, he could have made a Kaya and Bael half quite easily.

He pushed those thoughts away. He wasn’t here on the planet Strife to think about dead girls and lost hopes, he was here to build a future. Settling down on his bed, he started absorbing all the information copied onto his slate and sifting through what he’d stored already in search of his next embodiment and paradigm. There was no hurry for him to ascend to the next circle anymore, not after the wild rush of the first three just to survive and stabilize his core of mana, but given just how many options were available to him, that didn’t mean that he didn’t want to start exploring his options.

He fell back into the rhythm of it. As if he hadn’t spent the last week in space, as if he hadn’t just had to fight for his life and stand trial for fulfilling his mission all over again. Studying was soothing to him. A fact that he knew would make Kaya froth with rage if he ever shared it.

With a smile on his lips, he sunk deeper and deeper into his own perfect memory, absorbing one embodiment after another, searching for some way to make himself perfect. It was only as he drifted off into sleep that he recognized what had been staring him in the face all along. Kaya and Bael were the two extremes of what he could be, just as the combination of them made up Mira, so too did it make up him. His embodiment, his paradigm, they should reflect them as much as himself, because in them he saw himself.

It was a profound enough thought that he stirred himself from sleep long enough to highlight a couple of the embodiments that he’d already seen. Then took the time to strip out of his uniform and return to bed with the intention of actually getting to sleep. Hopefully before Kaya found him.