Chapter 12

“Minimum unit sizes of three are to be used when squads are to be deployed in direct contact with Eidolons. This eliminates the likelihood of affinity lockout, reduces the dangers of mental domination and also any risk of agents going rogue by conventional means. The optimal team size is nine, as this will provide the widest spread of capabilities, and bolster morale, but three is acceptable in crisis situations where reinforcement is not possible.”

—Operation Manual, Ardent Strategic Command

The air displaced by his arrival made a booming sound that seemed to startle the medic, presumably because he’d teleported into the room directly behind her. 

“What the—” She spun on her heel and whatever she was asking fell away in the immediacy of the situation. Sylvas was standing only in the sense that he’d oriented himself upright when he teleported. There was no strength left in his body to keep him upright. He collapsed into her arms the moment that he arrived.

With a kind of automatic efficiency, she caught him and swung him around towards one of the beds, the kind of move that would have had Chul impressed with her wrestling skills. “How are you conscious?”

“Patch me up, please.” He could already picture the Eidolons reforming into their rambling march towards the campus. His mission, his victory, slipping thought his fingers. “Need to get back.”

“Get back?” She was in motion already, strapping devices to him, pouring potions onto the most obvious of his open wounds to try and stabilize them before they killed him. “You aren’t going anywhere. I can’t believe you’re alive right now.”

He was dazed from the loss of blood, mumbling and struggling to focus. “Eidolons—”

“You aren’t going to be fighting anyone or anything in this state.” She shoved him flat onto his back as she slammed some strange device with a glowing crystal onto his chest. Its metal claws bit into the sides of the gaping black hole he hadn’t noticed in the middle of his chest.

Getting his elbows under him, Sylvas started pushing his way back up. “Can’t stop me.”

She jammed a wand into one of the open wounds on his chest and glowing green light flooded out. “The hell I can’t.”

“Teleport back.” Even Sylvas thought he sounded petulant when he said that. “When you aren’t looking.”

She grabbed a hold on his chin and forced him to meet her gaze. “Listen up. If you leave this table you will die, do you understand me? Even if you don’t, I don’t like your chances.”

The reformed group of Eidolon would have started their advance by now. If he teleported back to where he’d just faced them, he’d be able to make an attack to the rear of the pack, maybe pick off some of the Plovers before they had an opportunity to strike back. “Just patch me up quick and—”

“Sylvas Vail, you will listen to me!” She was yelling loud enough to be heard over the ringing in his ears and the screaming of all the scrying spells that had sprung into place around him since he was laid on the med-bed. “You have been brought here in pieces time and time again, and every time, I’ve always put you back together. Once you came in with your head nearly severed and I still fixed you. If I am telling you that this is bad, that this might be more than can be fixed, you will believe me.”

He blinked at her once, then twice. “You… know my name?”

“It is on your file…” She looked genuinely perplexed. “Is that really the part of this that you are focusing on right now?!”

“You…never told me… your name.” He tried to reach up to her then in a punch-drunk haze, but his right arm was no longer taking orders from his brain. It just flopped convulsively by his side, flaking off blackened chunks of flesh. “Fix… please.”

She shoved him flat again and cast something complex into his arm that burned as it entered. “I’m trying to fix you, but it isn’t easy when you keep trying to leave and move and I have to keep talking to you at the same time.”

His head lolled back against the hard little pillow on the bed, and his eyes closed. Convulsions still racked his body as his injuries and the healing spells did battle, with every small victory on either side being rapidly countered by the other. His body was the battlefield now, and he was losing the fight.

Distantly, he heard a voice. “Vail?”

“Vail!” The medic was yelling in his face and prying his eyes open.

“What?” He gasped.

Her hands flexed, as though she was fighting not to strangle him. “I thought you were—”

“I was being… not talking. You said—”

“Okay, fine. Shut up again.” She cut him off and went back to her work. Sylvas couldn’t see what she was doing, or with what, but he knew better than to reactivate his pain receptors and find out how things were doing south of his neck. He knew some of the words of the spells she was using now. From the one he’d stolen from Vaelith, and from the many times that he’d been here before.

For a few moments, or maybe minutes, she worked with the kind of frantic attention that Sylvas was pretty sure he could only muster in the heat of battle. Her hands were a blur, the instruments and spells that she brought to bear on him completely impossible to keep track of, even with his perfect memory. The crystal set above the hole in his chest was pulsing with a dim light which he gradually realized was in time to his heartbeat. It was silent, but the steady trickling sound that surrounded him was not. It wouldn’t be until later that he’d realize he was listening to the sound of his own blood dripping off the sides of the bed to puddle beneath him. Each wound that the medic encountered was cleaned, dressed and healed. With the biggest of his injuries stabilized for now, she was working her way across him methodically.

After digging one of the power stones out of the joint of his burn wrist, she shook her head in disbelief. “What the hell were you doing out there?”

Sylvas tried to clear his throat, but it seemed from the spritz of red that appeared on the front of his uniform that he was choking on his own blood. He managed to heave out the words. “Holding… the line.”

The medic’s arched brows furrowed, creating a little line between them. “And the rest of your squad just let this happen to you?”

He didn’t want her to know that this was some sort of punishment detail from Vaelith or his instructors so he mumbled. “Squad… of one.”

“Ardent are never deployed in groups smaller than three in case of—” She stopped speaking, abruptly as she considered his words. “You’re saying you were out there alone?”

“Why I need to get back… nobody else to…”

“Shut up you idiot.” She reached up to cover her face with her hand, then thought better of it. “There has to have been some mistake, nobody would send a cadet out alone to face eidolons unless they were trying to get them killed.”

He settled back onto the uncomfortable pillow and the uncomfortable bed, and wondered when she’d realize that he had just as many holes in his back. “Mystery solved.”

She scoffed. “Nobody here is trying to kill you other than you, you buffoon.”

He tried to smile again, but the blood oozing from his mouth somewhat spoiled the effect. “Doing… a good job.”

She rolled her eyes. “You certainly are.”

“No… you… thank you… for always fixing me.” He tried to catch hold of her hand as it moved by but she slapped it aside. 

“Literally my job description.”

“You… do… more.” Sylvas consciousness was wavering now. All the adrenaline was out of his system, the desperation and need to act were giving way to a realization of how close to death he’d come.

“You make me do more, constantly throwing yourself into all sorts of—”

“What’s… your name?” Sylvas managed to interrupt the string of complaints.

She scowled down at him. “Is this an attempt at flirtation? Because I have to tell you, you’re not my type. I prefer my men sane and not half dead.”

“You’re so kind… to me and I…” Sylvas had no idea where this was coming from or where it was going and if he had just a touch more awareness of what was going on around him, he would have been mortified.

“And that’s quite enough of that.” She pressed a wand to his forehead, pushed mana through, and abruptly Sylvas was asleep.

In the darkness of his dreams, the Eidolons followed him. They had made it to the campus without him there to stop them, they had breached the wards, overrun the facility. They were coming for him. They’d tasted him and now they needed more. He was still strapped down to the bed when they came pouring through the door, a Plover incinerating the medic with a blast of lightning as it ducked low to come in, a tide of Gaunts advancing on him. Menacing and slow after the frantic chaos of the battlefield. They were in no hurry now. Why would they be, when their dinner had been laid our for them like a buffet.

The claws dragging across his skin, the tendrils pushing underneath. One Gaunt pried open his jaws and pushed its way inside, between his teeth, down his throat, squeezing and pushing and twisting its way down until it was inside his body and there was no sign of a Gaunt at all. Until there was just the Eidolon that had forced its way inside, and everything that Sylvas had been was gone.

He woke gasping for air, swinging a fist at an enemy that wasn’t there. Vaelith caught the blow on her palm. 

It gave her all the justification she needed to thrust her other hand into his chest and shove him forcefully down. Breath left his lungs and his ribs cracked as he fell back onto the hospital bed, his head suddenly spinning. There had been no chance to protect himself or shift weight around. Even so, she must have pulled the punch, seeing as he didn’t have a hole where his heart used to be.

All of the scrying spells monitoring him began screaming, and the medic barged in to see Vaelith poised over him with her hand still on him. Elf and half-elf stared one another down, and for what had to be the first time ever, Sylvas saw Vaelith back down. It must have been the good medication that they had him on making him see things. He’d never admit to what he’d just witnessed.

After a few moments of being checked over and a quick spell to repair the immediate damage the excitement had caused, the medic looked into his eyes. “Call if there is a problem.”

He tried to nod, thought better of it, and managed to squeeze out a terse smile.

Alone again, all of his attention turned to Vaelith. The room seemed to spin as he turned his head to look at her. All the spells and attachments moved with him, but the curtains drawn around his bed and the wall seemed to keep on moving after he’d stilled. The world was a hazy place, with darkness prickling around the periphery of his vision.

Vaelith slumped down into her seat, glowering. “What was that?”

He tried to hold up his empty hands to pacify her but found they were too entangled in tubes and magical constructs to be moved so easily this time. Had the medic just strapped him down? His tongue felt too big for his mouth. Like even that was swollen and bruised from overuse. “Sorry, I just… nightmares.”

“I don’t care about that pathetic excuse for a hit.” She grunted, a hand coming up to wave the words away. “What was that out in the field?”

Sylvas stomach dropped. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hold them off. I tried, but… you were right about needing to advance.”

“I was, but that isn’t it either.” She had settled back in the seat by his bedside, giving him space to breathe. A moment to think. “You nearly killed yourself.”

“My orders were to hold the ridge.” He replied, as if by rote.

“Your orders were…” her words trialed off as she took a deep breath to steady herself, eyes also closing for several seconds before reopening. “When you are faced with overwhelming odds, the correct solution is not to die. It is to fall back to a more defensible position and call for reinforcement. You were meant to go out there, realize you couldn’t win without advancement and then come back. You were not meant to put yourself at risk in a training exercise.”

“Training exercise? Our home was under attack.” He recognized that it was wrong, even as he said it.

“This isn’t a home, Vail. This is a Relic world. The only people called this home died before your people had stopped living in caves. This is an Ardent training base, warded against Eidolons and everything else. You think one of them could get anywhere near us if we didn’t let it?”

“Then why—”

She tapped him in the center of his forehead, right where the medic had stabbed him with a wand to put him under. 

“Because you have a problem Vail, one I hoped you’d gotten the hint of after our last lesson.” Vaelith stated. “You’ve gotten yourself into the habit of relying to somehow asspull yourself to victory after everything has to gone to hell. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad skill to have, but do you know what is even better?”

It took Sylvas a second to realize that there had been a question after Vaelith had finished speaking, belatedly shaking his head. “I, uh, no.”

“Being so godsdamned strong that you don’t ever need to.” The woman answered forcefully. “It’s a pattern that all of us, especially General Wartback, noticed after what you did on Mournhold. And you know what? It’s going to get you killed one day. It’s going to get others killed too. A lot of others given where you’re most likely to end up in your career.”

Awareness was slowly coming back to Sylvas. His core was still nearly empty, his body was still healing from the litany of wounds that the day had inflicted and the damage he’d done to himself was still there. Using the wrong affinity of mana had scarred the inside of the channels in his left arm, even beneath all the damage that the lightning bolt had done. Ripping in mana at the rate he had to pull of the last-minute escape had left every other channel in his body aching and tender. The circles that contained his mana spun, but they were wrong somehow, the rhythm was off and they were out of synchronization.

Reality sank in. “So, the eidolons I left behind—”

“Wandered off in a random direction, same as they always do.” Vaelith stated. “You aren’t making a difference here killing those creatures, Vail. If only for the reason that there is no difference to make. You are here to train, to make mistakes, to get stronger, so you can make a difference on the worlds that matter and survive while doing so.”

Many words fought their way up his throat, but he managed to silence the worst of them. Letting only the simplest of answers slip out. “I’ve made a fool of myself.”

But if Sylvas had expected the woman to nod or say something cutting in response, he was quickly disappointed, for her head starts to shake side to side.

“I wouldn’t say it was just your fault,” Vaelith said slowly as she stared back at him as if looking for what words to say. “You’ve…you’ve never really belonged to a place before coming to the Ardent, have you? A place where you truly and I mean truly, belonged without hidden fangs or agenda.”

The question caused Sylvas to simply stared back at the woman, the words being far more direct and emotionally connected than anything he’d heard from her so far. But more than that, it made him think of his parents, the orphanage, then the cult that had essentially raised him, all of which brought up a complicated surge of feelings and heartache that he was in no shape to deal with.

“I…I don’t know how to answer that,” he said simply, discovering that he suddenly had a heavy lump in his throat.

“You just did.” Vaelith stated simply, the woman then going on to lean back and exhale sharply before looking up at the ceiling. Sylvas couldn’t be completely sure from their respective angles but he was fairly certain the saw the instructor wordlessly mouth Instructor Aurea’s name. Though what she might have had to do with anything was beyond his ability in that moment. 

Instead Sylvas used the pause to get a hold of his emotions, the moment of introspection eventually letting him know that his stomach was painfully empty. He had no idea how long he’d been laid up since the medic put him under, but there must have been several missed meals. That was nothing compared to the awful emptiness in his core. There was barely a drop of mana still left in him, and just the thought of trying to draw more was so obviously a bad idea he didn’t dare to consider it.

Sylvas remained silent as he pushed the feelings aside, trying to compose himself in the face of everything he’d said and done. Emotions ran riot beneath what he hoped was a calm face. It would have been horrifically embarrassing if Vaelith knew what he was feeling right now. The shame. He was terribly naïve, and it had put his life in danger again. It was a habit he really needed to break. Trusting that what people told him had any bearing on what was actually going on. 

Or perhaps even trusting people at all. He thought acidly, his roiling emotions, and the frustration accompanying them, causing him to shift into anger. It shouldn’t be this hard to simply do what I’m told to do.

It was a growing rage that would have likely consumed him had not Vaelith then say the only words that could have brought him back.

“It seems that…we, I, have made a mistake in our approach in instructing you,” she cleared her throat. “And for that, I’m sorry.”

There was a long pause as the anger and tension that so threatened to overwhelm Sylvas abruptly broke, leaving him staring at Vaelith wordlessly for what felt like an eternity. The last thing that he had expected from anyone, let alone her, was an apology. To say it was a shock was an understatement. He wasn’t sure how long he stared at her, but eventually he managed to find something to say. “For what it’s worth, I had already started work on my new embodiment after our… conversation. I was just in the process of working out details for the paradigm before…well, you know.”

“I…see,” the reply came out strangled as she looked away from where Sylvas lay on the bed, still covered in the healing devices and tubes feeding healing potions directly into the worst hurt places. But that single moment was all that she needed to compose herself, her voice calm and controlled as it ever when she spoke again. “So, then you really nearly died for nothing.”

“Yes. Yes he did.” Came the medic’s call from across at her desk, hidden from sight by the curtains that had been pulled around Sylvas. Vaelith shot a dirty look in that direction, but chose to pretend she couldn’t hear it.

“No. Not exactly,” Sylvas replied as he continued to come down from his rage. “It was… a learning experience.”

Vaelith scoffed. “Oh? And what did you learn? How much punishment you can take?”

“I mean it was a learning experience for you, for all of you.” If he weren’t hopped up on so many different painkillers to affect him even through his mental clarity, he felt certain he would never have had the courage to say any of this to her. “Now you all know that I don’t need to be tricked, goaded, or corralled towards what you want me to do. You just need to tell me, clearly and honestly what you need, and I’ll find my own way to figure it out.”

Once again Vaelith stared back at him with a blank expression on her face, the length of the silence that followed making Sylvas realize that he had managed to actually leave her speechless.

“I let you break me.” He continued after a long pause. “I let you shatter me, knowing that the brittle shards of what was left would be sharpened into weapons. Because I’ve put my trust in you, right from the beginning, to know what is best for me, even when I don’t.”

A look of dismay crossed Vaelith’s face, the stoicism that she had managed to shield herself in cracking once more. “Sylvas…I—”

From the moment he had woken, Sylvas’ world had been gradually been becoming harder and harder to follow as his treatment progressed. A process that had steadily caused the sounds of the various scrying spells tracking his vital signs and progress to fade away from his active hearing. Moreover the whole room, except for Vaelith had gradually become blurrier and blurry until all he could clearly see was her. 

A good thing in his mind considering the the shock he saw on her face as he mumbled out, “You need to start trusting me back.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he lost his increasing tenuous grip on wakefulness and soon found himself falling into darkness, fading away from all of the pain and the damage that he’d done.